“All that we are is the result of what we have thought” The Buddha
I am not sure I have ever started a story before without having any idea exactly where it was going. I know what I want to write about, but it is a really tough subject to deal with. It is about getting older, something I seem to come back to rather frequently, which makes perfect sense to me, considering my age.
I spend the majority of time around people, who are considerably younger than I am, continually engaging them in dialogue. Many of their stories and situations sound so familiar to me, a kind of life poetics, because I’ve been there. I find myself communicating in their language, rather than my own. In a way, it feels like watching a movie with a familiar plot, but I have no right to give away the ending, because who’d believe me anyway?
No, no, I am not claiming to be clairvoyant, but I have lived the age most of those around me are just entering, brand new to them. It is not in any way condescending either. You can only know where you’ve been and where you are, but no way you have any idea where you’re going.
This is the way that always made perfect sense to me. I am not sure when it changed, when I started looking back at all those times in my life, when the certainty of the moment was nothing more than a numbing comfort. From where I am now, I understand how the unknown future was always there, lurking just a second out of reach.
I don’t have to lurch beyond my own life to understand that the momentary positivity of all my thoughts were based on what I knew and what I felt just then and not a breath later. Once again, the Buddha’s life long mission of making sense of everything, yielded the perfect quote above. Ever since my early thirties, I’ve been magnetized to his way of thinking.
Who was going to tell a nine year old boy the sudden death of his father was not the end of world? When I left the cushy, childhood comfort of assuming I’d be a doctor, because I couldn’t intellectually hack it, there was no voice to tell me that my life was going to as wonderful as it has been. Nobody told me not be frightened about being a young man, who wanted to take chances, instead of opting for convention. I was saddled with being a victim of my choices for the first forty years of my life. It was then I veered way off course, based on a voice I could barely hear, stepping into the complete unknown, with the freshness of faith my only companion.
I moved from NYC to Santa Fe, NM, something I have written about often. Many nights, sitting on the brick floor of my little adobe home, I cried and cried uncontrollably. Those were the labor pains of giving birth to myself. I had so many adventures out there, so many remarkable experiences. When I left, after fifteen years to come to Kauai, I was not the same person, who drove from NYC life times before. If I tried to wrap my arms around everything I experienced in the high desert country, I’d be flooded with an indescribable abundance, miracle after miracle, more than I could possibly hold, impossible to quantify.
I have been here, in paradise, since 2003. The night before coming, my mother suffered a massive stroke and passed several weeks later. I was now an official orphan, my monstrous fear when I was a little nine year old had come to pass. I was now alone. I was still climbing the mountain of time back then, looking in two directions, backwards and forwards. I wasn’t quite sixty and it was still some years before I paused, finally looking side to side, something for which there was no preparation or precedent, getting my bearings and embracing my time in a totally unexpected manner.
For most of us, the future is this endless kind of journey, one without limits. We have a palette of infinite colors, painting on a canvas in every imaginable style, with no frame anywhere in sight. This idea of being distanced, able to see all four sides, stepping back and seeing the entire arc of my life, is something that creeped up behind me, catching me completely by surprise.
It was almost ten years ago when I began to think something was really different for me. It was a kind of wordless understanding. I began looking for the invisible words, a silent vocabulary that I could faintly hear, but not translate to the page.
I spent quite some time thinking about my voice, feeling I needed to share my stories, but not with the palette of my past. I have been talking to myself for as long as I can remember and that voice has aways been the one I listened to and listened for. I am likely the worst dancer in the world, but me and my voice are a seamless couple, impossible to tell who is leading. My writing is the dance.
I love doing exactly what I’m doing right now. I have no wisdom or advice to share with those that are a fraction of my age. It took all those countless moments of certitude to get me right here, right now. I love watching people find their way, just like I did and like I’m still doing.
In case there is any misunderstanding about where I am, I am like every one of you. There are no secrets I am bogarting. However, in the midst of painting your life, hitting the palette for an extra hint of compassion for yourself and others, might increase the value of your experience.
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