Tag: freedom

We All Dig Tunnels, and Call Them Lives

We all dig tunnels and call them lives. Our perspectives are defined by the scenes on the walls of the paths we burrow. These tunnels we dig may lead to a vein of metaphorical gold that runs deep through the terra firma of our lives. Striking such gold is a wonderful if rare outcome and cause for much gratitude. Other tunnels may lead to silver, copper, coal or stone, etc.. Each discovery a direct, if unforeseen result of the direction in which one chooses to place their effort. In misfortunate circumstances, our digging may lead to flooding or cave in, and there the story ends.

Why tunnels? Many feel trapped by life, and here the metaphor is clear. Others see double rainbows, climb the world’s tallest peaks, or hurtle themselves from aircraft at 14,000 feet. These souls feel free. Indeed, “freedom” is a familiar battle cry, and an excellent alternative to feeling trapped, but it is still freedom within a confined mental space. It is only an experience of the concept of “freedom” based on a singular perspective. It is a mindset defined by the path they’ve selected to carve a life out of this endless universe of possibility. Have you ever met someone who “knows” they are “right,” perhaps in the mirror even? Case in point.

One can be “free” anywhere; on a mountain top, in a tunnel, even in shackles if strong enough of mind. The point is not freedom from bondage; rather, it is to recognize and acknowledge the limits of the human capacity for perspective. Each person’s path is unique. Therefore, even in the presence of the most compassionate, empathic soul on earth, our stories, while perhaps listened to by many, will be experienced by us alone. Empathizing is the act of stopping for a moment as we delve, turn to the wall, and swing the pickax with the goal of opening a window to a world that has not as yet entered our passageway. It is a way of honoring the fact that our’s is but one of a countless set of perspectives to consider.

No two lives are alike. No law of balance exists between the worlds of choice and fate, good or bad fortune, or life and death. With the infinite experiences occurring simultaneously and continuously on this planet alone, it is perhaps prudent to consider this reality before we level judgment on others. We may think we know how existence works, and overlay that template onto the world around us, or we may feel lost, alone in the dark. In either case, compassion suggests remembering this simple, empathy-based truth; we all dig tunnels and call them lives.

The Ending of Brazil

Brazil movie poster

We’ve all felt it; trapped then freed, captured then escaped, stymied then, etc. Sometimes life feels like a toned-down version of Terry Gilliam’s classic motion picture Brazil. To be more specific, living can at times take on the feel of the film’s ending sequence. Everything is okay. Then things are not okay. Suddenly, everything is going to be okay again. Then, not so much. The magnitude of fluctuation between a crest and a trough in life may vary significantly based on the intensity of the slope. However, the fall, no matter how mild is rarely the fun part.

If the aforementioned film has not yet made your dystopian playlist consider it recommended. It is of course wildly extreme, but beautifully so. Spoiler alert! The lead character finds himself suddenly yanked from his normally endurable though sometimes annoyingly monotonous life to be thrust into a chaotic, absurd, yet most serious battle for survival. He is rescued, then captured. Then freed, then retaken. Then…sound familiar?

We are all beholden to fate, or “destiny” for those who prefer a more anointed perspective. Puppetmaster or no we are in fact attached to those around us and the six degrees of separation that come with them. This is true of even those we have not met, yet. We are, of course, also bound to our environment and its whims. For those of you who welcome surprise of any kind, whether it dons the costume of angel or devil, well done you. Not everyone, however, is eager for darkness just because they’ve glimpsed the sun.

Life choices are powerful. They give us the ability to create opportunities, seemingly self-directed outcomes and of course repercussions. Choices, however, do not always rule the day. Chance it seems is the real prime mover. Chance, luck, randomness, are there making life happen while we make plans. During the early years of one’s journey, the changes in circumstantial altitude seem so vast, exaggerated by lack of experience, and therefore perspective. Later we most often come to understand that no matter how steep the pitch we face there is at least a chance that things will level out, then climb again. That alone makes every turn of fate more manageable.

