If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will stare back at you. Nietzche
So for me it’s fair to say it’s been at least years I’ve been looking into the abyss and losing my identity. In the past few months, I’ve questioned the need to have children and a partner in this life, going so far as to go on a date with a man who explicitly was reasonably sure he didn’t want (more) children and instead would prefer a life of adventure and romance with his new companion, and even wanted to go to Japan in a few months. All this was on line, and when I met him in real life the attraction didn’t hold, not to mention the fact that I love babies. But I was willing to entertain the thought.
I’ve also been writing about the single life and how great it really is, and marrying myself first. I’ve ben thinking a while about buying a house in Paris, but the truth is that I think I want ties and roots here and ties that bind but in the end I don’t really want to be bound, as I feel my central purpose in this life is to explore, travel, etc and I hate administration and maintenance- yes I know this would be a huge part of having kids as well, but I think it might be worth it since you would get more love and joy from the experience of them than from a house, at least for me.
I’ve been having dreams of pregnancy, not recently but from time to time I have a spate of them. I thought I was bringing into life a new lifestyle in Paris, and maybe buying an apartment and having my own little form of domestic bliss, but I think the babes might be a little harder to handle than that. In one of my dreams, it was explained to me that what was in my womb resembled a crawfish at that stage, and when the quote above came to mind, I pictured some kind of bison floating out of the void towards me. While I do hope human children are in my future, I think there might be something more along the lines of “giving birth to a new spirituality,” as a friend thought may be the case.
It feels like I”m surrounded by pregnant and wanting to be pregnant women and children. One of my best friends wants to start trying to conceive around the end of this year. Needless to say, we are trying to organize as many fun trips and everything as possible before that happens. My feelings of mortality and finiteness have also resumed themselves into realizing I have a limited time unencumbered by man or baby so I try to travel as much as I can, which as I may have mentioned above, feels like the meaning of life at times.
And sharing my adventures. It appears that even my family, who I know loves me unconditionally and everything, which is huge and not given to many, has come around to admiring my voyages if not completely understanding them especially when I share my experiences on social media. I think I could find a bit of purpose in being a travel writer, particularly one that doesn’t write for the already initiated well-traveled people.
The truth is that while i love and miss my family, I would not trade my life to be closer to them. I have in a very real way sacrificed a certain type of relationship with my family, holidays at home, etc to live a very different life than naything they ever dreamed of.The guilt I feel over this can be immense. I am trying to let the guilt go. I don’t thinkt hey are consciously trying to guilt me anymore.
As for domestic bliss, I was so, so happy ths past Easter, it was a real celebration of life. I went alone to Bilbao, took a surf lesson, saw te Guggenheim, and then I did go to church (in Spanish). I chatted with people from Uruguay and Ecaudor and ate a lot of pinxtos and a Basque treat and some fries. No chocolate bunny needed- or large family gathering, or gathering of intimate friends either.
As for the going to church thing, my beef is not with God, it is with the instiutional stuff and hierarchy. We are humans though, so I guess it’s quite normal for a divine message of peace and unconditional love to be corrupted. Also I think the wonder of Easter is more that Jesus died tan that He rose. Even if He knew He could rise again, to take on mortality is a pretty big deal. And if you believe He is really the son of God and God is all-powerful, the dying thing is more impressive than the rising, I think. Bu tthis could be because I am Catholic, or was born that way.
It’s been a big sort of mortality and other people growing up month or so. A friend who’s been engaged for a long time to her college sweetheart set a date and invited me to come, realizing I probably won’t be able to make it, a very close friend is thinking about having a baby soon, a childhood friend recently gave birth, I got added to the facebook group for my high school reunion, a lot of people are doing well and living in new cities and getting married and having kids and dogs, while a fair number actually died, with some being due to drugs. One of the guys who died was actually in some of my classes. Just goes to show that you have to treat people well while you can and you never know what will happen. Not to mention that the smoke detector went off like mad two nights in a row, completely freaking me out because I was afraid it was carbon monoxide, and I felt pretty alone though some neighbors came by to see if things were ok.
