I started this blog primarily as an extension of my personal journal. It was a way to force myself to look outward more, to ruminate less, and to practice coming to a point (arriving somewhere) through my thought process. Now, that purpose seems somewhat incomplete, because I've found that many lines of thought are simply not worth following all the way through. I have had many moments of anguish and as many moments of pure joy, and for the most part have been content to let them pass into memory (or into the black hole of forgetting, for that matter).
I used to be terrified of 'forgetting' in all its iterations: inattentiveness, absent mindedness, zoning out, disorientation, dementia and Alzheimer's (both of which have shown up in some older members of my family) I am still terrified of forgetting - but I'm resisting it less.
What has intensified in my life is looking. I am in a constant state of awe about the process of living and the experience of inhabiting life - painful as that can be at times.
My own inadequacies have been my first points of focus - until I was one day able to turn that sock inside out with the realization that its life! It is experience, its the stuff I have to work with. Anger has been playing a prominent role in my life within recent months. I have partnered with the important people in my life and have given them permission to call me on it. The anger has a valid source, the reaction is human and understandable, but once you look at it, anger as a go-to emotion becomes indefensible.
And, I am looking at the world. I can't get into it. It will make no sense to read about it - but if you are reading I hope you take the time to look at your world. And today, this is why I wrote.
It's always a pleasure to read your words, not just for their meaning (always thought provoking) but for the beauty that derives from the choices you make in that expression. Your first paragraph, for example, so clean, so clear, nothing extra, yet full. What is the gestalt experience? I FEEL your anguish, it becomes MY anguish. I too have trapped myself in that kind of either/or corner.
ReplyDeleteOne word at a time, a metaphor for the working through, you travel, and I with you, to the breaking open epiphany: "My own inadequacies have been my first points of focus - until I was one day able to turn that sock inside out with the realization that its life!" You, and I as reader, have transcended the locked-box of either/or. The feeling is spacious, energizing, nutritious, and a balm.
Your words, so carefully chosen, have taken me to a new place. If you hadn't been compelled to write them, MY world would be a smaller place. You write, I read, to experience our human-ness. You write, I read, because. Thank you. Write on!