Reaching deep into the heart exposes blood and guts not always pretty to see. The truth of our flaws, frailties and vulnerabilities are as ugly as the gold, sparkle and glitter of our best parts are beautiful.
In this year of forthright introspection, I have been both praised and vilified for my willingness to stand so directly before so many eyes. Despite wonderful support, admiration and encouragement from so many readers, there are those who believe this effort is selfish, egotistical, narcissistic, and downright embarrassing.
I am the first to admit that courage and stupidity are close cousins, often standing hand in hand awaiting judgment depending on an outcome. A slim line separating them can just as easily entangle me in a confusing mess.
It is natural to want to keep our best foot forward and out of the mouth. We want people to like us, to think the best of us, to see and (most importantly) let us know that we are “alright”, certainly at least as good as the next guy. We all crave reassurance, and celebrating the best parts of ourselves should be a part of every day.
Conversely, there is the fear that if people discovered that we are not all perfect, sunshine and roses (like they would be surprised), we fear they would not like us. We would be condemned to live and die alone. For some, reputation is a commodity as precious as diamonds, coveted beyond reason and on display in only the best of lights.
To me, only by stumbling do we really learn how far behind our other foot actually lags. Usually, that distance turns out to be not so great as we fear and the rhythm is quickly regained. By not taking it too seriously, a good laugh at oneself is actually hearty nourishment for the soul.
Being open about our miss-steps, I learn, brings great comfort to discover that others march just as awkwardly. The simple truth is that very few of us are as exceptional as we believe our neighbors to be, including those very neighbors. This realization, once truly absorbed, offers a relief to our loneliness and quiet desperation, unites us to a common mediocrity that is actually quite satisfying.
The challenge sometimes lies in the way that our individual truths may ripple outwards towards those around us. My honesty can reveal more about others close to me than they are comfortable having exposed. In relationship, an action of one which might seem modest may cause embarrassment to the other. Mutual respect sometimes requires restraint. A balance can usually be reached.
I believe that one’s gold is not just the bright reflection on the surface, but a rich texture of all the best and the worst that congeals from deep within to form the nature of a person. To recognize, acknowledge and even celebrate that I am flawed, I stumble, I fall smack on my face, connects me better to myself and others. In as many ways as I reach for the hand that wants to pull me back on my feet, I extend my own to pull someone else out of their particular muck.
Life is rich with opportunity. Focusing only on the good stuff denies a significant portion of the true Self, veils the sunshine in a mysterious cloud. We all like a good story, and that requires conflict and resolution. A story only half told draws yawns and polite but indifferent attention.
We are a people fascinated by triumph and tragedy. We applaud the achievement proportionally to the adversity which is overcome, champion the spirit that perseveres over hardship. Equally, we might mourn a great fall, but without an attempt for redemption, our sympathy sours and eventually condemns the victim to their just desserts.
So long as one humbly recognizes the folly of their stumble and strives to tread more lightly, there are always helping hands.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Truth and Consequences
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Hot chocolate
Some days the challenges and struggles just seem too overwhelming to bear. The ache appears in many different guises, physically or emotionally. The neck screams, shoulders stoop. The clump of snow looks like the perfect target for a well-placed kick.
Sunday afternoon, I climbed the snowy hill out of the employees’ parking lot with amazing ease, my new snow tires on my Redster gripping as they should. Gears shifted to avoid the rumbly quirk to which I have grown accustomed, and I cruised home considering my solid footing on my life in transition and the recent ground gained.
No job lies on the horizon beyond an ocean of resumes, but flotsam drifts into place to keep a little money in the bank. A plan exists to get the basic bills paid. Words rush on to paper; the pages are sent out and returned with polite and encouraging notes. The key strokes continue to reward with satisfying comments. Musical notes open doors wider and a new song about a cool cat looms in the mist.
