Work

Coming Soon.

Boys, Guys and Men

Coming soon.

Funny how things turn out, Part IV

  Let me start off by first saying that sometimes I can be a real idiot.  Okay, that on record, here’s what happened.

  So, after my last update I decided to try to move on.  After all, I was a good guy, right?  I could date around and find someone to be happy with, right?  I was still part of a singles ward where the possibilities were almost endless, right?  I could find happiness even if it was with someone else, right?  …RIGHT?! 

  Well, apparently not.  Once you know a good thing it’s easy to leave it.  It’s a lot harder to leave it alone.  Sarah was a very good thing.  She was a good person, kind, caring, bold and unapologetic.  I knew that I was falling for her – in truth, probably already had fallen for her – and yet she was gone, again.  I tried to get involved in my work.  I tried to get involved with my singles ward.  I tried to resume friendships from across the world that I had been neglecting.  And it worked for a time as a distraction.  I even wrote more in my blog. 

  You may see from my blog that it is rather eclectic already, but obviously I write about what is on my mind at the time.  It was about this time that I decided to write about the nature of constancy, the importance of making a decision and sticking to it.  I wasn’t writing it TO anyone, but it was obviously on my mind.  I also was turned onto a song by Julie Atherton by a dear friend.  I even wrote an entry about how frustrated I was with my current lot but decided it was too much.  I was blaming people for things and I was upset when I wrote it, so I thought better of posting it. 

  It had been some time without any contact from Sarah.  She had gone silent.  No blog updates, few Facebook updates.  Well, that’s not exactly true.  She did go to Vegas…   I missed her.  But she was moving on and I tried to as well.  Until one night, I saw that she was on Facebook and I shot her a quick message to just say hello.  Small talk.  Mostly I just wanted her to know that I was okay and that I was still willing to be her friend.  Quickly, it seemed, we fell back into old rhythms with how we talk.  When I realized what was happening, I caught myself and tried to steer the conversation in a different direction. 

  Then I did something idiotic…  I asked her for dating advice. 

  Yup, I was that bone headed guy who asked her what to do to make contact and a good impression on someone else.  My reasoning was sound.  I thought two things.  First, we had always been totally honest with each other and she knew me very well as a result.  Second, if we were going to be friends this is something that I would talk with a friend about freely.  She was hurt and upset that I had asked her.  When I asked her to explain her reaction and I explained my reasoning for asking her, she told me that she doesn’t know how to be “just friends” with me.  At first, I thought this was a bad thing.  I thought she meant that we couldn’t have any kind of contact because it was too weird/hard for her to stay in contact. 

  Once again, I was wrong.

  The next several weeks were a blur.  Seeing her again.  Holding her again.  Hearing her voice.  Seeing that moment of realization when she thought she felt something but was unwilling to say it out loud.  I knew.  I knew that it was all over for me.  I knew that I had fallen and fallen hard.  My schedule was absolutely insane with work, my boys and this new show I was involved with that took most of my evenings during the week.  Still I made time to see her.  Even sacrificing my precious sleep to do so. 

  One night after spending the evening together, I wrapped her in my arms and sighed.  When she asked me what the sigh meant I simply said, “I love you.”  It was the first time I had said it out loud.  My heart was pounding as the words left my lips.  I remember thinking that this was one of those before and after moment where everything in our history from now on would be measured as before I said it and after I said it.  She told me that she knew and I was content.  I didn’t expect her to reciprocate my sentiment.  After all, our story thus far had been me developing feelings for her well in advance of her. 

  Then it happened.

  As it was getting late, I realized it was time for me to go.  I was getting ready to leave and she reached out and took my hand and said she loved me, too.  It felt totally normal and natural, like it had been said hundreds of times before and as a result it took me a second to realize the impact of what she had just said.  She loves me. 

  SHE LOVES ME!!!!

  That was some time ago now.  The words don’t get old, their meaning only intensifies. 

  What an adventure it has been getting here.  I have known Sarah for 7 months now.  I am in love with her.  What kind of adventure is in store for us from here?  I don’t know.  But I look forward to it.

Marked

  Everyone knows someone somewhere who seemed different from other people previously encountered.  Someone who seemed to have that little extra twinkle in their eye, perhaps or that little half smirk that would pop out whenever the conversation turned toward a particular subject.  Surly even now you can think of someone that just seems to “get it” when you try to talk about an experience you’ve had but have difficulty articulating.  We may consider these people to be seasoned, knowledgeable, experienced or even wise.  Funny thing is that age, while commonly associated with the wisdom of experience, has little to do with this curious phenomenon.  I tend to think of these people as having been marked by experience. 

