Taking Off The Suit

I've got one foot on the edge, the other foot on a banana peel, and I feel my life pushing me to decide my fate.  There are choices to be made.  Should I struggle to keep my balance or just let go and fall into the unknown?  On the outside, I project the image that I want the world to see--that I'm strong, confident, and well-equipped to handle anything that comes my way.  On the inside--where it ultimately begins and ends--I am faced with uncertainty.  Until now, I led myself to believe that a man doesn't show his weakness, that a man doesn't cry or speak of his feelings.

I buried those fears underneath an armor, and I put up a wall to conceal that armor.  I taught myself that this is what I had to do in order to protect myself.  I lived this way for so long that I actually believed that this is who I was; a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote that "No man for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true." I found that insight to be extraordinary.  It feels almost like he wrote that passage in order for me to find it all these years later; the message reverberates inside of the armor, bounces off of the walls, and resounds throughout my soul.  It was the first thing that I read as I began this journey to free myself from the prison that I had created.

The first step was taking an honest look into the mirror, without the armor, and to admit to myself that I was afraid to live without its protection.  The second step was to search through those fears and to ask myself why they were there.  I had to ask God for his help to guide me through.  The third, was to have the courage to walk away from that mirror, naked and vulnerable, into a world that I have never faced.  The kicker is this, I had to stay committed to that change, and I couldn't just duck and run at the first sign of trouble.  I had to live in the state of vulnerability, and be open enough to allow the possibility of being hurt.  I had to give my love freely, without caution, and temper my expectations of others with the acceptance of the fact that not everyone is going to accept my new way of being. 

Expectations can lead you down a dark and lonely road if you allow them.  Expectations come along with the need to be in control, or the need to be right.  I had to learn how to give up those things, and it's an everyday process.  No, I don't expect to get it right every time, but I am committed to being aware of when I am slipping back into my old ways of thinking, and finding a way to use those experiences much like the eagle uses the storm--as a learning tool to learn how to soar at greater heights.  The people who know me best, know that I do not like cliches, but it really is a one day at a time thing.  I never get too far ahead of myself, and I am allowing things to take their natural course-- 

That's not to say that I lay down and surrender when, instead, it may be time for me to stand up and fight.  What it means is that I've got to pick the fight that's worth fighting, which brings me to another quote, this time, from poet E.E. Cummings.  "To be nobody--but yourself--in a world which is doing his best, night and day, to make you everybody else--means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."

These are the lessons that I want to pass on to my young son so that he doesn't have to ever feel the need to suit up---that I still live with uncertainty.  I still feel the fear of the unknown.  And I am vulnerable.  But if I never took off that armor, I wouldn't be feeling anything at all.  No regrets.  I'm taking the leap with a faith in God, all the while believing that He has a plan for my life...but somebody pass me one of those bananas to put under my other foot before I change my mind!  Stay vigilant, my friends!

My Unregrettable Day

Is unregrettable even a word?  I decided that I could not live another day without knowing--so I Googled it.  What I found out is that there are others out there who have wondered the exact the same thing!  Not only did they wonder if it was a word, but they used it anyway!  Somebody even used it in the exact same way that I was planning to use it before I second guessed myself and used Google to ease my mind.  Maybe I just won't use it.  Mindjacked again! 

Who cares if it's a word?!?  Who gets to decide what is or what isn't a word anyway?  I know what it means, and so do you, right?  But what stopped me in the first place?  It was far too easy for me to want to give up on using a word that isn't in the dictionary because it would make me feel like less than a good writer.  A fear of failure?  Rejection?  Will all that energy that I spent second guessing myself pay off in the end because it led me to these conclusions?  Who knows?  But that voice has always been enough to stop me from even picking up a pencil. 
   
Ok, so, puttting my inner dialogue aside for a moment, my point is simply this--sometimes we all hear that voice inside of our head.  The one that can cause self doubt, isolation, procrastination, or get this--paralysis by analysis--leading to yet another thing on that long list of regrets.  It's nothing new.  Oliver Wendell Holmes must have understood this when he wrote: "Many people die with their music still in them.  Why is this so?  Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live.  Before they know it, time runs out." 

Reading that quote brought all that BS that's been running through my mind for all these years (and some of this post) to a screeching halt!!  Why?  Because I don't want to be one of those people.  We've all seen them, the guy sitting on the end of the bar talking about yesterday as if today doesn't exist, or the lady who keeps talking about what she wants to do with her life after leaving her oppressive husband, but never does anything. And I'm sure we all said the same thing to ourselves when we saw them--I'm not going to be like THAT guy or I'll never live like THAT lady!

Well guess what?  They didn't start off that way.  Maybe they started off with a dream, or with the high hopes of living a life less ordinary.  Whatever happened to them, at some point in their lives they decided that they were going to settle for something less than what they wanted in their wildest dreams.  They decided that a memory in the past was going to keep them anchored to a day that no longer exists.  They stopped moving forward, and it can happen to any of us...
   
Nope, not me, I said--I'm not going to be that way.  I'm going to travel, see the world, write the next Great American Novel, run with the bulls, study Kung fu in China, climb the highest mountains and sail the great blue seas!!  The world is mine!!!  Well, as time went by, I took a look at that list, and I haven't done any of it.  And the older I get, the less likely it is that I ever will--at least that's what "they" say. 

How depressing.  I can hear my music fading.  What can I do?!?  I'm not as fleet of foot as I once was, those bulls are gonna rip me to shreds!!  Why is it so dark in here?!?  My God, did those mountains get taller??  Forget it.  Those voices in my head are screaming louder and louder with every tick of the clock, and I can no longer hear the dreamer inside of me---tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick---I give up!

That's how it's been for me for longer than I care to admit.  Until today.  Today I realized something. I realized that all I have is right now.  It's the only thing that I can change.  I can't change yesterday, and there is no tomorrow.  I can either continue to build the unclimbable Mount St. Regret or I can climb over it, or even run right through it to get to where I want to be---which is right here, right now--fighting for my dreams with the desperation of the third monkey on the way to Noah's Ark!  I'm doing exactly what I want to do.  Today I am pursuing my dreams with a passion; refusing to let my music fade into the darkness of despair.  Today, I listened to Oliver Wendell Holmes, or better yet, I hear Red from The Shawshank Redemption when he said, "Get busy living or get busy dying." 

 More importantly, I stopped listening to that self-defeating voice in my head.  Today, I am living my dream...because now I know, today is all I've got---and I can use any damn word that I want---that's quite an unregrettable day if you ask me...