I was also moved by the Louise Bourgeoise exhibit at the Guggenheim. She created small rooms and various metaphors of woman= house to explore her memories and the role of women in society and the relationship with domesticity, the mother, etc. SHe also emigrated to New york. http://www.theartstory.org/artist-bourgeois-louise.htm
I would say thanks to her I feel less inclined to buy an apartment
So yeah, lots and lots of things to think about. but maybe not that many
time to listen to the inner voice and follow my intuition instead of my impulses and open up to joy instead of fear…
So I listened to a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O937dHmNxE yesterday about how, in order to avoid unpleasant feelings, we often reach for objects- be they material ones like food or retail therapy, or sometimes using other people as a distraction, or false comfort of absolute certainties- just to avoid the irritaion, anxiety, confusion, sadness, discomfort. It can arise in moments of stillness where we feel bored especially, because, “”The only thing the ego cannot stand is the clear light of awareness.”
It seemed to fit my situation, where I’ve been falling for old traps I’d long since thought I’d mastered, or had under control. But what truth was I hiding from? What is my ego so bent out of shape over?
Besides the fact that we are so much more than our bodies, our individual thoughts- most importantly, we are NOT our thoughts at our deepest level, we are the awareness that notices them- I’ve been going through a bit of an identity crisis. The old question of who am I and where do I belong has come up, made bitter by the potency of always worrying, Who should I be? WHere should I belong? WHat is supposed to make me happy? Why am I so far from my ideal self?
ANd most of my efforts, which have mostly failed, have been in service to the idol of my idol self. The way I think I should be, rather than tring to be the best of the person I am. In all my gluttony, overspending, and other sins, I was trying to avoid unpleasant feelings with distraction, and then as I got farther from my ideal self, the guilt and shame only became exarcerbated, which led me to look in the same pits of destruction for distraction and comfort. And when I tried to change what became more and more ingrained habits of mind and habits of behavior, I eventually stumbled in some way or failed to really try, kicking off the cycle of guilt again, until I finally became afraid of making any real structured effort to change. And the anxiety, the panic, of dealing with who I am an dmy reality just got stronger, till it reached a fever pitch though was always abated with the cool touch of reality, with sheer love, the mother of GOd.
My ego has been fighting really hard against change, and against things not turning out as I expected. It has taken me to task for things getting out of my control. And more than anything else, it has demanded to know WHY to everything, to have a plan, a scheme, a raison d’etre. To feel in control, like I am the master of the universe and the mover of all things, especially myself. But I am not.
I’ve also felt exceptionally guilty about leaving my family, country, and former self and all the dreams I once had that now feel like old garments shrunk in the wash, faded of color. In moments of nostalgia and mourning for a future that wasn’t to be, I see so clearly Washington, or my life as a teacher. The moments are tantalizing, still carrying some juiciness, some spark of life like a faded favorite sweater. Perhaps carryig a clue into the future, but not quite right. Roads not taken that need to be left in the past. And it’s not so much those paths that I mourn, it is the seeming control I would have exerted over my life; becoming a person I could better understand and control; something that could have made sense, been rationalized. And always, its just easy to say it would be easier elsewhere, but the truth is it wouldn’t be worth it. I am where I am for a reason. Things didn’t go according to my five year plans, but they were never supposed to. A higher power than me has led me to where I am.
I watched the film La Famille Belier today. It’s about a girl who can hear who grows up in a close deaf family and helps her parents a lot. She finds that she has a gift for singing though, and is encouraged to audition for the national conservatory, which would mean she has to leave the family farm in the province and go to Paris. Her family initially is very upset, but eventually they come around and even take her to the audience. She sings a song about leaving one’s parents, not to flee them, but to start her own life. It says, “I am not fleeing I’m flying, I’m leavng and I love you.”
Taking some silent time in church, the Church of St Odile to be exact, some things came to light.
1) I want to stay in France. I really like it. I don’t have a reason why.
Yet, somehow I remember echoing from some moment in the past, you don’t always need a reason. And maybe if I don’t fully understand, well that’s part of the mysterious ways of God.
La vie n’a pas besoin d’un but, elle est un but elle-meme.
Life doesn’t need a purpose, it’s a purpose in itself.
