I've been thinking a lot lately about universal evil, you know, as a concept.
I spent a lot of my life believing that there was a universal evil. I remember very clearly sitting in my honors seminar with the wonderful and amazing Bill Van Antwerpen at Indiana and talking in great detail about my believe in universal evil. The idea that there is something in the universe that is pure evil, and that it does impact us, and that it is imperative on us to actively ward it off from our daily lives. Call it the devil if you must. I don't, and I think it's a lot more complicated than that. But it's the closest western equivalent we have to what I'm talking about.
But in the past year, I've been doing a lot of reading on religion and religions (two separate things), and so much study claims that the idea of a universal evil doesn't exist at all until after religion became politicized or corportized (pick your poison). That if you really truely look at the first evidences of religion, they involved gods that were both good and evil simultaneously. The gods could bring fertility and abundance, but they could also take them away. There was not one god who was good and gave good things and another separate force that destroyed them. Creation and destruction were part of the same whole, necessary elements of the same cycle. And one was not evil. It just was part of the whole.
Except that, in the absence of a universal evil, there's so much I can't explain. I can't explain Jeffrey Dahmer. I can't explain Idi Amin. I can explain Hitler, because he was more evil in theory than in practice, but I can't explain the people who actually walked herds of humans into gas chambers. I cannot explain any of that, and so much more, without a universal evil.
On the other hand, it's quite true that the more traditional views of good and evil, of cycle and regeneration, of giving and taking, fit more in line with my own practices of spirituality.
And so I came to a conclusion. And I hate it.
We done went and manifested a universal evil. It's the only thing that makes sense, you know. We've gotten more and more evil over time. And as more and more people were preached to and convinced that there was a universal evil, there it was. Way to go, humans. Way to introduce that concept and then run with it. Awesome work. But I've never doubted the power of the mass subconscious to create from nothing, something. And I've really come around to believing that we created a force of evil.
Which then begs the question - if I believe that a universal evil does exist, but I believe that it is not a natural thing, in what way do I proceed with my own development?
Discuss.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Let Us Discuss, If We May, Mortality
So deep! Mortality!
Mortality is, without a doubt, one of the things you think more about when you get back from a trip to Africa. It comes at you double sided. Firstly, you are thinking about mortality because you've just come back from somewhere where 45 is considered old. OLD. And you have already started spurting out that "forty is the new thirty!" But you're faced with the fact that, whether you squeeze out the extra years afforded by American medicine or not, life is short.
Then you are hit with pondering mortality because you can't help but come back from there thinking about what you really want to leave behind when you go. What do you really want to do that will have left things better than you found them?
And, of course, when you start thinking about those two things, you start thinking about the nature of physical life altogether.
And because the Universe likes to fit things together, you then start watching season three of Northern Exposure, which is the season where the writers were clearly preoccupied with the idea of mortality.
The first episode is called The Body in Question. In it, Chris, the subconscious voice of the show, discovers the frozen body of a historic Frenchman while fishing. The body also has a preserved diary that implies that the Frenchman had traveled to Alaska with Napoleon, who was seeking to sire a child after Josephine failed to give him children, and that Napoleon was never actually at Waterloo. During the episode, the town struggles with the possibility of improving their financial lot by opening a museum versus the greater historical and spiritual consequences if the rest of the world were to know that Waterloo wasn't as Waterloo is believed to be.
The episode ends with a native tribe, the Tellakutans, coming to reclaim the body, which to them is a mythological hero as it is believed that Napoleon actually fathered a child with one of their tribe females. As the episode closes, the Native Americans row away in the mist on a canoe with the body of the frozen legend, and Chris reads the following Proust excerpt (from Remembrance of Things Past) over the radio:
"When from a long distant past nothing persists, after the people are dead, after things are broken and scattered, still alone, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long, long time like souls, ready to remind us, waiting, hoping for their moment amid the ruins of all the rest, and bear unfaltering in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence the vast structure of recollection."
I mean, firstly, before we even discuss, let's take a moment to just soak in how brilliant and wonderful and amazing Proust is.
There are many takeaways from that episode. But to me, at this moment, where I am in my head and my soul, the contrast between the two types of things you can leave behind is so stark. You can leave something big and massive. The kind of thing that will change history and make a town want to create a museum for you. Or, you can leave something that contributes a memory or a belief or a particle into the "vast structure of recollection". Something that feels small but that would make a tiny tribe of Indians in the expansive North travel for days in a canoe to take you back home. In short, something that will cause somebody, even just one person, to be inspired and to care. To love, really.
And really, you can do that every day.
You should find that episode. It is brilliant in the way it unravels to that powerful last moment with the canoe and this crazy philosophical radio DJ reading Proust to a town of 1300 people in the middle of Alaska.
After another episode passes, there is another exploration of mortality. This episode is called A-Hunting We Will Go.
