Keeping the Dream

Now that’s the million dollar question…or in today’s economy, trillion dollar.

Next to, “Who am I?”, “What is our purpose?” is the big question.

I remember in my youth, as early as preschool, and a good deal into my adult years, pondering that question. I still ask it every now and then today…but the answer I seek is decidedly different in nature and less urgent these days.

There was an excerpt from Sylvia Plath’s, “The Bell Jar” that struck me to the core when I first read it. Chapter 7 (formatting changed for ease of blog reading):

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.

One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

I was afraid I’d be like that, and in some ways I was. But I did manage to find a way to develop certain skills in specific areas, some through choice, others through necessity, and found a niche for myself despite my indecisions.

I’ve stopped looking at life as it were some big multiple choice test with right and wrong answers, and made friends with my imagination that can dream up of more options that I will ever have enough years to live.

When I was younger, the question of my purpose encompassed not only my place in the universe, but what career choices I should make. But I see now they are only extraneous to the real issue. When you understand the question, then everything else attached to it becomes less important, in and of themselves, because you see they are only in service of something greater.

To me, the answer to the question “Why am I here?” is no longer a cornucopia of choices. There’s only one answer - To love.

Don’t roll your eyes, it’s true.

When I remember this, every encounter becomes an opportunity to find some way to express love. It may be opening one’s heart or closing a door. It may be extending yourself or drawing your boundaries, but everything - everything is an opportunity, a request to love.

This really makes a big difference to me, because instead of becoming frantic over losing time to “get it right”, get the training, make the career moves, locate to the right place, each and every present moment is just where I need to be to live my life’s purpose. I don’t need a degree or a new job to do that.

From that perspective, I can make whatever choices I need to make to affect the shape and form of my reality. Even if the details of my life are not what I want, at the moment, the heart of it can be true to its purpose - my life’s purpose. There is no waste, just a journey where love is expressed through one form or another.

And that’s what will remain after we “retire”…from our jobs or our lives.

I’m sorry I didn’t post yesterday. I missed it. I’ve really come to look forward to sitting here on a daily basis. It’s become a lovely daily ritual, and it just doesn’t feel right when I skip a day.

Yesterday was a day of preparation. In just a little over an hour, I pick up my nephew. We have a special relationship, he and I. I was his mom’s sister…still am, as far as I’m concerned, and she was the world to him. We see her in each other.

I look at him and remember how much she adored him, how hard she fought to stay here.

He was seven when she passed away.

You know, when she died, in trying to explain why, a spiritual teacher of hers said to her husband, “She wanted to give you the highest.” And through my grief and tears a resounding thought came through - What a crock!

Death had to drag her out of her body, and there’s no doubt in my mind Death has a few extra scars to show for it.

Few people would fight so tenaciously, cling to life even when one of her own doctors was telling her to quit, because he couldn’t stand to see the pain she was in. A doctor, no doubt, who has seen a lot.

It was hard to witness. But she said she made a promise to her son that she would do whatever she could to stay. And she did. Way beyond what anyone would think possible.

I suppose it’s comforting to think that when something you don’t want happens, it’s for a good reason…or was meant to be. But it isn’t to me, and it especially isn’t when it doesn’t honor the real passion or discount the tremendous effort that person put into attaining something…and failed.

My sister did not want to go. She didn’t want to suffer either. There was no grand purpose in it for her. And she never would have broken her son’s heart for anything. I was with her as she was losing her battle. I held her hand, climbed into the hospital bed at times, to hold her as she was wracked with pain. I know why she put herself through that. It was to stay long enough for the tide to turn. It didn’t.

What she was was true to herself all the way to the end. That is the inspiration in this story.

Not some hyped up explanation as to some cosmic purpose.

I don’t know why she had to die at this time. Even that statement implies there has to be a reason for everything. Maybe that blank needs to be filled in by us. It goes without saying there’s a lot I don’t understand, especially where suffering is concerned. I don’t understand why my sister died to not see her son grow up and my abusive father lived to have another set of kids.

But I still believe in Justice, even though it doesn’t always manifest here. And I still believe in Grace, even though it’s sometimes absent in the lives of those who deserve it the most.

There is no greater way I can honor my sister than to not become disillusioned.

My not understanding doesn’t determine my belief in hope or in something better or more than what we see. But that doesn’t mean I invalidate the experience of the suffering or pretend that what is clearly unjust and sad isn’t, just because it doesn’t fit into what I need to believe.