2) I am more than the balance sheet of my mistakes and my accomplishments. I am neither of those things. I am a human being and I am allowed to make mistakes. I can only move forward if I forgive myself and leave the past behind me. I deserve forgiveness. And despite all my flaws and sins, despite my cares-
“If then you cannot do even a very little thing, why do you worry about other matters?“Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. “But if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you? You men of little faith!…
3) THe more I live in the world, the more categories seem false to me. THe more difficult it is to come to an easy, pat answer or to identify with any sort of ideology or dogma. Yes, there are differences between French and AMericans, and in some ways I don’t identify fully with either. I lvoe AMerica and am very proud to be American, but I love France too even if I don’t always agree with it either. We are all human, and a certain amount of ambivalence and ambiguity is part of life.
And as far as France being some sort of escape from real life, it is anything but. And my typical method of evaluating and calculating choices according to an optimization equation is not only making me miserable and killing my happiness, it’s totally wrong. And as for the guilt I feel about “wasting” potential in whatever way, I am a human being and I don’t owe my life to anything, not even to making more money or travel or leisure or anything. “making the most” of what I have has been a mania, and I’ve been plagued by guilt over making the wrnog choices.
The truth is, that the underlying being, the firmament of all that is random or appears to, put me in certain places at certain times. I have not gone astray. I have made my journey with courage and always tried to discern what is best. If that’s good enough for God, it has to be good enough for me. WHo am I to hold myself to another standard of my “ideal self,” or beleive I am responsible for all events in my life and beholden to all results? I have certain responsibilities, yes, but forcing events in a certain direction isn’t one of them. ALl I can do is my best. And I am allowed to make mistakes- that doesn’t diminish my worth one bit.
I once heard of preachers telling peopl ewho had already had sex instead of remaining virgins until marriage that they were like a tarnished, dirty twenty dollar bill. THe value was the same. Now, I dn’t think that’s a Christian teaching at all. Personally I don’t think non-adulterous, consensual, respectful sex is bad at all, nor are our bodies evil, and also I don’t think that any mistake relegates you to being dirty or less than someone who hasn’t made a mistake. If anything God rejoices more over the lost sheep that is found- I don’t think that it is marked as inferior, either before or afterwards- just perpetually cherished. The example is also strange to use dollars as a sign of value- I thought life was the ultimate one.
ANd living gets messy andits not always easy. I’ve been looking for ease, for casual victory as a sign I’m going in the right direction, for a feling of returning to normalcy. But growth often necessitates a step back in order to leap forward. If I had found a job immediately after graduation, chances are likely I would not be as well-diplomed, world-traveled, or rich in experience as I am now.
When I first went to France as an English teacher, I had the feeling that life would soon return to normal and this was just a temporary interlude to get the traveling back out of my system and I would soon have my professional life on track. As it turns out, I got my acceptance letters from business school just before starting off on my first solo backpacking trip- my first backpacking trip ever, in fact- and I remember feeling a twinge of jealousy in the hostel lookng at the 18 year old voyagers and one guy from Canadia who was traveling around Europe until he found a place he wanted to settle down. I guess I didn’t want to go back ot a life plotted out in black and white, steady and seemingly certain after all. But I was comforted and elated at the prospect of trying something new, gong into a totally unexpected terrain- business.
Being in business school was a huge identity crisis. Not least after I left study abroad in Paris when I really, really wanted to stay. I know I did the right thing by leaving. But I remember that that time in Paris was when I started to be a little bit out of control. Wen I started gaining weight and without realizing put my new French debit card into the red. I was living my dream, talking to French business people at cocktail parties about cinema and felt like I fit in with my classmates. It was very hard to leave but it was thanks to my experiences after leaving that I ended up getting my current job. O ye of little faith. The stories of people who came to Paris and just fell in love and never left really got to me. My business school dean, one of those people- he came for school apparently with no money and student debt and a few suitcases, and stayed for a few years and a few years more until it ended up at 20 years and counting, told me: Stability is an illusion. He hadn’t intended to stay for so long.
I have imagined what my life would be like if I stayed. There would be plenty of petty annoyances partially linked to the French abd being foriegn but also just facts of life here for everybody. It wouldn’t necessarily be better, in some aspects it would be worse, but somehow the small thigs of daily life seem like precious details. There is no rational reason, not even the beauty of the boulevards Haussmanien or the elegance of the metro, to prefer life here. And yet I do, at least right now.
