In a flash.. out of the blue... suspecting nothing
Everything that one takes as "normal", as one’s own “ordinary life” can change in a second.
How many of we human beings, ever vulnerable to becoming damaged through accident, experiencing destruction, have thought that thought, and have discovered the absolute and disheartening truth of this? One second in time and everything has changed.
Then later in the first available moments of reflection think if only we could turn back the clock to any moment just before that life-changing second was upon us. How many of us have wished that totally impotent wish.. and thought that thought of longing and regret?
There is nothing we can do about it now. ..nothing but "stop the bleeding, clear the airway & treat for shock" and try to find our way away from some dreadful event that has occurred to us or our loved ones. Life has instantly become a battlefield.
Once the moment passes there is nothing anyone can do to go back. Life is always in forward motion. Nothing can turn back the moment now that the moment has passed and has become untouchable in the receding past. The damage is done. The damage is done. The damage is done.
The new reality has presented itself. Now what..?..
Later, when the pressures of the moment have subsided somewhat, then comes the regret. The regret lingers upon reflection of the destruction and by process begins to transform itself, into the inevitable (and unanswerable) question of “why me?”.
We humans need answers.
We need to make sense of everything.. "making sense" has become our de facto god.. that we may put everything directly into it’s properly understood and contained pigeonhole. Filed away. Known. Pinned down. Got a question? Well, here’s the answer. The un-known can be scary to both children and adults. Answers become our anchors, regardless of whether they are real or imagined.
Whatever it takes to achieve that needed sense of understanding such a little thing as “why me?”.
“I don’t know” is so unacceptable on so many levels.
But it is difficult, this little squeak in the dark.. that little question of “why me?”
For the religious-minded there is always an answer. ... It is written.. and one need only seek for a little while and something will pop-up to explain it all. Conflict is reconciled. We have our answers.
For the more philosophical/religious minded, the inner search for reconciliation of that conflict poised by “why me?” can be the greater struggle. Bad Happenings to me can easily equate to Bad Me... punishment for being a bad person. God must hate me. It makes sense. I am bad.
For the modern soul steeped in pop-philosophy (and psycho-babble) everything is a manifestation of sub-conscious programming... we create the circumstance leading up to the fall. It’s all our own fault. Everything is our own fault. We chose this event. It makes sense. Again translating to "me bad".
From my own equally biased, non-objective and always insufficient point of view.. well.. for me in my drive to make sense out of senselessness, sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar... and nothing more. For me, accidents can happen through no fault of anyone. We slip on banana peels and we bump into things or things into us.. for neither rhyme nor reason. Life can be a battleground of random booby traps.
But as well on the other side of the coin, sometimes darker forces of the unconscious do indeed set us up to be in a certain place, along with a certain attitude, that precipitates and is the source/cause of that damning second we have helped to create.
Sometimes.. but not always. Our lives are determined by both the randomness of event and our own unconscious behavior.
But how are we ever to tell anything? How are we ever to tell anything about our own personal dramas?
Which pigeon-holed file cabinet do we put our painful stuff into to give us that sensation of “it makes sense”? It is really all just random chance in a random reality? The good or the bad luck of the draw with absolutely nothing personal about it? Nothing personal about anything that happens to us?
or.. does everything we do.. everything that happens to any of us have deep, dark psychological motivators putting us into some vulnerable position to be whacked. To whack ourselves for indoctrinated sin.
Some would propose that there are no accidents in nature.. That everything that happens is brought to us as some kind of mystical, personal “learning tool”. Or penalty... that we are to blame for everything bad that ever happens to us. That everything we do (or not do) whose outcome is painful to us is directly attributable to our own guilt for past bad behavior... our sins.. our karma.. our stupidity.. our evilness... our lack of respect toward some Deity who is in charge of the punishment dept. whatever.
I did the crime.. and now I have to do the time. ..even though I don’t even know what the prior transgressions were, or even against who. again.. me bad. What else makes sense..
Answers are needed. Answers are our anchors no matter if they are real or imagined. Reconciliation that we may move on.
Well.. sometimes, and in my opinion and like the bumper sticker philosophy says, “shit happens”.
Sometimes a cigar.. really is just a cigar... and can be filed away into the heavily stuffed (or nearly empty) “cigar” cubby. Stuff, both good and bad, happens all the time through neither merit nor fault of our own.