  For example, the young woman who grew up in a fairly religious and conservative community who, though always considered to be a good girl, had to reveal that she was pregnant at 17.  Or her family who are so incredibly loving, understanding and giving to others, but in quiet moments have that little hint of something extra glinting in their eye as if to say, “I understand.  I’ve been there.”  These types of people seemed almost more genuine to me than others who were seemingly without flaw.  Certainly I felt more comfortable and trusting of these wonderful people than I would of some plastic someone who had never screwed up before. 

  It has been my personal experience to find this phenomenon very commonly among those who have been divorced.  There is an almost instant kinship between two people who have shared a common experience so emotionally tumultuous.  I remember meeting a particularly talented younger actor who was just concluding his divorce.  I could see instantly that there was something that had changed him from who and what he was before to the man that stood before me.  Though we had never before met, we were able to talk at length about our shared experiences.  He would ask me questions about my experience and offer information about his and vice versa.  We talked for several hours and parted ways as instant friends. 

  I imagine this is the draw of collegiate fraternities across the country.  Perhaps the hazing that is endured by pledges of different houses serves to cement the bond of brotherhood more than anyone but those that have experienced it would understand.  On a larger scale, I feel this is what draws men of the armed forces together over so many differences like race, religion, background, upbringing, social class, etc. and allows them to be brothers even if they didn’t engage in the same fight.  I have witnessed two men with 35 years difference between them realize and instant brotherhood upon learning that the other was also a marine.  They had both served their country, both fought in real combat, both suffered the loss of friends and both been marked by the experience and they saw this in each other.  Once a marine, always a marine. 

  Many different things can mark you.  It can be as simple as first love bitterly lost.  It can be death of someone close to you.  It can be merciless ridicule because of your appearance or because you are different from others.  I can be that you have witnessed something truly awe inspiring.  It could be that your life as you knew it was shattered and you had to rebuild a new one.  It can be that your expectations were not met.  It could be that your wildest expectations were exceeded.  It could be that you have seen true greatness in people.  It could be that you have seen the face of pure evil.  Having children can mark you.  Having children with a disability can profoundly mark you.  Experiencing the limits of human experience, good or bad, can and will change you and it leaves a mark on your life and your experience and you are no longer unblemished.  I would describe it almost as a loss of innocence, but it’s so very much more than that.  It’s almost like an awakening of understanding; like a change in the way that you think and reason.

  Now, I have always been a fan of things that have character.  A book well-worn with use and time is far more appealing to me than a brand new book with the spine never having been cracked.  So too with furniture: like the bookcase that has a gouge where a child hit it with a toy in a moment of frustration.  Or the art that has perhaps one or two brush strokes that seem like they shouldn’t be there.  Some would look on these things and consider them flaws, impurities or imperfections… I consider these things to be the character of time well spent and a life well served.  This is also true of people. 

  The battle weary with their thousand-yard stare burning through the unseeing distance may seem broken when looked on by the untrained eye, but these are the good ones.  Those who have been battered and beaten by the tidal currents of life’s ebb and flow are the real people.  Those who have been touched by the heat of the refiner’s fire and are changed by it are the genuine article.  These are the salt of the earth.  After all, it’s our imperfections that make us unique and truly make us great.  Life was not meant to be put on display under glass.  It was meant to be lived, dirty, messy, painful, horrible, wonderful, amazing, loving and brutal, it was meant to be experienced in order to change us.  

  That’s life, what can I tell you. 

Sleep

  Those of you who know me and are reading this will probably know the love affair I have with sleep.  You will also probably have heard the stories of my wonderful bed and how much I love it, too.  I love sleep and think it is about the second best thing in the whole world. 

  While in flight school, I had the chance to study sleep extensively.  I began looking into it as it pertains to air transportation safety at first, but as I found out how it works and what works better to get a great night’s sleep, I became fascinated by the technical aspect of sleep.  The simple fact of the matter is, though we know much about how sleep works and what it kind of does, we still do not know why we need to sleep. 

  “Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast”

  --William Shakespeare, Macbeth

  I suppose I could regale you with the process of sleep and how it works, but I won’t; Sufficeth to say that sleep, for me, serves a multi-role purpose in my life. 

  First, sleep is a healer of the body.  During specific stages of sleep respiration is increased while blood pressure is decreased along with heart rate and body temperature.  While in this state the body, which is amazing in and of itself, goes to work repairing the normal damage inflicted on it during the day.  This is the stage where muscle tissue it regrown, dead cells are sluffed off and carried away to be disposed of and other “maintenance” procedures are completed to allow the body to function.  This stage is particularly important for those who are much more physically active during the day than others.  This is also the stage in children where they grow. 

"And if tonight my soul may find her peace in sleep, and sink in good oblivion, and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created."

