Past Pain, Present Learning, Future Growth and Healing

So lately I’ve been nipped by the nostalgia bug and have been re-reading a lot of my old writings, including blog entries.  Long before I started this particular blog, I had a blog for about four years that was essentially just a way to keep family and friends apprised of things going on my life.  Interestingly enough, the blog happened to start at this site (and no, I will not post a link to that garbage here), then it migrated to LiveJournal (now I’m just making myself feel old) and then finally to MySpace, where it just kind of petered out (just like MySpace!).  For various reasons, most of which I can’t seem to remember, I abandoned the blog about three years ago now and hardly thought about it until recently.

This read-through was an incredible experience, far more than just (excuse the horrid cliché) a trip down memory lane.  It was a look at who I used to be, how I thought, felt and communicated.  Those who know me know that while I am exceedingly talkative, I don’t often say much about myself; I am a very private and shy person who prefers talking about almost anything else.  As one might expect, I am in fact far more comfortable putting my thoughts in writing as opposed to speaking them, so starting a blog was a natural outgrowth.  But like so many other bloggers, I didn’t really know what I was doing.  I simply posted about whatever was going on in my life or what I was thinking/feeling.  Because of this, the first thought that popped into my head upon reading these old posts was “Why the hell did I feel a need to keep people apprised of every single thing that happens in my life?”  I mean, who the heck wants to read about every intimate detail of a person’s existence (unless of course, the person in question is a celebrity, which is the entire reason for the existence of the rags known as tabloids)?  Thankfully, I at least knew where the line of “should not be posted on the web. Ever.” was located and I never crossed it; thoughts that fit into that category are reserved purely for my handwritten journal.  But I still posted far more than anybody needed or wanted to know.

In addition to frequently posting too much information, I’ve noticed that many of my posts are almost disturbing in their redundancy.  My brain clearly got stuck, and still does to this day, on certain things for weeks, even months at a time.  Now, for some things, such as severe emotional pain, this is understandable; for example, breaking up with your significant other is something that can take a long time to get over.  While I’ve never had a girlfriend, I have written a great deal about love, especially when the girl who remains the closest thing I’ve ever had to a girlfriend turned me down.  That experience was an incredibly painful thing to deal with, especially when you factor in my nasty inferiority complex.  I found that the only way I could even begin to understand the emotions I was dealing with was to write about them, both in my blog and in my journal.

Although writing most certainly helped with the healing process, it had an unintended side effect that I was too damn blind to see; I couldn’t see how my writing was affecting others.  I don’t mean that people were bored of the redundancy of my posts (although I’m sure that’s true), but the fact that I often spent weeks moaning and groaning about this or that without learning my lesson.  While it’s certainly true that you can only learn the lesson or move on from the pain when you’re ready, my old posts clearly illustrate an idiotic, naïve boy who almost seemed to delight in dragging things out.  I honestly wonder what in the hell I was thinking at times, acting like such a sniveling child. 

Regardless of the motivations behind my behavior, my thought process on it comes to one logical conclusion, and that is that I owe my friends and family both an apology and a debt of gratitude.  I’m not going to sit here and beg forgiveness for my sins with some bullshit rationalization and/or proclaim that I’ve seen the error of my ways (anyone who has read those old blogs knows that I often claimed to have done so, almost always erroneously); I am simply going to say that I am eternally grateful for those who have stuck by me no matter how much I acted like a complete, total and utter ass.  I didn’t deserved to have such good, caring people sticking by my side.  For those that didn’t, you had every right not to, and you have my most heartfelt apologies for any pain I caused you.  While the damage can never be repaired, I sincerely hope that, with time, any wounds I have inflicted can be healed.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking.  It’s only a couple of days until the dawn of a new year and I’m trying to ease my guilty conscience so that I can go into the new year with a clean slate.  I’ll tell you right now that anyone who believes that is a bigger fool than I.  We all walk a hell of a bumpy path, some more than others, and there are things that we will always carry with us, no matter how many years may pass.  I won’t sit here and bitch that I’ve had it harder than others, but my path has certainly not been an easy one.  Re-reading my old posts helped me to see some of the obstacles I have already overcome, yet they also showed me just how far I still have to go.

