The Greatest Gift of All

May well take you years to accept

I had a girlfriend I was madly in love with years ago. Actually there were three. Each one came at a different stage of my life. The first left me. And broke my young heart. As first loves are wont to do, it took me some time but I moved on. And met the woman I would marry about three years later.

Decades later, after a long and brutal illness, she died. And left me with a shattered heart and broken dreams. In some ways I still struggle with that loss. But I’ve also grown into a completely different person. And I have moved on. Sort of. I like to pretend anyway. Enough to pass the gift on, regardless. To the third woman who would steal my heart.

I imagine she believes I bled all over her for a wound she didn’t inflict. But we danced around in our relationship for a number of years. And I did love her. But I just couldn’t figure out a way to fit my vision of this life into the puzzle that she brought to the table. So I let her go. Because not to would have been unkind to her and unfair to myself.

I’ve recently learned that she has launched the dream she always talked about. The one she didn’t seem quite willing to reach for while we were still a couple. And I can see now that the courage she needed to build that dream was the gift she gave herself after I broke her heart.

And therein resides the gift that is so damn hard to receive.

Freedom:

The greatest gift a human can give to one they love. And no, they may not want it. They may wail against it. And they may never embrace it. It’s far from free. True freedom comes with great loss. The loss of the love you wanted to have. The loss of the future you’ve envisioned. It may in fact, have been the love you dreamed of having all your life. But nothing on this earth lasts forever. And as the prophet Janice taught us all:

Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

Losing one you love deeply, whether through death, divorce or just a parting of ways offers you the courage to know you can survive the end of what was once the most important thing in the world to you. Seize that knowledge and you can build a new world around yourself. It doesn’t mean there’s no longer pain, but what is a scar but new growth? Growth is what life is all about.

Loss is the most potent weapon you will ever face in life. But it’s also the most powerful tool you will ever have. Allow it to, and it will give you gifts of limitless value. It’s your choice to accept them or not.

The only path to a successful life

You ain’t gonna like this

We sat in front of the doctor as he gave us the news. “You don’t need any more tests, you have ALS. I’m very sorry.” he said as he rose from his stool. “I’ll leave you now. If you have any questions, please contact my office.”

We’d been through half a dozen doctors. Visited three separate neurologists. And after over a year of searching we now had an answer as to why wife’s right hand was becoming a useless appendage. It wasn’t good news.

Do you want a successful life?

Have you planned for EVERY conceivable contingency? Because if you’ve missed one, that’s the one that will bite you in the ass.

I planned for every one I could imagine. Or so I thought. I carried a million dollar life insurance policy. On myself. Because I thought I’d die long before my wife. And she would need the resources to successfully raise our four children. But I never really considered that she might get sick and die first. And long before those kids were all grown up.

I put a lot of money away for retirement too. Because my wife couldn’t. And I figured she’d need that if she were going to have the time and resources to be a proper grandmother in her later years. Truly, I never even considered that I would be the only one to get a chance to be a grandparent.

But here I am. Financially free after a lifetime of trying to make sure the people I love would have a chance when I was gone. And I AM successful. In most ways.

But I lost the one person who gave meaning to success in my life. And that’s something you can’t plan for, no matter how smart and capable you might be. Real success doesn’t come from anything you achieve in life. It comes from the people you love and the gift of love they give back. If you lose one of them, you have to start all over again. And you’ll be way poorer than any lack of money could ever make you.

My Kintsugi

Life’s precious scars

Image for post — By Daderot [CC0], from Wikimedia Commons

I used to be a nearly impenetrable rock. A stoic, storm proof container with no visible emotions. It wasn’t an act. It was who I was and how I approached all of life. I never really got hurt. But I also didn’t feel those elevated emotions that launch the spirit and bring true joy. There were almost no tears. But there wasn’t a whole lot of bliss either. I see now that it was a safety mechanism. I haven’t figured out yet why I cultivated it or from what it was protecting me. Maybe someday that’ll come out in therapy. Or hypnosis. I’m not sure I care anymore.

When my wife died though, that stone was fractured. Permanently. In the hours before she died, my mother in law told me to go back to bed and get some rest, that she would sit with her. I could tell she wanted a little time alone with her daughter. I was almost afraid to walk out of the room, but Mary assured me she would let me know if anything changed.