When I say that, you probably think that it's obvious that the element of mortality being dealt with in that episode is about hunting. And that's definitely part of it: the struggle that Joel faces with killing animals and the emotional turmoil he goes through trying to preserve the life of a bird he shot. Really, you could write an entire paper on the multiple levels on which mortality is explored in this episode, but I don't have that in me right now! Instead, I'll sum up the key story that drew me in. There is an older woman, Ruthann, in the show. She's in her seventies, in fact in this episode she has her seventy-second birthday. And she is friends with Ed, who is a wandering twenty-something. During the episode, Ed becomes obsessed with the fact that Ruthann is old and will die soon. And there are lots of plot turns involving that, but in the end, he throws her a birthday party - to celebrate how alive she is. At the birthday party, he tells her that the next day he will take her to show her what he got her for her birthday.
He has gotten her a spot of land, high up on an Alaskan mountain with a beautiful view. It's for her grave, when the time comes. And then, they are standing there. And I may get the quotes slightly off here, but Ed says to Ruthanne, "What do you want to do now?" And she says, "Dance."
Ed looks at her quizzically.
"I want to dance, Ed. I want to dance on my grave. How many people ever get the chance to do that?"
And as the show ends, the camera pans out and up into the sky above them as Ed and Ruthann dance on top of the grave she'll one day occupy. And they are happier than you can imagine.
And what's so powerful to me about that episode is that I kind of feel like that's my philosophy every day anyway. Even if I can't dance "on my grave" I really try to live every day so that eventually I will have lived it as much as possible. I will have danced on my grave in all the metaphorical ways that count. I will not have missed a minute of the dancing, or of the living.
And it's perfect universal timing that I came home from Africa and those two episodes were on. Because they put me back into healthy places about remembering how I want to live. You can't help but come back from Africa and want to do something BIG to make the world better, but the most important thing is to make the world better in small ways every day. Inspire girls who wouldn't go to college to go to college by being there for them every day, for example. Give love freely because people are short on it. Be generous of emotion and time. All of those things that I try to incorporate into my life anyway.
And you can only do that if you live like you're dancing on your grave every day. If you're not alive, how can you make other people feel alive? Live every moment.
It's completely odd that I'm saying that Northern Exposure snapped me out of my post-Africa depression and affirmed all the things that I think are so important about the way I need to live if I'm following my right path, but it did.
Mortality is, without a doubt, one of the things you think more about when you get back from a trip to Africa. It comes at you double sided. Firstly, you are thinking about mortality because you've just come back from somewhere where 45 is considered old. OLD. And you have already started spurting out that "forty is the new thirty!" But you're faced with the fact that, whether you squeeze out the extra years afforded by American medicine or not, life is short.
Then you are hit with pondering mortality because you can't help but come back from there thinking about what you really want to leave behind when you go. What do you really want to do that will have left things better than you found them?
And, of course, when you start thinking about those two things, you start thinking about the nature of physical life altogether.
And because the Universe likes to fit things together, you then start watching season three of Northern Exposure, which is the season where the writers were clearly preoccupied with the idea of mortality.
The first episode is called The Body in Question. In it, Chris, the subconscious voice of the show, discovers the frozen body of a historic Frenchman while fishing. The body also has a preserved diary that implies that the Frenchman had traveled to Alaska with Napoleon, who was seeking to sire a child after Josephine failed to give him children, and that Napoleon was never actually at Waterloo. During the episode, the town struggles with the possibility of improving their financial lot by opening a museum versus the greater historical and spiritual consequences if the rest of the world were to know that Waterloo wasn't as Waterloo is believed to be.
The episode ends with a native tribe, the Tellakutans, coming to reclaim the body, which to them is a mythological hero as it is believed that Napoleon actually fathered a child with one of their tribe females. As the episode closes, the Native Americans row away in the mist on a canoe with the body of the frozen legend, and Chris reads the following Proust excerpt (from Remembrance of Things Past) over the radio:
"When from a long distant past nothing persists, after the people are dead, after things are broken and scattered, still alone, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long, long time like souls, ready to remind us, waiting, hoping for their moment amid the ruins of all the rest, and bear unfaltering in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence the vast structure of recollection."
I mean, firstly, before we even discuss, let's take a moment to just soak in how brilliant and wonderful and amazing Proust is.
There are many takeaways from that episode. But to me, at this moment, where I am in my head and my soul, the contrast between the two types of things you can leave behind is so stark. You can leave something big and massive. The kind of thing that will change history and make a town want to create a museum for you. Or, you can leave something that contributes a memory or a belief or a particle into the "vast structure of recollection". Something that feels small but that would make a tiny tribe of Indians in the expansive North travel for days in a canoe to take you back home. In short, something that will cause somebody, even just one person, to be inspired and to care. To love, really.
And really, you can do that every day.
You should find that episode. It is brilliant in the way it unravels to that powerful last moment with the canoe and this crazy philosophical radio DJ reading Proust to a town of 1300 people in the middle of Alaska.
After another episode passes, there is another exploration of mortality. This episode is called A-Hunting We Will Go.
When I say that, you probably think that it's obvious that the element of mortality being dealt with in that episode is about hunting. And that's definitely part of it: the struggle that Joel faces with killing animals and the emotional turmoil he goes through trying to preserve the life of a bird he shot. Really, you could write an entire paper on the multiple levels on which mortality is explored in this episode, but I don't have that in me right now! Instead, I'll sum up the key story that drew me in. There is an older woman, Ruthann, in the show. She's in her seventies, in fact in this episode she has her seventy-second birthday. And she is friends with Ed, who is a wandering twenty-something. During the episode, Ed becomes obsessed with the fact that Ruthann is old and will die soon. And there are lots of plot turns involving that, but in the end, he throws her a birthday party - to celebrate how alive she is. At the birthday party, he tells her that the next day he will take her to show her what he got her for her birthday.
