We’d hit the bottom.
I thought it was my fault.
And in a way I guess it was.
I’m just now finding out what it was all about.Ben Folds — Landed (2005)
Back at the end of October (2007), my family went through what I can only describe as the most gut-wrenching experience of its existence. I will spare you the minutiae of the details, but the overarching concept was a forced separation of my family and a significant cost of time, emotion, and treasure. We will recover, as a family and each of us individually. I am certain in that, if only because the alternatives are not something I’m interested in entertaining. The lost time can never be recovered, of course, but the financial and emotional invoices will have their accounts settled — eventually.
Some good came out of this, however. I think we have a better appreciation for each other, despite the occasional drive up the short wall. I myself came to realize from this incident that some things I held on to really weren’t all that important. So the kids don’t always finish their dinner before getting dessert, or they are up an hour past their bedtime, or their rooms are in a constant state of clutter, or there seems to always be popcorn in the carpet no matter how often it’s vacuumed. It’s just not that damn important anymore, and saying ‘no’ to them feels more wrong than ever before.
Despite the anger, the disappointment, and the pain, the last six months have also served to clear my head of some things. For the first time in nearly twenty years, I’ve picked up a camera and seriously starting shooting pictures again. I’m not sure what will become of it, but I’m not expecting anything extraordinary. That’s a good thing, however. This time I will have nobody to disappoint but myself.
The one real loss from this has been my faith. I no longer have faith that people are inherently capable of good. In fact, I’ve flipped so much on this that I have come to understand and expect that we as a species are greedy, vindictive, untrustworthy, selfish, and sometimes evil creatures. The small percentage of this planet that are the exceptions to those assumptions are few and quite far between.
I no longer have faith that there is anything really that watches over us from beyond this consciousness, despite my dabbling in the concept of karma. The idea that any such higher power would allow undeserved suffering on this marble to continue unabated is an equation that just does not compute for me any more.
Success and happiness to me used to be something that didn’t require a zero-sum equation. One person shouldn’t need to be miserable in order to bring happiness to another. These days, I’m not so sure of that. I honestly wonder if the zero-sum equation of success and happiness is how the universe ultimately balances itself back to neutral. Such equations are just amplified in this new media sphere we revolve in. There are so many chairs at the dance, and you best be in one when the music stops, or you’ll be leaving the prom by yourself.
Defeatist? Maybe. Radical? Probably. Cynical? No doubt. Dangerous? Not at all. I mix these ideas liberally with a huge dollop of realism. Things are what they are, and I have no more power to change them than I do the weather. Other people have the skill, talent, and personality to be something beyond themselves, and I will simply go through my life now trying to keep things as close to neutral as possible. Each day, that bothers me less than it did the day before.
This post may seem rambling and out of style for me, and in truth it probably is. It’s been six months coming, and despite all the things I wanted to say, the words escape me like air from a balloon when I need them the most. Maybe this post is the first in a series of me getting this out of my system so I can move on. Maybe it’s just a one-time fluke to bring that internal balance back in order. Maybe I’m just damn crazy. Maybe it’s a little of everything.
Maybe, though, just maybe, this is the way things are supposed to be.