I know now why mourners wail. When I laid down in those predawn hours, I curled up into a fetal position. The sobs felt like bubbles in the center of my body. I tried to hold it all in. I didn’t want to wake the kids. But I literally felt like I was being lifted from the bed with each expanding bubble and violently thrown back down as it burst forth from my chest. I wanted to wail. I wanted to let it go with all the force bottled up inside of me. But I had the kids to think about. And my mother in law. I think I would probably even have awakened the neighbors. So I held most of it in. But my shell was broken. Forever.

As I write these words, eight and half years later, little tears form at the corners of my eyes. The memory of that morning is still very powerful. But it’s no longer too much to bear. The relationships that have come after have filled some of the cracks. But like the Japanese kintsukuroi, the repairs are of a precious nature. Even though the women have moved on with their lives without me, they each left something of value to me.

The relationships I have with my children are different now too. For a while I didn’t quite know how to be their father. Single parenthood is a challenge under the best of conditions. Trying to do that job for three teens and a preteen, with a broken heart and very little outside support, still seems like a monumental undertaking. They don’t say anything about my failures but I know. I was only able to do it because they stepped up and became adults. Long before they should have had to. More priceless repairs to the cracks in my soul.

This is life. All the pain. All the tragedy. All the brokenness. But there’s so much more. People step in and fill the little cracks with joy and tenderness. Some give you the gift of love. Even if only temporarily. One of them gave me the gift of writing. Another gave me the gift of just quietly being there with a space for me to heal. My kids waited for me to come back to them. Because even the glue that one uses to repair oneself needs time to set if the pieces are to stay together.

The long dark night of my soul

Some rainy night musings on love and loss.

If we’re lucky, we get the opportunity to love a lot of different people in our lives. Parents, children, one or more spouses, lots of friends. And then there are the romantic liaisons that for one reason or another just don’t quite end up happily ever after.

Some end clearly. There’s a moment of “we need to talk”, possibly a complete surprise to one party, but it at least puts everything out in the open. A conversation follows and decision is made. The relationship becomes part of each person’s past. There’s pain, but it’s like ripping a band-aid off, sharp and startling but it’s usually over fairly quickly.

Then there’s the loss from death. I loved my wife. Like I will never love another in this lifetime. But when she died, the relationship came to a natural end. An end that is clear and delineated. There’s closure. I’ll always miss her in my life but moving on is like pulling away from a stoplight. Everything has changed, but the past is behind me. The pain is unique and long lasting (likely life long) but you at least know why it ended.

Some aren’t quite so cut and dried.

I walked down the street from the bar with the rain beading up on my glasses. And I pondered, as I have several times over the past few months, why it was that I still couldn’t quite get over her. Just as I will always love that beautiful dark haired Italian woman from thirty years ago.

I realized it was because the relationships never came to a coherent conclusion. There was no point in time where there was a clear signal that this was over. And I think it’s because the love didn’t really end. The relationship just didn’t work in the context of each partner’s lives. Maybe the timing was wrong. Or maybe there just wasn’t a way to rationalize each person’s values with the other’s. Despite the love, two people sometimes just don’t fit together.

I think most of us have one or more relationships that end in this fashion. I suspect it’s how most marriages that end in divorce come to their final conclusion. The love doesn’t actually go away. Someone cheats, or finds they just don’t feel that same passion. Maybe the kids grow up and that glue that held everything together just sort of dissolves. There are as many reasons as there are couples who split up. But there was love there once. And I suspect it’s still there. The relationship just can’t survive the new reality.

This pain fades slowly. In fact it’s actually grief. But a different form of grief, because the party that is central to the pain is is still alive. Often, I think, the grief morphs into anger. Possibly, for some, it runs through all five of the stages of grief, although that hasn’t been my experience. For me, there’s always just been a profound sense of disappointment. It’s a failure. And I don’t deal well with failure at all.

I guess what I’m really getting at is, it sucks. Sometimes life just doesn’t give us the answers that we seek. Nowhere is that more plain than in relationships between people.

One day I’ll undoubtedly find myself with another love interest. But those two relationships will always be behind a door in my heart that I can’t quite close.

Ode to a sleepless night

A Poem

in the hours after midnight
wraiths of long lost love
torture my sleep

deep in the psyche
emotions engage in warfare
and set siege to the heart

soul deep injuries
hastily triaged
only to return to battle

demons slither amongst the wounded
and approach the ramparts en masse
with weapons of promise

if only the gates are opened
all manner of riches
can fill the keep

but empty dreams
and broken oaths
bar the entryway

thou shall not pass
you are not welcome here
disturbing my slumber

allow me my repose
tomorrow is another day
and love is far, far away

Lest We Forget

This is no accident

We are all here on a sacred spiritual journey. We didn’t come here to get rich, or to command armies, or to die with the most toys. We came here for a reason. The beauty of the adventure is that we don’t get to know why we chose this life. Not while we’re still here anyway.

