I have been spending a great deal of time with myself lately. Lost in thoughts and scenery and songs. Driving about 1300 miles in the last few days, I have had a lot of time to reflect and to obsess, a little. Really more thinking productively about my life and how I show up for it, and how I don’t. Alone driving time really becomes a moveable inventory for me. I am just there with the open road, God and my thoughts (words in moveable form).
It occurred to me yesterday while driving across New Brunswick, Canada how much power words carry. Whether they are spoken, or just ricocheting around in your mind, the basis for thought, language, really creates whatever reality we live in, or don’t.
For the most part the words that rattle and hum around my skull are pleasant. Gone are the days when the harshness of them, the wretched agony of my own thoughts plagued me so. I guess this still does happen from time to time, but mostly they are more docile now, more palatable. And so, since my thoughts are subdued, so therefore, are my actions.
Words create realities in my life, as do the words of others. I was thinking about how very often I am destroyed by the word spoken by another. And just as often how much I am lifted by them. Right now I am struggling with them, words always coming so easily for me, escaping me now. It is like I have lost all organization of my thoughts, the inner workings of my mind, jumbled, out of sorts and confused. I long for something I can’t quite place my finger on...
So all this driving and singing and viewing the passing landscapes has left me somewhat bereft of intention. What am I doing here? What is the purpose of my living? What am I supposed to do now with myself that my children are almost grown and need me so very little? I feel torn, and honestly, a little more than lost.
The words landing for me right now are unkind. Purposeless. Aging. Death. Invisibility. I fear what is coming. I try to cover that over with lots of bravado and immaturity but honestly, I am afraid of growing old. I know that growing up is another matter entirely and perhaps I shall never reach that milestone. I mean I have studiously avoided it thus far...
Words, the building blocks of thoughts, and the origin of all behavior. The systemic elopement of the internal reality married up with the ever evolving external reality, creating life as we know it.
And if I am honest, I am afraid. Of what I will become and all that I will not. I listened the other day to the first podcast I ever did, the only one I ever did, and was amazed at how great it was. And then was immediately sad that that was almost three years ago and I just abandoned that project and subsumed myself in him. So much of my life placed on hold attempting to find the intimacy I crave, but that so terrifies me.
I am not sure what I am doing with this life. I mean, I am doing my best, of that I am sure. But this solo trip has shown me how very much being with others challenges me. I want the connection but I fear it all the same. I do not know how to connect. I truly do not. So the words echoing in my mind the past few days are getting louder and harder to avoid. They taunt me, “what is wrong with you?” “Why are you like this?” “Why can’t you be different?”
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
One of the things I avoid in my routine life is questions, word salads such as this. I get up and do my thing and my interiority is mostly pleasant. But when I get away from all I know and love, my mind shifts into a lower gear, and the tsunami of words, thoughts, ideas, beliefs and feelings takes over. It is like the routine maintenance of daily life keeps me operating just above the hum of rank and file daily living. I am not plagued with doubts about my own abilities, my desirability, my attractiveness on a spiritual level, I am consumed with the tasks of daily living so there is little time to reflect upon how very afraid I am of love, intimacy, death and unfulfilled dreams.
But here, out in the middle of nowhere, and I really do mean out in the middle of nowhere...currently I sit in a geodesic dome on the edge of water, moonlight streaming in, some sort of bird calling in the distance. I can hear the crack of the fire. The slow whirling sound of the heater blowing. And the words flow through me onto the screen feeling foreign, untenable and untamed. All the wild that surrounds me releases in my thoughts and words a feral unfurling that I am not quite sure I will be able to contain as I move forward.
I do not know what I am doing. And I am not sure I will survive it. I know, that sounds dramatic, but I mean it. I guess what I am really saying is that the power of words thought and spoken alters lives forever. Mine included. And while I am have no desire to stop living, I do find myself a bit lost on what to say and whom to say it to these days. So much of my life upended and in a state of flux.
I trust the process. I know that in order to rebuild, redirect and reorient oneself, one must go a little mad, a little over the edge. And I also know I have likely taken up more than my share of madness.
I guess I am owning that I do not have it all figured out. I do not know what I am doing, and my internal dialogue these past few months has been unkind, hard, and exhausting. But this trip has freed something up in me, a resounding lack of care about those things for which I am usually unusually occupied with and about. There is great freedom on the open road, to think new thoughts and allow seldom uttered words to have a more lasting impact.
I endeavor to allow the words of love and heart and soul and sky and earth their rightful place within the confines of my mind. Crowding out, hopefully, all the doubt, insecurity and fear that tends to reside there most of the time. I desire, truly, desire with all that I am, to be here, to love well, to embrace the life I have and to live it to its fullest. To own the gifts given me for the brevity of my life, however long that might be. To do the internal work to allow the words that organically spring into existence in my mind and heart and soul to be kind, graceful, honest and true. No matter what might be uttered by others. Sometimes I think this is an overly ambitious task...but then again, there are moments where I know that all this uncertainty and doubt are the seeds for a better future for me and all I encounter. I cannot be afraid of the words that challenge. They too have their rightful place in this life.
Again, still...
Moonlight self portrait...
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