He has gotten her a spot of land, high up on an Alaskan mountain with a beautiful view. It's for her grave, when the time comes. And then, they are standing there. And I may get the quotes slightly off here, but Ed says to Ruthanne, "What do you want to do now?" And she says, "Dance."
Ed looks at her quizzically.
"I want to dance, Ed. I want to dance on my grave. How many people ever get the chance to do that?"
And as the show ends, the camera pans out and up into the sky above them as Ed and Ruthann dance on top of the grave she'll one day occupy. And they are happier than you can imagine.
And what's so powerful to me about that episode is that I kind of feel like that's my philosophy every day anyway. Even if I can't dance "on my grave" I really try to live every day so that eventually I will have lived it as much as possible. I will have danced on my grave in all the metaphorical ways that count. I will not have missed a minute of the dancing, or of the living.
And it's perfect universal timing that I came home from Africa and those two episodes were on. Because they put me back into healthy places about remembering how I want to live. You can't help but come back from Africa and want to do something BIG to make the world better, but the most important thing is to make the world better in small ways every day. Inspire girls who wouldn't go to college to go to college by being there for them every day, for example. Give love freely because people are short on it. Be generous of emotion and time. All of those things that I try to incorporate into my life anyway.
And you can only do that if you live like you're dancing on your grave every day. If you're not alive, how can you make other people feel alive? Live every moment.
It's completely odd that I'm saying that Northern Exposure snapped me out of my post-Africa depression and affirmed all the things that I think are so important about the way I need to live if I'm following my right path, but it did.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
On Paths and Fearlessness
Earlier this week, I was having a discussion with a boy, and we were talking about a friend whom we have in common who is twenty-four. And she's doing something that, by just about every thirty-something's standards, is thing you just know not to do. She's involved with a married man. Not a married man in a questionable relationship, a married man who's thoroughly married. And the boy I was talking to, who is in his late thirties, started in on how awful it was, and didn't she think about what she was doing to the wife and the children and the family and what would she say if that wife walked up to her and said, "I just want you to know what you've done to me and my family."
And I just looked across the table at him and said, "She's twenty-four. I did horrible things to people when I was twenty-four. You've already admitted to me that you cheated on lots of women in your early twenties. She's twenty-four. She has to do those things in order to really understand that that's not the person she is."
I took my niece to dinner tonight. My niece is also twenty-four. She's really put together for a twenty-four year old, probably more put together than I was at that age, but she's still trying to figure out who she is in a lot of ways. When you ask her what she wants, she can list a lot of "things" and "situations." She wants somebody to love her, but she can't describe for you what love is other than it would make her feel valuable and safe. She wants to be married, but because she wants security, not necessarily because she feels that she's ready to know which parts of herself she'd need to compromise to be in that kind of relationship. In fact, when you ask her about which parts of herself she'd be willing to give up to be in that kind of relationship, she answers "none," which made me laugh. She wants a career, but she wants it because she wants people to view her as successful, not because she herself understands that she's a person who needs to "build" or "create" or have something tangible to succeed at. She can tell you all the things she wants, but she can't tell you the things about herself that really make her want those things. It was an interesting conversation.
Ah, I was young once, too.
Both of these girls are close to me, and, with both of them I feel a certain parental type of responsibility to help them grow into versions of themselves that they can love, because neither of them are quite there yet. And when, at the end of dinner with my niece, she asked me how to get to that point, I found myself coming back to the same philosophy that I've always had. I said to her, "You have to walk the path in front of you fearlessly. You have to let yourself get hurt and rejected and to fail. And you have to hurt other people, too, if it's what's necessary. You can't be afraid of hurting other people because sometimes it's the only way that you learn what's deepest inside of you. Really, you just can't be afraid of any of the things that hurt out there."
I was thinking about it on the way home, and I think that, when I think of the people I know who are the least happy, it's because they're still wrapped up in insecurity, in the belief that being rejected or being hurt or failing in front of others in some way makes them less of a person, or a less valuable person. But that's so not true. It's experiencing those things that makes you into a complete person, and a person who understands both your happy, optimistic side and your darker corners. Because we all have darker corners. And the only way to start to understand those corners and what they mean to you is to live fearlessly and to be willing to feel everything. Everything.
Today I made a choice that will end up costing somebody I care for deeply their job. And I thought about it before I did it, but determined that in the end I am, at base, a person who will look out for myself first. And I fought that realization about myself for a long time, and I got myself into some unhappy, miserable situations because I wanted to deny that that was the person I am. But it's not. And there are probably a lot of reasons that I'm like that, and the most simple would be that nobody's ever really looked out for me for me. And it's not my best characteristic. But I'm okay with it, and it's who I am. And I have lots of other kinder characteristics to counter balance it. And the times in my life when I've done real damage to people have been when I've tried to fight my own best interests in favor of somebody else's.
