Introspect-reflect

I’ve never been a big one on cathartic blog posts:  in fact, I usually abhor the idea of folks sharing their personal lives in such an open forum as cyberspace.  From dating services to online self help seminars, I’ve always and firmly believed that your introspective self should stay within.

Every now and again though, I have to renege on my own ideas, especially when I cannot help but believe that someone might just benefit from the sharing of my inner ideas.  It is so easy to see the ways in which everyone is different, so easy to become a stoic, or a martyr when we believe that our pain and trauma and convolution is ours uniquely, that we are alone in an uncaring universe, that the advice of our friends and loved one cannot strike the true chord that resonates with us.

As my days roll on though, I have found that the fire that drives us out of bed in the morning, the fire that fuels our passions, our loves, our lives, is one which burns within all of humanity:  we are never alone, never unloved, unless in some way we choose it for ourselves.  Only we can be our own worst enemy, after all, and we can only get over ourselves with a bit of personal honesty.

Personal honesty.  It seems such a trivial and self-evident truth, yet we just cannot be honest with others unless we can be honest with ourselves.  This involves a lot more that merely taking account of what we think is going on inside us, it is a commitment; a commitment to reflexive translucence of the ever changing facts concerning who we are and how we feel.

My feelings on privacy prevent me from going on big rubbery one in cyberspace, yet suffice to say I’ve taken a bit of shock in the past couple of days, thus bringing this little post to life.  It’s just so easy to accept the status quo, no matter how unsatisfying it may be, in lieu of taking a look inside and realizing the necessary changes in our lives that must be made in order for us to continue to grow as people:  to move forward at all in fact, in the horizontal backwards moving escalator that is life.

Moving forward, another surprisingly difficult truism of our lives.  It’s so easy to hide behind such wit and wisdom as “Take what you like and leave the rest,” and “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” and even “Know thyself.”  Especially “know thyself.”  What does this really mean?  I used to think that it involved merely being aware of the multitude of angles from which we attack the decisions which shape our lives:  I believe know that it also involves making the tougher comparison of knowing who you are as contrasted with where you want to be, for knowing thyself now is only useful in the present moment, nowhere in that phrase allows for the essential characteristic of improving the condition of our lives as a living organism.  While science may live in a vacuum, we do not and necessarily cannot.

What I mean is this.  I have had, in the past 48 hours, feelings which have lain dormant for quite some time have run screaming to the surface of my psyche and which, I have to admit, threw me for quite a loop.  What I had neglected in my inventory of self (my ontology, to be more specific), was what I managed to unconcern myself with because it wasn’t a part of my life.  I’m sorry to vague, but I need to keep confidential certain info to protect the guilty and innocent alike.  It did prove however, the necessity of making harsh choices in our lives, that sometimes the baby needs to go out with the bathwater for the ultimate good of ourselves.

For the one thing we really cannot control are others, and as much as we would like to say that we know them better than they know themselves (and oftentimes, we do) we can’t force them to see what is actually going on.  To use a really beaten analogue “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.”  I’ve turned down quite a bit of wise advice in my day, and my own offerings often fall on deaf ears, but I understand now truly that we also need others to help see ourselves (So to all of you who stuck by while I refused to listen, my apologies, kind world).

I guess where this is driving is the more final idea that we need to be right with ourselves, and put to hope and hope alone that those we care about will come to see the truth.  I have run myself ragged over the years trying to spread glad tidings and good times to others, often at the expense of myself, and it is only now that I can see the folly in that.  A lesson taught is not a lesson learned, especially when we don’t want to hear the moral that it teaches.

So as tough as it is to say, for today I have to preach a thoroughgoing “just let go.”  To treat others with respect to what we know about them rather than what they know about themselves is to set ourselves up for suffering:  someone really cannot be held responsible for what they don’t know is there.  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t get frustrated, (for we care about these people damn it!) but all we can do is hope that when they finally come around (if they ever do), they have enough stop playing games with themselves, and especially others.

Happiness is not difficult, but it most frequently clashes with desire.  I’m not entirely sure yet how to maintain both joy and desire (my Buddhist koans specifically believe that you cannot, but I think that’s a cop out), how to walk the razor thin line between care and disregard, how to love without the pain of our love’s missteps.  For me, a life without desire is a life not worth living, yet a life which limits happiness in any way is almost as unsatisfactory.  My life is going to make some pretty wholesale changes shortly, so all of those out there who worry that the rut that they are in is a permanent endeavor can take heart:  it really doesn’t matter who you are or what makes you suffer and long for, you are in command of your own journey.  When you can look inside and try to find every fiber of your being, past, present and future, then truly, to use another analogy, the world is your oyster.