            --David Lawrence

  Second, sleep is a healer of the mind.  While you dream somewhat through the whole night, you really only begin to experience vivid dreams later into your night’s sleep, usually after the fourth of fifth hour of sleep.  This is when the body has completed most of its physical repair and can now turn to the repair of consciousness.  This is when the brain, magnificent and mysterious, literally “cuts off” communication with the rest of the body and begins a pattern of sleep that is incredibly similar in brain activity to being awake.  This is the time when a person experiences deep dreaming.  This is the time when the subconscious mind, which is far more perceptive than the conscious mind, “downloads” its contents into the understanding of the mind and begins to sort out things that were not possible to process during waking hours. 

  Have you ever been so frustrated by something you were thinking about that you just couldn’t find a way to understand?  Then after getting a good night’s sleep, you take a second look at what was so frustrating and it just seems to make sense.  During REM sleep, neural pathways are formed between stored information in the brain which allows access of information between related subjects.  It’s like the most advanced cross-referencing software you have ever imagined on steroids.  This is the time when emotional confusion is understood.  This is when intellectual dilemmas are worked out.  This is also the time, I believe, when personal, individual, divine revelation can be received and understood.  More on that point in a later posting.

  “The bed is a bundle of paradoxes:  we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.”

 

--Charles Caleb Colton

  Third and finally, sleep is a chance to lay down the cares of the day.  It’s like a miniature death that allows you to lay aside your frustrations and worries of the waking world and succumb to the peaceful bliss of infinity.  If sleep is the microcosm of death, then I do not fear death and will welcome it, but for the pain of those left behind, when it comes.  Sleep is a chance to reassess and realize what is really important.  It is a chance to take the longview of things. Sleep allows me to begin to fathom the mysteries of the universe and even gain a little understanding and a few answers to the unanswerable questions of life. 

  Now, here’s the punch line.  Why, you may ask, when I feel so strongly about sleep do I often forsake it in favor of time doing other things?  Why do I spend time with other people instead of seeking the wonder of the sleep I have just described?  The answer is simple.  Because I choose to. Because it’s worth it.  Because I feel that time spent with that person is worth more than the sleep I am giving up.  Because, as wonderful as sleep is, as amazing and blissful as it can be, real life and real people and real interaction is worth so very much more.  If you are one of these people that take the place of sleep, feel loved, valued and cherished.  You are the first best thing in the whole wide world.

Loss

  I had a dream last night.  I don’t know what it means, but it left me pretty shaken when I woke up today.  In my dream my family was hiking through a forested, mountainous area with large, full trees, rocky trails, birds, animals, the works.  It was beautiful and serene.  My parents and sister were there laughing and talking with me, my brothers and our kids.  It was picturesque, really.  I remember the impression, now after waking up, that it had been a wonderful time of fun and adventure and that we had really enjoyed the day. 

  Then in an instant it all changed.

  My boys were running around the trail up and down a sloped section of the path, goofing off and playing tag when suddenly my youngest, J, slipped and fell.  Due to the slope of the path he began to tumble backward down the trail like some sick version of a cartoon character snowballing down a hill.  I didn’t realize that he was falling until right at the end when he tumbled right up to the rock that I had rested my day pack on. 

  I was concerned as any parent would be as I picked him up and brushed him off.  I knew that he would begin crying at any moment so I began to calm him.  Now, it has been my practice for a long time to help minimize the “artificial hurt” -- the additional crying and carrying on that a child feels due to the fear of something they experienced that they think should hurt regardless of whether is really does or not -- to pick up the boys and immediately praise them for how awesome a fall they had just pulled off. 

  “Wow,” I said.  “That was an awesome fall!  Did you see how far you rolled when you fell?”  J, was sniffling as he looked up at me with those huge eyes and dust smudged face, but he smiled as he was trying to be brave.  I looked over to my parents who had seemed not to notice the fall and were still talking to each other.  When I looked back to the face of my son it was stained red and the hood of his jacket was blood soaked.  I reached over to the picnic basket and grabbed a handful of paper towels to mop at his face and I called my father over as calmly as I could to help me.  I laid a paper towel over the wound on my sons head and it immediately soaked through with blood. 

  I calmly told my father to go get the park ranger.  My father, who was still laughing slightly at something he had been talking about, didn’t seem to see the urgency of the situation.  Instead, he came over to coo at J and began to dust off his pants.  Again, I told my father to go get the park ranger and to call 911.  Again, my father ignored me as he was talking to J and encouraging him to be brave and not cry.  With my hand over a mess of towels that were now soaking through and coating my hand in my sons blood, I finally shouted at my father, “Go get the f***ing ranger!!!”  I remember that I was looking at my sons eyes as they sleepily began to close while I screamed this last plea for help both in my dream and in reality.  It was this call, out loud and in real life that woke me from the dream.

