When I sit still and listen, I remember. I remember that my realizations of late are not truly realizations; I knew them long ago. I recall that I buried them, visiting them time to time but never allowing them to surface fully. I always promised them, “I’ll be back.”
But before I could return to them, they took the matter into their own hands. They presented themselves to me in a pattern so stark, so clear that it was impossible to ignore. The pattern had a backdrop of almost-pure cream. On it were black dots and dashes, like Morse code, streaming from left to right. Sometimes these would last a small moment — a dot — and others a period of time — a dash.
At the beginning, I looked at this pattern from the outside: the canvas stood right in front of me. What did these marks mean? I couldn’t figure it; I couldn’t read it for my view was too wide and all-encompassing.
As I gazed upon it further, a curious thing happened. I felt myself shrinking, my physical self shrinking. The more I gazed, the more I shrank, like Alice drinking her potion. The more I pondered, the more I was drawn to the canvas like a magnet. And before I knew it, I was sucked completely into the world of Morse code standing on the blackness I tried so hard to ignore.
Being inside, I still could not read what the code conveyed. The road was too narrow, and being inside, I was only blinder than before — yet I was blind enough to feel. And I felt it all. I felt the dark spots whisper to me, whisper what they represented: the points when I understood I was not living true to myself. Where I stood on the path, the darkest moments trailed just behind me and my shoes were sticky with fresh black paint.
I looked at what lay ahead, and saw cream and black simply fade into white. I looked at that space and, with this collection of realizations, the dots and dashes that have marked my existence, I finally faced the truth: that I do not want any more Morse code. That in fact, I could not bear it.
So I stepped forward onto the unmarred canvas, leaving fading footsteps of black. I hoped that as the black ran out, I would not fall into the abyss of cream. I no longer had the dark marks to support me in all their falsehood; the task now was to support myself with the truth of my being, to pull the gravity into myself so that the ground was not below, but within.
I asked myself: Do I have the courage?
—
Reader, do you understand?
Do you understand the plight that inflicts us, the reasons for the dark spots, the questions we must ask ourselves to try to stay on an unmarred path?
I will save you the unsavory surprise: even if you understand, there is no way to keep a virgin canvas. We must stray from our true selves every once in a while, and “every once in a while” is if we are lucky. Often, we must deliberately act against what we know to be true, because our truths are anarchical. We require an ordered way of thinking and acting, and so we stray away from ourselves and toward society.
Life is full of tradeoffs, and comforting phrases exist so that we can feel some solace in the tradeoffs we must make. “Things will get better with time,” “Just let it go,” “Practice gratitudes.”
But what about all the things on the other side of those phrases? The tough experiences, the hurtful memories, the reality of things?
Sometimes, those real things are the very etches on our heart of hearts that we know to be true, and that we desire. We desire to burrow ourselves deep into those etches even if they are painful, because the pain makes them all the more real. They make us all the more real: ourselves. How we were formed. Who we are.
With life, often the things that are in our heart of hearts are not always — in fact, not often — practical. Life presents situations inconvenient to pursuing those deeply true desires. Being able to make responsible decisions in the face of what feels true, so that one can lead life amid the practical and societal contexts we are given, is what makes us stronger as beings. Perhaps, however, we only get stronger in one dimension and in an entirely other dimension altogether, we only become more and more cracked.
As we get older, many say that we get happier. Part of that is that we just get more complacent — complacent to the realities of life that are harsh, or sad, or otherwise unwanted. Some would say that we “accept” these realities. Perhaps that is so. We accept and let go. But isn’t “letting go” simply a form of numbing oneself? The realities do not get any less harsh, sad, or unwanted. We simply choose not to pay them heed.
We let the reality of things go to protect our sanity. Can you imagine, after the death of a loved one, paying attention to the acute pain of it and never reaching acceptance? Of course we cannot survive under such conditions, or at least not survive in any way in which we would feel there is a point to the survival.
But we need to be careful about the things that we let go. They are not always as dire as the death of a loved one; sometimes they are certain career paths, or soulmates, or other choices we encounter when trying to be true to ourselves. In facing life, we face the heart-cracking decisions to let some of these things go. We get stronger in one dimension, but remain fragile in another.
When we allow some things to “get better with time,” I believe we do a disservice to the very thing that is healing. Healing is numbing; healing is forgetting; healing is sometimes the least true thing that one can allow to happen.
Healing is taking moral or practical responsibility rather than leaning into the pain that soulful truths inflict on oneself and others.
And so life presents us a great tradeoff: soul or morality? Passion or practicality?
Originally published at http://megumismusings.wordpress.com on November 16, 2020.
