Sunday, June 10, 2012

In Waiting (a.k.a. My "Story")

We are always getting ready to live but never living. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
that bookmark I'd made had been there for quite a while already

I'm finally really reading the first book from the Dark Materials set my sweet Lionbear had sent me for my birthday... last year... (I know, shame on me) and have been loving it.

The fiery of the child Lyra is contagious, or at least intoxicating enough that I feel it awakens some old, sleeping fire hiding inside me. I feel like I've been living in Mrs. Coulter's flat, deluding myself that I'm undergoing preparation for a big adventure that I actually won't be included in. But instead of being deceived by a malevolent mother, I've been packing winter clothes and memorizing constellations as a game of pretend or as a way to procrastinate because I'm too damn scared, or have zero willpower to actually go North.

All my life has a rehearsal. My extensive extracurricular record in grade-high school made me feel like I've reserved a seat in greatness. That I've reserved a right to just let things happen to me in college. Well, turns out that college doesn't really bother much with delegation. In the same way that knowledge wasn't spoon-fed like it was in high school, tasks weren't either.

I only had to answer to my own planner, to tasks I wrote with my own hands.

In a big way this was liberating, and I admit I enjoyed being a wallflower very much. I would do my duties, but not very well and was less than eager to take on more than what is needed. I was rarely absorbed in my tasks but have found subtler sources of fulfillment that I maintain were just as valuable.

I instead became obsessed with lists, and positivity, and changing how I see things, and dreaming about the many things I could do now that I've been liberated from many limiting thoughts.

I would start some of them, but ultimately shift from one goal to another, so I didn't really get to build anything of importance on the outside. Be that as it may, I feel that I have expanded inside.

But this doesn't remove me from the fact that I haven't created much, and the things I did create were birthed from a very distracted, weak, hesitant and confused place. Like trying to douse a fire by letting a soft mist graze by the air around it.

At first I tried to tell myself that the pain came from denied pride, that I just no longer had the badges I once wore to assure me of my value, and I reassured myself that this was a good thing. I lost any desire to appear great to my peers. I stopped caring much about appearing talented or enigmatic. I did not want to make myself heavy with earthly attachments. But as the time passed, dreams were listed, hopes were hung, and the pain of having become a nobody apparently had never ceased completely and had caught my foot in the end. I felt that I failed in a way that I cannot deny any more. It was there when I looked around me, making me feel like my heart is being yanked to stand on its side. I couldn't understand it. Was it shame? Was it envy? But I can say now with much clarity: It was guilt.

By looking outside and deciding that there was much of very usual human things that I didn't want to take part of, I actually denied myself the joy of doing things I wanted to do. I became crippled by a strange fear that was so strong but very subtle that I couldn't even tell it was there. But I submit to forgive myself when I feel this guilt simply because at those times when it happened, I WAS crippled. And you can't blame a cripple for not joining a race.

But I willingly lost myself in observing the world. I crippled myself. I tried to be so small, so malleable, so invisible, that life could pass by like wind and I would remain unhurried, unworried, and unchanged. But sensitive and more aware of my inner being.

I'd done that, and I'd succeeded, but lost the ability to function with the world. I became as detached to the outside as I felt attached to the inside. And as I grow older and start to need my legs again to run with the tide, I'm then left wiggling myself through. In other words I honestly feel like I have no fucking idea what I'm doing.

Life inside my head is vivid, intricate. Everything makes sense one way or another. But once I need to express it, I become lost. I do not know how to function. I can dream the nicest dreams, plan the best plans, scheme nice strategies to make things work better for everyone, but I have nothing to show for it because I function quite horribly. I'm L A Z Y. What good are my dreams if I just sleep all the time?

So my youth was practice, and I did well. And college was a time for reflection, something crucial for endurance in prolonged activity, but I'd overdone my stay and missed so many opportunities (or at least that's how I feel when I compare myself to others, which is rarely a good idea)...

And each time I try to catch up, it was an effort to lunge forward, to do overdue things quickly and hastily to get to my intended state at this age.

In other words, my actions have betrayed my inner purpose, and the biggest lesson of all:

The present moment is all there is.

There are so many levels to this, so many ways you can swallow it, so many ways you can wear it, so I forgive myself for missing it one way or another when I need it, even when I've read it so many times.

The best way to deal with waiting is to get busy in it. This is a moment as good as any other.

imgsource: cafernon@deviantart


Be so very absorbed in creating greatness that you won't have any time to mourn the lack of it.

Waiting is only wasted time when you forget that you are in it, and therefore stand still.

If I should have one regret, after all of this wasted time, it would be that I didn't fully learn early enough how to enjoy myself. It's the core of all great things. Enjoyment is passion, excitement, and absorption in your tasks. But I'm still in the process of learning how to do that properly, and I'll be directly contradicting it if I even start considering regretting things.


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