No sooner do I pat myself on the shoulder, however, then the car clunks with a sickening shudder and alarms scream in my head. After losing my truck to negligence and driving one mile too far, this time I pull over immediately to inspect the damage, but see nothing amiss. Back over 45 MPH, it is clear that something has worn dangerously thin. Too far from home to inconvenience someone for a lift and too expensive to tow, I limp along the back road next to the highway, gnashing my nerves and chilled with sweat.
Just as I warned my son I would be late to pick him up, the clunks and rattles became undeniable and suddenly the back end dropped with a crash. One wheel unperturbed spun along for 100 feet past me without looking back. In stunned silence, I stared into the darkening evening, too baffled to even wail.
At school, one can take a test and fail, clearly understanding the lack of answers to specific problems. In ski school, another can dismount and walk down, deciding the sport is just not what one should do. As I kicked and cursed my way along the snow bank towards a road house for warmth and a phone book, I was at a loss to even identify the questions.
Inside, a patron offered, “You get what you pay for”, hearing that I had just bought the car. My own perspective understood that the purchase had reduced my budget significantly in an attempt to live within my means. New tires were paid for instead of risking safety to “save” money. I have worked in these last years to reduce the stressful need for speed in my life, made conscious choices to live within calmer limits. I am doing The Work.
Likewise, I learned to ski a smoother, straighter line and translated that to the larger issue: deciding I could embrace a regular job with a steady pay check. Ironic that flooding the opportunities with my first resume in 30 years, it is lost in the sea of others looking for work.
Doors keep closing in the directions of my “shoulds” and open to my wants. I am invited to play music in ever wider circles as I broadcast my willingness. I have begun a similar blog for our local paper. Even with a long list of daily duties to perform, my heart rejoices and urges me to sit here at my desk and scribble late into the morning while thoughts are fresh and energy is high.
Sometimes we just have to stop wondering about the questions and move forward with what feels right, suspending the mind, ignoring the constant chatter, live with faith. Like skiing down a mountain, there comes a purity of motion. Still with turns rough and smooth, we come to the bottom, smile on our faces, choosing to ride up again or decide to head in for a little rest, warmth and a cup of hot chocolate. Whatever the heart decides, it usually knows best.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Rules of the Game
By definition, a midlife crisis is a middle ground, a turning point balanced with half your life behind and half before. In truth, there is nothing symmetrical about it. A crisis, also by definition, is lopsided, ugly, uncomfortable and disorienting, often painful to suffer as well as to witness.
A midlife crisis is difficult to identify and easy to ascribe to someone’s behavior we might consider to be out of character. Immersed in our own dramas so deeply, it happens to people we know slightly, but is just Life as we know it to those immediately around us. Though it might be ignited by one or a series of particular events, it creeps upon us as warmth under a blanket, surrounding our bodies seductively until the shock of cold feet on the floor.
Death—the cruel jester and constant companion on our shoulder—whispers louder in our ears.
Amidst the turmoil and discomfort in my own life that was so consistent it felt normal, moving my parents out of the home that had been ours forever was the catalyst to ponder my past and futures. As my mother’s clarity of mind dissipated, my conception of the shape of my own life began to weaken, then gave way in a torrent.
Typically, in crisis events unfold with a speed too fast to contemplate alternatives and forge a plan. Reactions without thought recover the stumble or swerve away from the on-coming crash.
But in this, the changes are much more subtle. There is time to review the places we have been compared to where we wanted to go. Evaluation of our circumstances, our relationships, and our priorities takes on a certain urgency as we are confronted by the reality that--sooner than the way-later it used to be--this will all end.
Questions abound, quality is examined, quantity is determined, calculated and judged. The realization of our limits places a value on each aspect and we begin to understand that some dreams will be abandoned while others must be pursued.
For many, this might require only slight adjustments of routine, or a recommitment to finally take that trip. A thoughtful person has hopefully been aware of their movements all along to be aligned with their heart and comfortable with their decisions.
Others, confronted by reality of death’s whisper, discover a great mismatch in how they are living and the value of their dreams. Sometimes the lessons we were taught by others have rooted so deeply in our psyches as to smother completely the joyful desires that had once been our own. Influenced by the love of our parents, our significant others, and even our children, both blatantly and subtly, we have made choices for what is "Right", over-shadowing what we might have really wanted.
