AFRAID IS OK - Mark’s Musing Tuesday Feb. 23, 2010

today’s Musing  written and published from Cranston in south- east  Calgary, near the Bow River valley

 

Morning walk: -11C/11F, light breeze, overnight fog burning off, ice-crystals floating in the air, hoar frost painted trees; Gusta found a new dog friend – they couldn’t see each other, couldn’t touch or sniff - inches apart, separated by a solid fence barrier, just sounds and odor got them talking, got them wagging like old friends on the phone across distance and time.

 

Door is opened, but I don’t know where it leads.   Who will I be?  Do I rush - to fill this void with void-filling activity, void-filling people, void-filling thrills? It’s what I’ve done before; easily it consumes time and energy - it could be spent in some deeper place, wresting demons gripping fear by the horns.  Where is my best (best life, best state of mind, best relationship) - right now, in the past or with some new unknown around some distant corner I’ve not come to yet?  How can I know?  Being afraid is OK, if I know what makes me afraid. Do I look forward to new adventure – some imperfect stranger I’ve not met; or, open myself to explore deeper, someone just as imperfect (perhaps perfect for me) I know already?  Lucky me.

 

Taped to my computer Mark Twain’s words: ‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.’  Twain skips that personal discovery involves pain amid those warm trade winds and sailing metaphors. While I’m figuring course to chart, I consider this ship may have sailed.  How many twenty year chunks of life do I have?  Do I re-explore and re-discover the past twenty, re-kindle embers still hot or build new fire with someone new; or set both aside as too hard, too much trouble, too painful to try again where I’ve failed? It is like facing Frost’s two paths, and I’m wondering about a third path, frightened of choosing the wrong one. Knowing, deep, all three are right ones, is little comfort. Lucky me.

 

Friends help me try to see fine line between choices - incalculably improbably impossible - to know, pick, choose. Those who know me well would probably say I am open. Those who know me better than that would say my focus and bull-dog determination give me emotion tunnel vision. My mind, open?  On most things. My heart, open?  My attitude, most days is positive but lately I’ve stretched hopefulness into despair.  Lucky me.

 

In the last year, in course of talking with my daughter about her conundrum du jour with a new love interest, I said ‘we don’t pick who we love’; I said it effortlessly, glibly, and afterward I wondered - had I just said something profound?.  Across the street or thousands of miles away, what draws people to one another? Peculiar slurry of humanity, qualities, animal attraction, emotional connection, joy, pain, companionship, compassion, drive and friendship. This life force comes, rescues, transcends all. Lucky me.

 

I don’t look for conquest or money or success on life’s main stage; sure, I work hard for clients, projects and causes, but my main cause – that drives me - is love in the company of a partner, someone to hold and care for; someone to hold and care for me. Someone to celebrate me as I celebrate her – joys to share, sorrows to share, laughs and tears – as we sift fire-pit of memories gazing at summers sky or out into winter’s bluster . . . and, settling for no less than the most of what we can be, till death do us part. I’ve come close to perfecting this formula before, so many times, some ingredient always missing. Maybe that was my commitment. Chaos interfered, accidents of circumstances and lousy timing were often blamed. I’ve loved and lost; loved and won but not kept it; I’ve kept more than I deserved. Being afraid is OK. It has to be, or fear wouldn’t be part of life. When we’ve lost it all, lost someone completely, there is no replacement, just moving on alone. All that is left is who we are – alone, just us, just alone – perfect as the day we were born, ready for life.  Lucky me.

 

Mark Kolke

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RESPONSES/COMMENTS ALWAYS WELCOME; send to: mark.kolke@frameyourmessage.com  

 

 

February 22 Comments

 

February 22 – POUR LOVE ON IT – I can appreciate your search for the answer for healing the hurt felt from the loss of a lover and the consequent "solution" of "love." I lost the love of my life 9 years ago so have personal experience. Life is energy and as a person dies you observe the energy dissipating.  You live through the heart as a couple and your energy is from the meshing of two souls. After the loss of a lover, life is edited through the brain and the energy of living through the heart is lost. This creates the hurt. The cycle of living through the heart again is elusive because of the quality of love shared, and the tendency to live life through the brain trying to evaluate other potential mates in "comparison" to the lover lost. As the memories of the lost lover become dimmer,  then the brain may expand the parameters for a new lover.  I agree that "Love" heals...but finding it, can be like "Chasing Rainbows."  "Love" as I see it is the meshing of heart and brain into a unity of happiness.  Good luck with your "Chase".   Much Aloha,   S.Y.  Honolulu, HI

 

February 22 – POUR LOVE ON IT - I just re read this musing...very powerful, JH, Kelowna, BC

 

February 22 – POUR LOVE ON IT - Your words are wonderful. Always have been. FO, Kaunakakai, HI

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