The heart of the matter

Are we honest with ourselves?  I mean, there are some little white lies we tell all the time, but are we honest with ourselves about the things that really matter?  It's hard to do, right?  It's kind of scary to face the big ugly truths. If we face it, then we might have to do something about it.  It's easier to ignore the harsher realities and honesties and live for the moment. 

Remember that scene in The Matrix when Morpheus tells Neo to choose between the pills?  One pill will lead him back to his quiet and boring programmer's life, ignorant of the larger truth, and another pill will deliver him into the cold reality outside of the matrix.  For a long time, I took the safe pill.  I liked my little safety bubble; I could sit and watch episodes of Mary Tyler Moore and eat peanut butter cups.  But earlier this year, when the proverbial fit hit the shan in my life, I had to reexamine how the practice of self-medication was serving me.  It is okay to self-soothe when hard things happen, and we need to figure out what we need when we need it, but beyond that, we need to not be afraid of the big awful truth.

For one thing, the big awful truth won't have any power over us once we confront it.  For another, we won't have to carry it around everywhere once we face it.  Growth and change comes from facing the big awful, and we are all strong enough to face it down.  I find myself waking up each morning and confronting my little lies.  I want to make sure I'm not carrying around some giant elephant on my back and putting on a facade of "I'm fine".  That stuff festers and smells and starts to become truth even though it is a fiction I totally created in my head.  So I have these mini-interventions with myself.  What is true, what is false?

I was an early cheerleader for truth... and Niwot, but also truth...

And the outcome is always good.  Freedom comes with honesty.  I've felt so alive this year and it is because I'm leaning into the hard and scary and demystifying it.  Does it suck, absofreakinglutely it does.  But it replenishes and fortifies in it's wake.  Peanut butter cups do not replenish and fortify, maybe in a perfect world.  But in the meantime, I'm trying to be real and truthful about who I am and what I want. 

Summer days drifted away...

Yes, school is starting up in a few weeks and I am clinging onto the last days of summer (barbecues, afternoon naps, iced tea with friends) with both hands.  I revisited my summer to-do list and I think I did okay.  I read a lot, saw a ton of movies, I soothed babies and chatted with friends I haven't seen in a long time.  No regrets.  Summer days, like weekends, are there to recharge my soul. 

Okay, so I didn't learn French, I didn't watch the Story of English, and I spent an obscene amount of time sitting on a porch playing Drop 7 on my iPod while listening to The Boxer Rebellion, Regina Spektor and Sigur Ros.  I got a new high score.  Bonus.

But I DISCOVERED a lot this summer.  Discoveries are awesome, especially when you aren't looking for them.  I've said before in my blog that I often succumb to the "go, do, become" pressure of life.  If you haven't DONE this or GONE here or BECOME this, then what contribution have you made?  I don't know where this comes from, but that is a crappy voice to have on a vacation.  My summer motto was "sit, think, be; let the summer come to you".  And it did.

And the recharging came from this.  I like my summer to-do list.  It was a good guideline and made sense to have some goals, but I'm okay if I didn't learn French.  Tres bien!  Croissant! Bonjour! There.  It was more important to be present with others and watch the world go by. 

 

My friend and bandmate Jenn had this great epiphany about sunsets.  She's way smarter than I am (she has, like, five degrees) and she had this huge, metaphorical, connective dialogue with me about what she had learned from the metaphor of sunsets.  It got me thinking, sunsets have always been a little sad for me.  The day is done and there is a farewell that seems a little heart-tugging.  Out at the beach, I had to pause the scrabble or card game I was playing and go take a photo of the sunset.  In truth, sunsets are common as the rain, but different every night.  I saw the sunset as a transformational time when the page turns and the next chapter reveals itself.  No matter who you are, what you do, or how you live, you transform.  You can't help yourself.  I have seen the rate of change speed the hell up in my life lately.  The transformations that used to seem slower have increased their rate of change and my head spins a little bit in the process. And just like a sunset, it happens daily but is different every time.  

It was a very good summer.  I am happy, rested and ready for the challenges of the next school year.  The changes I've gone through are in a sense providential I think, as though something is coming and this version of myself needed to be ready for it.  I hope your summer was equally as wonderful.