Look out 'cause here I come

We are trying to consolidate, clean-up, and generally organize all of our stuff.  I came across some boxes that had "memory" things in them, you know, like old letters, cards we saved, etc.  Danielle even found the dress she wore in her junior high's production of Little Shop of Horrors.  She tried it on and it fit, so she left it on for a while she sorted her stuff.

Eventually I found a box within a box that had my old writings.  I've spent the time since then trying to process some of the things I've found.  I have been embarrassed of them, proud of them, nostalgic for a time when I felt creatively productive; I really have run through a lot of feelings in attempts to reconcile the me now with the me then.  The same thing happened with this blog: I feel exposed, but to whom?  There is nothing wrong with writing, nothing wrong with putting feelings to paper and expressing oneself.  And I would tell everyone to try it.  But when I see my own attempts, it's embarrassing!  Even more bizarre is that I'm embarrassed for myself, to myself.  No one else is judging or likely even reading.

It's like my ego wants to decide that we shouldn't hang out with that 19 year old kid who was madly in love and questioned God and swore his allegiance to his girlfriend of 15 months if "God allows us to be together."  Twenty years later, I am trying to distance myself from that "me" but cannot figure out why.  I mean, I know why:  the writing is juvenile, the author immature.  The writing is earnest but shrouded in metaphor and religious undertones that confuse.  It's a journal but clearly meant to be read by an audience.  An author seeking an audience is pitiful.

I wonder if that's part of my current discomfort:  I know how those written prayers were/weren't answered.  I know how the story finishes.  I know that kid doesn't end up with that girl.  I know that praying for redemption because "this time I slipped and let Satan win" doesn't work.  I have seen how that chapter ends, and how the subsequent chapters end, and though the book is still being written some of the conceits that guided that author then eventually fall apart.  The scribblings in the margins of the looseleaf notebook that point to the Judeo-Christian God and ask Him questions eventually become just scribblings.

So maybe the discomfort comes from wondering if the time was wasted or misdirected?  What worries me more is that I'm judging me as an artist, as someone who earnestly was trying, and years of trying to be cool has taught me that earnestness isn't cool.  People who are earnest are suckers.  Unless you can turn and wink at the camera saying, "I know, isn't this all lame!" then you aren't cool. IT'S SUCH A FLAWED MINDSET but I can totally see myself slipping into it.

One of the smarter instructors I had in nursing school for Human Growth and Development quoted someone as saying "there is nothing more shameful than the phase we've just grown out of."   What I do when I judge me, though, is rob myself of the now.  If I am projecting how I will interpret myself 5, 10, 20 years in the future, I am taking from the me today the opportunity to be fully human.  The experience of consciousness includes earnestness, joy, shame; all of it.  And I cannot let myself be dampened by people's perception of me ESPECIALLY IF THAT PERSON IS ME.

Physiologically every cell in my body has been replaced since I wrote some of those things, seemingly I am a "new" person anyway. Somehow, some way, the undying light that is "me" continues on.  The mind that is judging me (past, present, and future) doesn't work, though, and is flawed.  It serves to protect itself, advance itself, and exists for itself.  And in this instance, it is working against the "me" that wrote those things.  The same me that writes these things.

I don't entirely know how to not be embarrassed by the younger me, but I sure as hell admire his devotion, and passion, and ability to keep creating.  I wish I could tell him that the relationship ends but that eventually he'll meet an amazing girl and marry her and have three amazing children and that maybe he'll find out God is dead or maybe God is alive but he shouldn't worry about his emotional response.  He should feel those things because earnestness is cool and it's more shameful to have attempted to curate an image based on fear than to have lived and experienced it all.

The me that wrote was young and naive and immature.  So what?  It should read as this: "The me that wrote/writes was/is conscious.  I am conscious.  I am."

Get back to where you once belonged

I've been meditating every morning before I do anything else.  It's an interesting thing.  Every session I've done has been guided with the assistance of either Insight Timer or Headspace.  If I were just to set a timer and sit I have a suspicion my mind would capitalize on the silence and perseverate.  Some times I'm shocked at how quickly the time passes and other times I'm fighting to maintain any sense of focus (or non-focus, depending on how you look at it).  But I don't feel like it's taking anything away from my day and it does seem to help set a tone for the day, a tone of intentionality.

One thing I've been working on this week is viewing my kids as their own creatures.  It's stupid to view them as my agents, or as working against me or for me in the flow of life.  I'll probably murder this quote, but I heard this week that we don't look at a tree and get angry at it for leaning a certain way or being more green on one side, we just accept it.  And yet I can't do that with my children.  They are like those trees, leaning or tilting one way and if my reaction is to stifle that growth, it will likely frustrate me and them.  I'm not sure how this translates to day-to-day life and the very real fact that "we are running 15 minutes late and why don't you even have your underwear on yet because I know for a fact you were wearing it 30 minutes ago?!?" but directing mindfulness towards that just might result in less of a stress response, less of a panicky feeling, less of an anger response that could damage who we are as a little community.  In any case, I feel it's worthy of an attempt.

Still reading "Power of Now."  Ordered Ram Dass' "Be Here Now" which maybe I'm not ready for and will stumble into later.  Despite my best attempts to intellectualize this process, I'm trying to just accept it as it is.