Anyone who has read any blog I have ever posted knows that I was once a boy who was shy, naïve and blind to the future, a boy with little confidence in himself or his abilities; in some ways, I still am this boy.  I carry him inside of me as a reminder of my strength and I still have difficulties with my confidence.  As I walked my path, I found strength I never knew existed simply because my fear of the consequences of failure was too great.  That strength carried me through every obstacle to date.  Over time, the fear faded into the background, but never went away entirely, as it often does.  In the last few years, I have suffered some very painful personal losses and have begun to reexamine my life as I approach my third decade.  Between this examination and re-reading my blogs, the only conclusion I can draw is that the same fear that once drove me back from the gates of Hell, that showed me how great my strength was, has now become my greatest weakness.  My fear has made me complacent, afraid to change things.  As a result, I’ve spent the last few years stuck in a rut, unsure of where to go or what to do.

Now, it’s not as if I’ve made zero progress in recent years.  I’ve gone back to school in order to make a better future for myself, one that is free of dead-end jobs and the depression that comes with them.  I’ve developed a better understanding of myself and of life and I’ve become a better person.  But through re-reading my old posts, I’ve noticed that I am continuing to repeat old cycles and it is this constant repetition that feeds my fear and holds me back.  I can’t keep letting fear and uncertainty guide me, no matter how well they served me in the past.  Instead of actually accomplishing anything, I’ve stayed in my safety zone so that I didn’t have to deal with potential failure.  How the hell can I rely on my strength when I damn myself by acting like a coward?

Frankly, I’m at a point in life that I should have reached ten years ago.  I’m finally starting to build a life for myself, finally able to leave the nest and really get out into the world.  But instead of moving on, I continue making bullshit excuses for myself so that I can stay in my safety zone.  How can I consider myself a man when I still act like a child?  Everything that I have to deal with, good or bad, is a direct result of my own choices.  Yes, the world is a scary place, and yes, the potential for failure is also great, as are the consequences of it; these are things that I above all others know very well.  But there is also great wonder in this world and great potential for success, if I only get off my ass and chase it.

What this really comes down to is that it’s time I stopped observing life and starting living it.  There’s a quote from the Disney movie “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” that sums this up well; Laverne the Gargoyle tells Quasimodo “Life’s not a spectator sport.  If watchin’ is all you’re gonna do, then you’re gonna watch your life go by without ya”.  I have missed out on so much in my life because I preferred to watch rather than participate.  I think that’s also part of why I’ve had so little luck finding love; I stood back to avoid being hurt because I feared that rejection was inevitable due to my lack of a backbone.  Combine that with the fact that I’ve always thought myself to be unattractive and unappealing and you have a recipe for dating disaster.  So how in the hell could I ever expect to find love without actually participating?  It’s not just going to come knocking at my front door. 

Now, while being a pure observationist (I’m not sure that’s even a word, but oh well) can very easily prevent you from experiencing anything, it does have one merit.  I’ve learned a remarkable amount through observing others, and in doing so I have begun to understand certain things a bit better.  But that only nets you half of the knowledge and experience that every person needs.  Observation is no more or less important that participation, and we all need a little of both; without a combination of both, life is bland and unfulfilling.  I mean, all I do is observe without participating and, while I can say I am content with my overall life at the current moment, I am by no means happy.  I feel alone and disconnected from everyone because I removed myself from my own life.   Yes, I’ve never had to deal with the pain of rejection, but isn’t it just as bad to miss out on everything?  Watching from the sidelines causes great jealousy, which can easily lead to just as much pain, if not even more, than flat out rejection.

I’m nearly 28 years old, and it’s time to grow up.  Enough is enough.  No more circuitous logic.  No more cyclic behavior.  No more excuses.  I have a great deal I want to do with my life, and I’m sure as hell not getting any younger.  The only thing standing in my way at this point is me.  My friends and family have always seen great potential in me, even when I couldn’t see it in myself, and it’s high time I started living up to that potential.