Not every thing about every person is good. I do feel badly about what I did today. I could have made a choice that would have protected the other person from what's inevitably going to be a very bad spell for them. I could have made that choice. It would have been the wrong choice for the person I am. In the end, I would have hurt more people, more awfully, than what I am in this moment.
Sometimes, I struggle with the fact that I am not an intrinsically good person, but I suppose really, if we're being honest, who is? I struggle with the fact that when pushed up against a wall, I will choose what is best for me before anybody, and that includes my little brother, whom I love more than anybody in the entire world. And no matter how much I always work on myself as a person, I know that I will never change that about myself. In some ways, people are who they are. I suppose if I had a child that might change. But my point is that when I start to struggle with the fact that I can be mean, I can be self-centered, I can amputate people from my life when they no longer bring me positivity with surgical precision, I stop myself and just remind myself that I have other wonderful characteristics. And I wouldn't know that, wouldn't have had to dissect and graph myself until I understood the good and bad parts, and what I can compromise and what I can't, and what I can change and what I can't, if I hadn't been willing to live all of the good and bad moments without hiding from them as I walked along my path.
And so, when I talk to my niece and later when I talk to my silly little friend with her married boyfriend, that's what I'll say. Get hurt, and hurt others if you need to. Don't do it intentionally, but don't run from it if it's what's in front of you. It's the only way you learn where the next step is on the road you're supposed to be taking. Be fearless. Absorb the pain. In the end, you can't love yourself if you don't know yourself, and you can't know yourself if you don't explore yourself, and you can't explore yourself if you're hiding from anything that may not be picture perfect.
And I hope that when my little twenty-four year olds are closer to thirty-four, they are where I am, which is to say very happy with who they are and able to say the following:
a. I want somebody to love me because I have things to share that you can only share in the type of unguarded relationship that you can have with somebody who doesn't expect you to be perfect and who understands that you are not always a good person. And because those things that I want to share are powerful and special, and I will feel lacking if I have to hold them to myself instead.
b. If the right situation to be married presented itself, then I'd want to be married, but if it meant compromising my need for space or independence or the ability to share my love with all of the other people in my life, then that wouldn't be the right situation for me. I'd rather be happy than married.
c. I don't want a career. I want something that makes me feel like I have purpose. If, at any given time, what that is involves a career, then that's the right situation for me. But it may not always.
d. My definition of what makes me a success or failure, a good or bad person, is whether I wake up each day and love myself. I pretty much love myself.
That's what I want them to be able to say. I hope they walk the path to that place.
And I just looked across the table at him and said, "She's twenty-four. I did horrible things to people when I was twenty-four. You've already admitted to me that you cheated on lots of women in your early twenties. She's twenty-four. She has to do those things in order to really understand that that's not the person she is."
I took my niece to dinner tonight. My niece is also twenty-four. She's really put together for a twenty-four year old, probably more put together than I was at that age, but she's still trying to figure out who she is in a lot of ways. When you ask her what she wants, she can list a lot of "things" and "situations." She wants somebody to love her, but she can't describe for you what love is other than it would make her feel valuable and safe. She wants to be married, but because she wants security, not necessarily because she feels that she's ready to know which parts of herself she'd need to compromise to be in that kind of relationship. In fact, when you ask her about which parts of herself she'd be willing to give up to be in that kind of relationship, she answers "none," which made me laugh. She wants a career, but she wants it because she wants people to view her as successful, not because she herself understands that she's a person who needs to "build" or "create" or have something tangible to succeed at. She can tell you all the things she wants, but she can't tell you the things about herself that really make her want those things. It was an interesting conversation.
Ah, I was young once, too.
Both of these girls are close to me, and, with both of them I feel a certain parental type of responsibility to help them grow into versions of themselves that they can love, because neither of them are quite there yet. And when, at the end of dinner with my niece, she asked me how to get to that point, I found myself coming back to the same philosophy that I've always had. I said to her, "You have to walk the path in front of you fearlessly. You have to let yourself get hurt and rejected and to fail. And you have to hurt other people, too, if it's what's necessary. You can't be afraid of hurting other people because sometimes it's the only way that you learn what's deepest inside of you. Really, you just can't be afraid of any of the things that hurt out there."
I was thinking about it on the way home, and I think that, when I think of the people I know who are the least happy, it's because they're still wrapped up in insecurity, in the belief that being rejected or being hurt or failing in front of others in some way makes them less of a person, or a less valuable person. But that's so not true. It's experiencing those things that makes you into a complete person, and a person who understands both your happy, optimistic side and your darker corners. Because we all have darker corners. And the only way to start to understand those corners and what they mean to you is to live fearlessly and to be willing to feel everything. Everything.
Today I made a choice that will end up costing somebody I care for deeply their job. And I thought about it before I did it, but determined that in the end I am, at base, a person who will look out for myself first. And I fought that realization about myself for a long time, and I got myself into some unhappy, miserable situations because I wanted to deny that that was the person I am. But it's not. And there are probably a lot of reasons that I'm like that, and the most simple would be that nobody's ever really looked out for me for me. And it's not my best characteristic. But I'm okay with it, and it's who I am. And I have lots of other kinder characteristics to counter balance it. And the times in my life when I've done real damage to people have been when I've tried to fight my own best interests in favor of somebody else's.
