Crossroads - An English Comedy
Let me set the stage. My daughter came to me last night in tears. “I don’t want you and mommy to get a divorce.” Her mother angry with me had said something about divorce to her. There had been a painful dialog between mother and daughter about telling lies. I had intervened, a real no-no, by asking my daughter if she was afraid. When I did so she broke and into tears, but then articulated her fear beautifully. When this did not move her mother, I intervened again, “What is more important to you this idea or your crying daughter?” Bad, very bad. In the end, things are better, maybe good between mother and daughter, and not so much better between spouses.
I feel myself at a crossroads; from here, so many things could change. I’m so confused about what to do with my life that it makes me want to puke. Work, marriage, and children all pull at my fabric. Tiredness and body pain are also weighing heavily on my ability to just plow through. My ten-year-old daughter is the only person I truly feel any obligation too, but the truth is I have no idea what is best for her. I would very much enjoy successfully supporting my wife and two sons to live their lives fully, and this is true for a number of close friends, but there is no sense of obligation. [I get stuck trying to write about this, a sure sign that I am resisting something.] I feel that I must sort this out and choose by some prioritization of importance, but then I am faced with the feeling, almost certain knowledge, that life will not cooperate with my little idea of importance. The thing is, I have been hanging out at this junction for a while.
OK, now I am trying to escape into metaphor about life and I can’t do that because even before I can put something down I realize it is not quite true.
Here is something I wish to share with my daughter:
Life is like a movie. You are on stage. The movie may be a drama, a comedy, and sometimes a tragedy, but don’t take it too seriously, don’t believe it is true or false. Here is the trick; you are the costume, not the actor. The one looking through your eyes is the actor. These things, your body, your feelings, your mind, the whole world you see, taste and touch, are the actor’s props. The actor is the unseen and unspeakable, the nothing that lies behind and looks through your eyes, smells with your nose, and touches with your fingers. You are free to live this life joyously no matter the circumstances because you are that one, looking through the eyes. You are in the miracle we call life and you are free to be with it however you choose. You cannot lose. You and I are the same; we are costumes for the Unnamable Unborn One.
I can see that this will become my message to her. I don’t know how I will deliver it. It may come out in pieces. I will not try to stuff it down the throat, god knows that doesn’t work - irony intended.
When did this happen to me? When did I wake up? Was it a few weeks ago, or thirty years? Maybe I was never asleep. It is so easy to forget, to not trust one's deepest truth. Here on the holodeck things can get very confusing. Two years ago, I could not have used any of these words to talk about myself. Now I am immersed in this as truth. Who would have thought?
Of course, awake or not parts of the drama are in a difficult to resolve state. Does the actor drop the job that he has been looking for for years and go back to consulting and money? I had not had juice on the job for such a long time, and until Friday I was really enjoying the juice. It was an unexpected turn to fail; a total surprise actually. I mean the part where these people decided that removing me from my position was remotely a good idea. It is really quite strange; it shows that they are operating from an entirely different set of beliefs than the ones I operate from. I see from here that life has cemented the lesson that everyone’s “truth” is different. How about the marriage that is not working, do I drop that? I miss my sons. Sometimes I think that I should leave my marriage and set up a situation where they can go to school, but then I realize that it would not work either. [He laughs to self with the realization that “life works” is a complete myth, the great shared lie.] So, that is it really, I will persevere for now and let others make the choices, just like I have for most of the last two years.
The actor looks bewildered on the set. What will happen next? It is then that the watcher says oh no, “this is an English comedy!”
redslime
I feel myself at a crossroads; from here, so many things could change. I’m so confused about what to do with my life that it makes me want to puke. Work, marriage, and children all pull at my fabric. Tiredness and body pain are also weighing heavily on my ability to just plow through. My ten-year-old daughter is the only person I truly feel any obligation too, but the truth is I have no idea what is best for her. I would very much enjoy successfully supporting my wife and two sons to live their lives fully, and this is true for a number of close friends, but there is no sense of obligation. [I get stuck trying to write about this, a sure sign that I am resisting something.] I feel that I must sort this out and choose by some prioritization of importance, but then I am faced with the feeling, almost certain knowledge, that life will not cooperate with my little idea of importance. The thing is, I have been hanging out at this junction for a while.
OK, now I am trying to escape into metaphor about life and I can’t do that because even before I can put something down I realize it is not quite true.
Here is something I wish to share with my daughter:
Life is like a movie. You are on stage. The movie may be a drama, a comedy, and sometimes a tragedy, but don’t take it too seriously, don’t believe it is true or false. Here is the trick; you are the costume, not the actor. The one looking through your eyes is the actor. These things, your body, your feelings, your mind, the whole world you see, taste and touch, are the actor’s props. The actor is the unseen and unspeakable, the nothing that lies behind and looks through your eyes, smells with your nose, and touches with your fingers. You are free to live this life joyously no matter the circumstances because you are that one, looking through the eyes. You are in the miracle we call life and you are free to be with it however you choose. You cannot lose. You and I are the same; we are costumes for the Unnamable Unborn One.
I can see that this will become my message to her. I don’t know how I will deliver it. It may come out in pieces. I will not try to stuff it down the throat, god knows that doesn’t work - irony intended.
When did this happen to me? When did I wake up? Was it a few weeks ago, or thirty years? Maybe I was never asleep. It is so easy to forget, to not trust one's deepest truth. Here on the holodeck things can get very confusing. Two years ago, I could not have used any of these words to talk about myself. Now I am immersed in this as truth. Who would have thought?
Of course, awake or not parts of the drama are in a difficult to resolve state. Does the actor drop the job that he has been looking for for years and go back to consulting and money? I had not had juice on the job for such a long time, and until Friday I was really enjoying the juice. It was an unexpected turn to fail; a total surprise actually. I mean the part where these people decided that removing me from my position was remotely a good idea. It is really quite strange; it shows that they are operating from an entirely different set of beliefs than the ones I operate from. I see from here that life has cemented the lesson that everyone’s “truth” is different. How about the marriage that is not working, do I drop that? I miss my sons. Sometimes I think that I should leave my marriage and set up a situation where they can go to school, but then I realize that it would not work either. [He laughs to self with the realization that “life works” is a complete myth, the great shared lie.] So, that is it really, I will persevere for now and let others make the choices, just like I have for most of the last two years.
The actor looks bewildered on the set. What will happen next? It is then that the watcher says oh no, “this is an English comedy!”
redslime