The only things that matter

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Recently I've caught a few episodes of a show in which the main character—who was alive during the American Revolutionary War—is brought back to life in present day. Various movies and books play with the same theme, but I found this show to have decent writing and a clever way of juxtaposing past and present so it reminds us just how fortunate we are to be alive—how much we have, yet take for granted.

Photo by Damian Markutt on Unsplash

Photo by Damian Markutt on Unsplash

Make it gold

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Photo by Johnny McClung on Unsplash

Photo by Johnny McClung on Unsplash

It's a few minutes before New Year's.

I remember one year I celebrated with my father and my cousin Charlie, who was several years older than I was (thirteen at the time). Minutes after the clock struck 12, I asked my cousin, "What does it feel like to live in the 90's?" He paused for a second and said, "Exactly the same as it did in the 80's."

As little as it was, my bubble burst. I was clinging to some illusion that time could change something. But time doesn't change anything. We do.

Here's to a new year. Here's to making it golden.

Foot for thought

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The timing of events can be eerie sometimes. I was having a conversation with a couple of friends earlier today on being right. We weren't talking about your regular, run-of-the-mill rightness; no, this was the wrong type of right—I'm talking stealth, ninja, smokescreen, the works. When you're on the receiving end, you feel something is terribly wrong, but it's hard to put your finger on it because what the person says is seemingly reasonable. And when you're the giver, even if you're aware you've just put your entire foot in your mouth, you go right ahead and reach for the other one.

A few hours later this little gem arrived from my friend, Sean. (I wasn't able to find the author of this image, so if you know the source, please let me know.) Aaah timing!

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Painfully beautiful

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Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

​I'm a fan of C.S. Lewis, even though I've read very little of his work. Truly I'm a fan of anyone who can take a crude amalgam of thoughts, feelings and experience, and, with a few simple words, crystalize them into something painfully beautiful.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

– C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Time to choose

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I have a soft spot for duality, for opposites, contrast. Invariably, regardless of the art or mode of expression, I'm drawn in.

There's a part in Neale Donald Walsch's book, Conversations with God, that talks about every choice coming down to love or fear—nothing in between. It's not the first time I've heard this, but the manner in which it was delivered stirred up experiences past.

Language can be boiled down to its most essential building blocks. Take the most basic computer language: nothing but zeros and ones. If there were a language behind the universe—creating, morphing, dissolving it—it would be this. At least as humans are concerned, may be that's all there is: love or fear. 

We choose all the time. It's time to choose differently.

Joy, truth, love

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I just started reading a book I got as a gift from my mom, Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. I'm literally just a few pages in, but I wanted to post this quote. 

I love finding these little treasures in things—thoughts so tightly strung together you can touch them. Well, they touch you. 

The Highest Thought is always that thought which contains joy. The Clearest Words are those words which contain truth. The Grandest Feeling is that feeling which you call love.

Photo by Ben Watts on Unsplash

Photo by Ben Watts on Unsplash

The mirror

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A number of years ago, I had one of the most profound experiences driving down the interstate. It was well into the fall in upstate New York, the leaves ablaze with crimsons and oranges against a pale, grey sky. Through the clouds off in the distance broke the most beautiful sunset I’d ever beheld—it completely robbed me of breath. Every part of me was consumed by this delicate explosion of color—I couldn’t understand, I couldn’t even imagine how something so exquisite could ever exist.

But it did, and I was there bearing witness to it. Then, in the quiet, intruded the subtlest recognition: It wasn’t the “sunset” I was seeing.

Faster than awareness itself, I shut down: batten down the hatches! It pained me, terrified me to acknowledge the source of this indescribable experience.

I’ve spoken about this time and time again, as if attempting to keep the experience alive but always at a safe distance. Today, that safety was broken.

I was out for a walk in the early evening, and found myself staring off into another sunset. It was, again, beautiful. Moments before losing myself in the experience, the same memory rushed in. A tender vulnerability marked a palpable threshold I realized I could choose to cross.

I can’t recall the exact decisions I made, but I finally surrendered: There, the sunset serving as a backdrop, a gracious mirror against which I could briefly glimpse the vastness of the universe within. There, with the gift of the physical world and this physical existence, I found my place in earnest gratitude. There, magnificent.

Photo by Steven Feldman on Unsplash

Photo by Steven Feldman on Unsplash

Commitment

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Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality. It is the words that speak boldly of your intentions, and the actions which speak louder than the words. It is making the time when there is none—coming through time after time after time, year after year after year. Commitment is the stuff character is made of; the power to change the face of things. It is the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism.

– commonly attributed to Abraham Lincoln,
Shearson Lehman or anon

As long as we accept we can choose

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For as long as I remember, I've been afraid to love—to love in the purest sense.

There are these lines from Lord Tennyson's poem, In Memoriam A.H.H.: 

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

I’ve been an ardent advocate of the opposition, especially as I’ve grown older. Yet throughout my life, through the good choices and the terrible ones, this is true: it is the very thing I’m drawn to—a moth circling an ever-burning flame.

We cannot know love without loss. The profound pain of loss and the nature of love itself—immense, vast beyond comprehension, infinite—is deceptively terrifying. I say “deceptively” because I’ve glimpsed it and survived.

This video, When I Die: Lessons from the Death Zone, was deeply moving to me. If you’re also on a quest to overcome the fear to love, I hope this inspires you too.