Fierce Honesty

So, the truth is I've not felt like writing to you Points of Light lately. The question is, why? Well, I think it lies in how I need to absorb and then process accepting darkness with a newfound understanding that life requires balance. That is, a contented life requires brightness AND darkness, happiness AND sadness, yeng AND yang. Furthermore, as I dig deeper into this new understanding, I must make time in my life for a long pause where I thoroughly consider the most meaningful question ever asked of me, “Why do you work so hard to find bad things in something so beautiful?”

Please allow me to backtrack. Up until I turned 59, and before the just mentioned meaningful question was asked of me, I could only describe my life in this way, “I can tell you I suffer from depression, generalized anxiety disorder, memory problems, and auditory and visual processing disorder. Those are issues I've dealt with my entire life and all of them began affecting me in my childhood. What I can also tell you is how for years I've struggled in my emotional pain, wrongly feeling nothing but darkness surrounded me.

Within that darkness, beginning as early as my childhood, I felt there were ugly, hideous, dark beasts outrageously growling at me, snapping their ravenous razor-sharp teeth at me in an attempt to devour my flesh.” At 59, what was for me the most profoundly meaningful question I’d ever heard, was asked of me. This question almost instantly became an epiphany filled with all the light, color, and beauty I needed to reveal the following to me, “Points of Light, it was precisely because I'd always been too busy guarding my heavy load so I could meticulously study it to find all the bad, hideous, and ugly things my load contained. That exercise commanded all my attention and left no time for my soul to look up and into anyone's eyes. I had to realize I'd always treated my soul badly for sure, of certainty I caused my soul to suffer severely. I mean, I made an exerted effort to be sure it was forever alone, isolated, and even shivering in the cold. So, you see, when I've previously written to you about those hideous beasts with their razor-sharp teeth that were always growling at me while they nipped at my flesh, I had to learn they were always me!” This meaningful question’s epiphany was Alexzander’s sword that cut the unsolvable Gordian Knot which was the lock that had sealed the door to my seeming never-ending imprisonment. I was then able to push that prison's door open and walk out of darkness and finally, into some very bright and intense, glorious light. Now rather than nasty beasts surrounding me in the darkness or said without metaphor, rather than my hating on myself, I almost immediately began experiencing happiness for all the light, color, and beauty a life lived was shining my way.

But while I was caught up in the beginning throws of my new and very beautiful life experiences, I failed to take heed to one of the most important life lessons I’d learn and write about. In my blog post, The Choice Between Dark and Light, I write, “Points of Light, darkness, well that can be a choice, not the best choice, but yeah. So that leaves light being a choice, and it's by far the best choice. A heart wants to live in light in as much as a heart desires the happiness of freedom and wide-open spaces. Smiling is a thing most needed, desired with all the desire one might have for gold. Which choice do I make? Well, if I desire to smile with the same desire as I have for gold, I choose the latter, I choose the light...It's funny isn't it, how people don't see themselves as possessing all their intrinsic lovely light. They put themselves down, they disavow their own light. Of all the good they have and own, they feign ignorance, trying to put it under a blanket. I notice this all the time, or more precisely during those times when I've chosen my own light. When I've chosen light, I can't help but notice the beautiful color inspired by the other person's light, and I desperately want to call their color out, name it, write it, paint it, and my hope is their own light inspired color will put a smile on their face.” Now I have to process exactly what this means to me and how it wants to help me as I move forward.

In retrospect, upon release from my self-imprisonment, while true, the life lesson on choosing between darkness and light didn’t include an all-important and very much-needed caveat. Nothing in life that’s both real and true is forever-without-end composed of the brightest light. That’s true because light contains a full spectrum of wonderfully fantastic colors. Within this spectrum will always be some colors that are dull and even dark; that is - both the happiness's and sadness's, highs and lows of lives lived. Still, no matter the personal difficulties life will always encounter, in order to find beauty, we need to be extremely honest, even fiercely honest enough to take in and accept every dull and dark color to find true beauty and help us find overall honest, sincere, and long-lasting happiness.

Since my self-revelation that I’d been torturing myself within the confines of my very own mind, I joyfully, but without awareness of the needed caveat, made myself aware of only the brightest of colors from light’s full spectrum.

