Vision's High Noon

Recently, I was given a homework assignment by an art coach.  I was to write to my higher self and ask her help with "Vision".  I've tried to complete this assignment but all I have to show for it is a pile of crumpled paper. 

Most of the time, I have to work at harnessing a flood of words.  Not today.

"Vision" was the word that jumped out from a list of nine.  Don't ask me why.  Apparently my higher self is supposed to know but she's not talking.    I think she's afraid.  I know I am.  I'm afraid of almost everything.  It's one of my secrets.  I guess the "cat's out of the bag" now.

Fear and I are very old companions.  Fear often gets in my way.  Over the years, I've learned to ignore this fear, at least some of the time.  Fear has me making excuses, aiming low, apologizing for imposing.  Fear kills "Vision" faster than any thing I know.

The higher self whispers, "Vision is afraid of being slain by Fear.  It has to hide, especially from you."

Great!  More inscrutable, mysterious talk.

As much as I'd like to forget this whole topic, the truth is Vision is afraid.  I'm afraid of Vision, of Fear but most of all, I'm afraid of envisioning something, working toward it, wanting it only to have it taken from me.

How rational is that?

I'm confusing "Vision" with a destination.  Vision is really the guide for the journey.  I'm using fear and uncertainty as an excuse.  I'm grieving imagined losses before anything is lost.

So, like Gary Cooper in High Noon. . . (a movie I love by the way!) http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2041381145/

I face Vision alone on a dusty street in an old western town.  The sun burns overhead.  Fear walks beside me with its hand on my pistol.  The music builds.  It reaches a crescendo and I draw my gun.  Instead of bullets, my gun shoots Vision into the unknown, into the darkness and the light.  No enemy awaits me.  The greatest enemy has always been the one that lies within, the one that tries to deny Vision or to stifle it.

Vision longs for expression.  It longs for peace, for stage coach rides, for Sunday picnics, and for late night stargazing.  Vision is what breathes life into a tired body and mind.  It infuses the air I breathe, if only I'll let it.  Vision isn't a burden.  It isn't something grand that must be lived up to or else.  Vision is a guide, a raison d'etre.  It tells me I've been missing out.

So, I walk this dusty street again at high noon.  Instead of Vision, I take aim at Fear.  It's time to put Fear in the grave.  Once deep in the ground, I'll dance over the soft mound of earth covering the resting place of Fear.  Arm and arm, Vision and I will walk into the sunset.

Trying Not to Think

Always do what you are afraid to do. --- Emerson

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I spent all day trying to run from myself.  It was Thinking Thursday and I was afraid of my own thoughts.  Wordy Wednesday evening found me verbally assaulting a loved one.  Words are not always good tools.   Obviously something was bothering me and I was doing my best to dump the problem on someone else.

As I spent the day avoiding the soul searching I was sure I needed, the truth came to me anyway.  I saw that I had projected my own fears and I knew why.  I was afraid of change.  I was afraid of action.  I was afraid of trying something new.  I wanted to follow my dreams.  I was now in uncharted territory and I was terrified.

How I got to this place, this age in life, without really following them is a bit of a wonder to me.  I've done a really good job ignoring them for years.  When I was younger, I tried to adopt the dreams of the significant others in my life.   I didn't feel good enough to have dreams of my own much less go after them.

Now, at mid-life, time ticks like a bomb.   Over half my life is over.  I can not afford to waste any moment that is left and this reality weighs heavily.  Sometimes, it's so heavy I feel panic. As I grapple with this fear, with this panic, with unfulfilled dreams and desires, a few simple words of Emerson fall into my day.  "Always do what you're afraid to do." 
"Yes, Mr. Emerson!" I reply as I contemplate the leap.  Terror grips me.  I've never felt more alive.

Camp Fear

Fear is the theme for the week.  It might be said that it's been the focus of an odd personal devotional.  I chant a litany of "Life is not for the faint of heart" while I tremble.
I'm afraid of just about everything.  Pretending I'm not is something I often do very well.
And yet, fear often fills me.  One recent night fear slapped me in the face with a dream so profound that the memory of it follows me still.

In the dream, I am running, running from fear, myself, from life.  Trapped in a corner, I'm left to face that which I fear most.  I must look my two greatest fears in the eye.  My heart is in my throat as I see what has been chasing me through the years:

the fear of being alone
the fear of being unhappy.

Irony swells up in my chest and forces itself out in a mind-shattering scream.  These fears have twisted themselves into a tangle of wretched self-fulfillment.  Despair opens before me like a giant black hole.  I fight the urge to jump and form an uneasy truce with fear.  I sit on the edge of the darkness and dangle my feet in the gaping hole.