   I don’t know what dreams are for.  I don’t know why I remember some dreams and forget many others.  What I do know is that upon waking from that dream, I feel a profound urgency to hold my son and make sure he is alright.  I had the sense after waking that as my son closed his eyes in those last moments that he was dying and for that split second, I knew the pain of the loss of a child. 

  Just yesterday I was told that my parents were going to be attending a funeral for one of their missionaries who had lost their 8 year-old son.  I knew almost all of my parent’s missionaries and viewed many of them like brothers so to know that one of these friends had outlived his own son was very hard for me to hear.  No man should have to bury his own child.  No man. 

  It took me back to when I had stood with my cousin as she and her husband had to lay their son to rest.  He had been sick for a long time and the mixture of pain and grief we felt was swirled together with relief and bitter-sweet happiness at his departure from the pain and suffering of this life.  I was a new father at the time and my oldest was just a baby, but I remember very distinctly the weight of grief I felt both for my cousin and as I imagined losing my own son.

  They say that God only gives you the trials that he knows you are strong enough to handle.  I know that one of my greatest fears is having to learn about the pain of loss first hand.  I have already lost much.  I have needed to rebuild my life many times and through it all, there has been one thing that I have never lost but always been afraid of losing: my family. 

  Here is the wonderful bit.  I can’t lose them now.  Not even to death.  My family is forever.  They are bound to me by eternal right and I will never lose them.  My boys are my boys through all the dimensions of time and throughout eternity.  I know without a shadow of a doubt that even if I am asked to be parted from them temporarily by the veil of death that I will hold them again.  This brings me peace in quiet moments and, with time, I know it will bring peace to my friend and brother. 

Effing irresponsible

You know the great thing about blogs... the irresponsibility.  No one really ever has to answer to anyone.

Fine, fine line...

  At the risk of being repetitive with posting song lyrics, a friend of mine sang this song last night and I liked it so much that I had to share it.  The music is simple and beautiful.  If you're interested, you can listen to the whole song here.  Thank you, Dimples.

There's a Fine, Fine Line

There's a fine, fine line between a lover and a friend;
There's a fine, fine line between reality and pretend;
And you never know 'til you reach the top if it was worth the uphill climb.

There's a fine, fine line between love
And a waste of time.

There's a fine, fine line between a fairy tale and a lie;
And there's a fine, fine line between "You're wonderful" and "Goodbye."
I guess if someone doesn't love you back it isn't such a crime,
But there's a fine, fine line between love
And a waste of your time.

And I don't have the time to waste on you anymore.
I don't think that you even know what you're looking for.
For my own sanity, I've got to close the door
And walk away...
Oh...

There's a fine, fine line between together and not
And there's a fine, fine line between what you wanted and what you got.
You gotta go after the things you want while you're still in your prime...

There's a fine, fine line between love
And a waste of time.

  I promise I am still working on my other posts that are coming soon.  They should be up in the next couple days.

The Easy Way or the Right Way.

  I have been thinking about the nature of “the easy way” for the past couple days. 

  Why is it that the hard way and the right way are usually one and the same?  Everyone has heard the expression, “Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.”  There have been books written on the subject.  Far greater men than me have discoursed at length on the subject ranging from simple philosophers to God himself.  So, why is it so hard? 

“Now I have come to the cross-roads in my life. I always knew what the right path was. Without exception, I knew, but I never took it. You know why? It was too damn hard.”

                                --Al Pacino, Scent of a Woman

Imagine for a second that you come to a fork in the road of your life and you have the chance to choose between two roads.   One is rocky, fraught with danger, uphill and treacherous.  The other is paved, smooth, sloping downward and beautifully manicured.  Which one seems more attractive?  Be honest! 

  Now for some more information… You have to make the decision in your life blind, meaning you do not know the end of the road from the beginning.  You can see a ways up the up-sloping and difficult road to where it bends around some rather treacherous looking boulders and that’s all.  Likewise with the paved, attractive road, you see a ways to where the road banks around a beautiful pond and passes out of sight.  You are free to choose either road, but once chosen, you may not turn back. 

  For a long time I was the type of person who would seek the easy road.  I have, on occasion, known the right path and intentionally turned from it because I knew how hard it would be.  What’s worse is I knew the reward at the end of the right path that I was forfeiting and I still turned from it.  Why?

  I was a coward.

  Well, either that or I am self-destructive.  For a long time I made a habit out of coasting through life.  I considered it a personal triumph to be able to find that beautiful balance point where I would reap maximum reward for minimal effort.  I am told that this is a common trait of the intelligent.  I guess most intelligent people are lazy.  Looking back, I wish I were a little dumber and a lot more hard-working…  I wish I had learned to work at an earlier age.  I may have to write more about the subject of work again later. 

