Going...Going...Gone

Soul Searching
I’ve been busy. Busy finding out what I’m made of. When I was fifteen, I looked in the mirror and said, “Who are you and what are you going to be? Why are you here?” Now, at forty-eight, I look in the mirror and ask the same question. The difference, thirty-three years, and the backside of youth. I know I’m not old, but I’m standing on the far side of fifteen and still wondering.

I have learned some things, but it’s only recently. Or, maybe I should say I learned them, but stored them in my subconscious somewhere and am just now taking them out, turning them over, really looking at them and beginning to understand. I think those of us who mature into an understanding of life, mature at different times. I’m a late bloomer. I’m only now really maturing into any kind of conscious knowledge of what life is about. I’ve spent most my life without real, inner character. I wallowed, wallowed in self-pity because life didn’t treat me the way I wanted. Or, refused to play because all things did not turn out the way I wanted. You can’t just live life expecting things to always be happy, always turn out the way you want. Sometimes when you get what you want, someone else loses out.

God finally had to take me away, away from everything and everyone and make me look at this imaginary person called me. “Look,” he said, “look and see and change. Stop looking for everyone else to do the hard work and you do it. If they never change, what’s that got to do with you?” He made me look by taking all away and by that, I mean removed me from distractions that would take my attention from the lesson he was teaching me. Removed me from my kids, mother, friends, until it was only me alone with him because I could turn nowhere else.

The hard part is, being big enough to do it. Pushing away the false layers that have built up over time through hurt and pride and anger and disillusionment and getting down to the core of the individual. It’s hard to take off the rose-colored glasses and get down to the issue of what has been covered for so long. There’s far more to life than just us, ourselves, but isn’t that how people operate, everything is about me and what I want?

When you get your eyes focused on the right things, self seems so unimportant. What’s happened to character and ethics? The worlds a harsh teacher. The world is people so maybe I should say people are harsh teachers. If we follow nature and watch the proper order of things, it all balances out, but people have upset the balance and wonder why it doesn’t spin as it should.

The balance of self and giving has been disrupted. Self wins hands-down and we push and shove for what we think is ours or our right leaving disaster in every direction and wonder what happened or why it all fell apart. To a few of us, this matters. To most of us, it doesn’t. Just give me mine and worry about your own. How foolish! Doesn’t anyone understand we’re all intertwined, that life depends on life, and we depend on nature? Where does gold and silver come from? Where do rain and sun and animals come from? Man acts as if they created these things. What man does is take and never gives back. And, why do they do it? Lack of character. Lack of honesty. Lack of ethics. Lack of anything except greed.

I stood on top of Pikes Peak once, long ago. Very small and very in awe of the knowledge that in the realm of bigger things, I didn’t count, that in the glory and all the splendor that spread out before me, I was just a tick in time that would pass on with the next sunset or sun rise, but the mountain would go on with it’s ageless wisdom forever. And I stood at the summit of a great volcano and understood that though we can claim to be all, we are nothing in the power of the earth. And again, when in the midst of a tornado with its mighty winds ripping and tearing and swirling, I survived to live another day, I knew a power much mightier than a human hand, or mind, or thought.

Yes, I’ve been learning, but only now is it all coming together because I’ve been too busy with what I perceived to be real. I know now that what is real, is life and love and soft kittens, and flowers and a dog at your feet and laughter and home and family and friends and anything beyond that is a gift of the highest order.