Not every thing about every person is good. I do feel badly about what I did today. I could have made a choice that would have protected the other person from what's inevitably going to be a very bad spell for them. I could have made that choice. It would have been the wrong choice for the person I am. In the end, I would have hurt more people, more awfully, than what I am in this moment.
Sometimes, I struggle with the fact that I am not an intrinsically good person, but I suppose really, if we're being honest, who is? I struggle with the fact that when pushed up against a wall, I will choose what is best for me before anybody, and that includes my little brother, whom I love more than anybody in the entire world. And no matter how much I always work on myself as a person, I know that I will never change that about myself. In some ways, people are who they are. I suppose if I had a child that might change. But my point is that when I start to struggle with the fact that I can be mean, I can be self-centered, I can amputate people from my life when they no longer bring me positivity with surgical precision, I stop myself and just remind myself that I have other wonderful characteristics. And I wouldn't know that, wouldn't have had to dissect and graph myself until I understood the good and bad parts, and what I can compromise and what I can't, and what I can change and what I can't, if I hadn't been willing to live all of the good and bad moments without hiding from them as I walked along my path.
And so, when I talk to my niece and later when I talk to my silly little friend with her married boyfriend, that's what I'll say. Get hurt, and hurt others if you need to. Don't do it intentionally, but don't run from it if it's what's in front of you. It's the only way you learn where the next step is on the road you're supposed to be taking. Be fearless. Absorb the pain. In the end, you can't love yourself if you don't know yourself, and you can't know yourself if you don't explore yourself, and you can't explore yourself if you're hiding from anything that may not be picture perfect.
And I hope that when my little twenty-four year olds are closer to thirty-four, they are where I am, which is to say very happy with who they are and able to say the following:
a. I want somebody to love me because I have things to share that you can only share in the type of unguarded relationship that you can have with somebody who doesn't expect you to be perfect and who understands that you are not always a good person. And because those things that I want to share are powerful and special, and I will feel lacking if I have to hold them to myself instead.
b. If the right situation to be married presented itself, then I'd want to be married, but if it meant compromising my need for space or independence or the ability to share my love with all of the other people in my life, then that wouldn't be the right situation for me. I'd rather be happy than married.
c. I don't want a career. I want something that makes me feel like I have purpose. If, at any given time, what that is involves a career, then that's the right situation for me. But it may not always.
d. My definition of what makes me a success or failure, a good or bad person, is whether I wake up each day and love myself. I pretty much love myself.
That's what I want them to be able to say. I hope they walk the path to that place.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Reflection
Because clearly it is in the weeks like last week when we need to do the most to find our way on the path, right? It is not when the world is crashing around us, because then we rely so much on something greater than we are that it is not hard to find a point in the sky and triangulate our souls there -- we long for focus and direction so much in those moments that we will embrace God's mind easily and let his hands pull us along. It is also not in the times of calm and peace that this work is hard. When your mind is still, going to the calm lake or the orange sinking sun or whatever the finest edge of your soul is is also easy, because there is nothing to distract us.
No, it is in the weeks when practicality and distraction speeds your life and your mind up that this work is hard. When a million things that should not cause static in your mind cause static. When silence is a forgotten concept left in the hamper with the three weeks of overdue laundry. When your choices are to spend your time working - working every minute - to maintain self in the face of expectation. When, even if it's briefly, it is easier to be ugly than beautiful, even if you already know yourself to be beautiful. That is when it is hard.
I am proud of myself this week. I didn't always succeed at fighting off the world and its impact on me. I had ugly moments. But I long ago learned to forgive myself for those. You cannot hate yourself for hurting somebody, because you will always hurt somebody eventually. You cannot hate yourself for falling short of other people's needs, because no matter how much you give, other's needs will always expand to take more (and yours will too). You will never be able to give anybody all that they want from you. It's the nature of the vacuum of the soul. And you cannot hate yourself for falling short. And I have learned that the hard way many times, because Lord knows that I have hurt people deeply in my life. I hurt people this week. I fell short of what people needed this week. I got lost in the noise and couldn't find my still lake or my sinking sun and when that happens I lose myself - and the ability to be my best version of myself.
And then today I found my way back out of the brier bushes and onto the path. And it was hard work to get there. A conscious choice to come back to the silence. I am proud.
No, it is in the weeks when practicality and distraction speeds your life and your mind up that this work is hard. When a million things that should not cause static in your mind cause static. When silence is a forgotten concept left in the hamper with the three weeks of overdue laundry. When your choices are to spend your time working - working every minute - to maintain self in the face of expectation. When, even if it's briefly, it is easier to be ugly than beautiful, even if you already know yourself to be beautiful. That is when it is hard.
I am proud of myself this week. I didn't always succeed at fighting off the world and its impact on me. I had ugly moments. But I long ago learned to forgive myself for those. You cannot hate yourself for hurting somebody, because you will always hurt somebody eventually. You cannot hate yourself for falling short of other people's needs, because no matter how much you give, other's needs will always expand to take more (and yours will too). You will never be able to give anybody all that they want from you. It's the nature of the vacuum of the soul. And you cannot hate yourself for falling short. And I have learned that the hard way many times, because Lord knows that I have hurt people deeply in my life. I hurt people this week. I fell short of what people needed this week. I got lost in the noise and couldn't find my still lake or my sinking sun and when that happens I lose myself - and the ability to be my best version of myself.