  For now, let’s go back to that fork in the road for a minute.  Now, I said that you have to make the decision of which path to take blind, but what if you knew where you were trying to go?

“Which road to I take?” said Alice.

“Where do you want to go?” asked the Cheshire Cat.

“Well, I… I don’t know.” Alice answered.

“Then,” said the Cat, “it doesn’t matter.  If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

  What is your ultimate objective?  Where do you want to go?  Who do you want to be when you get there?  What do you want to be like?  Who do you want with you when you arrive?  These are hard questions for someone who is directionless. 

  But you know the great thing?  Unlike the choice of the fork in the road, we'll always have a way back.  If you would rather ascend the mountain than coast to the valley floor, you need only make a choice.  Make the choice.  Don't apologize for it, excuse it or call it by another name.  Make the choice.  Own it.  And rise above the easy way.

Funny how things turn out, Part III

  Have you ever been frustrated by something that you know to be true?  You know that something is valuable and meaningful and when you try to tell others about it they just don’t “get it.”  You try and try and change your words and try to explain things in different ways to get your point across but in the end, it makes little or no difference to the person you are trying to tell.  I have felt that way. 

  I consider myself to be fairly eloquent.  I have known the power of the spoken word.  I have known the ability to use words to make others see perfectly in their own heads the idea that you are describing.  It’s really rather gratifying to have that kind of experience.  It’s also really frustrating having had that kind of experience to not be able to bring it about when you want to. 

  My beautiful, wonderful, amazing, stubborn, frustrating dear…  doesn’t get it.  I am falling in love with her and she doesn’t get it.  She is afraid of hurting me and has walked away again. Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool my twice, shame on me.  Fool me three times and I am just an idiot for coming back again and again.  But how can I deny the way I feel?!  That’s right, this is the third time she has walked away.

  After my last update we decided to try being together again.  I told her that I had feelings for her and that I was willing to be patient with her to allow her to sort out the feelings she has for me.  I am a patient man… most of the time.  I know that she doesn’t realize what she feels or maybe just doesn’t want to acknowledge what she is feeling but there are moments when I can see it in her face.  She feels something.  She seems very practiced at keeping her feelings under control.  I can tell that she feels things very deeply but she won’t let me see into her.  She won’t let me know what is going on in her head or in her heart.  GYAAAH!  It’s so frustrating to be THIS close to something you truly want and have the ground fall out from under you. 

  Part of me is even more frustrated because I had moments when I wanted to be the one to say goodbye.  I even tried a couple of times.  I wanted to be the one to walk this time.  After she backed off the second time I decided that I was done.  But I wanted to be the one for once who did the leaving.  I wrote a letter to her, in fact, that told her very clearly that I was falling in love with her.  It also said that real love doesn’t ask anything in return and I was asking.  I wrote that I had found myself asking her to care for me and hoping she would.  I told her that I couldn’t wait forever and that I wasn’t strong enough to love her from a distance and support her while she found she felt for another what I felt for her.  I wrote those words while I was waiting in limbo for her to decide what she wanted but I never sent them.  My mind was already made up.  If she didn’t want me then I guess I’d be by myself. 

It was kind of surreal actually.  We had seen each other earlier that day and everything seemed fine at first glance, but something seemed off to me.  Now, if you have read any of my other posts you already know that I tend to worry about things.  I could very well have been worrying for no good reason, but it just seemed like she was hiding behind a wall, an emotional barricade, that was designed to keep everyone out, especially me.  It could have been that she didn’t know how she felt.  It could be that she felt a certain way and didn’t want to tell me.  It could be that she was trying to put me in the dreaded “friend zone” and needed some emotional distance first.  After all, if she really cared for me why would she hide what she feels?! 

  Later that night we got to talking and I asked her if she had any more information for me about how or what she was feeling.  She told me that she did not.  I told her about my perception of earlier in the day when things seemed out of sorts.  She said she didn’t feel like things were off.  Now, granted… I may have been pushing a little, but I just told her that I felt like I was the one taking all the risk because I had gone out on a limb and had told her the way I feel.  She didn’t know how she felt, yes, but the fact that she couldn’t tell me what she was feeling left me in limbo for ever.  I reiterated what I had said earlier and told her that if she needed time to sort out the way she feels that I would wait, but if it was different…  If she had already made up her mind and just didn’t want to tell me what it was that she had decided (I fully thought that she was going to break up with me, which is funny because we were supposed to be “just friends”) that it was a different story.  I told her that I felt like I was in a precarious position, trying to keep from falling for her and knowing that it was futile but still not knowing how she felt for me. 

