lifepath

I just finished watching a documentary called 5 Girls. The doc follows five teen girls who are experiencing life and dealing with finding their place in this world (specifically the USA, Chicago-area) as females. It was interesting, but dredged up a pain.

When I was in high school, it was expected that I'd go to college afterward. I wasn't a first-generation college student and not attending college wasn't an option. During my junior year, I applied to the college I wanted to go to more than anything in the world: Hampton University.

I got accepted. In case I hadn't gotten accepted, I had also applied to other HBCUs that would do in a pinch. I got accepted to all of them, as well. When my mother made a fuss about me attending the colleges I wanted to go to (none of them were acceptable to her, although she, my father, and my father's side of the family had all attended HBCUs), I applied to colleges in Chicago, thinking I could stay at home and still go to school. That option held some appeal because I was scared of leaving home. I had no idea how to take care of myself.

My mother, being who she was, made sure I understood that she would not help me get into any of the universities I wanted to attend. She forced me to go to Purdue University and I went because I had a problem. I honestly didn't know how to lead a self-directed life. I didn't know how to live outside of my head.

Because of that single decision, her decision to disallow me my dreams, my life has taken on fractures. I'm not saying I haven't been happy. I have. I have enjoyed life in spite of the fact that when I needed support the most, it was kept from me. I was taught to be afraid of life, to not go after what I want in life, and to take what's handed to me, whether or not it's good for me.

Those are difficult lessons to unlearn.

It's taken me about fifteen years, but I think I finally know how to support myself, regardless of environment. I can go through the motions, anyway. But, deep inside, I'm still very unsure of where I'm going or what I'm doing. Inside, I still feel like that eighteen year old girl who needed more than her environment was willing to give.

Watching that documentary caused me to wonder how my life would have been different if my mother had encouraged and supported my dreams. How would my life have been different if I hadn't grown accustomed to being dominated and controlled by outside forces?

Because I don't ever want my children to experience the pain of an unsupportive parent, I argue with their father. But, that pain is there, anyway. There's nothing I can do about it, now. The time to control that was pre-conception. Now, all I can do is support them in their dreams and let them know that I will always be here to help them.

And, what if that's still not enough?

what's your story?

We all have a story. Or, rather, many stories.

We tell ourselves things about what we’re going through, what we think of other people, how we should live our lives, how we would live our lives if only…

Lots and lots of stories.

Sometimes, I sit and wonder what life would be like if there were no stories. If I just lived in the Now and behaved as if the Past and the Future didn’t exist, how would my life be different? What would change within me? What would change outside of me?

I sit and I wonder and an answer comes to me. What would change? Nothing. Because the fact is that I’m not as significant as I like to tell myself. I say that I do such-and-such because I choose to do it, but what if such-and-such is choosing to get accomplished through me? What if I’m not the one in control?

I like to think I’m a servant of Life. It’s possible I only exist to be used. Some say we are only here so that Source can experience itself. I believe that. And, because I believe that, I agree that nothing we do is horrible. But, that doesn’t mean it lacks meaning. That doesn’t mean it lacks significance. It is inherently significant because it happens at all. Simultaneously, it is inherently insignificant because the purpose is simply to exist. To be. And, that means that no matter what happens, the situation and outcome are acceptable.

I could be wrong. After all, this is a story. And, what if there is no such thing as non-fiction?

true or false?

Truth.

Is there such a thing as truth? There are facts, but truth is often subjective. We often pit truth against falsity and fact against fiction, as if they mean the same thing, but they do not. Not inherently.

All truths are not facts. I can say so-and-so is a nice person. That may be true, but it is not necessarily a fact. It can't be proven. I can give many instances to use as proof, but "nice" is an idea and a concept and, hence, can't be quantified in a way that we can use it to describe anything with absolute certainty.

So much of life is opinion. I often wonder why we bother to pretend we know anything at all. Today, someone told me, "Electrons exist is actually true." Is it? We call them electrons, but what if that is wrong? Or, what if we allow ourselves to see things that are not there just to prove our existence to ourselves?