And then today I found my way back out of the brier bushes and onto the path. And it was hard work to get there. A conscious choice to come back to the silence. I am proud.
Takeoff and Landing
In walking
through the airport -
the tremor of motion
outside of me -
I feel
finally
still again,
having at last found the moment
I was searching for all week
All of the people I brushed my
hands against
still dusted in particles
on the tips of my fingers,
licked onto my tongue
as I remember their tastes
and long to digest them
My cruelest cells were
abandoned today
in the flakes of my flesh that
shed onto his sheets,
sweating in the hot afternoon.
Somehow in putting my arms around
a man,
I found myself back in myself again
It is too often easy
for me to forget
to choose to not be alone,
or even to realize that it is choice
rather than natural order,
remembering that I am
perfectly designed
to connect like unspooled thread in knots.
the silence of my bohemian home
to the touch of a hand,
to the radiation of a mind
to the warm gossamer of a soul.
Too often, I choose
conservation.
I am designed for hand holding.
I am designed for entangled sheets.
I am designed for dinner conversations.
I am designed for morning hugs for warmth in
cold weather.
When I begin to fail, is when I begin to
believe that is easier on my own.
No, truth would be that
it is easier on my own.
When I begin to fail is when
I choose to avoid the work of
making knots.
I am designed to breath love in and out.
I feel
finally
still again.
My heart expanded,
once more,
to fill the bulkhead.
My eyes again
seeking out the smiles of
people who do not realize that
they are not strangers to me.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Easy Vs. Hard
Here's what we know. It's easy to be one with everything that you're trying to be one with when you're with people you adore in places like this:
In fact, easy can even be the day that you get back and go drinking at Wild Bill's, if you're going drinking with somebody who's known you since you were 14 and who understands every twitch, laugh and itch and when you're with him you are 100% comfortable inside yourself. And you know who you are.
Hard. Hard is what comes after four days on a mountain and one night with somebody who owns part of your heart. Hard is when you come back to work and it's the second week of preseason football and everything needs to go out the door PLUS you have to give up two days to roadshow presentations for a product you've developed...and that means working until 10 for several nights to get ready for that. Hard is coming back and Toni is busy working on the party of the century with the top of the Eiffel tower rented out and a stripper in a cake, so you have to deal with dozens upon dozens of bachelorettes, all of whom have needs. NEEDS. Hard is when more than five of the people closest to you are having some kind of legitimate drama and you can barely find the time to sleep let alone the energy to talk with them (but phone calls are coming, promise). Hard is not enough time to work out so you actually feel more tired. It's not enough time to clean so you're not motivated even in your own home. It's coming home one day and going into the spare room and realizing that the cats somehow got into your pattern basket and tore up eight years' worth of collected sewing patterns. It's bouncing a check because you straight forgot which account another check deposited into. Hard is when you spent the last weekend telling a boy you're crazy about that he sucks because he can't find enough time for you, and then every time he calls to ask you to spend time with him this week saying "I'm too tired" or "I have dinner plans" or "I'm headed out of town again this weekend." Then you feel like an ass and a loser because you were given what you wanted and you couldn't even really accept it. Hard is missing your friends when just a week ago you had plenty of time to email and call them at your leisure. It's actually having to say to people, "If you love me, don't respond to this email for a couple of days." How crappy is that? It's getting so angry at work that you storm out and then let loose with a barrage of really negative and mean things at people. It's realizing that you fell asleep on the couch with a jar of peanut butter in your hand and now it's all over the spare blanket. It's looking at your calendar and not understanding when this will stop.
And you try. You try to get quiet in your head. Soak in the sun. Fall asleep peacefully, but when your life races your mind also races and it's hard to shut it down without the tools you would normally use (distance running, swimming, early mornings, nights in somebody's arms). Each day you say "Tomorrow is the day I will wake up with the sun and be back in my mind again."
I've failed a lot this week. I have not been quiet or still. I have not even been very nice as a person. I have definitely not been present for people the way I want to be. And so tonight I'm forgiving myself, and tomorrow I will get up with the sun if it KILLS me and get back into my head. Because the only way back to a place of centering is through work, and I've prioritized the wrong work this week.
Sometimes it is easy and wonderful. And sometimes it is hard. This week was hard, but that will make the moment when I find my core again all the more worth it.
In fact, easy can even be the day that you get back and go drinking at Wild Bill's, if you're going drinking with somebody who's known you since you were 14 and who understands every twitch, laugh and itch and when you're with him you are 100% comfortable inside yourself. And you know who you are.