I’ve never been one to make New Year’s resolutions, mostly because it’s not like anyone keeps them anyway, but I want to make a resolution this year.  No, I won’t make a New Year’s resolution; I will make a promise.  Although 13 is traditionally viewed as an unlucky number, I know that 2013 is my year.  This is the year I will finally become the man I should have become years ago.  This is the year I will finally stop watching and start living.  This is the year I will start chasing my dreams instead of just dreaming them.  Most of all, this is the year I become a better person, one who treats his friends and family with the respect and gratitude they deserve instead of taking them for granted.

It might not mean a lot, but you have my word on this.  This is my year, and by God, I’m gonna seize it by the horns.

Pay or Passion?

I haven’t written anything in a while, largely due to a lack of topics. I have a list of potential topics I keep on my desk, but haven’t decided yet how to approach the few I haven’t used. This particular topic was not one of those; it was generated by the death a couple of weeks ago of a former teacher and friend. This means it is considerably more personal than I generally go on here, but then, isn’t this blog supposed to be about self-discovery?

As noted, a couple of weeks ago, my entire community was shocked to learn of the death of our beloved high school choral director. He taught at my school for 57 years and influenced not just the hundreds of thousands of students that passed through his classroom but also many, many more beyond that. I won’t go into too much detail here as it has been thoroughly covered in the news and on Facebook; what I want to note here is his passion for what he did. He was one of the few people in this world that truly loved his job. I remember being greatly inspired by this passion when I was under his tutelage.

I remember, all those years ago, making up my mind that I needed to find a career that I was passionate about, something I loved doing. Every day I saw people going to work their 9 to 5 job and hating every minute of it. At the time, I was completely flummoxed as to why people would do that. The only answer I could give myself was that too many people are concerned only with making money so that their bills could be paid and their family could have food. That is most certainly the case now, with jobs being few and far between and wages going down. At times, we all must put pleasure aside in order to provide. But we can’t lose focus on the long term while we are trying to get by in the short term.

Sitting in that chorus room, I learned to follow my dreams and passions. I admit that to most, this sounds like idealistic nonsense, but that is because most people forget about their dreams in order to provide. So much importance is put on money that we forget about ourselves. Money has never held much importance for me; as long as I can pay my bills, have bread on the table and have enough extra for a treat now and again, I’m fine. Unfortunately, over the years, I have fallen victim to the same trap of using material possessions to fill a void in my life that so many others do.

The inspiration I felt in that room, that I gained from him, made me dream of following in his footsteps and becoming a music teacher myself. I planned to enroll in a music education program as soon as I left high school. But life doesn’t always work out as planned. It’s been nearly ten years since I graduated high school, ten years since I went out into the world. I had to amend my dreams a bit due to them not being entirely feasible, but after eight years and one miserable college career, I took a leap of faith and went back to school to begin following a dream that predated my musical ambitions; I decided to become a writer.

Now, the path of a writer is not exactly paved with gold, so I made the decision to pursue an additional degree in Electronic Media; the reasoning behind this is twofold. First, I clearly need a source of income so that I can eat and pay the bills. Secondly, and in some ways more importantly, I see media production as something to supplement my writing; being able to produce my own works will give me a great advantage.

I put a lot of thought into this arrangement, and I think it can work, but I’m concerned about balancing the two. There are a multitude of paths my career could take, and all them will require devoting quite a bit of time to my work. But my writing requires a great deal of time as well. I enjoy creating things in many different mediums, but my ideas take a lot of time to ferment and develop. Anyone who’s ever worked a full shift at any job knows how difficult it can be to motivate one’s self to work on a project after you’ve just worked all day, and I already have difficulty motivating myself to work on my creative ambitions. So the question becomes how do I balance my life between passion and pay?