  It was a potent conversation and I even caused her to cry with my words.  Not because I was mean or anything, mind you, but because I was asking and pressing for answers that she didn’t know.  It made her sad and frustrated to not be able to give me what I was asking for.  I again asked if she had truly not made up her mind and she told me that she hadn’t.  I told her that I would go on waiting.

  And waiting…

  And waiting…

  Finally she sent me a message telling me that she couldn’t do it anymore.  She couldn’t continue to keep me in limbo.  She said it wasn’t fair to me.  She was hurting me by not being able to return for me what I felt for her.  –Now, let me go on record her and say that she DID feel something!  I saw it! But still she had decided to walk away, to play it safe.  I just don’t GET IT!  Why would I be destined to feel this way for someone who can’t feel this way in return?!  So, she is gone… again.  But I can’t stop thinking about her. And that part sucks.  Still somehow, I get the feeling that she is still important.  I don’t know.  Maybe I am just going crazy.

The Action Plan part II

Coming soon...

Best breakup song ever

  So, I find it funny how you can find deep and profound meaning in poetry, lyric and music much more at certain times than others.  Often it seems like a song that you have listened to many times before suddenly "makes sense" while experiencing an emotion that reflects what the author may have been feeling at the time it was written.  The voice of human experience often seems to harmonize and resonate with people of any background because emotion is universal.  


  Someone once told me that the way you know you're in love is when all the cheesy love songs on your iPod suddenly begin to make sense.  So too when you feel your heart hurting...


  I came across this song again a couple of weeks ago in a moment of loss and pain.  It made sense at the time.  I thought I would share it.  Perhaps it will resonate with you and your heart will sing it's own harmonies.

"Goodbye My Lover"

Did I disappoint you or let you down?
Should I be feeling guilty or let the judges frown?
'Cause I saw the end before we'd begun,
Yes I saw you were blinded and I knew I had won.
So I took what's mine by eternal right.
Took your soul out into the night.
It may be over but it won't stop there,
I am here for you if you'd only care.
You touched my heart you touched my soul.
You changed my life and all my goals.
And love is blind and that I knew when,
My heart was blinded by you.
I've kissed your lips and held your hand.
Shared your dreams and shared your bed.
I know you well, I know your smell.
I've been addicted to you.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

I am a dreamer and when I wake,
You can't break my spirit - it's my dreams you take.
And as you move on, remember me,
Remember us and all we used to be
I've seen you cry, I've seen you smile.
I've watched you sleeping for a while.
I'd be the father of your child.
I'd spend a lifetime with you.
I know your fears and you know mine.
We've had our doubts but now we're fine,
And I love you, I swear that's true.
I cannot live without you.

Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

And I still hold your hand in mine.
In mine when I'm asleep.
And I will bare my soul in time,
When I'm kneeling at your feet.
Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have been the one for me.

I'm so hollow, baby, I'm so hollow.
I'm so, I'm so, I'm so hollow.

3:41 am

It's 3:41am on a Tuesday morning and I can't sleep.


I sometimes know when it's coming -- what nights I will sleep because I am exhausted, but if that sleep is interrupted for any reason that the likelihood of getting back to sleep is slim to none.  Usually it's on nights where I start thinking about things that need to be done.  I go through my checklist of things that need doing and I check off things that I've done and I go through the things that are next on the list.  The trouble is that there aren't a lot of things you can do at 3:41 in the morning.  You can read, I guess.  You can study, sure.  Or you can type aimlessly on your blog.


  Why is it that we always seem to think of really important things at 3:30 in the morning?  Or, seemingly important things, I should say.  It should work to wake up, write a note to yourself to accomplish something that needs doing in the waking hours, then lie back down and go to sleep, right?  It never works that way, though.


  I wonder if there is a way to quantify the weight of human thought.


  You know how people talk sometimes about their thoughts being heavy or being weighed down by their thoughts, or of being uplifted by or carried by their thoughts?  I wonder if there is a way to physically measure the process of human cognition... And, if so, would there also be a way to measure the way thought impacts the physical world?  I'll have to look into that one...  Tomorrow...  If I can get back to sleep.

Take the longview

So, I’ve had a collection of conversations with some dear friends recently whom I trust greatly and I thought it would be interesting to see if I could string together some of the conversations.  The purpose would be simply to gain a little clarity or a new perspective on things.

  A dear friend of mine whom I have known for years and years asked me about age differences.  I thought this was interesting since I myself had just asked the question of another friend just a few days before.  You see, having entered our 30’s now and both being single, we both find ourselves asking the same kinds of questions.  Often among the questions raised is the matter of age.  Is age really just a number? 

