I am smiling as I start this first sentence, not real sure where it is going to go, but certain there will be no answer at the end. Yes, I know this won’t encourage you to read along, but cut me some slack between here and there. Even though I don’t need any extra encouragement, this is the time of year when the heavies tend to pad around inside my head.
There is no question that losing my father at nine started me on this internal journey of mine, grappling with some frightening shit for a kid. I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral, because it was thought to be too upsetting, which boomeranged terribly. It allowed death to become a kind of monster, creating a bit of an edge around me. I felt like a bona fide Martian my first day back in school, kids were whispering to each other when I walked to my desk.
As a young boy, I certainly didn’t have the intellectual or emotional resume that began to slowly evolve with time. What we somehow manage to have from birth are a dazzling array of instincts, some visceral and others are from the realm of spirit, the magic that follows us through our lives. I kind of got pointed into a direction, my unique way of engaging the world, although I was a clueless in the midst of it.
Life began to catch up with me in my Thirties. I really wanted to be a good son to my mother, a carry over from that early time of fear and anxiety. I kind of did what was expected of me. Those questioning voices remained muted, while I was busy growing into responsible adulthood.
I don’t have the vaguest idea what you think about, the ribbon of thoughts continually wrapping itself around your attention, fractions of a second at a time. For as long as I can remember, I have been carrying on a conversation with myself, never alone. I move around in a rapid fire fashion, like a snake shedding its skin in a blink. My eyesight began to improve as I got older and I was able to begin seeing myself more clearly. The idea of being a grown up turned to bullshit, the myth of finally being in control.
At some point for me, the rest of my life began to migrate from being a distant concept to something I could start to smell and taste. Like a brand new tire with deep tread, the mortality business began to grab traction in my consciousness. The little boy, so ill equipped to deal with loss, was now relying on me to find a way forward for both of us.
Fear of death and fear of life are inseparable. I had run into a wall, unable to see around it. The only way through it was to go inside. Toward the end of that decade, I found myself drawn to the Zen philosophy, at least the way I see it. Looking for meaning in a transient existence is what began moving me into my Forties. I was terrified of living the rest of my life the way I had been. I would come back to that practice about a decade later, but the seed of questioning had taken hold.
I put death aside and got on about living. I eventually left NYC for a completely unplanned life in northern New Mexico. Looking back on it from here, I can’t believe I pulled it off. There were endless adventures during the fifteen years I was there. I don’t know how many times I ran my savings down to zero and refused to flinch. For the first time in my life I had faith. I was re-introduced to Zen and it provided a missing discipline for my mind. I remember feeling a strong kinship with the Buddha, thinking I would have enjoyed spendtime time with him, skipping all the the ritual trappings, the affectations of religion. Little did I know back then, but the Buddha actually got his start looking for the meaning of life.
When it was time to move on from the Land of Enchantment, I came here. In a way, I had proven my point with my seemingly, precipitous move out west. I not only survived, I thrived beyond wherever my early dreams took me. I made that one way ride, with tomorrow in the passenger seat on Route 66.
My Sixities were nearly upon me and it was time for my version of paradise. Slowly and sometimes not so subtly, I was beginning to feel my age, wrapping a brightly, colored ribbon around all of me. You talk about being older more than you can ever remember, except maybe while impatiently waiting for eighteen. Becoming an elder statesman in my own world, the mind can’t help trying to make some sense of it all.
Now that I am running out of decades, it is simply inevitable for my mind and its perennial, internal dialogue to be focusing on the obvious. Larry of long ago was stunted by his inability to understand the continuum between the beginning and the end and the mystery of
meaning.
Now, in my Seventies, I have revisited the magic and death is losing its strangle hold. I will search for the meaning of life until my last breath, convinced the true value is only in repeating the question throughout life.