This question of balancing passion and pay is something that almost everyone must encounter eventually. I’m only just hitting it now; in the years preceding my current stint in college, I mostly just worked dead-end 9 to 5 jobs, hating almost every minute of them. I certainly never planned the path my life has taken; as I’ve already noted, I planned a very different path but, as the old saying goes, life is what happens while you’re making plans. But I’ve chosen a new path, going back to school to end that cycle of crap jobs, a cycle that I swore I’d never start.

There is a third factor in this balancing act, and that is having a personal life. Yes, my professional and creative goals are important, but I have things I want to accomplish in my personal life as well, most notably to have a family. Over the past decade, I’ve not had much of a personal life due to working full time and dealing with very difficult personal issues. But now many of my problems are behind me and I feel that it is time to start having the life I’ve never had, that I couldn’t have before.

So now I just need to figure out how to balance professional, creative and personal. I suppose that only with time will I learn the best way to accomplish this. I am, needless to say, concerned about my own ability to do this, but I don’t think it’s impossible. I’ve seen many people, including my high school choral director, accomplish exactly that. I know that it can be done. But between my distinct lack of experience with these things and the fact that I’ve always had a rather nasty inferiority complex, I find myself questioning my abilities and even whether I’ve chosen the right path.

Frankly, these are things that I should have gone through years ago. I won’t sit here and try to rationalize my way out of it, but for one reason or another, that’s not the path my life took. But I can’t keep hiding out in this house, my childhood home, waiting for my life to get going. I need to be brave like the man who taught me to sing so many years ago. He didn’t shy away from life; he’d always face it head on. I’ve been through a lot of hell in my 27 years in this world and, until now, I too have done my best to face it head on; problems can’t be ignored forever and mine were too big to ignore anyway. Now the only things holding me back are my own fears and sense of inadequacy.

There’s more to this than a balancing act, however. I’m still concerned that I’m not devoting enough of my life to pursuing my dreams. My schoolwork already takes up so much time that I have to resort to picking at my novel and other projects between classes or late at night. Yes, I get some work done, but there’s already so much clutter on my mind at those times that I have a difficult time getting my mind to focus. Am I doing the right thing, letting my dreams take a back seat for a bit so I can get my career going? And what about my personal goals? I’ve seen many people destroy their personal lives because they focused solely on their career. I like to think that going into media production will only help my dreams, enabling me to self-produce at least some of my work, but I suppose that only time will tell what effect it will have on my personal life; heck, for all I know, I’ll meet the girl of my dreams by focusing more on my career for a while.

The more I think (and write) about this, the more apparent it becomes that the best course of action right now is to stay the course. That isn’t to say that I should just sit here twiddling my thumbs, however. I’ve been sitting around waiting for the past ten years, and I’m done with that. My instincts are well developed, and if I listen carefully, I’ll know when to stay put and when to leap.


Of the many things I learned from my high school choral director, there is one springing to mind right now that applies to the current situation and to life in general. When we would sight-read a piece of music, whether preparing for a contest or learning a piece for an upcoming concert, he would always say “Don’t stop, be aggressive, look ahead.” That is one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever been given. Never stop yourself, take control of your life, and always keep an eye out for things on the horizon. He always seemed to live by that mantra, and it served him well. I think it’s high time I took that mantra on as well.

I’ve come a long way since I studied under that man. I was a small, smart-mouthed, shy boy with one of the biggest inferiority complexes you’ve ever seen. But my teacher saw potential in me; he had a gift for seeing potential in people even when they couldn’t see it in themselves. Without him, I wouldn’t be the man I am today. But there’s still a long path ahead of me, and where it goes, I don’t know. Even now, I have a lot of worries and concerns (not to mention the fact that my brain tends to be rather pessimistic) but I can’t keep second-guessing myself every step of the way; that behavior has kept me paralyzed for the last ten years. It’s time I stopped worrying about a what-if that might never happen and started living.

My dreams and goals are somewhere on the road ahead; all I have to do is keep moving and I will attain every single one of them. I just have to stop beating myself up over every little thing and have faith in myself for once; feeling sorry for myself will just make the wait longer and harder.

