In hindsight, most people are able to see what they did right or wrong. Most of the time it seems pretty obvious and it's embarrassing to notice just how easily one could have avoided one's fate. When things go right, often this look back is taken as self-validation or vanity, as if our thoughts and actions were the prime movers of the beneficial result. When things go wrong, we tend to blame everything but ourselves until there is no avoiding our own culpability, at which point we also tend to overexert our senses of shame and regret. Then there's the people who believe in luck and karma, but as they've gracefully bowed out of the game, I'll let them alone.
Depending on how long has passed since a given event, we'll tend to have greater perspective on the elements involved and so feel more confident about judging it. Similarly, the more removed we are from the event, the more we trust our objectivity and so too our ability to reason out the causes and consequences. Time and Distance - one happens simply by living, the other requires substantial effort.
What if you were to shorten the time between retrospectively analyzing the events of your life? What if you stopped at the end of each month and graded your performance? Were you better at life this month? What about last month? Are you congratulating or berating yourself? Do you think if there were a persistent measure of your success or failure, a regular report-card for your life, that it would emphasize your own responsibility, or would it only serve as reflective entertainment? Would it tell you who you are, or who you were?
Since we all reflect on ourselves, and the conditions we find ourselves in, with varying frequency, I don't imagine that regulating that process would be too difficult to imagine. Instead of looking back on those spontaneous occasions, we could look back deliberately. With a schedule.
Now what if we take that schedule and shorten it. Every week, say. Or what about at the end of each day. How did I score today? Did I do better today than the last? Naturally we'd lose some of the perspective of time and distance, but wouldn't we gain a new, perhaps equally valuable perspective? To pay attention to our lives in such a way - wouldn't that bring focus to our hindsight?
If we make it after each meal, or after each hour, or every minute or few seconds - isn't there a point when the rhythm of our self-awareness and desire for improvement and value stops being a beat and suddenly becomes a vibration?
And what would that sound like?
This week has been very strange. I got reminded a few times that sometimes there are things that must be said that are also better left unsaid. It may be stomach-turning to endure that paradox, but I re-learned the penalty for ignoring it.
You're the one who secretly wishes to sing and inspire listeners to heights they would not have otherwise reached. You're the one who sees injustice and dreams of righting wrongs. You're the one who feels a tingle on your lower back that signals a need to shake your rear and make the party start. You see the group of independents and know that harnessing their power would be a synergistic event. You feel others pain, and yearn to touch them only so long as is necessary to dismiss their lonliness without diminishing their sensation. You are the one who can stand in front of that tough guy and stand him down, or beat him down, his choice. You have the solution to their problem. Your body is just the thing to make a bloody fight begin - or stop.
You are a hero. The supervillain is your fear of being such. Biff! Pow! Crash! it. Embrace your destiny, if not for yourself than for those who need you. Allow your doubts and questions to guide you, not restrain you. Understand your limitations, and know that they bound capacities that will forever remain greater than you understand, without using them as an excuse not to exercise your powers. Take comfort in your ability to fail, but only as a useful by-product of your attempts to succeed.
If you do not crave victory or glory and cannot find the courage to draw your abilities out, don't lose heart. You are not alone. We are all fighting fears in perpetuity with the hope of victory. But do not succumb. Your life is a critical part of our mutual endeavor.
Man is it a long story. I'm nexus-drunk, which means I've had enough to drink to be loose and emotional, but not enough to drink to really get into it.
My phone hasn't made one peep today, or tonight, and my outing with Ian has resulted in a surreal and largely unfortunate experience with a group of loud drunks. One girl we met tonight wanted to sing for me, him, oh just about everyone, and she was far to inebreated to even hum a tune, much less sing a song.
I told her so, but she didn't appreciate my honesty and wanted to get even more drunk (as if that were possible) and wandered off with some random guy.
I got spontaneously kissed by Lexi tonight. I've known her for years and years and I can assure you that I had exactly zero expectation of that happening - ever - but there it was, shortly before she left. Hell, I haven't even seen her for years!
When Ian and I left the bar, on the way home a few idiots essentially called us homosexuals, and I spent the entire walk home thinking of witty comebacks - and being fully aware of wasting my time doing so. I always think in moments like that, that I'm being the smart one for walking off without getting into some trouble that won't do anyone any good. Part of me will always feel like a sissy for not punching people like that in the mouth. I had been witty and fun all night, why not then? Feh. I guess it's still bothering me.
At any rate, I'm taking down the last of my Bud Light and eyeballing my bed. I'm lonely, and even though I know it's just a temporary condition of my current state, I wish someone were here to hold me, or let me hold them.
My transition is not yet complete. When it does eventually finish its business, I won't be aware of it anyway, but at least I can be marginally aware of still remaining caterpillar for the while before I become.
Typical of my life, my absence has drawn the attention my presence doesn't seem to achieve. As such, I'm writing this and hoping that it satisfies interested parties - my friends, my family, my children, myself.
2004 is not over yet and still I feel a need to reflect on it and conclude that it's "one of those years". A year where people find their forks in the road. A year where love dies and one feels a tapping on the shoulder that's love reminding you that it never dies. It's a time of shifting sands and twilights. Do you see your life changing? It certainly sees you changing and wonders if you're hearty enough yet to keep pace. What a year.
I've had my heart touched again, this time by Sasha, and what I learned from Rose has prepared me to accept what Sasha was ready to teach. Rose taught me confidence and faith. Sasha educates me on compassion and nature. Nevermind what a terrible student I am, they seem to find fertile ground where I saw barren impact sites.
Nothing could have prepared me for the bounty of fortune I have recieved from my peers, from my associates, from my family and friends and lovers. There was never any signs that could have alerted me to what was to come from these.
I've found strength, from you. I've found solace, from you. I've seen truth, from you. I've touched beyond my reach and felt past my senses. From you. I am who I have become and am flung towards who I will be because of you and no thanks, or curses, will affect my trajectories.
You are the reason that I am, and we are. And I love you.