An Essay A Day For A Year
By Roe
Day 25, January 25, 2012
***
A really, really long time ago I didn’t know who I was. I sailed through life on a course chartered by everyone but me. I sailed many courses with full investment in the outcome without even knowing that I was sailing blind. The funny thing about being lost from yourself is that you don’t know that you are lost from yourself, otherwise you wouldn’t be lost from yourself. I was so sure that I was a person on an escalator going up, and it took over a decade of self proclaimed escalators before I realized that I was a really a hamster, kept pet by my parents and society, and I was just going round and round on a treadmill. When I discovered that I was a pet rodent of the world, I set about to discover how that happened, and who I am.
The first thing I did is go to the hamster-help section at the book stores, and in a few short years I had many hundreds of books of advice to thoroughly confuse me. I read about philosophy and now I’m a philo. I read about psychology and now I’m a psycho. I read about spirituality and now I’m a spirit. I read so much and now I got a headache. The next thing I tried is some traveling. I spent 5 years more or less on the flat hamster wheel of the world looking for all the philos and psychos and spirits of the world like me out there with headaches, hoping to find something, but I wasn’t sure what. One day I was being interviewed for a Televisa television program in Mexico about my trip around the world, and the young, handsome interviewer asked me, “So tell us Roe, what are you looking for going around the world?” I stood there shaking in my adventure sandals looking at the camera, and finally said, “I just like experiencing new cultures and people.”
“Cut!” Yelled the TV guy. “What? Did you read that in some National Geographic magazine or what? Come on man, blond hair and blue eyes, with a motorcycle to make Indiana Jones envious, man you’re out looking for the love of your life right? You’re looking for a little Mexicana to keep you warm in your tent at night, right?” And then, “OK, one more time, sound, camera, roll ‘em!?”
“So Roe, tell all Latin America what you just told me about what you are doing traveling to South America on this amazing motorcycle of yours?”
“I’m looking for the love of my life, and maybe I’ll find her right here in Mexico! And if I do I’ll build her a sidecar and take her with me around the world!” That is what I said. (How funny that exactly that happened!)
“Cut, and print!” He said. “Now that’s the spirit. And you better get a bigger tent Gringo because your life is about to change! No more National Geographic for you!” I noticed that even the girls in the camera crew were smiling at me and wanting to talk to me. Televisa aired that interview for years, and I would ride into small villages in countries thousands of miles from Mexico, and the girls would yell, “Mira! Es el guapo de Televisa!” “Look, it’s the cute guy from Televisa!” Well that TV guy was right, because my life changed. You would think that being hoped for by so many muchachas that this hamster would just be in rodent heaven. In fact, I became even more lost and confused. What a pathetic place to find oneself in life. I had the miserable luck to be free and independent, I had all the money my gas tank and belly needed, and I was immersed in muchacha heaven. Even a moron can do simple math to find some kind of happiness. I was so lonely and miserable.
I began to notice that each time my life changed, each time one foggy domino was shifted, I had a whole new life and a whole new me. And each time I had a whole new life and a whole new me, I felt like shit. I spent so long shifting dominos in the fog of me, so many new me’s, that I could be crowned President Feel Like Shit. I have visited a whole lot of places in my lifelong search for self. I have lived for months at a time in Me Anxiety, Me Angst, and Me Miserable. I have lived for years at a time in Me Lonely, Me Scared, Me Worried, and Me Depressed. I know a lot about Me Doubtful, Me Guilty, Me Ashamed, Me Angry, And me Sad.
I studied people all over the world, and I found the same Me’s out there. I found so many “Me not know who I am’s” in the world, all trying so hard not to feel like shit, that I began to think that being a lost, unhappy soul was just the way life can only be. I then turned to the fellow searchers of self of the world to confirm whether chasing “not feeling bad”, or selling out to a doctrine, or pretending that feeling bad is only an illusion, was the only road. When I looked into their eyes I saw a picture of them as a whole, just like me going round and round on the wheel of life. I looked at or took close up pictures of these people, specifically to catch their eyes, their windows into their soul. When I developed and enlarged the pictures I then placed one paper over their forehead and up, and another over their nose and down. I was looking just for eyes. Without exception, what I found, from the Pope to theologians on down, was Anxiety, Angst, and Misery. What I found in the eyes of Ghandi, Reverend King, and Lennon, was Loneliness, Fear, and Worry. What I found in the eyes of Mother Theresa and Gurus and Sages, Ph.D’s and world leaders of any discipline across the world, is Fear, Worry, Anger and Sadness. I realized that I in fact was normal, and could expect no more self or happiness when I became a world renowned leader in my own discipline. Boy if that wasn’t a time to run to the “it’s all illusion and let it go like the clouds on the horizon” camp.