Premature Permanent Guilt

Note:  In this post, I will discuss several recent high profile criminal cases and will express some of my viewpoints about them.  Feel free to disagree and to leave comments, but crying out loud, don’t go nuts and firebomb my blog.  I’m all for a good debate, but keep it civil, folks.

Not a day goes by without a news report about someone accused of breaking the law in some manner.  Sometimes it’s a well-known politician or celebrity and sometimes it’s just an average citizen.  Some of these cases disappear quickly while others become national news, polarizing the nation.  Regardless of the case, as soon as we hear about the case, we almost always immediately decide right then whether or not they are guilty.

. It is precisely this trait of deciding a person’s guilt or innocence before actually being tried for their alleged crime that I want to talk about.  We assign our verdict with such fervor that the person in question is forever a marked man.  They will never again be able to lead a normal life.  But it is the verdict of the court that should matter, not that of society.  All you need to do is look at the Witch Hunts of Europe and Salem to see what that accomplishes: innocent people being imprisoned or executed.  Our justice system was set up in a way that was meant to prevent exactly that.  It is far from perfect, but it is at least better than the systems used in the past in that we have strict laws and regulations to dictate how we try a person.

Our courts use evidence and reliable witness testimony in order to aid twelve peers in deciding the guilt or innocence of a defendant.  But what happens when we don’t agree with their verdict, especially in an instance where the defendant was acquitted?  Look at the Casey Anthony trial from last year; she was charged with and later acquitted of murdering her three-year-old daughter Caylee.  From day one, most of the nation was completely convinced of her guilt, despite the distinct lack of any evidence to tie her to the murder.  Everyone believed that she’d be found guilty and was completely shocked when she was acquitted; I personally took the opposite view, realizing that the only evidence against her was purely circumstantial and that no decent judge or jury would convict based on that.

The outcome of the trial was something I hadn’t seen since the O.J. Simpson trial back in 1995.  People became furious.  Some threatened to kill her.  Social media outlets exploded with rage at her acquittal.  Even the jurors had to fear for their lives; thankfully, the judge refused to release their names.  But why were people so polarized in the first place?  Murders unfortunately happen every day, but very few of them become national news.  So how did this go from a tiny spark to a raging inferno?

I can answer that in three words: the news media.  The news media jumped on this story as a way to garner ratings.  Like any other television program, news programs need ratings in order to keep airtime and funding from the network.  Due to a phenomenon known as Missing White Woman Syndrome (I won’t go into it here, but Wikipedia has a great article on this completely racist and sexist phenomenon), stories like this are like a pile of gold for news media.  But it goes deeper than that.  In order to keep people watching, they will twist and manipulate the way the story is reported.  Yes, they (usually) report the facts, but by reporting only certain facts and leaving out proper context, they can make a person look guilty as sin or angelically innocent.  With the Casey Anthony trial, they reported in a manner that made her look guilty before she ever set foot in court.  People wanted to see someone be guilty of this crime, even if it couldn’t be proven, and the media fed them out of the palms of their hands.

Perhaps a better example of this is the ongoing George Zimmerman case (strangely, this case and the Anthony case both occurred in Florida).  Zimmerman, a member of his neighborhood watch association, is accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, a teenage boy who was walking through the neighborhood at night.  The facts in this case are ambiguous at best, yet the media chose to portray Zimmerman as a racist bigot who was guilty of murdering an innocent boy; several news outlets were caught intentionally using old photos of Zimmerman that made him look like a thug and photos of Martin that made him look like a sweet young kid.  Just as with Casey Anthony, everyone is already certain that he is guilty even though he’s only just recently been charged.

The problem with this behavior is that it works in a manner that is completely contradictory our legal system.  Our legal system contains measures to prevent a person being declared guilty before they have a chance to defend themselves.  But the way we are manipulated by the news media forces us to assign guilt prematurely and permanently; we believe that a person can never change, meaning that their life is destroyed forever, regardless of how they defend themselves.  Casey Anthony was rightfully acquitted, but judging by the responses I’ve seen and read (I remember seeing CNN’s Nancy Grace so furious she was practically spitting) she’ll be lucky to find a job.  Zimmerman will almost certainly face the same problems if he is acquitted (and I hope he is, because even though I believe he is guilty, there’s no evidence to support it).