Fear has been a most cunning opponent.  She has a ravenous hunger that is only satisfied by more fear, more of the same.  I have often over fed her.  Suddenly, I remember Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.  Flying monkey fear has been menacing me.  Might I possess the power to return home just as Dorothy had? 

The black hole starts to close beneath my feet.  I hurry to pull my feet to safety just as the second fear leaps from the heart of the darkness and sits beside me.  The fear of being unhappy drapes a cold, bony arm over my shoulders.  It leers at me through a smile of broken teeth. 

I meet its gaze with my own.  The smile starts to crumble and it turns to dust.  With a smooth and graceful motion, I sweep it into the black hole. 
"Good riddance," I say softly.  It is a prayer of remembering.  I note the heartache this fear has brought to me and drop the memories one-by-one into the black pit.  They turn to rose petals as the darkness swallows them.

My fears have fought hard to live outside me.  They've really been a part of me all along.  The black hole no longer menaces.  I stand and walk across it and then back again.  It is solid.  I am not lost within it.  I look down and see my reflection gazing back up at me.  I bend down and gently touch its face.

The Mirror of Fear

Despite my efforts to avoid introspective entries, such writing insists on falling out of my head and onto the page.  I've decided not to fight it.  The words seem to know something I do not.  While I often find my personal style embarrassing in its dramatic language and confessional nature, the words insist on being written.  I've decided to get out of their way. 

My mind is always subject to change as it struggles to follow my heart.

Neglecting Just 10 has become the norm. Recently, it was obvious that I was avoiding contact and introspection.  I was struggling with this issue when I suddenly realized that I was deliberating generating a lot of self-perpetuating negative energy.  I was sitting dead center in my own private pity party.  This pity party had "evasion" written all over it.

Putting problems outside myself had been a way to escape them.  Standing in the open, blinking at reality, I trembled in fear.  It was time to say hello to what I was feeling.  Self-awareness wasn't through with me.  I replayed an impassioned speech I'd recently given another in the heat of an argument.  The realization that my words were meant more for myself than the one I was addressing slapped me in the head with a vengeance.  I'd displaced my problems and fears.  They had suddenly come home to roost.

At first, I wanted to hack away at my self esteem wielding a mental machete but I couldn't allow that. Mental machetes hurt.  They do not help.  Besides, it would only be a symptom of the problem it was trying to hide.  Yet, I also knew that I couldn't coddle and protect my inner self either.  It was time to face life without the defenses.  I had criticized another for allowing a negative attitude to become an excuse for not trying.  Denial blinded me.  I'd given up.  I just didn't know that I had.  Most of all, I had criticized another for "not seizing the life he'd been given."  What I was doing was worse.  I was pretending to seize my life while waiting to be rescued from it.

This was a lot to accept.  A flood of emotion swept through me.  It carried me through the day and into sleep.  There on a sea of dreams I floated like a sailboat without a sail.  The captain had jumped overboard.  I was going nowhere. 

While I lay in my sail-less, captain-less boat, I starred at a cloudless sky.  Life was passing me by.  It lie just below me.  I was only skimming the surface.  Reminding myself that life is not for the faint of heart, I shook hands with my fear.  Acknowledging it was long past due.  Fear had gotten out of control.  It was getting in the way.  I was experiencing a growing panic that often took my breath away.  It had a vice-like grip around my heart.  It was time we sat down for a talk.

"Hello, Fear. I'm sorry I haven't noticed you.  I am noticing you now."
Fear hissed, "It's about time." 
Fear sounded a lot like Voldemort.  Fears drama made me angry.
"Ok, cut  the crap.  You don't need to get all dramatic on me.  You're just a soft, timid chicken.  We both know it."
Fear doesn't look me in the eye.  I know it feels ashamed.
"You've got me," it says.
I continue in a softer voice. "Look, you're really messing me up.  I can't think clearly because of you.  You're making everything harder than it has to be.  You've got to stop scaring me."
Fear looks up.   It's soulful eyes touch the deepest part of me.  "I'm lonely," it says.
I open my arms and fear crawls in my lap.  Fear smells steely and cold.  Its skin has a pallid, mortuary hue.  I pity it but can't make myself embrace it.  It sits rigid and still.  It catches its breath as it stifles a sob.  I want to cry with it.
"We need to start out slowly, get used to each other," I say.
Fear sighs with relief.  Softly, it speaks, "Yes.  I would like that very much.  I just want to be noticed."
I pat the top of fear's head.  It is much smaller than I am.

After our talk, the panic that I feel eased.  I could see that I needed to be more honest with myself.  It was time to acknowledge what I could do with the life I've been given.  I've been ignoring it in favor of the life I wished I had.  This "wished for" life can never be.  It was time to go home and put a candle in the window and stop cursing the darkness.  Fear walks beside me.  We're getting to know each other.  Maybe we'll even be friends some day.