It's a rare occasion when I'm right about anything, and it's becoming clear I'm not right about the purpose of my dying year, or the premonition that foreshadowed it. That's not to say I won't die, because I might. That's true everyday, whether you think it's your 'dying year', or not.
I expected that. I expected to confront that possibility when I started this. It was kind of the point. What I didn't expect was my most recent decision: I didn't expect to make a conscious decision to Live.
Self-NOledge
This has been the most difficult year of my life, and it qualifies as such on numerous levels. It's been difficult emotionally, spiritually, personally, professionally, and financially. Every Demon I have has been engaged in a full-court press, and they've been unrelentingly in their efforts to challenge what I mistook for self-knowledge. They exposed me, and I still don't know if I survived.
I've learned one thing for sure: Being Human is hard. It often requires you do some bushwhacking in unmarked terrain. When you admit you're cornered, and without hope, you need to swing toward darkness, and cut your own trail. But you need to cut with caution. Evil's out there, and madness. You need to navigate both, and you have to do it blind. The advantage is all theirs. They're unkind, and unfair, those sirens. Neither requires rest, and both exercise a calloused refusal to rattle a warning as you approach.
The best plan is to cut your swath for one, single footstep at a time, and hope the direction you've chosen is the direction to save you. You need to step toward it slowly, cautiously, and when you plant your foot, plant it deep. You have no choice but faith, so claim each inch of progress with a display of confidence. Whether the trail you cut is the one that can save you, or not, is up to a muddled formula of luck, chance, and timing. If the force you follow senses doubt, it may fold.
There is another possibility, however. Maybe, just maybe, the path you cut for yourself is the one you sought, but never found. Maybe, it's existence was dependent upon you all along, and your entire life has been a series of tests, and training exercises that prepared you to map it. Maybe the destiny you've been waiting for has been waiting for you.
I've learned one thing for sure: Being Human is hard. It often requires you do some bushwhacking in unmarked terrain. When you admit you're cornered, and without hope, you need to swing toward darkness, and cut your own trail. But you need to cut with caution. Evil's out there, and madness. You need to navigate both, and you have to do it blind. The advantage is all theirs. They're unkind, and unfair, those sirens. Neither requires rest, and both exercise a calloused refusal to rattle a warning as you approach.
The best plan is to cut your swath for one, single footstep at a time, and hope the direction you've chosen is the direction to save you. You need to step toward it slowly, cautiously, and when you plant your foot, plant it deep. You have no choice but faith, so claim each inch of progress with a display of confidence. Whether the trail you cut is the one that can save you, or not, is up to a muddled formula of luck, chance, and timing. If the force you follow senses doubt, it may fold.
There is another possibility, however. Maybe, just maybe, the path you cut for yourself is the one you sought, but never found. Maybe, it's existence was dependent upon you all along, and your entire life has been a series of tests, and training exercises that prepared you to map it. Maybe the destiny you've been waiting for has been waiting for you.
Before Logic
For now, the darkness is staved off, and pushed back to the fringe. I'm not enveloped in it like I was. Where there had been a monolith of shadow, there is a tapestry of splintered light. And with it, gratitude. It's no coincidence light is accompanied by the opportunity to serve others.
Life is the simplest equation, and the Riemann Hypothesis, all at once.
First Knowledge
What we know best about ourselves, and with the most certainty, is what we learned first. It's what we knew before we entered school. It's what we felt before logic arrived to question it. It's the crayon drawing to illustrate happiness before we were taught its definition.
It's also the thing we're most likely afraid of admitting to ourselves, and
others, if the life we're living is the one we dreaded. The one we swore we'd never agree to, like so many of the adults we remember from childhood had.
Those adults were easy to spot. There was no remnant of wonder left in them. They were vacant, and spoke down at you with absolute certainty their way, was the right way. If you disagreed, you were dismissed, and disciplined. If you couldn't be convinced of their codes, you'd be reduced by them.
Those adults were easy to spot. There was no remnant of wonder left in them. They were vacant, and spoke down at you with absolute certainty their way, was the right way. If you disagreed, you were dismissed, and disciplined. If you couldn't be convinced of their codes, you'd be reduced by them.
If there's no sign of what we knew first in who we've become later, it's likely who we've become is false. It's likely that who we've become is terrified of vulnerability, and transparency. The things that make us real.
That's what I've acknowledged to myself, at least. That was the only way to preserve a chance at its opposite. And I want that. I want it with everything I am.
Everything I am exists in one small granule of a glowing orange ember that I didn't see before. The flame I thought I was had been in the way. Life took that from me. Extinguished it.
Thank God.
Everything I am exists in one small granule of a glowing orange ember that I didn't see before. The flame I thought I was had been in the way. Life took that from me. Extinguished it.
Thank God.
If I hadn't been sequestered, and disabled from feeding the flames, I would have continued my belief that they were representative of me. I'm not the flames, or the heat, or the rage, or the passion. I'm the ember that starts them.
