Prelude - Waking Up
I have been asleep for some time now. Tired of the same questions and frustrated with the same answers, I retreated within myself, tucked away from the worlds unrelenting gaze. I have spent so much of the past year tearing down the broken foundations of my life that I forgot what it felt like to build something new. I forgot that feeling of accomplishment, that feeling of blind confidence in myself that can make me capable of doing great things, and instead settled for a life 'in neutral'. I grew fearful of taking chances, of investing in the future and hoping for the best. I tried so hard to protect what little good I had left in me, that I let it wilt in the darkness. This is not what life is supposed to be and I am capable of so much more. It is time for me to slip the chains of my protective slumber and start building something that I can once again be proud of.
Reflections
As most of you will know, I just came back from a three week trip to Europe. I am not exactly sure how I managed to plan and execute something like this in the state I was in, but somehow I found the smallest bit of initiative and seized on it. It is almost impossible for me to hold the entire trip in my head all at once simply because far too much happened and I was completely unprepared for the sheer volume of experiences I had. What I want to focus on here though, are the personal insights I had while on my own. I place these in no particular order because I feel like these insights have always been within me, they just didn't have a way to get to the surface. Rather than try and dump it all out in one post, I will break when my brain needs time to 'cool off' and continue when I feel inspired. Unlike my other posts, I am speaking solely from the heart here, so expect a fair amount of speculation and assumption to be mixed in with the rational.
Reflection #1: Emotions are Illusory
"Whoa there", you might be thinking, "That doesn't sound like a particularly healthy conclusion at all!" Have you ever had a moment where just one piece of information turns utter despair into complete elation? The doctor calling to say that, even though a relative was rushed to the hospital, it was a total false alarm. Receiving a bill that you can't afford to pay only to get an unexpected bonus at work. Our life is filled with these moments on both the large and small scale. If despair is really a tangible thing with real power over us, how can it ever be so quickly pushed aside? On the other side, how can a lifetime of happy feelings be torn to shreds by one event? How can 20 years of fulfilling marriage be completely erased by a single act of infidelity? If that happiness was real, like an emotional bank account, wouldn't the many years of "happiness deposits" more than pay for a single painful withdrawal? If only our emotions were so rational and orderly! In reality, our emotions are what our brains use to express complex concepts in ways that we can interpret and act upon. Our consciousness can still choose to either acknowledge or ignore those emotions, and one of the great struggles of life is to continually refine the amount of control we exert. Don't ever confuse, for instance, having a feeling of anger for being angry. Anger can be used to steel our resolve to do good just as easily as it can be used as an excuse to cause destruction. The emotion is the illusion, an echo in our head, it is our decisions in response to that emotion that are real. This does not mean however, that our feelings are irrelevant (far from it!), but they must be placed in the proper context. My personal struggles in the wake of my divorce are a clear testament to the fact that emotions can overwhelm even the most guarded of us. Despite all appearances though, we are in control. Emotions are not gods that have to be appeased to avoid punishment, they are simply advisors that we can either choose to listen to or ignore.
Of all the emotions we experience, fear is the most pervasive and insidious. While fear lies at the heart of many of our struggles, it has the ability to disguise itself, blinding us to its presence:
- The bold are afraid of being overshadowed, so they make themselves stronger at the expense of others.
- The meek are afraid of being hurt, so they hide themselves away.
- The lover is afraid of being alone, so they seek out anyone they can.
- The intellectual is afraid of being wrong, so they overreach their knowledge.
- The believer is afraid of the unknown, so they cling even more tightly to their beliefs.
- The unbeliever is afraid of the power of belief, so they lash out against it.
I wrote that list from the third person perspective, but in a curious trick of the subconscious, ended up describing - for the most part - myself and my own fears (at least a subset of them). I am most of these and much more. The insight here is that all of these fears are self-serving. They only exist to perpetuate themselves and 'burrow further' into our minds. A fear of rejection leads someone to retreat into themselves, which leads to loneliness, which leads to a loss of self-confidence, which heightens the fear of rejection, and so on ad infinitum. These cycles play over and over again until all we have left is that fear, and sometimes we are afraid to even give that up (it is the devil you know, after all).
My trip was filled with many 'negative' events. I got forced off of the subway in Paris by the police (funny story, in retrospect), paid $400 for a train pass that turned out to be useless, had countless people be rude or inconsiderate to me, had to deal with frustrating public transportation, cope with feelings of loneliness and isolation, destroyed both my knees in the first week, got eaten alive by mosquitoes for another week, got rained out at the opera just to name a few. What surprised me was not that these things happened, but that they didn't really bother me and I never had a negative attitude about them. Any time something bad happened, I just kept spinning it as a positive. I was utterly determined to have a good time on this trip, and nothing was going to prevent that from happening. Anyone who knows me and my cynical ways will probably understand how unusual this is for me. What I realized though, was that these events, while certainly not good, added just as much richness to my experience as any of the truly spectacular things I did. I did get charged 40€ by the Paris police for (unintentionally) 'disrespecting their laws', and while I do think the rule was designed to take advantage of tourists, I didn't allow myself to feel victimized. I certainly did not want to part with the money, but now I get to talk about the most expensive subway ride of my life. I could not control what happened to me, but I could control how I chose to perceive it. I made a conscious decision to be happy no matter what came my way, and was astonished by how radically different my outlook became. The cynic in me was shouting (shouting!) to stay on guard and use these frustrations as a shield. All of my instincts tried to tell me that I was setting myself up, that I was letting my guard down, that I was going to be in danger. It wasn't until I tossed them aside that I realized those instincts were preventing me from recognizing the very happiness I trying to protect. I am not so delusional to think that this approach will protect me from the inevitable pain and losses of life, but the riches I reap in the process will more than pay for it. Genuine happiness can be manufactured, if only we have the courage to let go of our fears.
The real world, with all of its perils, can never hurt us as much as we can hurt ourselves. We are sitting at the controls of our own life, and no one can push those buttons (for good or for ill) as well as we can. Fear, like all emotions, is illusory and can be controlled. Years of personal neglect may have given it a fierce momentum, but just like planets can be stopped by the gentle and persistent force of gravity, so to can emotions be eventually brought under proper control. This is the great adventure of life, and I am just now taking my first steps on that journey.
Next Reflection: "You Can't Win What You Don't Put in the Middle"