Hard. Hard is what comes after four days on a mountain and one night with somebody who owns part of your heart. Hard is when you come back to work and it's the second week of preseason football and everything needs to go out the door PLUS you have to give up two days to roadshow presentations for a product you've developed...and that means working until 10 for several nights to get ready for that. Hard is coming back and Toni is busy working on the party of the century with the top of the Eiffel tower rented out and a stripper in a cake, so you have to deal with dozens upon dozens of bachelorettes, all of whom have needs. NEEDS. Hard is when more than five of the people closest to you are having some kind of legitimate drama and you can barely find the time to sleep let alone the energy to talk with them (but phone calls are coming, promise). Hard is not enough time to work out so you actually feel more tired. It's not enough time to clean so you're not motivated even in your own home. It's coming home one day and going into the spare room and realizing that the cats somehow got into your pattern basket and tore up eight years' worth of collected sewing patterns. It's bouncing a check because you straight forgot which account another check deposited into. Hard is when you spent the last weekend telling a boy you're crazy about that he sucks because he can't find enough time for you, and then every time he calls to ask you to spend time with him this week saying "I'm too tired" or "I have dinner plans" or "I'm headed out of town again this weekend." Then you feel like an ass and a loser because you were given what you wanted and you couldn't even really accept it. Hard is missing your friends when just a week ago you had plenty of time to email and call them at your leisure. It's actually having to say to people, "If you love me, don't respond to this email for a couple of days." How crappy is that? It's getting so angry at work that you storm out and then let loose with a barrage of really negative and mean things at people. It's realizing that you fell asleep on the couch with a jar of peanut butter in your hand and now it's all over the spare blanket. It's looking at your calendar and not understanding when this will stop.
And you try. You try to get quiet in your head. Soak in the sun. Fall asleep peacefully, but when your life races your mind also races and it's hard to shut it down without the tools you would normally use (distance running, swimming, early mornings, nights in somebody's arms). Each day you say "Tomorrow is the day I will wake up with the sun and be back in my mind again."
I've failed a lot this week. I have not been quiet or still. I have not even been very nice as a person. I have definitely not been present for people the way I want to be. And so tonight I'm forgiving myself, and tomorrow I will get up with the sun if it KILLS me and get back into my head. Because the only way back to a place of centering is through work, and I've prioritized the wrong work this week.
Sometimes it is easy and wonderful. And sometimes it is hard. This week was hard, but that will make the moment when I find my core again all the more worth it.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Sunburn
No matter what you say,
I will plant roses in the desert,
always convinced that
their fragile petals
will not be scorched
by the closeness of the sun
And if they are scorched,
their vital color gone
turned to brittle brown
like sunburnt skin flaking
from a child’s shoulders
the soft tissue temptation that made me
rub my check against them
compromising the threat of a thorn
now replaced with exfoliating crispness
falling to the sand like
ashes caught in the air after a firestorm
Is that form not as beautiful as their
precious incarnadine bloom?
Is the burning and breaking,
the disintegration,
not necessary and
sometimes
even
more beautiful?
Or, at least,
is it not
what is needed
to nourish the resurgence of beauty?
Today, We Pick Up in the Middle of My Journey...
Because it's not as though I haven't been on a path with God for longer than I realize. It's not as though I am starting this journey to become whole, by which I mean become a million pieces that I can feel moving, today. I've been on this journey for so long. And sometimes I am centered and one with everything and with whom I know myself to be.
And sometimes I am not.
This year, I got very lost for a long time. I allowed fear into a world that can only be lived through fearlessness. I allowed my wrist to be held in the fog when my soul and spirit wanted to run forward into the sunlight. I forgot to get up every day and look at the sunshine. I gave love where it wasn't returned and held love back where I could have grown by sharing. I got very, very lost. And when I finally was ready to come home to myself, I had no roadmap back.
Which is not to say that it was really that hard. Because at the heart of it all, I am one with me and it was only the process of severing my belief in concepts rather than realities that was hard.
And then I became inspired by Hilary's powerful quest for her own spiritual center.
And then I became inspired by the hard work Carrie is doing.
And I found my old Thankfulness Journal and decided to start a new one, in a new form.
And this beautiful man who is with me in these moments said to me, one day while I was struggling, "If you need to find your way back to something, do it with words. That's how you've always done it before."
And so this blog will be my recording of the lessons that I need to remember. It will be a collection of the words - both mine and others - that help me find the Truth in the world. It will sometimes be pictures, and sometimes be poems and sometimes be silence. It will, to the best of my ability, be the collage and the scrapbook of my roadmap. Of the images and words and sounds and memories that I use to build my soul up.
It will not be updated daily, or sometimes even weekly, because nobody chooses the moments in which they understand their being. But I have always believed that a relationship with God, in every form he has ever taken, is hard work. You cannot sit in the middle of the field and wait for the universe to drop baskets of manna in your lap. You have to do the hard work. The hard work of exploring. Of finding your way. Of taking actions that offer thanks and making sacrifice so that the universe will give you goodness. You have to be good, be dedicated, be hard working, be diligent and be sincere. Not just say that you are those things. Doing those things is harder than saying them.
You have to know that you will fall. Often. You will be less than the best version of yourself frequently, and the moments in which you are not will require that you constantly make yourself aware of every way in which everything you do impacts not only this moment but the moments forward. That is hard.
You will have to forgive yourself when you have fallen. You will have to forgive others when they have fallen. You will have to begin to understand the fine, paper thin barrier between forgiving people and allowing them into your life if their impact will work against your becoming whole. You will have to live forgiveness while knowing your own limits
You will have to be fearless. So fearless - because the universe, because God, will challenge you every day. You will have to believe in the value of yourself beyond all reasonable faith. And you will not always succeed in this, and then you will have to find your way back to believing it again. And that is the greatest challenge the universe will give you.