It’s a passion. And I love, love speaking French. I appreciate that, and would miss it, the most.
So all fo my brain and my logic have assembled in opposition. And the future remains to be seen. But right now, I want to stay. ANd that’s ok.
Reason is a tool, it shoudln’t be a tyranny. Maybe my heart is wiser than my mind- well, of course it is.
It seems to me that all those bad habits began or were exarcerbated in large part to try and drown out the silence, and the still small voice. That is largely what has been driving me insane, making me torture myself.
It’s not for ego that I am here.
IT seems like my real life began in the ashes of failure, when I crossed the ocean to take a job as an English teaching assistant. When things seemed in a way hopeless, but I really began living, writing my own story. It wasn’t just about the plan at that point, or the things I always thought I knew would happen. It was a difficult time, but an adventure.
And also a homecoming. Just like when I came back as a student, and when I came to work, and just recently when I came back after vacation, happy to be here.
This is my real life. Not all the illusions and plans I wedded myself to, not the five year plan, not the easy pat answer to who am I and what do I believe. My life is this real, living juicy stuff right here, not something I plotted out in black and white out of fear. Life is more than anything about love. Love makes us rich.
I have no idea hwat life holds in store for me and I”m not supposed to. I do believe that any wish in accordance with God’s will will will indeed be granted, that much I know from experience. Just as we are human beings, not human doings, life is not about doing, it’s about becoming.
And every day I am becoming more and more myself.
I let go of guilt, fear, shame, pain, sorrow. I forgive my past mistakes.
You will erase everything you had written in the book of your life up until now: restlessness, uncertainty, lies. And in the place of all this you will write the word courage. By beginning the journey with that word and continuing with faith in God, you will arrive wherever you need to arrive.
Breviary of Medieval Knights
And I pledge to listen to the still small voice. Not only in my actions, but in clearing my thoughts. IN letting go of the what-ifs, and just allowing what will be, to be.
I guess this is the time to be self-forgiving, to learn, and to carry on. But not before trying, once more, to understand what’s making the path so hard.
It’s so easy to enjoy success. People like you, parents clap, you distinguish yourself from the crowd. You feel good about yourself in comparison to others.
But at some point, the applause becomes addicting. And it’s hard to tell whether you like doing something because of the adoring crowd or because you actually like it.
Eventually you start doing things because they are “right,” “practical,” “sensible,” a “good compromise.” You think a lot about what looks good on the resume. You enjoy feeling like you are the best, regardless of the what.
And then probably someday something knocks that feeling down, and it’s only then you realize how much you craved your feeling. And without that applause, it doesn’t seem worth it, sometimes.
Well, I’ve recently started thinking about what people clap for and why, which has i n a way made what applause comes my way less sweet, and has the overall effect of making me slightly less of a circus animal. Now I start to wonder- what do I actually want to do? What is the next p”practical,” step- to my dreams? What is the risk I need to be talking, what is the plan I need to be hatching, so that I can feel that applause come within- and not have to depend on other people- parents, lovers, sibling family, counselors, educator s, and all the people that you might one day want to give you a job, and pretty much everybody that has ever felt important in your life- and stop asking the question that has held you back for so long- what would they think of it?
Somday, maybe when the applause isn’t there though you think you’ve earned it, and all the rights privileges money and group acceptance included, you might get mad, sad. It might be really ahrd, because without that feedback, you don’t know who you are aanymore. And someday, maybe you will stop wanting that, or rather, maybe you will decide that wehther you LIKE doing something or not is a better way of judging whether it’s good- not just what other people think, or the lies you tell yourself so you can avoid having to go after what you really want (though mabe not all at once…)
So now I’m trying to releanthe delicate balance between doing what I must (though who says I must?) and doing what I want. And not worrying so much about what the ideology of the age has to say about the matter, not that it doesn’t play out into both categories. Maybe I can see beyond it, though, and come up with my onw idas abot what’s important. I might be wrong, but it would be better than being a zombie.
So I think I’m going to France, to work and learn French. There’s a lot of stories I can tell about it being useful, but there’s a dream I know is real which is the important thing.