I had a dream last night that my late wife and I had a baby. A little boy. Scrawny and dark with a complexion and face that held none of the features of either myself or my wife. At three months old he was standing in his crib and telling me who I was. He spoke clear sentences. He was mischievous, funny and full of love. As I changed his diaper he looked in my eyes and joked with me. As we walked down the street he greeted everyone and ran around playing hide and seek with me in wanton joy. He brought bright smiles to all the faces in the crowd.

This short dream triggered a vague sense of deja vu. As if I were being given a little hint of those memories I’d left behind me. In my headlong pursuit of “what I was supposed to do” I seem to have misplaced what I actually came here to do. For what does a tiny child know of life in this world? They know love, they know kindness, they know vulnerability. They know fun, and how to live a life as if tomorrow wasn’t something to dread. They don’t think about tomorrow at all. Today is all that exists to them. And today is enough.

There are big things that need doing in this world. And more reasons than one can imagine for dreading tomorrow. But if we all lived life as if we were little children, would that be so bad? Love everyone, be kind, show your vulnerable side. Bring smiles to the faces of everyone you meet. Make them laugh and pass along some joy.

I think we could heal the world. One lost soul at a time.

A Letter

To my conservative friends

You know something:

We haven’t been trying to take your guns away for the last forty years. We’re just tired of people pointing them at kindergartners.

We don’t kill babies. We just don’t believe a teenager should have to carry her rapist’s child to term. Especially if that rapist is her father.

The enemy isn’t in grade school. And it’s not the liberals.

It’s the people telling you to be afraid. Of others. Of people that don’t worship the same way you do. Of gay people. Of people that don’t look like you. Or think like you. We’re not all the same. But we do all want mostly the same things. We want our families to be safe, our livelihoods to be secure. We want to believe that life on this earth can be good. That there’s beauty and love. That it isn’t all about “only the strongest survive”.

We can all pull together and make sure the “least of us” get to have the same quality of life as the most privileged of us. But we don’t get there by making those who have less than us pay a greater price than those of us who have been blessed with more.

I watch as the Senate of this great country debates who deserves to be supported in this time of crisis. I see Senators try to justify bailing out businesses that have shortchanged their employees for forty years. Businesses that have bought back their own stock in times of crisis to boost shareholder equity. Businesses that have increased the pay of their CEO’s and upper level management even as they cut payroll and terminated employees. And I wonder, who you gonna fuck now? There’s no one left. You’ve been screwing the little guy over since Reagan was in office. Maybe it’s time for you to take a “haircut” or, as happened in 1789, lose your head. I’m just a little on the fence here. Convince me that the latter isn’t the best decision. ’Cause I’m thinking we don’t have much to lose at this point.

Sincerely,
Those of us who are tired of living under someone else’s boot.

Culture War

A personal take on sustainability and western civilization

I am different. I accept this. In a world of excess, I mostly just want to get rid of everything I own and live like a Buddhist monk. And I’ve pretty much always been like this. But I knew early on that it wasn’t the same for most of the people around me. Most of them see the world as a competitive place where they are either a winner or a loser. In their eyes, I’ve always been a loser. Or, at the very least, someone they can just step right over on their way to the top.

My wife was of a very similar nature to myself. She pursued a career in mental health. Helping others is where she found her place. She had no need to prove herself against any sort of competition. And she lived a life, both at work and at home, that was true to her inner being. Deep down, I think she left this plane so early because she had no work left to do here. But that’s my spiritual nature speaking and it’s a subject for another time.

I, on the other hand, took a job with a huge multinational company. The competitive culture was fierce. I never felt comfortable. I eventually came to work in information technology and I did quite well in that role. There are still people all over North America working in that organization that know my name for some of the unique systems I put together. But I really didn’t fit in. The company made a product I never believed in. And the idea of extracting resources from nature to manufacture an unnecessary product never sat well with me. But everyone needs to make a living, right? So that’s what I did.

After my wife died, the dissonance between who I am and the culture of the place I worked became progressively more difficult for me to ignore. I struggled more and more with my place in the world. I met and had relationships with a couple of different women. Both of them had strong competitive streaks and eventually that dichotomy (obviously, in addition to other incompatibilities) doomed both of the relationships. Deep down though, I think that it was least partly because, to competitive people, I look just plain lazy. And maybe I am. But to the competitive person, laziness is a weakness of character. When someone looks at you with that sort of disdain, the relationship isn’t going to last.