  She, my friend, is being “fixed up” with a nice young man by a mutual acquaintance.  When I say young, I mean 10 years her junior.  She is a little worried about it so we had a conversation about the subject and here is the question I asked her.  “When you've been married for 55 years and have 8 children, 29 grandchildren and 6 great grandchildren, is it going to matter that you're 90 and he's 80?”

  I, as you know by now, am 31 and divorced.  I find myself thrown back into the dating game as a seasoned veteran and as such, find myself much older than many of the other players in the game.  I find that age, sometimes, is a prime consideration of some of the people, especially younger people, who are looking for someone special.  What brought this to mind was an experience I had when I was spending time with a group of single people, hanging out, playing games and telling stories.  There was one younger woman with whom I enjoyed speaking.  I came to find out that we have theater and musical interests in common.  I casually mentioned that I had performed at a local theater and as a result had season tickets to see each of their productions, but my date had canceled on me for their showing of “The Seussical Musical.”  She said she hadn't ever been to the theater but that she had seen the show and liked it.  Before I knew it, I had invited her to come with me to the show and to my surprise, she said yes. 

  Now, I have been included with this group of younger single adults as an equal and only raised the question about age as a consideration to them when I first met many of them.  I was concerned, not for my sake, but for theirs.  It can seem a little strange to some people having an age difference like that and I wanted to be sensitive to their feelings.  It had been something that I had thought about for a moment back then and not thought about since… until I had a date and found out that she was 21.  That story is still in the works and I may write about it later… the fact of the matter is that it shouldn’t even really count as a date.  It’s just two people going to a show together… right?  More to follow.

The reason I raise this question is that my conversation with my dear friend took on a more general perspective after that.  We talked about the idea that no two people are tailor made for each other.  There are many concerns like age differences, social circles, class distinctions, differences in education, religion, upbringing, family.  There are many things that divide.  There are always going to be challenges even for two people who seem "Made for each other."

Look at it like this.

Do you know anything about masonry?  About brick-laying?  Stone work?  ...doesn't matter.

Imagine two large foundation stones.  Place them side by side and no matter how well they have been cut to fit, there are always going to be small gaps between the two stones.  Now imagine taking those two blocks and rubbing them against each other day after day and year after year.  Many of those hard and sharp edges with chip away and smooth out and after a while the stones will become almost perfect for each other.  Now, even still, you can rub those stones together for years and years and years and there will still be gaps between the stones even though they have become a matched pair that works near perfectly for each other.

Love is the mortar.

Love is the fill that makes up for the gaps that are left so that you can build a life, a family and a future on that foundation that you have made together. 

I guess my point is that there is no such thing as a soul mate or rather someone that you meet who is perfect for you in every single way. That is a Disney movie fallacy. The point is that you BECOME perfect for each other.

My question to my friend then was, “Who knows if this younger guy is it or not.  No one can tell.  But if it means that you and he can find happiness with each other, are you going to let 10 measly years difference stop you from finding out?”  Are you going to let that one thing, that one worry stop you from finding something truly great in someone else?  I guess it’s up to you. 

Attitude is everything

  You know those days when you wake up and you just know that today is going to suck?  Like the day where you wake up earlier than normal and can’t go back to sleep, for instance.  Or the time you couldn’t find your keys and you were already late for work.  Or when you found your keys but you realize that you had left them in the ignition of your car.  Maybe it’s when the momentary relief at finding your keys dissolves when you realize that the day before you had left your keys in the number two position of your ignition and that your battery was dead.  So, by now you’re sleep deprived, you’re late for work, your car battery is dead, you’re behind on your school work, you have frustrations, worries and you feel like your day is the microcosm of your life and it is spinning out of control. 

  To make matters worse, the woman you have been waiting patiently to “figure things out” tells you that “It’s not meant to be.”  You, like an idiot, want to know why and she tells you exactly what’s wrong with you.  It could be any number of things that resonate with your own insecurity like, not attractive enough, or don’t make enough money.  It could be things outside your control like you’re family background, or upbringing.  Or it could be the one thing that makes your confidence crumble completely, like you’re 31, divorced, without a college degree and you have never lived up to your true potential. 

  So, by now you’re walking to work, worried about the wrath of the boss, you have no girlfriend, you’re behind on your school work, you don’t have enough money, you’re not attractive enough, you’re sleep deprived, you’re a failure as a student, lover, man, etc.  Can it get worse?!  …yeah, just then it starts raining.  “God?” you ask, “Why do you hate me?” 

  Sure, things could always get worse, but it’s the mindset I want to point out.  You see, this is something that would ruin most peoples day and would make most people want to curl up into a little ball and hide from the world.  It just seems like circumstances like these would sour your outlook for a while and there would be no recovery, right? 

  Nope.  Funny thing is attitude is a choice.  For the unpracticed it may seem like circumstances dictate the color of your day, but the fact of the matter is that you can choose.