I might go watch Eat Pray Love again tonight, lame and self centered upper class white woman and Orientalistic and all as it may be.
Most of the things I’ve want and have worked hard to achieve (sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing) haven’t neessarily been what I really wanted. They were what I truly believed I wanted, because I wanted to want what my parents and society and everything else said was good, and wanted for me. My goal right now is to go to France, which offends logic, reason, the idea of making a good salary after investing in my education, my family (because I’ll be far away), red blooded Americans, and the whole educational-corporate complex.
I’m supposed to want to sit in a box be tied to a crackberry and want nothing more than to please eople so I can just please more people and have more responsibility weighing down on me.
Maybe most professionals don’t describe their lives this way, and I do hope that I will find some kid of jb, not too dissimilar than that, but where the people and the work and the culture will not be so insupportable. My goal in life is not to be a Dilbert cartoon. It might be to be Belle, but that’s a separate issue.
Will moving to France remove me from the world, with all its highs and lows? It won’t be an escape from the life my choices have created. And more than likely I’ll be working and not just hanging out at cafes writing poetry, unless I win the lottery.
I don’t even want to live the lottery- I just want to have a sense of my own freedom. To please myself, more than anything.
And to figure out what that might actually entail, besides avoiding my accounting homework, and travelling.
What is meaningful? What would serve others beyond myself- many things. Which I’m actually called otdo, I’m not sure.
But I do hope that I start chasing my real dreams, and not the pipe dreams that are someone else’s ideas of happeniness. I probably can’t always please every aspect of my life and the people in it, and I just have to make sure my truest desires come first.
So here’s hoping that I figure my own stuff out, and not let other people’s expectations do it for me anymore. Let me step out into the void of the unknown, and make peace with my own soul.
Let me be myself, but not selfish or a false martyr to my desire to please either.
And let’s believe that’s the best way I can help people too- by being the unique individual I was born to play, rather than getting frustrated trying to perform a role I was just pushed into doing.
I don’t want to pursue excellence, or greatness, or perfecion; happinss is quite hard to pin down; what I do hope to have is integrity, that my words and actions and creed all line up. I knnow I might make a few mistakes and take some bumps and it might not all be strateigic or easily understandable.
And this means not only that I have to stop reading self help books and looking for a plan and trying to know where i’m going before I start, but that I have to begin to write my own poetry, commune with God, and look to saints and artists and heroes for my inspiration.
To deal with mystery, accept the present, and embrace what is simply unknown- I hope that becomes my reality, because that’s the only way I’m ever going to hear the voice of a dream worth chasing.
The word success brings up a lot of interesting feelings in me. I have spent years trying to define it. Sometimes it seems like it’s about an illusive balance between disparate elements. Sometimes it’s an extremely clear target I just keep throwing at (and sometimes hating myself every time I miss or a little off). Once it was about how my tummy looked in relation to my ribs every time I went to the bathroom and keeping the number on the scale, as well as everything else in my life, within an acceptable range of “perfection.”
I’d like to say I’ve evolved since then, but mostly I haven’t, or at least my mind hasn’t. I may have let go of some standards, but I’ve added tons of others: what job, what type of industry, location, location, location, speaking a foreign language no mistakes (hah!), getting on the basketball team, being accepted to the top choice college, and having him like me back as much or more as I liked him, and having him want everything that I wanted. Success was definitely not something that came from within me. Then I went through a little quarter life crisis identity shift, and started questioning some of my assumptions, and my criteria took on a more “spiritual” tone: knowing who I am, deciding the meaning of life, being able to plan my life out and set new targets for success, figuring out exactly what my purpose was and where I “should” be, understanding my destiny, coming to grips with my mortality, and just achieving a state of centered, well-planned, perfectly-executed wholeness. Well, it just doesn’t work that way…
Eventually I was lifted out of the depression that is striving for perfection and needing immediate answers by that childlike, sometimes slightly impish friend of mine- Joy. He shows up where you least expect it. Just when you think you’ve “failed,” or that you know what you want and where you’re going, there he is! All you can do is smile and hold up your hands! He makes you laugh, and when you lose him, sometimes you grow pure, soul-cleansing, completely unbitter tears of a life well lived. And the tears are only a sign he’s still there, just hidden from view. And just when you think you’ll never see him again, you remember this life is so much more than just a vale of tears, sorrow, and doubt, and there you realize he was lurking just out of the corner of your eye.
