I read these lines in a book entitled “In A Strange Room" by Damon Galgut: Maybe when two people meet for the first time, all the possible variations on destiny are contained in their separate natures. These two will be drawn together, those two will be repulsed, most will pass politely with averted gaze and hurry on alone.
It struck me; after many deaths of friend and family, after two marriages, the blessing of a beautiful, intelligent and compassionate daughter and a current relationship with a partner that blossoms in a space without demands - it sometimes feels like it took a lifetime to get here. Where is that? Well, the obvious answer - where I am. And most regularly I ponder where I am, to see if where I am is where I want to be. There are constants that are absolutely necessary for me. Just like you have your own constants. The essentials. They are: having time for creativity, giving and receiving love in the relationship I'm in, and serving others through my work. Those are mine.
These are the things that have been a part of my human “fibre" from the start, at a very young age and without my even realizing it; before the demands and the multitudes of directions available to me led me along sometimes bountiful, sometimes bleak, but always valuable pathways.
And along all of the trajectories of my life and the people in it, I have been very aware of two powerful truths; 1. I wanted to maintain the essentials I needed for my life to be happy and 2. I had a choice in the matter whether I walked or didn't walk down the pathways laid out in front of me. Those two truths have kept my life moving forward through pain and hardship, joy and gratitude, marriage and divorce. And at this point in time, I could very much look back on all of it and say “this was a wrong decision" or “that was a failure." But that would be untrue. Remember: “all the possible variations on destiny, contained in their separate natures." I chose each and every pathway based upon one or more of those essentials I need. I imagined that walking down this particular path at this particular time would give me one of those elements that makes me thrive. And they all did, at least for a time.
I don't regret any of those pathways. In most cases I recognize the joy and the pain that I have given and certainly the joy and the pain I have received; much of it, while each of us wrestled trying to maintain our own “essentials" in the manner in which we needed them. It's in recognizing this pure and simple fact of our own choice and our ability to change it, that shows us the grace in our lifetimes and gives us the ability to apologize and forgive ourselves and others equally.
Our so-called “dying" is inevitable. But our daily living need not be a slow blood-letting of our essential soul. Stay true. Stay open. Change when needed. We're not approaching any new life, we're already in it. What we are trying to do, is make it the kind of life we want. That doesn't mean there's no sacrifice but it certainly means each and every one of us is deserving of creation and the only creation we've got is within.
If there's a huge emotion welling up in the throat now. If it seems unbearable. If the face in the mirror is of somebody who died a long time ago, move into thyself again dear friend. Like a child who wants what it instinctively knows it wants, and walk toward it. The world that crumbles around you is reparable and it isn't the world you can or want to maintain anyway. To get here you need not see yourself in a new life at all right now. A new house. A new partner. A new job. First, you must see yourself in an open field, somewhere nearby, and feel the rain drench you to the bone.
TO GET HERE... (For a friend, not yet a ghost)