But these problems extend far beyond the manipulation of facts regularly practiced by the media.  Many of these issues come from the very laws that were broken, especially in instances where the person actually was guilty.  It comes down to laws that do exactly what the media does with high profile cases: assigning a label that sticks like super glue, and labels are like sugary snacks to our society.  For reasons I will not profess to fully understand, we prefer to look at only the surface of a person instead of what’s inside, and this is nothing new.  In fact, this has been going on for thousands of years.  Kings, Emperors and even powerful religious figures would label people enemies just for disagreeing and have them killed with no chance to defend themselves.

The behavior I’m talking about, while having the same psychological basis, has to do with average people, not those in power.  Perhaps the best example I can give is actually from a work of fiction, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”.  In this story, the main character, Hester Pryne, is clearly guilty of adultery and is thusly forced to wear a scarlet letter ‘A’ upon her chest at all times.  Throughout the story, Hester is ridiculed and scorned by everyone simply because she committed adultery.  I do not condone such behavior, but I will not condemn a person for them either.  The problem is that in such situations, people believe that person is forever the person who committed a misdeed; to quote Javert from “Les Miserables”, “Once a thief, forever a thief”.

While “The Scarlet Letter” and “Les Miserables” are both works of fiction, we can see such behavior in action every day.  High profile cases like those named above are prime examples.  We also see it in modern laws like those in “The Scarlet Letter”, laws that are overpowered and assign an unfair and permanent label, like current sex offender legislation.  I’m not going to start railing against sex offender laws here, but I want to point out that they tend to inflame situations just as badly as the media does.

The sex offender label is one that forces people to automatically assume the absolute worst about a person.  While there are those that do deserve such a label, the law is so broad and overpowered that the vast majority of people given that label did not deserve such punishment.  More to the point, regardless of whether or not they deserved it, the label makes is completely impossible for them to reintegrate themselves into society; there’s not even any evidence that the label actually protects anyone.  They, like those persons crucified by the media, are outcasts.  They can’t find jobs, or even places to live.  How can we justify treating people this way?  How can we call ourselves civil while refusing to give people a chance to change?

Behaving in this manner is not only illogical; it’s also ironic and hypocritical.  We look at people that we perceive to be guilty and believe that they will always be that person, regardless of what they may have done.  But in doing do, we prove our own unwillingness to change.  We’ve acted that way for centuries upon centuries, letting our perceptions guide us instead of searching for the truth of the matter.  Such behavior may seem benign, but it has sparked violence and bloodshed countless times.  Refusing to change is contrary to human nature; we require change in order to thrive (especially if you believe in chaos theory).  Yet, in these situations, we actively fight against it.

Look back at your own life.  We all change constantly.  I’m not the stupid, naïve and immature boy I once was.  I have grown and matured a great deal, though I freely admit I still have a long way to go.  My point is that we need only look at our own past to know that we do change; believing that because a person committed an action once they are certain to repeat it rarely holds any merit.  Yes, there are people with incurable tendencies toward despotic and illegal acts, but they represent only a small percentage of the human race.  For the rest of us, as long as we learn from our mistakes, there is no reason to assume that we will repeat them (barring things like addictions, as that is an entirely different subject).

Learning from mistakes is, I believe, the key point here.  I have always found that life’s most important and valuable lessons tend to come from examining the mistakes we’ve made.  Legal situations such as those described above are always a direct result of mistakes; in fact, in such situations, both sides tend to make numerous, and often grievous, mistakes.  If we learn from those mistakes, we can prevent them from occurring again.  We can help to deter crime.  We can stop automatically assuming someone’s guilt; after all, it’s innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.

