11/16/24
Do not pity the one who falters who made a serious attempt. There is no shame in trying. For me, though, it doesn’t feel like I’ve tried hard enough. There are things I want to write, express, describe. Memories? Plans? Hurts? Dreams? I cannot dramatize a life that sits in a moment of ease, though viewing myself at a place of complacency on a still greater path may spur me forward.
One topic I dare not confront is my failed marriage. Failure is the correct word, as it is easy to see the lack of effort made on my part to decrease my ex’s day to day burden. I did not rise to the challenge. I took all for granted and squandered a good match. And through negligence, I would have hurt a soul deserving of much finer attention. That there are so many pictures of her smiling left on my phone leaves me feeling bitter, that not all was as bad as she made it out to be. But sigh, time worsens all untended wounds.
That there were opportunities to win her back that I did not see makes me think, what could have been?, and yet I can’t yet dissolve the thought that there will be a reunification in years to come. But though we may think and hope and plan for the future, we live in the present. And in the present I am as far from love as I am close to falling in once more- love is a black curtain that surrounds me, as ignorant as ever to when it will be revealed and what will be its latest form.
11/22/24
What do people need? Food, water, shelter? What do people need? You mean like human beings? That’s a big question. Too general. But somewhere near the beginning of all the questions I need to ask.
A warm glance, a welcoming handshake, an invitation into the home of another. The moments that strangers become friends. To feel ourselves sharing the struggle of existence, the wonderful and terrifying momentousness of life, the universality hauntings of death. To breathe, to feel, to be, to learn, to know, to appreciate the moment remembering the ones who’ve lost themselves to unconsciousness, vegetation, coma- and worse.
So while I’m here, I count my blessings. The glory to have the opportunity to feel lonely, the chance to waste time. The ability to hope, this reminder to dream beyond. The power to act, the leisure to laze. To grieve my own losses, to imagine others’ pain, others’ anger, frustration, and calm, too, while I’m at it. To imagine the coolness, poise, mastery coming from the acres of skill and the miles of experience I have never grazed. And to know that their are sheer cliff-drops of shock and thousand pound weights of suffering that I just can’t understand.
But in looking into another and trying to really see them- know them- I adjust a lens that sharpens my sight, crossing distances of unfamiliarity, opening portals with each attempt. How far I am willing to go, how much am I willing to show up and how much am I open to accepting, how expert am I in this moment in being a lover of humanity? And the next time, and the time after that?
I’ve heard the advice to love yourself, but to love others makes a lot more sense to me. To deepen that groove so each return is easier, to transform an unfeeling stone into a carving smiling with life, to polish a rough exterior into a gentle, yet powerful, everlasting glow. To not allow bodily encasement have the last word in trapping the force of spirit’s expanse.
Probabilities are imprisoned by numbers, but I feel an infinity in the outpouring of possibilities of the heart. The shortness of time becomes an irrelevant thought as I realize my self, who I am, and how inseparable I am from You. The way of compassion, it’s good to meet again. Where have I been all this time?
11/23/24
Know thyself
The matter of my character
Facing myself, in the mirror of my mind, I will provide an account and try sincerely to be accurate.
I am a man of 35. I am not who I once was, and not who I will come to be. Is history without its merits? What brings me to this point? My starting points recede further and further away from any desire to remember them, but roots are roots, they remain significant appendages of the living. But am I a tree?
I feel less and less the need to look back. Looking forward, though, is more difficult. There nags at me the sense that if I don’t guide myself somewhere, I will end up just about anywhere. But where is that somewhere, that future that I would feel zeal for. Is it about leading a life of entertainments? A different set of possessions won’t change much. A sense of accomplishment, then? An unbroken stream of activity flowing towards a sea of self-satisfaction?
And this is where we come to the matter of my character. Fulfillment will come and go in harmony with the moral tune of my actions. As much as there are facets of life beyond my control, what I choose from moment to moment is what is going to make up the sum of who I am, how closely I’m able to live in-line with my conscience. But what do I know? My conscience could be mistaken, a faulty instrument.
The heart wants what it wants, to love and be loved. This feels hard to doubt. My memories of failed relationships can remain blanketed, as much as they glimmer in the dirt. The hope that they renew themselves stem from the water sprinklings of reminiscence, and taking a shovel to slice through the ruggedness of fibrous roots feels a violent end to sources of past blooming. But I have feet to keep moving- I’m not a tree, after all.
This is also clear- that time waits on no one. I may wait on time, but time is indifferent. And to personify time is to call on cruelty as much as it is folly. So where does that leave me? Circling myself from the outside, winding up tension and dispelling it to return to square one. Peering within, the light shines straight through. If anything, there is no mystery.
As I talk, write, think to myself, here on the page, and to you if you ever read this, I enjoy this indulgence of expression. Certainly, one cannot fault me for doing what I enjoy, in such a harmless way. But I’ve been avoiding my original task, with the sleight of hand of moment to moment commentary, not bound by real-life experience.
So where do I go from here, in terms of real-life? I can build up my career, work towards financial security. I can get out more, to live in the world of people that I don’t already know. And the people I know? I can know them more deeply, as they change, as I change, as we win and lose and age and are eventually no more, or maybe we make it up the breezeway to heaven, baggage rolling effortlessly behind. But since you may be wondering about finer details after all this exposition, here I’ll try once more:
I’ve been working as a psychotherapist for the greater part of the last 6 years, with a couple intermissions brought about by my own poor health. Working in this profession, I’ve met with hundreds of individuals and listened to the stories of each, attentive to whatever each person brings to therapy on any given day. If I’m keeping things vague here it’s because to win a patient’s trust comes with a commitment to secrecy of their lives, a vow of confidentiality.
So I won’t speak much about my work, though it also feels that I’m blocked by the tentativeness of my own participation in the profession. I don’t think it was ever my dream to be a therapist, though it is not a job without its privileges. Each client I see connects me to the world of people, and being given the honor of knowing another’s vulnerability is an educational process for me as much as it may be an exercise in self-knowledge for each client.
I’ve been divorced now for almost 2 years, after marrying my ex-wife 5 and a half years ago, after getting into a long-distance relationship with her 7 and a half years ago, after our first meeting 8 and a half years ago. For her I still have admiration and respect, though we are no longer a part of each others’ lives. What it means to respect someone you no longer interact with is its own question. Our relationship had picture perfect moments, and frustrations brought about by my chronic failure to rise to the challenge of being a good husband, to do my duties with each small task needing to be done at a reasonable standard, and a painful misstep early in our marriage. Her departure was not something I fought against- she had a way of winning my confidence in her opinions and decisions, even if it meant allowing her to slip out of my life.
Before marriage, I had two other significant relationships- one for most of my time in college and another relationship of half a year soon thereafter. What have I learned from my romantic forays? To look back on times gone by, memories feel futile. It’s the real thing that counts. And right now I’m comfortable with loneliness.
Which brings me again to the future. That I will live and age and suffer and die- these things I’m taught I should be sure of. What it will look like is a surprise.