So no, I can’t tell you in the great scheme of things, why my sister died. But I can tell you what reason she didn’t die for. She didn’t die because she was in cahoots with some cosmic plan to express some noble idea of love as sacrifice, or because suffering and early death is the mark of a truly great soul.

If achieving that stature required the breaking of a child’s heart, never mind her son’s, she would have been content to enter heaven as the lowliest one.

Cancer took her, when she didn’t want to go. She never would have abandoned her son…and she didn’t.

If I have anything to do with it, he will know that.

I light this candle for my sister
and her beautiful son.

(To light your candle click on the icon)

I’m writing a series on the healing journey on my relational aggression blog.

The healing journey is really similar in principle in all types of situations. I describe these steps that worked for me in the context of relational aggression, but you can apply them to any type of wounding or abuse.

I posted the introduction yesterday and step 1 today. Hope you can check it out when you have time.

A dear woman I know was crying over the loss of her beloved dog. As she wept, she said her heart was broken, her soul was broken. As she spoke, I saw a garden, her garden that she lovingly works in from the beginning of spring through the late fall. I saw the earth broken up, split in two, dark and rich.

“When you plant”, I said, “don’t you break the earth?”

“Yes”, she replied.

“And then you can plant your rose bushes and your ferns, and out of this broken earth comes a beautiful garden…you are being prepared, too. Right now, you are like the broken earth. Let what you feel open you up…”

It’s hard, but we don’t need to see the plant in full bloom to trust the process and to have faith in the seed or the tender plant that will not only survive, but thrive.

And knowing this, we don’t have to dry our eyes any earlier than we want to. Because we know it will be all right. We trust that time will be our friend and that even if things will never be the same, we will look for the good, for the beauty in the many ways it can come to us.

And we will not miss what may be there to find.

There’s planting to be done, even now…especially now, when the days grow shorter. There’s planting in us, our dreams and visions, even if it’s the dream of being able to dream, some day, once again.

Well, yesterday I upgraded the version of this blog and my relational aggression blog, and wound up messing up the email feature on both blogs. I stayed up most of the night - literally -last night and spent almost all day trying to find answers, which is pretty hard when you’re not even sure what you’re asking.

But after much vigilance and experimenting with altering codes and finally settling on one of two plugins I experimented with, not only do I have email notification and password retrieval working again, but I think it’s improved.

So if you had trouble logging in or never got your password when you registered, please, give it a try again.

I plan on adding some more features in the next few weeks. I want to have fun

A most remarkable video. What I like most about this is what he has to say about the importance of creativity, with no small amount of wit and charm. Though he focuses on education for children, Sir Ken Robinson is really talking about that creative part in all of us, and the value we place on it - a wonderful perspective, and gentle, yet urgent, nudge…

(If you have trouble viewing it here, just click on the link right below and it will take you to the site, itself…but it’s worth watching all the way through)

TED | Talks | Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? video

I love this movie, The Neverending Story…haven’t been able to stomach the sequels, though I only saw the second and part of another one. But this first movie touched me deeply from the time I first saw it and each time afterward.

Do you remember the scene where the young boy, Atreyu, is trudging through the Swamps of Sadness?

Their danger lies not in their quicksand, but in their ability to fill you with so much apathy and depression you don’t care if you sink.

When I’m at work, I’ll sometimes turn on the television if I’m doing general maintenance type stuff - nothing requiring my full attention or energy. Because I don’t watch too often, the constant theme of narcissistic self indulgence and psychopathic sickness is really overwhelming.

I’m not desensitized to it by a daily intake of it and it’s like ingesting something not good for you for the first time…until you get used to it…and then crave it. The poor scripts, the gratuitous, graphic violence…

And then I think of the children who are placed in front of this day in and day out, to where they spend more time being fed this kind of poison than interacting with real people, including their own parents.

Is that the neverending story we want to perpetuate? Is there not something more we want to give to our children…to our selves?

What about the stories passed down from generation to generation, when storytellers were born and made within each community? Not that there was never violence in those stories, but people were a part of the story, your life one thread of the fabric woven into the story even as it was being told.

I don’t know, but I think if a story is going to be neverending, I want to take a little more responsibility in penning it.

I mean, isn’t that what we’re here for?