A Hard Left

It’s hard to believe it’s August.  So much has happened, so much travel this summer.  It was a good thing, we did something we had always wanted to do, we spent a summer going and doing as a family.  We will be doing that more and more and to be clear that’s a really good thing.

 I am currently sitting on the front porch watching the birds as I write.  Today I’ll be heading to the maker space at the library getting some things done for Zoey’s party.  Then J will be home and we will work on some things, perhaps do some pictures.  I know we have things to plant.  I am waiting to hear from a few things and have a Zoom tomorrow.  Sometimes it feels like I’m spinning my wheels.  I think we all go through that though.  I would hazard a guess that the older we get the faster time goes and the more we feel like we are bogged down in the sand, the wheels of our buggy spinning out digging deeper instead of moving forward.  The alarming thing happens when suddenly the wheels find purchase and we lurch forward speeding toward the next thing.

 There are things that I miss and things that I don’t.  I’m sure that may seem obvious, but sometimes the obvious things need to be stated I think, doing so makes them manageable.  It’s funny how some days are harder than others or is it interesting that some days are harder than others.  It may be that last one.  The realization that those days are going to come no matter what just builds the anticipation or trepidation depending on the difficultly level.  

 Sometimes I wonder what it is to be one of those people that see things has half full instead of half empty.  I believe I used to be that way, at least I’m told I was at one time, but I am still on a quest to find that person, and while it’s getting so much better it’s also not where I want it to be.  

 I guess I just want to be…not normal, but less needy. I don’t want to need as much help as I do but I mean does anyone?  The hypocrisy of that statement is not lost on me at all.  It’s glaring in its condemnation.  Here I am telling people all over this blog that asking for help is not a bad thing, that things are so much better specifically because I’m not trying to do all these things alone and that the reason, I am able to have the right kind of coping skills now has everything to do with the help I have received and continue to receive.  Realizing and wanting this space and my conversations to help anyone that is struggling with anger, resentment, bitterness grief…the list goes on.  While all of that is true it’s also true that I so wish I was not in this space at all.  I would love to just be a well-adjusted person that understands the needs of his brain and is more than capable of recognizing when that brain needs more. The frustrating thing for me is that even now, as I am more of that person than ever before, even now as I embrace therapy, and medication, and conversation, and asking for help and setting boundaries, there is this huge part of me that keeps saying, “What the heck took you so long?”  One of the things that hit me rather hard in this entire journey is the simplicity with which I can find reasons to not like me, and in that realization, I am starting to get some clarity on what I hope is helpful to anyone that is reading this blog and is struggling as well.  So much in life is about getting or feeling better and getting and feeling better is not relegated to just health issues.  The broken part of humanity tends to want more and better.  In many ways that’s not a bad thing, it can be the driver of innovation and growth and life. The real problem comes when we stop wanting to be better and when we just want better.  Better than the next person, better than the thing we already have.  Add the reason to want to be better and it can get really messy.  It’s great to want to be better at whatever job we have, but when we want to be better at what we do because we are comparing ourselves to someone else and in doing so we begin to wish that other person ill, that’s a problem.  When we compare our stuff and by stuff, I’m talking tangible stuff no the mess of stuff we all carry around in our minds and hearts and souls, with other people's stuff it becomes an issue. It’s a losing game that can have real world and eternal dispensation consequences.  

 I am writing this because I think it’s important six months later to reflect.  The foundation stones to the explosion that hurt so many are rooted in the world of comparisons.  

 I stopped going to breakfast with the guys that were in my life, if you’ve been reading this you know that.  The why’s though are one of the contributing factors to the apocalypse that ensued.  I told myself it was because of politics, and to be fair to myself in this that was part of it, I am not like a lot of people.  I like to push the boundaries when it comes to faith, both mine and the people I come in contact with.  I am not a Republican; I know shocker right.  Neither am I a Trump fan, again not any real revelation.  One of the broken parts of me, and this is not the depressed suicidal parts that in spite of all that was, I let pull me along a path.  Please notice I said I let…I never want to be the guy that blames it all on extenuating circumstances.  Yes, those things are real, and yes, those things were a major cause of all that happened, but it was letting those things influence my relationships with the people that were there to pull me from the edge that was a huge issue.  I chose that for a myriad of reasons that of course make sense but also in the end don’t matter nearly as much as they do. See I let myself get more and more frustrated with the people around me and I justified it when it came to “the guys” because of politics and a president that I didn’t like.  Short sited, stupid, annoying, childish.  Yes of course, but what I have to remember is that part of me that was so angry and hurt and depressed.  That’s the fine line that has to be walked.  At any moment I could have said, hey guys can we just not do the politics thing today, even if I wasn’t involved directly in the discussion, just hearing it would set my teeth on edge, but that’s because I was looking for excuses to get away from my checks and balances, not because I didn’t think I needed them but because of this feeling of not being worth them.  Because I “should have been better, should have been able to move on and do my grief and pain and anger and hurt the same way that some of them did.  Again, that’s not how any of that works, one person's grief is not comparable to another person's grief.  Both are heart breaking; both are able to cause all kinds of other feelings and emotions.  Both matter, both are valid, at the same time they are only alike in one way.  They are both griefs.

 And so here I sit.  It’s 7:45 AM and I have been writing on this page for a few days.  I find that what has been happening when it comes to writing, which I do daily, has morphed into something that takes more time than it used to, not because I can’t write at a pace but because the words are so important.

 Words are dangerous things.  Without even realizing it they can bring joy or wreak havoc.  They matter because while verbal communication is powerful, and needed, it also has a short shelf life.  Verbal communication can evolve in our minds into something that it’s not, just play a game of telephone with a few friends, or better yet just think about the last juicy bit of “information” (read gossip) that you were a part of.  How much it changed from the first telling.  Spoken word is powerful but it’s also easily altered or forgotten.  Written words last, they stick around and are a yard stick by which we judge and are judged. If I’m working on some of the fiction that I have been dabbling in, it’s not such an issue but these posts, the inside of Aaron stuff that some of you get to read, that is a bit different.  That has a different weight, that takes more time and prayer and introspection, at least it should, and so I have made it do so.

 Where does all this leave me?  I have a hope that this bit of writing that sits on a server somewhere out in the land of Google, (I’m pulling for one of those offshore data farms that float in the middle of the ocean) is able to help or encourage someone.  If it does that then it’s done what I want it to do, in addition to being a way for me to process this life that is quickly approaching half a century.

 I was a pastor, and in spite of it all, I was pretty good at it.  I find myself having to make a hard left though.  Moving to something different, not because I want to but because sometimes the consequences for being human, and with that humanity having all the flaws and failures that comes from choice, make that necessary.  No excuses, no accusations, no fist balled in defiance, just acceptance. A realization that there are other ways to follow the one with the nail scarred wrists…

 

Be Well Good Reader…until next time.