Experience is the ultimate instructor. We don’t all learn the lessons, but at least we are forced simply by virtue of existing to do the work. One of the most significant benefits of living long enough to look back is the gift of beginning to understand the ebb and flow of things, and by association be able to believe in the possibility of a happy ending. To that point, containment, happiness, victory, or deliverance may be in our future, and may even define the ending of Brazil.

When Push Comes To Shove

push comes to shove

Getting back on the horse that threw you, with sharpened spurs. Biting the dog that bit you, should it attack again. Saying the things that will damage or destroy a relationship, things that nonetheless must be said. It is the thing we most want to avoid that when finally faced, opens the door to new possibilities. All freedoms have their price, and most often the deal is done using the currency of courage.

Apologies

Im sorry

Apologies. I’m guessing I haven’t offered enough of them in my lifetime.  Neither I’m sure, have I received some that might have been deserved, but that bit is beyond my control.  “Deserve’s got nothing to do with,”  or so I’ve heard Clint Eastwood say, and so I’ll leave that be for now.  Apologizing is the most potent acts of healing in the human relational inventory.  A heartfelt apology can repair seemingly permanent damage.  The act can even spark the rebuilding of ostensibly terminal relationships.  Apologizing is a two-way wonder drug.  So why is it that when it’s needed most this seemingly simple choice can appear so utterly unavailable to us?

Hello Ego!  The pride-o-meter sits pinned at eleven.  “Sorry?” I spit.  “Ha, I’m not sorry, I’m fucking pissed!”  Sound familiar?  “It’s they, not I who should be asking for forgiveness.”  Here I am once again, facing a barricade I’ve built obstructing the pathway to reconciliation and so created the need for the other person’s permission to move forward.  Waiting for an apology is just that, waiting.  Waiting in lieu of acting, of taking the chance, of creating an opportunity for resolution.  

Pride is a fickle mistress.  It can afford us the intense bravado needed to inflate our personal myth of invincibility, which in a fight or flight situation can be useful.  However, when the peak intensity of such an engagement subsides, we are left with the stance we took based on pride, not on love.  “Love,” where did that come from?  Hmmm, from the idea that if we truly want peace, we have to choose it.  Peace is my favorite, but clearly not a universal choice for ‘state of being.’  Have you ever apologized to someone only to find that the words had no effect on them?  Come to understand that your act of contrition bore no fruit in your effort to create healing?  Me too!  Some people thrive on conflict, and that is either a nature, nurture or both thing, over which we have no power other than a heartfelt, “ugh!”

Sometimes offering an apology is not a practical option.  In such downward spiraling relationships, we may find the right answer to be ‘cut and run.’  Sometimes we have to let things go.  The real challenge lies in determining, and owning the difference between circumstances beyond our control, i.e., dealing with an ‘unreasonable’ person, and situations in which we have been party to the wrongs that might well be righted by a diminishment of our own ego posturing.  Difficult yes, but not insurmountable.  It is painful to think about lost friendships or loves that might have been saved by an apology.  Could they still be?

These days I find myself apologizing rather frequently; though I’m sure I still miss some prime opportunities to take responsibility.  I say “I’m sorry” to my sons when I’ve wrapped up a solid performance of being less than the father I’d like to be.  I can see in their eyes that it lands, and moves them.  Perhaps, more importantly, it may someday help them with the task of owing their own spells of less than stellar behavior.  Hopefully, it will instill in them the notion that choosing to initiate the making of amends is not an act of weakness.  Rather, it is an act of strength, or so I believe, survivable and often enriching.

Heartfelt apologies spring from a bottomless well within us.  They are an infinitely renewable resource.  The courage to make the first move of reparations may be buried deep.  At times it may seem utterly impossible to grasp.  Even so, I believe it is always worth the reach.

 

Free Fall

Free Fall JH 2

“What do you mean ‘bad’?” I asked.

“I think it’s self-explanatory.” He said.

“Nice bedside manner doc!”

He reached into his lab coat and produced a flask and two plastic shot glasses, “Cheers!”

“Ha, we’re celebrating my terminal diagnosis?” I said with a hastily shaken tone cocktail of irony, indignation and false bravery.