It seems that after all those years of self-imposed captivity, my experiences during that time left their lasting impact on me. “What was that impact”, you ask. The answer is, that all forms of darkness – sadness, depression, worry, uneasiness, ugliness, anxiety, fear et al.–are meant to be avoided. Why? Well, the answer is obvious, isn’t it? But for the occasional thinnest slivers of light that sometimes found their way to me during my captivity, that miserable darkness (self-torture) was the end-all, be-all of my existence. Now with my newfound freedom, in my choice to notice light over darkness, I never considered how within that bright, beautiful light, of necessity there are shades of dull and dark colors. All those years of lacking anything that allowed me to feel emotions of happiness left me to desire nothing but happiness. Why did I only desire nothing but happiness? I can only answer your question with an implausible thought that says this - would that nothing but happiness be all the world could ever experience. With this thought one might imagine no heart-crushing breakups ever happening, people wouldn’t vehemently argue over manufactured political platitudes, countries wouldn’t invade and massacre the peoples of other countries, and so forth, simply because people are only forever-without-end happy in their light that is so full of color, their life is filled to the brim with the beauty of happiness!

Might I add some reflection here? Let’s say all the world was always only sad and depressed as people only ever take notice of lights duller and darker colors. Wouldn’t people tire of that world relatively quickly? Let’s reverse that, let’s say that all the world was always only optimistic and happy as people only ever take notice of lights brighter and more intense colors. Wouldn’t we also tire of that world relatively quickly? I'll dare to answer both those questions with a bold, “Yes, we’d tire of both those worlds!” Points of Light, there’s so much beautiful wisdom in those questions and the answer to them. A world full of the balance of both the bright and dark, happy and sad, is a more interesting and elegant world. Nothing is perpetually smooth because even if the jags and edges of something may be small rather than pronounced, everyone has rough edges - you do, I do, hell, all of us do. About that, here’s a beautiful and extremely profound verse from the bible that’s applicable to anyone and everyone willing to hear it, I prefer the Amplified Bible rendering, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens [and influences] another [through discussion].”

So, coming from a lifelong self-imposed lived life where I had been surrounded by the dark light of unhappiness (again, of my own making), as I moved forward and away from that type of living with robust eagerness, buried deep within the confines of my subconscious, I was supremely and sublimely unaware (ignorant) that my heart, my emotions, and feelings were very tender and not wholly healed from everything those years of unhappy darkness gave me. As a result, my heart, emotions, and feelings shied away in order to completely avoid anything that resembled the unyielding, dark, menacing, unhappy hardness of the life I lived up until this new now.

So, in a world full of light’s awesome spectrum of beautiful, happy colors, rather than confronting any slivers of darkness that penetrated my new life, I deigned their very existence. I refused to entertain anything that might have any, even the slimmest possibility of touching any nerve of tender emotions and feelings that rightfully remained within my psyche. I say rightfully because of course these hurts were never going to disappear overnight. In retrospect, I think as my work to free myself from captivity happened, I needed to find and feel the happiness that came along with experiencing light, color, and my choice of accepting beauty found in a life lived.

Accepting myself as being a beautiful person was ultimately very hard, but the first thing I had to do as per that most meaningful question ever asked of me. So, once I could stop hating on myself and accept myself as beautiful instead, I was finally free to discover the beautiful happiness from all the light and color everywhere around me. However, that never meant my hurts, fears, anxieties, et al. were automatically healed. Was I finally trekking upon a path to find and then discover beauty, yes. But I had NO conscious idea that I was finally able to discover all this beauty everywhere I looked even while many of my feelings and emotions I'd acquired, beginning from a very young age, were not wholly healed.

So, as I’ve arrived at a place where I’m joyfully able to have a life lived full of light, color, beauty, and happiness, I realize there are issues I need to name, deal with, and resolve. Points of Light, I once wrote to you saying, “Good morning! I'm full of trepidation, anticipation, and a little intimidation. I'm aware of something that needs to be written down, using words real and true. It's a thing that's a thing that's said to be a long time coming, inevitable, and needful. Truth is power, right? Prayers that I'll be mindful, fearfully searching my heart.” I feel my words may be hitting me harder now than they were when I first wrote them. Still, I’ve also written to you about an action I require of myself, “Fierce Honesty”. I will forever cherish what Terpsichore, my beloved Light House said to me to start me on this journey to find both real and true beauty in this life lived, "I know you know it, but everyone is imperfect. And sadly, no one will ever be perfect. But I think it's important and admirable of you to strive to better yourself. And I also wanted to say, that as imperfect as you may be, there are people around you that see all the amazing things you have to offer, myself being one of them. You've always been a great friend to me, supportive and there to listen when I need to vent or needed advice. You're intelligent, you have a good sense of humor, and I always enjoyed our conversations together. I'm so proud of you for all the effort you have been putting in to looking inward and figuring out who you are. Most people don't have the guts to do that, it's truly impressive. It's seems like your faith has been an anchor for you throughout all this, and I encourage you to cling to that. I love you always and I miss you! And I would love to get together soon when you're free. I hope you have a wonderful evening, and hit me up soon!”

While I’m a flawed man with feet made of clay, a fearless inward searching of one’s own heart is always the predicate of every redemption story.