To you, wherever you are

Upon reading a passage that moved me quite deeply, I thought of the idea of being moved. A catalytic moment, an instigation, a provocation, or a spark. Whatever it may have been or could be, I knew others had these moments. Other people had these moments, right? Surely I'm not the only one. I've read about them as others experienced them and wrote them down to report to people like myself who would one day read about it. Maybe I'd have a revelation about someone else's revelation.

But then, everyone is different. Certainly each person wouldn't react the exact same way I do. Perhaps my synapses are unique and my brain triggers at the thought of a word or the time of day bringing forth past memories and sensory feelings both good and bad. Maybe I sit in my car hearing the thundering voice of So-and-So and am moved to tears because I have the unique life I have that no other person could duplicate.

Why do we create? I feel an urge to explain why. Why do we...? The opportunity to logically think through my life and its complications and explain them away with cause and effects and perfect delineations feels empowering. I want to tackle life. When I have questions like: Why me? I wonder: If not me then who else? I feel uneasy and unsteady. I feel blank and insecure. No one can understand insecure in the way I mean it without thinking about self esteem. Even on my worst days I don't lack self esteem, but more on this later. When I say I feel insecure I mean to say that I feel wobbly and unsure. I have plans and ideas and dreams galore but those are fragile things that are like bubbles. Structurally sound without interruption. The glossy outer casing is the simple representation of the small and basic detailing or sketches of my dreams or aspirations in life. They are just outlines. They fade. They fly. They dance. They create more ideas in the process. They also falter easily with the hint of a breeze, a change in the wind. A ripple effect. I feel a ripple tearing through my life right now. It is slowing but surely disturbing all the bubbles that were gracefully gliding along just in my recent past. Some have gone altogether. I ask why because when they happen it is like my future cannot happen. I haven't imagined it, therefore it is incomplete. There is no repairing the delicate casing of a bubble. There is no turning back. I dig my heals in deeper and with more resistance as I'm being forced by time and life into the future, a future I fear because I cannot know it, plan it, or change it. It will tear through all my other corners of life with the same shallow ripple effect. I'm the same person below those waters, but it hurts nonetheless to imagine my surface sanded away by a buffeting storm that undoubtedly will return again over and over during my life.

I said I do not lack for confidence or self esteem. I am not egotistical. I am not arrogant. I am not needy (for the most part). I am not vain. I am not shallow. Now, I am guilty of all of these things to a more or less degree that every other human is. I don't equate self esteem with these traits as so many people do. How do I know this? Because I am confident I am often criticized as the guilty party to one or more of the above offenses. Honestly, if anyone really knows me for me they know I am far from perfect but I can be a humble person. Confidence for me is an idea not too far from the idea of purpose. A purpose to life, a purpose to live, or a purpose to be.

Why am I? Seems like such a silly question. Seems so small and inane and inanswerable. I am because. Just because. That is obvious. But why am I? I can lie and say a bunch of generic inspirational or spiritual drivel that amount to a lack of actual thought and meditation on the issue. I've done the before for certain. However, why am I? is not so far from why me? Why does this have to happen to me? I cannot answer the second question easily. I can answer to first with an icy clarity. I have mission statement of sorts. It is not in an articulate thought that I could spout off at this moment. I can say it is like a feeling that you get at the end of a great movie when your skin prickles and your eyes itch to cry. When you release a tension and the defenses drop just long enough to cry. I purging sense of catharsis. That's it.

A feeling of purpose is one both cultured and cultivated. It is nourished, it grows, and it is at once harvested by influences in my life. I know who I am. I know many people who cannot say so with ease. I know my every fault. I know the things about myself that both irritate myself and others and create disparate tensions and animosity. I see without filters the things that make me unlikable to some and unbearable to others. What do I do with this information? Three things. I forgive myself. I attempt to be a better person, and I do it for my own betterment. Finally, everything I do is for me, never for someone else. I am not seeking your approval. I am seeking my own. Validation, though momentarily gratifying, just creates a void that continually needs to be refilled. I don't have a hunger for validation, though I admit I crave it at times. I am only human and I forgive myself.

I have learned this last year to forgive myself. What I have yet to discover is Why me? Why do things happen to me? I found a piece of wisdom in a book I have been reading. A revelation, a cathartic feeling. "The word 'compensation.' It doesn't suggest that the losses and hardships of life can be undone. Nor does it suggest that these losses and hardships are somehow 'worth it' in the end. But it does suggest that if we know where to look we will be given something in return for them, and that we may even come to prize that compensation, the thing that our suffering brought us, more than life's enjoyments."

Why does God do ________ to me? What could I possibly learn from this? How could this pain make me a better person? The bitterness I feel is not going away. So then what? What good can come from such a loss? Nothing. The answer is always a bitter 'nothing.' But I have loss to notch on my belt and tuck away in my treasure box of losses to come. That's the scariest part. There will be more. Much more. Harder things than I can ever imagine. I dig my heels in. Time is ticking. The ripple is spreading. It reaches further into my life than I can see right now.