When I first watched The Matrix, I loved it. (As most existentialists probably did.) I found the posits quite common-sense. Someone had finally made a movie that mattered. However, the more you figure out, the more questions there are. The Matrix has now become a part of human subconscious, on many levels. People wander around telling others to get out of the matrix. Kinda like people used to go around telling others to think carefully before taking the red or blue pill. It's not that these ideas are new, but some of us now have a clearer visual for them and more folks feel comfortable expressing their understanding of those thoughts.

But, the film leaves a lot to be desired (and I won't even bother thinking about it's sequels). For instance, if they were in the matrix before, once they're unplugged, how do they know they're not in another matrix? B/c it makes no sense for robots to be controlling folks like that. What matrix is behind the matrix? There is always one, right? How can we know (or not know, as the case may be)?

That's the problem with knowing. Or claiming to know. Because you can't ever really know. You can simply think you know. That frustrates many people and it causes us to create all sorts of beliefs.

But, isn't it highly likely that none of this is real and there is no such thing as fact? The thing about living is that it demands trust. You must trust that there is a reason, grand concept, something behind life or you find yourself wondering why you're living.

And, what if you're only living because you've yet to choose to die?

in the Now

I remember when I constantly lived in Fear, but it seems lifetimes ago. I remember when it was so easy for me to conjure feelings of anger and resentment. I remember it much in the same way I remember being an infant; I know it happened, but I can't really tell you what it was like.

Every day, I practice being truer to myself than I was in the past. I don't frame it that way in my mind, but that's obviously what I'm doing. I'm improving and improving and improving and due to the improvements, I've improved.

I've become someone I really admire and like. This is very helpful when I have my more insecure and sad thoughts, because I'm able to relinquish the more negative self-talk quickly due to the fact that I know those thoughts aren't my prevailing reality. As a result, I haven't been truly depressed this year. Maybe that doesn't seem like long, but when you've struggled with depression for 20 years or so, going six-seven months without a serious bout of it feels triumphant. Yes, I've felt sadness. Waves of it that lasted for a few days. But, no depression.

I try not to think too much about the Past. After all, it's over. At the end of each day of my life (around bedtime), I usually mentally go thru the day and make sure I've extracted the lessons I feel I would expect myself to have learned. If there is anything I need to think more on, I put it at the fore of my mind and resolve to think more about it later. I fall asleep thinking about why I'm unsettled by whatever it is I need to think about further and conversing with whomever it is that converses with me in those moments, shedding light on things and not allowing me a moment's self-deception.

Rarely, I'll awaken agitated. But, when I do, I know I need to do more introspection, more forgiveness, more putting-down-of-fear. And, it feels good to go thru this. Perhaps my mother was right: I'm a masochist.

But, this is how I know how to live in the Now. This is how I know how to take the Past, learn from it, and leave it in the Past, where it belongs. There was a time when I could not figure out how to separate the Past and the Now. There was a time when I lived for the Future, because the Past/Now felt so overwhelming.

No more.

I have to be firm with myself. When a thought pops up that may lead to sadness and delusion, I have to tell it to get out. When it won't leave, I have to practice Pranayama, recite mudras, reverberate Om throughout my head. This has not simply happened to me, this ability to stay in the Now and hence, the lack of depression. I work at it constantly. It is my job. My life depends upon it and I treat it as such.

There are really only two things I give this level of commitment to: living in the Now and Motherhood. I look at everything as Practice and there are some things I haven't practiced, yet, because I have found it more difficult to stay in the Now and do them at the same time (like be in an intimate, sexual relationship). Since staying in the Now takes priority at this point in my life, I've consciously released opportunities to practice those things. Over the weekend, I began an attempt at holding that against me, but then I remembered that I will have many more opportunities for that Practice. I'm in no rush.

I think. I mull. I analyze. Those are my constants, and so, every opportunity for Practice that I pass up is used as an opportunity to rehearse what that opportunity will look like in the Future. This helps build my confidence as I'm the sort of person who feels most comfortable when she can see the Past, Present, and Future simultaneously.

All of this happens in the Now. There is no other time for it to happen. And, because every Now is another moment's Past and another moment's Future, I am able to keep a wonderfully forgiving perspective on Life. Mine, in particular.

Sometimes, it amazes me how even the Past and Future are happening in the Now.