  Now, I am not going to feed you some kind of nonsensical rhetoric like “Choose yer tude!”  or “Attitude is contagious.  Is yours worth catching?”  It goes deeper than that.  It comes down to a fundamental sense of who you are.  “Know thyself.”  When you understand who and what you are, it’s easier to place yourself in the grand scheme of things at take a wider view of any given situation. 

  More to follow later.

Pain

  Yesterday I saw the face of pain.  

  It was sudden, gripping and relentless.  It arrived so quickly as to take me completely by surprise and unaware.  It was not unbearable pain and was quickly stifled, but for a moment or two, it was there.  It left me wondering why this old pain should cross the face of one so full of joy and life.  And why now?  How did I respond?  In that moment I wished that I could take away the pain so completely and totally as to make it feel as though there had never been any suffering in the first place.  Then, I realized what a selfish desire this was.  Were I to remove the pain of this wonderful woman’s life, I would rob her of the experience the pain had given her which had shaped her into the person there before me. 

“Wisdom is simply pain that has healed.”

    --Anonymous

  I have been reflecting for most of the day on the purpose and benefit of pain.  Why do we experience pain?  Well, pain can be beneficial in some ways.  It can warn of danger or injury, i.e. touching a hot stove, a broken limb, a bruise.  In fact, one of the major things that doctors rely on when treating a patient is the pain scale.  If they know how intense the pain is of a patient and roughly where it is coming from they can begin proper treatment.  

  Pain or suffering in general is also one way of knowing that we’re alive.  I remember when I was a young teen knowing in that split second as I was falling off of a fast moving ATV that the landing was going to hurt.  I also remember the terror when, in that split second after landing, I didn’t feel any pain.  I thought for what seemed like a long time that I was dead.  It couldn’t have lasted longer than the space of one heartbeat before the pain rushed in all at once and I let out a primal scream of sheer agony.  It was so intense that I knew I must still be alive. 

“Pain without love,

Pain, I can’t get enough

Pain, I like it rough

‘Cause I’d rather feel pain than nothing at all.”

  --Three Days Grace

  They say that pain is a side effect of the healing process.  The old adage, “It has to hurt if it is to heal” has been used for millennia.  So, pain shows us that we can heal?  Yes, and not just from physical pain.  The pain of experience can turn someone into a very wise person.  Mental anguish can shape the life of a person, family and even a nation.  The feelings of torment and oppression of many can, in fact, shape the course of the whole world. 

  What about emotional pain?  What is the benefit there? 

  I have heard it said that emotional pain exists to teach us the depth of its opposite.  The more pain you experience the more you understand… what?  The absence of pain?  I don’t think so.  Pain, especially, emotional pain can be so intense you feel like you could die—hope that you would die in the moment it is experienced!  The opposite would have to be more significant to be its equal and opposite.  Pleasure, then?  Is the opposite of pain pleasure? Again, I don’t think so, at least not in the sense of opposing the pain I am talking about.  Pleasure too can be intense, but inadequate to explain the opposite of pain and suffering. 

  “People in pain—especially people we love—test that dimension of us. Their need forces us to decide how much of us we’re really willing to give, how much of our time and emotional and physical resources we will sacrifice for them.”

                        --Sandra Strange

  Personally, I feel that the opposite of pain is joy.  “My soul was filled with joy as exquisite as was my pain.”  Therefore, the deeper our understanding of pain, the deeper is our understanding of joy.  Perhaps the converse is also true that the greater our understanding of joy, the greater our understanding of pain.  

  For my part, it is difficult to see others in pain, both for their sake and for my own.  It brings to memory echos of my own secret pain.  Like the itch that you feel over a long healed scar…  The battle wounds that I have gathered from the car accident, cutting words or the heartbreak of loss… Pain is life. 

            “Life is pain.  But joy may be found from the willful participation therein.”

            --Buddha 

  What about the pain of rejection?  Everyone can relate to this pain on one level or another.  This is the pain of loss tied together with the fear of inadequacy and insecurity all rolled into one.  The human heart is an interesting thing, emotionally speaking.  We can feel something that makes no sense at all for someone and, knowing that it will result in nothing but pain and frustration, throw ourselves willingly into misery simply by exposing our vulnerabilities to each other.  

"Suffer love!  A good epithet! I do suffer love,

indeed, for I love thee against my will!"

  This may, in fact, be the worst kind of pain because there really is no recovery.  They say time heals all wounds and for some this may be true.  Time offers a healing salve over the scars of yesteryear and sooths the pain of memories long past.  The fact of the matter, however, is that the pain is still there; the wound is still there, though it has been covered by layer upon layer of time.  Some pain stands in constant danger of being revived, as though a wound  is reopened.