Broken, Glass Edges

This is for the restless spirits who contemplate life on a deeper level. The risk takers. The few that put themselves on the line and walk a different path, a little thorny, with broken glass edges. It is for those who refuse to live a wretched life, one where they have been forced into the cliches and disillusionment of what success means. The ones that bear their soul so others can reflect on their own lives.

I find myself walking into the woods, a gathering of tree friends, critters, and flowers that have peaked in their bloom, and I contemplate this life I am living and I have questions. I wonder why I am here? My purpose? I think about the forty plus hour per week grind to help pay bills and put some food on the table. Yes, I am grateful for that. I am grateful to have work, to have things, oh those material things that offer a false happiness and sense of security, but then I cannot bear the thought of simply existing, or that life may be so insubstantial. Are we here to blindly follow the pattern of being born, learning to crawl and walk, enter school and then depart with a dangling chord changing from one side of a square hat to another, work for someone else’s profit, retire, and then drift into the abyss? In between all of life’s major events, we live the social experiment of relationships, being a son or daughter, husband or wife, mom or dad, and inconsequential laborer? Do we leave this world complete or are we fractured, splintered into a thousand pieces, and each individual part tells a story? 

As I journey further into the woods, deeper into the path I have chosen, I think about what I am witnessing in the world. It seems like everyone is in a race, a hurried existence, rushed with a high pulse beating from the neck, and they try to avoid the one thing we cannot, dying. They grab every fad, every diet, and pill they can to avoid the certainty of mortality. They even allow machines to keep their bodies going, but to what cost? Their freedom? Their quality of life? I suppose that the word “quality” varies from one person to another. Yet, do we really think or want to live forever? We forget that we are not permanent, and nothing is. Impermanence is all we can count on and impermanence is a gift. When we understand this, we realize that every moment matters, embracing the times that have significance, like holding a loved one's gaze, and letting go of everything that truly has no meaning, such as our individual ego or the toxic drama that others enjoy bringing to your life. 

As I continue my journey, listening to the branches sway and the birds sing loudly, warning others of my presence, I realize that all of us, if we are lucky, walk further away from childhood steps. Those tiny indentations of youthful feet that we once created and have now left behind. The imprints tell us a story of who we once were, and the foundation that we were built from. We seem to fight aging and ignorantly celebrate youth. We see this as bodies are flaunted, and young skin is valued more than old. We hear it in people’s passive voices, “Well, you’re not getting any younger.” It’s a statement I never understood. Of course not! Why would you want to? We all owe a death, but more importantly we all owe a life. The gift of wrinkles and an ache in my knees shows that I have not sheltered myself from challenge or from defeat, but have embraced experience. 

I do not want my life to be like a blade of grass thrown into a lake, not producing any ripples. I want it to be like a boulder and start a wave. We all end up a memory to someone, but eventually, along the way, those memories will fade to become impermanent. That’s when I want to be that ripple, the stirring of cold water that makes someone wake up to what I once offered. Is it arrogant to want to leave the lessons you tried to teach behind? For others to be your students and put into practice what you once taught? I think that is what a mother or father does, or perhaps a compassionate mentor, but if I am not a parent, who will I leave my teachings to? Am I wrong to not want to simply leave a dent in this world, but a fault line that makes people want to jump in? 

I recently had someone reach out to me and ask me, “When are you most content?” I was pleased that they asked using the word “are” instead of “were.” The use of the word “were” to me, would indicate that I would never be content again, but I once was. I do find this to be an essential question, one we should all ask ourselves and contemplate deeply and often. I like the word “content” because it reminds me of what a philosophy professor once said to me, “You should never strive for happiness, but contentment.” That has resonated with me for half of my life. My written response to this young person was this:

“You do not owe anyone anything. Stop explaining yourself. Stop feeling the need to justify your decisions in life and look for approval. It is not needed, and when I have realized that I do not owe anyone anything, I am content. Then, and even more importantly, no one owes you anything. The times in my life when I have been most unhappy, when my mental health has been on a downward spiral, is when I thought people owed me something. It was the people I worked for, the organizations, and I thought they owed me a thank you for doing the job I did, what I brought to them. Well, when I pulled myself out of the fire, I realized that they do not owe me a damn thing. They hired me to do a job, and I did it to the best of my ability. Why would someone owe me more than a paycheck and a little gratitude for a job they hired me for? That’s important to remember because I think many of us think we are owed something and it makes us unhappy when we realize no one really cares about anything except you showing up and doing your work. It's just the way it is. When you step away from that place of work, you will not be asked to stay. You will not be missed because they have to move on. That’s the reality. This goes for relationships too. No one I know or love owes me a thing. Now, you do owe yourself something. You owe yourself the best life you can live. When I am most content, I have the courage to pull away from the toxic people and environments that run me down. I do not settle and protect my mental health by removing myself. I make decisions in my life with good intention and then learn from the plethora of mistakes that I have made. This is very important. I leave those mistakes behind. When you learn to leave the past where it should be, in your rearview, and live in the moment, you become content. I am content when I know that I am doing the things that bring me closer to my purpose, when I am loving my wife to the best of my ability, and being a good son. When I am true to my beliefs, convictions, and values, I am content. I owe myself that. I owe myself experiences in life, good or bad, and never settling.”

I stopped my response there because it was enough to give them something to think about. 

Yes, I want to be the boulder that causes a ripple, a wave in a large lake, and I also want to walk on the paths of broken, glass edges with bare feet, that cause gashes within my soul. The weary traveler that bleeds well. I will patch up the cuts and continue this journey, knowing I did it my way, not owing anyone anything, or anyone owing me, but owing myself a life well lived. It’s the charge I have given myself, to leave imprints along the way and eventually close gray eyes, a drifting mind, and move onto another plain in this universe content with the life I left behind. In the end, I will owe a death and I am content knowing that.