Disguises

Gifts are often disguised as challenges, they say, and unwrapping them is a challenge in itself.  Especially when the challenges are like those Russian dolls or Chinese boxes, one inside another and another and another.  Yet, that is life whether like it or not.  The opposite of the dolls and the boxes is the onion.  Peeling away at it, layer by thin layer, exposing more and more of what’s inside of us.  The pain, the joy, love, hate, misery, happiness…the whole shebang we call life.  Who can say they have the most challenges?  One person seems to win the genetic lottery and have it “all” while someone else gets the genetic mutations that make the winners life look all that more perfect.  But that is seeing the world through smudgy, cracked glasses, while the winner may be stuck with seeing the world through rosy ones.  Either way, they give you the wrong picture.

Why is it so damn hard to understand that?  Why do we want things that we know are impermanent and why do we expect certain things not to be impermanent when really, everything is impermanent.  Whew.  There is only now, right?  That is all that matters.  And yet. 

And yet when my pain is through the ceiling, when I am constantly missing family events, friends events, taking walks, going to movies, working, laughing, going out, staying in…having a life…I forget all of the above.  I forget that I can still make the most out of what I have.  I still have that power.  It’s a choice.  I chose to complain and feel sorry for myself because it keeps getting worse and damn it, I have a right to be mad and feel lousy and complain and drive people away!  Now there’s flawed logic if ever there was flawed logic and all you have to do is read the news to know it’s all over the place.  Mostly in politics.  But I digress.

Having the right to feel lousy seems to me a little whacked.  We all know that yelling at the stars does not make them move, it only gives us a sore throat.  I mean, the release is nice so yes, sometimes I do cry and scream at my situation.  But if I did it all the time?  It would be even worse, which sometimes is hard to imagine.  Yet sometimes, when that’s exactly what I’m doing and I realize it enough to stop, the pain subsides a bit.  Hmmmmm.  What do we have here?  And insight?  Yeah, the same old shop worn insight I have every couple of weeks when I slip back to the abyss and welcome the darkness, my tears drowning nothing.

Today should be a “good” day because I put a new patch on yesterday.  I mean technically, there should be no difference between days and I must admit, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the levels of pain.  I think I need to email G-d on that one.  I wonder what the address is?

"Impermanent Things" by Peter HImmelman