And, of course, you will have to love. You will have to love with abandon. You will have to love with flaw (and love flaws). You will have to accept love even when it means that you know it will hurt you, or even when it means that you know it will hurt the other person eventually. And you will have to offer love every time it is asked for, because to do less would be to be ungrateful for the love you have been given.
You will need to be grateful, and generous, and strong enough to hurt yourself and others when it is the right thing to do. And wise enough to know what is hurtful and what is Right. You will need to learn how to let go of things no matter how badly you want them if they are not in your plan. You will need to learn how to hold on to things patiently even when it is hard.
These are the things I am on a constant daily journey to do. I'm am working harder on it now than I ever have before, but maybe because I most recently failed more than I ever have before.
Come on my journey with me. More importantly, start your own. And work hard at it. Wake up. Be good. Do good. Do not destroy yourself when you cannot do and be good. Find a roadmap for yourself.
The picture in the right hand side of this blog is Matisse's "Open Window." It has always been a transformative image for me. When I look at it, I always see the vibrant colors of the world, coming in through the windows of my mind and heart and filling me up. You need to look at it that way - not as though the colors are on the outside of the window and your soul is on the inside, but as though the open window between the two things lets them fill each other up. When I can do that at every moment, I will no longer need this journal.
This journal will most likely be with me, in some form or another, for always.
And sometimes I am not.
This year, I got very lost for a long time. I allowed fear into a world that can only be lived through fearlessness. I allowed my wrist to be held in the fog when my soul and spirit wanted to run forward into the sunlight. I forgot to get up every day and look at the sunshine. I gave love where it wasn't returned and held love back where I could have grown by sharing. I got very, very lost. And when I finally was ready to come home to myself, I had no roadmap back.
Which is not to say that it was really that hard. Because at the heart of it all, I am one with me and it was only the process of severing my belief in concepts rather than realities that was hard.
And then I became inspired by Hilary's powerful quest for her own spiritual center.
And then I became inspired by the hard work Carrie is doing.
And I found my old Thankfulness Journal and decided to start a new one, in a new form.
And this beautiful man who is with me in these moments said to me, one day while I was struggling, "If you need to find your way back to something, do it with words. That's how you've always done it before."
And so this blog will be my recording of the lessons that I need to remember. It will be a collection of the words - both mine and others - that help me find the Truth in the world. It will sometimes be pictures, and sometimes be poems and sometimes be silence. It will, to the best of my ability, be the collage and the scrapbook of my roadmap. Of the images and words and sounds and memories that I use to build my soul up.
It will not be updated daily, or sometimes even weekly, because nobody chooses the moments in which they understand their being. But I have always believed that a relationship with God, in every form he has ever taken, is hard work. You cannot sit in the middle of the field and wait for the universe to drop baskets of manna in your lap. You have to do the hard work. The hard work of exploring. Of finding your way. Of taking actions that offer thanks and making sacrifice so that the universe will give you goodness. You have to be good, be dedicated, be hard working, be diligent and be sincere. Not just say that you are those things. Doing those things is harder than saying them.
You have to know that you will fall. Often. You will be less than the best version of yourself frequently, and the moments in which you are not will require that you constantly make yourself aware of every way in which everything you do impacts not only this moment but the moments forward. That is hard.
You will have to forgive yourself when you have fallen. You will have to forgive others when they have fallen. You will have to begin to understand the fine, paper thin barrier between forgiving people and allowing them into your life if their impact will work against your becoming whole. You will have to live forgiveness while knowing your own limits
You will have to be fearless. So fearless - because the universe, because God, will challenge you every day. You will have to believe in the value of yourself beyond all reasonable faith. And you will not always succeed in this, and then you will have to find your way back to believing it again. And that is the greatest challenge the universe will give you.
And, of course, you will have to love. You will have to love with abandon. You will have to love with flaw (and love flaws). You will have to accept love even when it means that you know it will hurt you, or even when it means that you know it will hurt the other person eventually. And you will have to offer love every time it is asked for, because to do less would be to be ungrateful for the love you have been given.
You will need to be grateful, and generous, and strong enough to hurt yourself and others when it is the right thing to do. And wise enough to know what is hurtful and what is Right. You will need to learn how to let go of things no matter how badly you want them if they are not in your plan. You will need to learn how to hold on to things patiently even when it is hard.
These are the things I am on a constant daily journey to do. I'm am working harder on it now than I ever have before, but maybe because I most recently failed more than I ever have before.
Come on my journey with me. More importantly, start your own. And work hard at it. Wake up. Be good. Do good. Do not destroy yourself when you cannot do and be good. Find a roadmap for yourself.
The picture in the right hand side of this blog is Matisse's "Open Window." It has always been a transformative image for me. When I look at it, I always see the vibrant colors of the world, coming in through the windows of my mind and heart and filling me up. You need to look at it that way - not as though the colors are on the outside of the window and your soul is on the inside, but as though the open window between the two things lets them fill each other up. When I can do that at every moment, I will no longer need this journal.
This journal will most likely be with me, in some form or another, for always.
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