The degree to which we have followed more than led ourselves dictates the severity of the crisis. The amount of passion suppressed needing to escape the container defines the quality of the sigh or the force of the explosion.
Our purpose, I believe, is to become the best that we can be. No rules of engagement or packet of instructions are included at birth. We must fend for ourselves and rely mostly at first on those who have brought us into the world, fed, clothed us, and taught us how to live.
Along the way, we shed skins and experiment with outfits. We forge alliances and discover solitude both bitter and sweet.
Ultimately we are living our own life and are responsible to ourselves. Accountability to others is important, but critical to the success of our own lives. If we are not honest with ourselves, our challenges multiply, our hurdles loom larger in number and size until the one fine day we trip, stumble or fall heavily enough to ask the questions that have been avoided.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Moving Mountains, Healing Hearts
In this year of separation, I have uncovered a tendency to throw myself at situations with heart and soul commitments which have turned out to be not always so healthy for my own individual life. Especially around the value of Family, having been raised to be unselfish, I drop anchor determined to withstand any storm.
Fresh out of college, exhilarated with talent and energized to break down any doors, from a mountaintop in Oregon, I surveyed the world before me: vast, broad, open and (for me) uncharted. That mountain, however, and my disposition, seduced me to stay with a woman recently widowed and her two children desperately in need of comfort and firewood.
These were problems I could fix, care I could give, an answer to Life’s questions I believed I was man enough to handle. We became an inst.jpg)
ant family and produced another wonderful child.
Once this had grown too difficult and greener pastures had torn us apart, I drifted across the country with plans and aspirations for great creative works. I carried with me also an undefined promise that I would find someone else to make me whole again.
Looking to the external to repair a pain deep within is no true solution, merely a band aide, a distraction.
Learning this now, eases the surprise that a second marriage would fail despite twenty years of effort to make it work no matter what. Not being true to my own self, I could not adequately support others.
A year ago, disoriented and uncertain, I separated to hear my own voice. It seems to resonate with words and song; something I knew intuitively as a child, experimented with in high school, refined in college, and abandoned as an adult overwhelmed by the practical needs of Family.
Sadly, one should be able to manage both, but I have not. Having made the commitment to live together, my priorities have been correct: food on the table should trump words on a page. The compromises necessary over so many years, however, have stunted the very flow of prosperity and abundance I sought to grow. While one piece of the internal damage was patched by marriage, another rupture flooded my organs with bile.
Now I have begun to heal. Embracing the man I want to be illuminates the suffocating darkness that has surrounded me, eases the chaos and turmoil. Not yet translated into prosperity, patience and determination of a more selfish nature still emboldens my steps. My blood thickens and flows more freely. Brave enough to face tough questions and push easy answers aside for deeper truths and meanings, a calm grows from within, noticed and welcomed by friends and family, supported by those who love me.
The Universe challenges me, however, ups the ante each time, testing my commitment with more and harder struggles to divert my attention. My truck becomes useless. The bad economy renders a job-search nearly futile. A daughter grows distant.
Now, my not-yet Ex has needs that draw me back compassionately, attracting attention impossible to ignore. Easily, I can be drawn in, to care for and nurture as I always have done before, to set aside the hard-won lessons of this past year for the higher purpose of comforting what ultimately has little comfort, trying to fix what is possibly unfixable.
When one has truly loved, the heart never fully relinquishes the flutter of that connection. Time passing may ease the extremes of adoration and bitterness the relationship has known, but the tender spot remains that was held for that one alone, preserved for eternity close to the heart.
My challenge is to find and immerse myself in the serenity of knowing 
Abundance begins with the heart and flows outward, like a tidal wave, overwhelming all it encounters. We have the opportunity to change our world today, abandon the selfish greed of hording scarce commodities, and open our hearts to share the unique gifts of our joyous souls. One by one, together, we create with love a family that can move mountains and grow greener slopes right at our own doorsteps.