Here’s the thing though, lazy people aren’t out there destroying rain forests to create empires. We take what we need from the earth and leave the rest. The hyperactive, go-getter personality without a productive, necessary, world enhancing pursuit becomes a destructive competitor. The kind of competition that extracts resources from the world to create unnecessary products. And we have literally millions of unnecessary products. Our homes, storage units and landfills are bursting at the seams with them. Maybe we need a little more laziness in this world.

Western culture has demonized contentment as a negative. Growth begins at the end of your comfort zone. Bigger, better, faster, etc. And it’s all true. But, not all growth is good growth. Cancer is uncontrolled growth and it can kill you. The world is now in a place where all growth needs to be examined for both its positive and its negative aspects. Personal growth is no different. It’s why CEOs of huge companies step down citing stress and their work-life imbalance as reasons for leaving. They should be fixing the culture of their organizations, not leaving. Or maybe, they should be rethinking the value of the existence of their organization at all. That’s the kind of leadership we’re going to need in the future.

Minimalism may well be the evolution of consciousness we need right now. In a time of global climate change, everything needs to be rethought. If the current status quo continues we will leave a scorched earth behind. Nothing will be left. And, deep down, we all know this.

On the other hand, there’s no going back. Yes, most indigenous cultures practiced a type of minimalism out of necessity, but not many of us would be willing to live life on those terms again. Western civilization has brought us fantastic wonders that make our lives easier, better and longer. To pretend that life was better “way back when” is a lie we shouldn’t be listening to. We all benefit from a world made better by civilization. But it’s long past time to examine the balance a little closer. We need nature a whole lot more than nature needs us.

The Soul of an Empty Life

Some musings on life in the here and now

I woke up from a dream a while back. It left me kinda lonely and sad.

We were sitting in a shareholders meeting. Apparently, I was a major player in this organization and we were contemplating an offer to sell the company. I was examining financial disclosures and discussing them with the two other principles of the organization. I kept bringing up that this was just financial stuff. It didn’t even come close to representing all that we had built. All the people we employed. The lives and families we’d touched.

The response I got back was essentially that the financial stuff is the only important part. People don’t buy companies based on their benefit to society, the employees or the community at large. None of that mattered. I woke up kinda dejected and uncomfortable. It brought to mind the following:

Some people are so poor all they have is money.

Now, I’m not a powerful or wealthy person. In any organization. Like a lot of people in this country, nearly all of my net worth is in a retirement fund. I’ve never attended a shareholders meeting, nor do I have any inclination to do so. But I think my reaction to that dream is spot on.

We have the responsibility to build something with our lives that is way more valuable than what can be expressed on a balance sheet. If all you have to leave the world at the end of your life is money, you are indeed destitute. An empty soul.

There is music in the very air we breathe. Love makes the leaves on the trees tremble. Real Life has no connection to money whatsoever. Except how much of ours we will sacrifice in it’s pursuit.
I’m fifty six old. Six months ago I bought a brand new van. As a project. To build myself a custom camper. Which I intend to take on the road after this pandemic runs its course. And I plan to live in this van for the next couple of years. Why? Because, like writing, I’ve always had this desire to see what’s over the hill or around the next bend. But it never called to me loudly enough to set aside other “more important” pursuits. And now, at this ripe old age I’m coming to understand that the most important things are those that give you joy or fulfill some long unrealized aspiration. Everything else should take a backseat.

Don’t let yourself become a poor rich person. Take those Tango lessons. Book that whitewater rafting trip. Learn to ride a motorcycle. Stop and talk to the old guy fishing on the pier, he’s probably got a fascinating story to tell. Become a person rich in experience, knowledge, skill, craft and insight. If you make tons of money that’s fine but it’s not a worthy pursuit in and of itself.

Thank you for reading.

Tempering the blade

a poem

the hammer falls for decades
a bad boss here, a failed relationship there
illness and accident
birth and death

bending and compressing the soul
welding the molecules together
forming a rigid weapon
with which to cleave the future

life is summoned to greater trials
the loss of a great love
or a carefully crafted future
unexpectedly crumbles to dust

the spirit is crystallized and turned hard as glass
one last heat cycle
to draw the brittleness out
leaving a resilient core and a rock hard surface

a new awakening, the understanding that nothing
is as it has always appeared
the realization that the mission
was actually to create the world from within

one final honing
draws the edges to a razor sharpness
and the tip to an exquisite point
the blade is ready for the ultimate battle