The sequential nature of Time
(or, if only I could turn back the clock)
How many years have I wondered about this... this sequencing of discernible events in one’s own personal life which create for each of us, our time and inseparably so, our life. One thing, one moment leads directly into the next. The dots connect and we have an aware sense of this forward-movement (we call “time”) as we go through the day (and night). It is always there, this sense of sequencing events. This flow of time. One need only to quiet the “drunken monkey” mind and then focus attention upon one’s own breathing to clearly get a sense of the creation of time...the flow of time.. each breath is a kind of “step forward” in our own dot-connecting.. our own sequencing duration.. our own time and our own journey.
Many, more philosophically oriented than myself, would argue that there is no such thing as time. That time is one of the great illusions we have created.. a program installed into our psyches.. a trick of our own nature.
From a greater vantage point all of that could possibly be true. How am I to know such a thing?
Still.. illusion or not, most all of us do feel a sense-of-duration as the sky above lightens upon us in the morning, the days flows by and then, in a kind of flowing breath-like sequencing begins diminishing into the darkness of night and a repeat of the whole grand play again tomorrow. This swinging of some vast mechanical-like “pendulum”, the life of which we also are a fully integrated and rhythmic part of, is felt.
Between the one thing (point A, as Patti so put it) and the other thing (point B) is that continuing, sensation of duration.. of ever-ongoing events happening to us, but mainly unnoticed as we sequence between infinite event (and breath) that compose our day, our lives, our big journey through this world.
But then.. bang! somewhere between points on our little, personal “time map” an event occurs that demands to be noticed, and everything else takes a backseat.
We have gotten hurt... broken.. whacked again.
If only we could turn back the clock...
.. we could then change just the slightest little thing in our own personal sequence leading up to the event that created our hurt... and thus avoid it.
Long have I fascinated about the “butterfly effect” theory and how it applies to my own personal drama. ..and to the drama of those closest to me.
Change something, change anything in the line of time leading up the hurtful event and the possibility of dodging-the-bullet is clearly seen.
Patti and I accidentally left in our motel room a little stuffed animal that we had brought along with us on our trip. An hour after leaving our motel and having put on a good 50 miles down the road, it flashed on me while I was driving that we forgotten it. The little stuffed guy had significance to us and thus for a moment we questioned whether to turn back and get it.
But that meant losing 2 hours of drive time.. backtracking which both Patti and I are loathe to do when we travel.
In hindsight.. if we had returned to fetch our little forgotten friend.. we would not have journeyed out to the state park to have our dinner. It would have too late. We would not have walked down by the lake.. nor taken the path up to the resort restaurant.. Patti would not have slipped on those little white rocks. Everything.. EVERYTHING would be changed from what is now.
We human beings do this.. we look back and we can see after the fact the many places in our own time/event line that if only we would have done this or not done that sometimes little thing, then everything would have turned out different.
If only....
I suspect that everyone who is still reading this (surely there be one or two of you who have made it this far ;-) has done this in reference to your own pain.
Andrea.. you with all kinds of broken stuff.. cousin Dick.. you who were blinded in one eye by some stupid act with a BB gun.. Nancy.. kicked in the face and wrist by a horse.. Sheila with your “borken knee”.. daughter with your Titanium rod and screws in your spine.. Debbi with your recently snapped wrist.. Margaret with your broken knee and fractured rib (we told you to let me help you get out of that kayak!).. Bob with both hips replaced.. myself being star-banged in the nose with a baseball.. motorcycle down... Lyse with your recent flirting with death from a simple (and botched) toncilectomy.
I would venture to say that any of you reading this have been whacked in one way or another.. bones broken.. hearts and spirits broken. ..
If only, we could have sensed just a tiny little glimpse of what was about to happen to us in this casual sequencing of events, we could have made some totally minor adjustment in our behavior, or our attitude, or our direction and everything would have turned out differently.
Sometimes I think there are no real answers to anything, only the ones we make up to help us reconcile our conflicts of the soul. We pays our nickel and we takes our chance... and as often as not, there is no one to really blame... least of all in blaming ourselves. Shit happens. Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do for ourselves is just to let it go at that.
There are questions that just cannot be honestly answered. Senseless things that cannot be made sense of. Conflicts that cannot be reconciled. .. and anchors that cannot be held onto, not even for dear life.