Life is hardly, if ever, fair, but prematurely judging a person is about the most unfair thing we can do.  Unfortunately, it seems to be somewhat of an instinct in us, likely a product of some ancient self-defense mechanism.  But we no longer face the dangers that created that instinct.  It’s no longer needed.  By prematurely judging people, we are actually creating new dangers; as I’ve noted above, it breeds resentment at best and violence at worst.  I’m certain that virtually everyone has been a victim of such judgment at least once in his or her life.  Maybe you were bullied as a kid.  Perhaps you were involved in some embarrassing incident.  Put yourself in those shoes once more, but increase the negativity people feel towards you by a few hundred percent and you can then see why we cannot keep going this way.  By continuing to single people out, we make it impossible to become truly unified, something we’ve consciously fought against since the dawn of humanity.

Instead of continuing to jump to conclusions based on knee-jerk reactions, I suggest we all start thinking a little bit more each time one of these situations rises.  Let’s do a little bit of research instead of relying solely on hearsay or the media.  Living in the digital age makes this more important than ever, as anyone can write a blog or even an entire website devoted to their point of view (yes, I recognize the fact that I could easily be considered a hypocrite by even saying this).  But so many blogs and websites are devoted entirely to flaming someone or something.  I’m not saying that the media or the internet are out to disillusion us or make us believe lies, I’m just saying that we need to use an iota of common sense before making up our minds.

We all possess great intelligence, so let’s use it.


I’d like to end this post with a note about my views on our legal system.  As you can no doubt tell, I am very opinionated about certain legal issues, but I don’t tend to feel this blog is the right forum for those opinions.  That being said, I am planning to start a new blog wherein I will voice my views on new cases and laws as I see fit.  This blog will still be updated, but I will likely not be quite as political as I have been.  Stay tuned for updates.

Fulfillment

The other day, I was sitting at my computer waiting for a program to finish patching, feeling kind of sour. For a few months now, I’ve been feeling kind of down off and on as I examine my life and where I am. Now, I am not saying I have a bad life; on the contrary, things are the best they’ve been since high school. It’s just that I am in no way where I intended to be at this point in my life. But hey, who ever is?

As I watched the progress bar on the patch tick upwards little by little, I heard my dog, Baxter, who was lying on the floor behind me, twitching in his sleep as he often does. I swiveled my chair around and looked down at him, thinking that sometimes it might be easier to be a dog. I started trying to visualize the world from Baxter’s point of view. He has no responsibilities or expectations to live up to. At 12 years old, all he has to worry about doing is eating, sleeping and relieving himself. But would that really be a better alternative? For that matter, is he actually happy with his life? Do dogs even worry about such things, like we do?

We humans seek fulfillment in our lives and we also tend to want acknowledgement of it from others. Like many others, I don’t tend to feel fulfilled. As I said, my life is the best it has been in over a decade, but I still feel like I’m missing things from my life, or, more aptly, missing life itself. I’ve never been a particularly social creature, and I’ve yet to date anyone or even go on a real date for that matter. As I previously noted, I certainly have taken a far different path from the one I had planned; by this time, I had intended to be a music teacher with a wife and maybe a couple of kids. Obviously, it’s almost unheard of for someone to follow the path they set their sophomore year of high school as things change and unpredictable things always crop up; it comes down to the fact that we go down a path for a reason, whether or not we chose it.

While I watched Baxter sleeping and dreaming (no doubt about chasing a rabbit or something) I pondered all of this in my mind as I realized that dogs, unlike humans, don’t have to worry about what path to choose; their path, at least those who have a home, is chosen for them. They don’t have to worry about the future. But that’s not really living. That’s just subsiding. That’s what I feel my life is anymore, just subsiding. Much of this is my own fault, being that like most Americans, I lead a far too sedentary lifestyle. I have almost obscene amounts of ambition but I never motivate myself to do anything, partially because I tend to be too busy feeling sorry for myself; however, in my defense, I’ve been through a lot in the last decade or so and it has taken a long time to rebuild myself and there’s still a long way to go. Some of this also comes from the fact that, as an Aquarian, I am a very introverted person who has a natural lack of confidence.