Sometimes you want to chase him, with his dirty little fingers and sweetly teasing smile, but then you realize he’s always around there somewhere, and even if you don’t see him right away he’s just hiding himself for the moment. You get excited about the next time he’ll surprise you, and look, there he is!
This little guy can completely change your life! Once you think you’ve got it all figured out, there he goes, showing up in those unexpected places that you wanted to completely check off the list of “success,” goals, and attempts to plan a life well lived. I don’t think it works that way. Mystery is part of the bargain when you’re human, and is always there even in the most satisfied contented happiness. You might someday be looking into your longtime beloved spouses eyes, with children and dogs cavorting around you, and never really know how it was you chanced to meet or why him out of all the men on this earth. Sometimes it will seem like it could have been anybody- or another city, or country, or profession- but out of all the possibilities, there it was that you found joy, as much as he is truly everywhere and in all times and places.
Believing is seeing.
And sometimes, you will re-orient your quest for joy- past, present our future. You could be mistaken, or you could be right on the money. Joy is pretty elusive and mystery, but maybe it’s the only thing worth aiming for anyway, and your efforts call it forth one way or the other. Maybe it’s the element of surrender, of realizing there’s something far beyond all your plans and strategems and expected utility and trying to optimize everything, that welcomes him in.
On this Good Friday, as Christians everywhere, and non-Christians admiring the philosophy of Jesus too, contemplate a sacred mystery of horrible loss, pain, brutality, and the most unfair of endings to the best life ever lived, the absolutely incredible sacrifice a man was willing to make for all men everywhere, that they might know love, it’s important to remember joy, paradoxical as it might sound. That is what He sacrificed himself for- our connection to God, which is rooted in the deepest expanses of our being, mysterious and strange, completely illogical to the world of the everyday, and totally beyond our human comprehension.
Joy is not something we deserve, it is a gift to be received with grace. So let go happiness, success, and all those other meager comforts you seek to deal with the fact of your mortality, your human finiteness, imperfection, and inherent limits, and let God. See the life of wonders beyond your imagination He wants you to lead, and say YES!
I’ve beat myself up a lot of times for all the goals I haven’t achieved. [Why haven’t I gotten around to cleaning, organizing, losing weight, and all those other things on the list? Why haven’t I become a trapeze artist, published author, non profit founder, multi-millionaire? Why am I not doing better than everyone around me? Shouldn’t I at least be doing the best I can with what I have? I should have done so much more by now]
Somehow recently, I haven’t felt the need to spend hours in self-reflection and writing/ have been too busy to do so.
I spent the last two months just kind of going through the motions, but the last three days I’ve actually been happy.
All I needed was a worthy goal.
I spent a lot of time thinking about what that might mean, about balancing many different considerations, trying to find a compromise between what I actually want and what I think I want, and you know, what I can actually do.
I’ve chosen to believe the sky is the limit, with the grace of God.
Well, you know what? The balancing act is over. I’m just going to do something I think will make me happy. Like, make me feel good. I don’t really have any logical justification for it, and like most things involving feelings, I can’t even tell you it really will make me happy. But somehow, just striving has made me be a little more conscientious about other things along the way, because I was happy and did see a bigger meaning.
Me, happy in Philadelphia? I must be on to something here.
When you’re beating yourself for not achieving something, maybe it’s not you. Maybe it’s the goal. Maybe you don’t want it bad enough or try hard enough because it’s just not worth it to you.
But I’ll give you a hint- worthy goals don’t depend on recognition from others, having other people understand, and won’t necessarily arouse anyone’s envy. You will probably have to work harder, there will be no easy way, and you might have a lot of inner resistance just admit what you want.
But admit away- there’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s ok to want to be happy above all. Whatever that means for you, as long as it doesn’t mean unhappiness for someone else.
…And sometimes worthy goals take a long time and a lot of soul-searching to find for many, and also take a lot of patience and perseverance to accomplish. However, that’s what passion is for!