It wasn’t until I had the terribly painful fortune to shift a domino around death that I had a breakthrough. The tears of the dying killed me. The tears of those that just died from the loss of a loved one killed me. The tears of terminally ill children killed me, and the tears welling up in the eyes of rageful men killed me. In my death of feeling more pain tears than words could represent, I thought of course of running away. I had options of suicide and murder and depression, maybe drug addiction and alcoholism. Workaholism and evangelism and sexual deviance were all possibilities, and crime and apathy called hard. I thought of all the addictions and compulsions that I had and everyone else had around me to run from my pain and tears when I shifted dominos around death, and I saw how it helped me and everyone else to cope. But then I returned to the photos of the eyes of all us suffering people out there, and I realized that defending myself by avoiding pain and tears was just a smoke screen, and another hamster wheel, for the pain never goes away.
So back to those grieving death I went. I walked into the fire of my fear and pain and tears, and I entered into the grieving of those dying, and those grieving the dead. I looked at close up photos of people dying peacefully or just dead, and I felt peace and release. And then I looked at the pictures of people grieving the dead after the death, and months later, and I saw and felt healing and release. And then to my surprise I felt agonizing pain and tears witnessing peace and the release of pain. Yet another domino had shifted. It occurred to me that I was as anxious and fearful of my own happiness as I was of holding onto my pain.
I realized eventually that I already am who I am, and I always have been. I’m in there somewhere, and I’m covered up in a lot of pain and sadness from what happened to me, and tragically for me, it is a boat load. I realized that it was shifting dominos, professionally, so I could feel like shit professionally, so I could cry and grieve my own death as a hopeful child professionally, that could ever uncover me. I tried so hard for 20 years in search of self to harness the magic of my brain to help me “do” something to help get the rage and sadness out of my soul that shone out of my eyes. I finally realized that my brain was just a toolbox to help me do things to defend from the pain blaring from my eyes, but that the trauma and deprivation occurred to my heart, and long before my brain could fully function. I realized that release in the dying and those grieving the dead comes from tears and grieving, and that their act of grieving was an act of the heart, not their brain. That is what was so painful, and what moved me to my own dying tears so profoundly.
I realized that I couldn’t ever find myself by believing in something, or doing anything. My self already existed, and all the believing and acting was only an endless ferris wheel of defense.
The magic of my real me I found to be in honoring my suffering and welcoming feeling as bad as I possibly could until I want to scream and die. And that is when I screamed and died. What dies are my defenses from my pain, and then I enter into me. I call this place Home. Every time, without exception, when I am at the door of my own fearful hell, and I am ready to jump off a bridge or hit the nuke button, I welcome instead my sweet tears of me with all my heart. And that is when I get to be me again, to remember how lovely it used to be as a child to hope and love, and to naturally cry and grieve when my hope was dashed and love withheld.
Learning to follow your misery and cry and grieve as an adult is like learning to ballroom dance or sing, it takes many years of practice and perfection to recover oneself after the fog hiding your pain moves in. But once you are able to feel bad again, and then bad enough to cry, and cry well enough to grieve, you become addicted to finding home again. And sitting there at home is your own disappointed but still hopeful child, arms outstretched, waiting for you. “I’ve missed you so much!”, you say to yourself when you are no longer lost to yourself, and you both cry tears of happiness. And one day there is only one of you, not two.
I am now a joyful masochist of crying, a cry-ocist. I am crying now as I remember this 30 plus year journey of mine and how hard it has been. It has been a really long road. I am crying hoping you’ll trust yourself once again to get a glimpse of the home of your real self. If you laugh at me or ridicule me, that will hurt and make me cry. If no one listens or understands me, or if I am just criticized or ignored, that will hurt and make me cry. I can now cry and grieve as well as any professional ballroom dancer can dance, or singer sing, so that is OK. I am ready to suffer from you and for you and with you. All I will find is my self, and I am no longer afraid of Me. If I am on the treadmill of forgetting who I am now at least it hurts like hell, and I welcome the tears of shifting the dominos of my life, so that I can go home to Me. I really hope I find you there too.
See you tomorrow.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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