Is it real? This day, this experience - is it real? Could I have had this sooner and have been someone completely different now? What was the reason I didn't try harder before? Was it because there was no sunlight to help me grow up? Did I lack the encouragement or the help? Words were everywhere. The old loved to give me words of encouragement but loathed to dispense the means of real help. Was the soil of my birth to inhospitable for life to flourish? What held me back from going for it long ago? I want to know. I pride myself on being strong but maybe that is only what I told myself to hide the truth that really I was afraid. I was angry. I was beaten. I was alone. The world had shown to one so young such a dark side of itself. To want something, to want something was too painful for wants equal disappointments and expectations only existed to be dashed.
"Be a father to yourself now." Sometimes I think we have to be our own best friend and some of us even have to be our own good parents. Whether it be distance or simple lack, there are times when we have to take care of ourselves. The summer story of the swimmer who jumped in the river to save his drowning friend weighs upon me now. The would-be-savior drowns, taken by the same unforgiving current. Sometimes in seeking to save the drowning we ourselves become lost at sea. Our own sacrifices should be given with all we are or not at all and even then, the result is not always what we think it will be. Life is not a logical equation.
"What have you learned Dorothy?"
You're here now and that's all that matters. Not how long it took you to get here. Because in retrospect it really wasn't long at all! I had so many students who went back after they had kids in school. Your life has had meaning and purpose. Each day of it. Don't forget that!
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