And to a certain extent, the joy really is in the case, if you really want what you are aiming towards. But want to actually succeed! Want it, believe you it’s worth doing, and go do it. Even if it seems impossible, if it’s your heart’s wish its worth pursuing, and if it’s really your heart’s wish you’ll be able to do a lot.
So folks, good night and good luck.
Best of luck finding and following your dreams (hint: look within!)
I’ve noticed I seem to end a lot of posts asking for a little divine help and intervention, and I do try to end my days remembering to do the same as well.
The more I try to think about things, the more I plan ahead, the more I try to choose before knowing what my choices really are or what they mean, the more I try to control my life, the less in control I am. I think this is pretty true of everybody.
God can’t be a scapegoat, God can’t be a get out of jail free card, God can’t be a way of avoiding responsibility for your own life. But God is there to remind you there’s more than your own life, yet your life is infinitely precious and valuable.
Whatever your creed or lack thereof, i think we can all agree that there are some things beyond human capacity for true knowledge. Epistemology, we just don’t always know, and what we do know is based on assumptions. For all we know, we are like the Hoos down in Hooville floating on a speck on a thistle, and God is our Horton. Or maybe, He/She is Horton’s Horton’s Horton’s Horton. We can’t know.
But this is where the value of subjective experience comes in. This is where believing to a certain extent is seeing, though that is quite dangerous because there’s a fine line between mental illness and fervent religious or spiritual belief. Whose truth is truth anyway? Who’s real is real? Can God just be something that you feel? In whatever way you can feel that which is omniscient, omnipotent, and all good?
I guess it’s possible that all that prayer and positive intention stuff just rewires your brain and serves evolutionary purposes of group cohesion and though the experience of God is real from the perspective of the person, it is not objectively or measurably so.
But who can measure love? Who can measure joy? sadness? commitment? Sure we can see what’s going on in our brains, and we can speculate as to the neurotransmitters and brain regions involved, but isn’t there something just a little beyond that? That science will never be able to explain or measure?
I’m not a materialist, if you can’t tell. I know some people are. But even if you think that we are just chemical cocktails aware of themselves, floating around in a random amorphous mass of probabilities that lead to this day and this time, can’t you see something beyond the horizon? Can’t you see something wonderful and not just think it is a trick of the light? Can’t the world be magical even with science? Isn’t there wonder behind reason?
So, I will close in prayer, to let go and let God, to love my neighbor as myself, to know my neighbor is all of mankind, and to know it’s always time to surrender to God. There is no appropriate amount of effort to put in, no test of when it’s appropriate to call in the Saints. They are not ghostbusters or ghosthunters. There is nothing too big and nothing to small to ask for heavenly aid. There is never a moment that can’t or shouldn’t be lived with a heart open to Grace.
Though I’m not in any rush to go to Heaven just yet, I do think that being close to God, to the good, and to something of deepest profoundest most hidden most radiant beingness is the most important narrative arc of my life. At least, I hope to make it so.
Whatever happens out there in the phenomenal world- be it finding my soul mate, succeeding at the perfect job, doing something meaningful, getting everything into order- it’s feeling okay in here that’s the important thing. And hopefully figuring it out a little for the benefit of others as well.
Ironically, I’m making this discovery kind of because of having an audience. The blog is really helping me. When I wonder if I’ll ever find love, and I see a got a new like, it is the biggest relief in the world- SOMEONE gets me! It breaks the illusion of loneliness and separateness. We’re all in this together.
So, while you can’t really come with me, it is my honor and privilege to share my stories with you.
Everybody has different ways of getting in touch with it- running, freediving, writing, acting, teaching- but we are all just finding our vehicles for this spiritual journey, that brings us closer to God while yet on this earth, and thus closer to one another. Despite our fallen, damned, wretched humanity (and I really do believe saved by the grace of his Son), we all have the spark of God within us that provides light in the darkness and meaning to our lives. The charm of life is not knowing exactly how it will reveal itself, and the beauty of life is the myriad ways God shows himself to us through each other. I guess I could say herself too. Be it your painting, my poetry, your family, or my travels, we are all in this together, finding our way back home.