Now, I’m not just trying to rationalize why my life isn’t what I want it to be; frankly, I gladly admit that about 99% of the blame lies on me. My life took an entirely different course from what I had planned as a direct result of my actions, and I’d be willing to bet money that the same is true for everyone. My problem is that I don’t really know how to live. Most people learn this in their early to mid twenties while they are in college or working. When I got out of high school, I was immediately overwhelmed with responsibilities; simply put, I didn’t have the ability to live. There was so much else to do that all I could focus on was merely subsiding. Most of those responsibilities have long since been lifted, but I still don’t know how to do anything else but subside. To make matters worse, I’m stuck in a comfort zone I’m afraid to leave. But while this all sucks, I also know that this is the path I was meant to take.

As the program patch neared completion, I continued thinking about Baxter’s life and his viewpoint. A few paragraphs up, I posed a question about whether or not he is happy. Being that he cannot speak, there is no way to definitively answer this; however, if I had to wager a guess, I would say that he is not happy. I think that, like most humans, he is simply content. He would love to go for more walks and have more playtime (unfortunately, the latter is largely prevented by injuries to his left hind leg and pelvis from getting hit by a car a few years ago) but he generally just hangs around the house due to my busy school schedule. 

I realized then and there that that may be the biggest problem with my life, that I am just content. This is a problem that I think most people in this day and age have to some degree; we are so caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday life that we just subside. We have so many devices to make life easier for us that we don’t really live and, admittedly, as a geek, I use many of them. However, we are now becoming too complacent, too willing to just let things happen. Life just passes by. That’s exactly what seems to be happening in my own life right now. In the past few years, I’ve lived more than I have in my entire life, but I still feel like I’m being far too complacent. Life is still passing me by, and I have missed and am missing so much.

It is at this juncture that I have been stuck for a very long time. I am well aware of my capabilities and know that if I really want things to change, I can do it. However, while not a believer in fate per se, I do firmly believe that everything happens for a reason (although in most instances, we are not meant to understand the reasoning behind things and I have learned through experience that trying to force an understanding will only end badly) and so I do my best to accept that the guy upstairs knows what he’s doing. In a nutshell, my spiritual beliefs and my intuition keep clashing on these big decisions, rendering me unable to move. The problem is that they are both right.

Regardless of my internal tug of war, I have already proved, at least to myself, what I am capable of. I have had to make life-altering decisions within minutes. I have had all power over my life stripped from me and have come out a stronger and better man for it. I’ve seen how dark and cruel this world can be, but I’ve also seen how bright and wonderful it can be; no doubt my preference of being an observer instead of a participator (again, a facet of my Aquarian nature) is also leading me to miss a great many things.

The program finally finished patching and Baxter woke up at about the same time, looking around groggily. In hindsight, this is an interesting bit of symbolism, as our eyes can see without our brain processing. Sometimes the guy upstairs or fate or whatever you want to call it forces us to open our eyes with a kick in our complacency, usually in the form of something quite painful. But our eyes open so fast that our brain needs time to catch up, meaning we’re bound to act like a complete idiot while our brain is trying to catch up with what we’ve seen. However, just to make it even worse, we have a subconscious awareness of exactly what we’ve seen and what it means. We just choose to ignore it, a costly mistake I’ve made way too many times. 

It’s an incredibly difficult path at times, with forks in the road here and there that require impossible decisions that damn you either way. I’ve always felt that the best thing to do is to just take life a day at a time. I may feel lonely and I may feel empty, but I also have few regrets in spite of everything I’ve done and everything I’ve been through because you can’t change the past. You also can’t predict the future because it’s not set in stone (though I’ve sure as hell tried), but you also can’t just resign yourself to fate because our destinies, our lives, they aren’t preordained either. We make such choices every day, but we don’t often realize it. I made a choice that day: when my program was ready, I chose the latter so that I could have a well earned day of rest playing “The Sims 3” because, ironically, I can run someone else’s life better than my own.