Month: June 2019

A Sudden Sense of Urgency

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As with most things in my life ,I have only moments of rest before the rise of work comes to greet me. It’s a bit tiring with just a hope that I will have a significant rest and renewal before my life steps onto it’s new journey. Though this is mostly my fault for always wanting to be involved in the cool things going around me. A moment of awesome usually is the culmination of many hours of hard work and preparation, and right now that’s where were at, in that preparation for something greater.  I leave this short and sweet because the night calls and I require rest, though I complain about the work I do enjoy it because it in some small way it makes me feel like a hero fighting against the torrent of evil to come out at the end of the day victoriously once again saving the world in my way.

Rest Well.

March Toward Matriculation: Sixth March – A Call For Closure

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When faced with the dramatic inevitability of monumental change, the necessity for closure becomes tied directly to the ticking of the clock. Life’s scale becomes a tangible, finite figure asking for motion or silence, telling you that whatever happens is in some way, locking itself into a certain state of being. Not that life works that way, but it feels like there is a sort of stasis, a checkpoint reached. It’s when the world takes a picture to capture a moment, a being of self that can look back readily without provocation and not wonder but know where we were during that period of time. Life has an inevitability of change, but as moments pass and memories are made comes the realization that opportunities are fleeting and those we hope but wait to capture fly beyond our reach. It’s then our responsibility to capture these moments when the opportunity arises or forgo them forever coping with the unquenchable curiosity of a question that lives in our hearts.

It’s in this change that I am looking back on the memories that I’ve had, the moments that have shaped my existence with the realization that the things I haven’t done have shaped me just as much as the things I have. I’d like to say that I’ve lived without regret, but that would be untrue in some ways, living without them is so hard, especially when learning to live a proper life. It takes courage and tenacity to do so, traits only tempered in the memories that can so scar us like a moment not captured. Regret may not be the right word, as I have come to terms with these moments, having realized that they are essential to my very present being. No, it’s more like reflecting on an old scar or wound, wondering then if it is possible for them to heal fully without losing what they represent.

Maybe it’s a sense of nostalgia, one that is tugging so tightly against my heartstrings hoping that things would change and wondering where all those moments went. I have found myself dreaming about that time machine that we all envision, one that lets us go back to moments in our lives allowing us to relive them, retry them with the memories and lessons we have learned since then.  To go back to a time with the self that knows better, or at least is stronger than the person we were. We would see anything different with the power of perspective gained from a hard-fought self-awareness? Would we allow ourselves to go farther, stretch out longer, or perhaps utter those words unspoken?

Like an old friend, I walk with these moments in a comfortable silence knowing that though life has passed, and there are somethings lost, there is more ahead than there is behind me. A journey is only as sweet as the challenges we experience needing these bumps and bruises to mark our growth. What hero could ever return home triumphant without overcoming something?  I look back so I can look forward, knowing I will change.  I hold these little questions in my heart, filling it up so that there is already too much in there to let these moments pass me by again.

In the end with Coping or Closure, when given the choice it’s always better to do something than nothing at all.

March Towards Matriculation – Fifth March – Finding My Footing

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Undoubtedly a great experience, filled with fear, adventure, and a promise for tomorrow. It’s when staring down our future all we can do is lean in and work for a better tomorrow today.

I am thankful that with an easing of the semester, I see a building of excitement for the future life I worked so hard to achieve. There was a worry several months back that these feelings would never manifest but thankfully now that that school been made more tangible to me there is now a place to link my hope and excitement.  It’s a weird experience having committed myself to a place for so long without the knowledge of what life there is like. I knew that my ambitions called for me to take such a leap, especially with the recent accident that held me up for so long.  It’s the faith that I’m happy with, faith in a type of plan or destiny that at times I so despise. Faith in fate as it were that everything would turn out okay. Now for most things, I knew I would make it work regardless of what happened and where I ended up, and I cannot discount that someplace were always better than others but there is an easing of grief and burden when you find that you at least made the choice that will come easy and is right.

I find great difficulty expressing the feeling that comes with this knowledge. It’s analogous to putting everything on the table you’re holding a hand you hope will win, knowing full well that where we end up is some part skill and another part luck but as the last card falls and the final bets are made you realize that the round has gone to you. That you played well and you are being rewarded. This is because there is something beyond the statues and stone halls, the concrete and the history; there is an ease in it all, one that does not come lightly with every place we find ourselves.  Am I scared, of course, I am terrified beyond belief, but in this fear I can thrive, in this transition lies a future of growth, change, and understanding one I am ready to make of.