“We all have a terminal diagnosis, my friend.  I love you, and this shot is to celebrate your life.  The life behind you, that left before you, and most importantly this moment, when we here together face the inevitable; the heartache, the confusion, the freedom, and the truth, that we all try so desperately to ignore.”

I found myself smiling in spite of the dour news, “I love you, man.”

Doctor James had been my college roommate freshman year, and my best friend for the last thirty years of my now seemingly bookended life.  Together we had surfed the waves off the Santa Barbara coast, chased the same woman at parties and fought over the outcome, ridden a motorcycle through the courtyard of a dormitory with frantic RAs chasing us.  This was the man who knew me better than anyone on the planet.  He had supported me every step of the way.  He knew when to say “I’m sorry,” and he knew how to forgive.  He was the perfect person the usher me onto the crowded tarmac for those awaiting passage to the hereafter.

“So by ‘no’ you mean there’s no cure?” I asked.

He looked me in the eye, raised his plastic shot glass to offer a toast, I obliged with a shaky reciprocal gesture.

“There is only one cure for life, and as mortals, we will all one day be cured.  May you rock the fuck out of the days, months, or years left to you.  May you know that I love you like a brother with all my heart and will ride this last wave with you wherever it may take us.”  He held his glass and my gaze.

Damn him; the fucking bitch made me tear up.  I killed the shot and immediately put my cup out for a second.

“How long?” I asked.

“I don’t fucking know…six months, six years, it’s so fucking random.  Let’s see, no sugar diets, kale, and on the uh-oh side, hidden guilt, self-hatred, or an emerging heretofore unseen badass extreme will to live.  I could tell you some number, but then that number enters your reality and who the fuck am I to shape your perspective on something like this?  I’m just a doctor.”  James laughed as he filled our little plastic shot cups.

“Let’s go to the mountains and hike.” He said.  “I’ll clear my schedule; we’ll go to my place in the Sierras, spend a couple of days and let this percolate.”

“Are you coming on to me?”  My super thin, false bravado wavering.

“Ha, fuck you, I’ll bring coffee, be ready by 8 am.”  Doctor J. hissed with a shit-eating grin.

“Thanks?”  I had to laugh.  Hiking would be good!

#fiction

Have thoughts on the subject?  Please comment.  Life is bigger and better with shared experience!

Butterfly Girl

PAPILIO MACHAON

The wooden window frame creaks gently at the caress of the breeze.  Dew drops tremble on the laden blades of grass running from the mailbox to the front steps.  Sunglow shines at the edge of the world, kissing the brickwork of the sleepy cottage, built long ago for someone’s profit, filled this day mostly with love.  In the kitchen, the faintest click signals the release of water, soon to be steam, then to become the rich black elixir that she loves with just a dash of cream.

As always the alarm is set but unneeded.  Her long lashes flutter open to the glow of this new day.  Most mornings her first thoughts are steeped in gratitude…for all of it.  For her life, her child, her present moment, and still with some difficulty she embraces and acknowledges her gratitude for the past.  Every day has lead to this moment, the aroma of coffee, the faint light filling the skylights, the peace that once seemed a phantom now seems a life.

“Mom”

“Yes, my darling one.”

“Can I have some coffee?”  Her son Jonah asks.

“Certainly, but no sugar please.”

“Nevermind.”

“Joey, have you noticed what an amazing gift this morning is?”

“Yes mom, I said my gratitudes,” his words wander naturally down this well-worn path.

“Excellent! I love you!”

“Love you too.”

Three paintings hang on the wall, across the room from her king size bed.  The painting on the left is of an intricately patterned caterpillar making its way across a birch branch in what looks to be late Summer.  The next is of a delicate chrysalis suspended from a similar branch in the Fall.  The painting on the right is of a magnificent butterfly taking wing in the Spring.  So it goes that not every day has been this day, full of comfort, and love.  But today, a few before, and many after will be very much like this one.

Discomfort, I’ve heard tell, is the price of admission to a meaningful life.  Knowing the Butterfly Girl’s story, I believe that to be true.

#fiction

Have thoughts on the subject?  Please comment.  Life is bigger and better with shared experience!

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