It’s then in this last trip to my future home, where I got to see the people and place that my forward path lies that I find myself excited for what is to come. I know there is so much more for me to learn from these places and people that it scares me. I decided though, that this time around I must approach it with a greater humility and understanding that I am to be guided, molded, and shaped into a better version of myself. It’s only though this great humility that I can be successful. It’s in this great humility that I can absorb, adapt, and prosper beyond where I know is possible now. I leave this saying that I am thrilled with the prospect of the future, but torn with how to feel about how soon it will come.

March Toward Matriculation: Fourth March – Busied Steps On A Windward Path

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It always happens, when the time finally frees up all of a sudden I get busier than before.  Maybe it’s a miscalculation on my part with the amount of work that I’m doing, but Summer and Winter seem to be those times of the year where everything starts to move again.

The problem being it’s a lot like triage, where I have to figure out where the priority should be and what I should be working on any given day. Like trudging through snow, every step is labored, and all I wish I could do is sit down with a sweet drink and relax for a little while.
Progress is slow, but progress is still progress. I mean not to put off anyone, but this is what I get for being so involved, people rely on you to get stuff done. People keep telling I should take a break and disconnect for a while. That’s not my destiny, though, nor should it be.  Work is part of who I am, regardless of what I am doing at least I am doing something.  There is a fear though that with all this marching that I am going to burn out before I even make it. I don’t know honestly, I haven’t really burned out before, but I’ve gotten that nagging feeling where my muscles become tense my brain grows dull from the lack of extracurricular stimulation.

I don’t know if I can reasonably disconnect, it’s been such a long time since I’ve done so. I presume it would take a lot to distract me from the comings and goings of the world back home with unfounded anxiety burrowing into my brain causing me to become preoccupied with things I can’t even control.

Right now the days might be getting longer, but they feel like they’re all too short.  It’s only a couple months away from me being gone in some far off place that is more indifferent to my arrival, and yet I still feel like in the thick of home still drawing me in.

I wonder when these bonds will loosen, it could be when I start to finish things, and perhaps that’s why I’m having such a hard time doing so.

 

Drinking Bitter Waters

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I’ve never been much of a fan of coffee and other bitter drinks. Something about having to acclimate to the taste doesn’t agree with me. Why would I go out of my way to learn to like something that has such a negatively visceral effect on my tastebuds? People do it every day though, guzzle down these bitter drinks, learning to love the taste that can from the outset be so unpleasant. Maybe it’s in growing up that we learn that bitter in some ways can be just as good as sweet. Maybe it’s in growing up that we can understand that just because it’s bitter doesn’t mean it’s bad.

We spend our whole lives in a flow, a flow that seems to spin around and around, making us confront our past and future at the same time.  It’s when these to points cross that I understand that I’ve grown, mature in these years of unending experience pushing me forward into the unknown.  It’s when confronted by these seeming repeated events that I understand where I am and who I am.  That these cycles we pass through in our lives show how we can take another path, a better way than the one we had before.  It’s only having gone down that path that I can understand the road that lays before me and choose perhaps a higher one than before.  These cycles though are painful, and maybe I can avoid them outright but to do so would be asking myself to stop genuinely living.
It’s in this unwillingness to deviate from that pain that I know I am stronger. It’s in this statement, one which I don’t know who taught me, the places you won’t go are the ones that ultimately control your life. It’s in strength that I persist forward, it’s in learning that I take the other path. If I were to lay down before these forces and events that call my name and make me remember past wounds and scars than I would give too much power to those forces that are indifferent to my destruction.

It is now that I am willing to drink these bittered waters, ones that before would give me so much anguish to consume.  It’s not that I take pleasure in them, but I don’t avoid them knowing now that drinking them can set me free. I know it’s not the failings of my emotions or callousness of my approach that I am unable to taste the bitterness of my life anymore. No, it’s a change in perspective, an understanding that life though indifferent at times to my wants and desire, is not an outright malicious force. Life is just a tangled web of lives, and stories passed between all the people we meet.  Though they sometimes weave together in ways that we wish, it’s not anyone’s fault when these lives don’t seem to match up. It’s understanding that there may be a better way that requires us to be uncomfortable at times and feel pain when served these bitter waters, but as long as we don’t shy away from it, everything will turn out okay.  It’s then that we can decide what we want to do with these moments, do we build upon them accepting the blood and tears, or destroy them hoping that the memories of our hurt go away along with it. I can tell you that destroying has never left a good taste in my mouth.

Life has a way of serving us these lessons in ways that may not be pleasant. I don’t regret drinking these bittered waters or the path the lead me to do so, my only regret is that I never learned to do so sooner.