there is something more important than being right.
***
i don't want to play at this game called life. it isn't fun. it's tiresome.
there are people in this world who cannot abide by anyone having fun "at their expense," i.e. winning even once. if you claim one meager victory at the game, then they will trounce you 10 times in a row to let you know that it was a complete fluke.
someone did this to me throughout my childhood. and the world let this person do it. and the world loved this person as he did it. because that is what the world loves. a winner. a go-getter. i did not hate this person for it. i, like the rest of the world, admired him...
growing up for me meant that i had to find another game, a secret game, and pretend not to play it. i always knew that once i started to become good at something, that someone would come along and destroy it, just to show that i didn't deserve it. this meant, for the most part, that i was a shadow of a person, with glints of genius and creativity (as ALL people have), who kept swallowing and swathing it all in darkness, because i was afraid of being seen. being seen meant that someone would smother out the little burning embers. being seen was the end of the world.
i did not know i was wounded. the world teaches you that you must never speak of your wounds. the irony was that those who wounded me would complain of pretended offenses, and because their voices were so clear, despite the hypocrisy, they would garner attention and aid. but whenever i attempted (or even now attempt) to speak of wounds which damaged me so much that my eyes could not see them, nor my voice whisper of them, i am castigated for feeling sorry for myself. and so, the offenses of the past were buried, as though they never happened, and any attempts to unearth them seemed, in the eyes of the world, self-pity and lies...
another irony was that, in concealing myself, i had in essence become the hater that i sought to escape. i had swallowed the knife of the one who had wounded me, and cut myself deeper than anyone else could... thus, in moments when i should have been happy, a part of me, that part of me that i had created, carefully carved out my shins with skilled slices, undermining my own stilted supports... "i hate myself" replaced "they hate me."
***
i am a shadow person. the world i live in is occupied by shadows. my past is a blur of shadows. muted impressions. deep within me is a hatred of this life of shadows, a yearning for the clarity that i sense others have. but at the same time, there is this fear of that clarity, for it would likely destroy everything that i have grown up to be, shade upon shade upon shade...
like a shadow, i derive my form and sustenance from others. i say i love people and support them, but perhaps what i really mean is that i need to have a role and identity by showing the world i am a good person by helping them. i am the beetle or centipede beneath the pavement, claiming that i shoulder the burden of it, when in reality, it is my concealment, and it is i who derive all the benefit... how i hate myself as i realize this! how i wish someone would smash me out of existence...
writing, a shadow play of words (shades of meaning), is in itself little more than another attempt to garner acceptance through concealment. it is a longing for a lover/reader who will reconstruct in their mind's eye a real person out of these echoes and whispers and shadows that i write. "believe in me, help me believe in anything, cause i want to be someone to believe."
***
i say i love people. i loved my grandmother. and yet perhaps i did not love her so much. why then do i not live in the clarity and conviction of the path that she laid out for me? why do i not honor her wishes? i continue to live in the shadows, perhaps deeper than before.
i claim i love my sister. and yet, i allow circumstance and time to dull my memory of her. perhaps it is all my fault that she has committed yet another crime. hell, she is hardly even a person to me any more...
***
what is love?
i imagine it to be an invisible embracing of all that is. i repeatedly cling to this notion that it is blind. it is blind, not in the sense that it does not see, but in the sense that it does not attach to what it sees; it looks beyond the eyes of the world into the truth of the heart. deep within that abyss, in a place that no person can see themselves, love can go, and can unlock secrets and redeem everything. love believes that i am a good person, and that i can do good things, despite everything. despite the mistakes i've made, and the promises i have not been able to fulfill.
in moments when i am desperate (and they come nowadays, deep in the night, when the footsteps of time echo within me, and I am not certain whether I should panic because I can't settle, or because I always settle too much), i call on, i look for, love. i find it in fragments of people and time. in reality, those times may have passed, and those people may have turned away, but i try to remember those moments anyway. they are all i have to cling to.
god for me is just like me in the sense that s/he has been so shrouded in the shadows and rags of hypocrisy in the eyes of this world, that i almost cannot believe in a fixed, institutionalized vision of him/her any more. churches have become hypocritical precisely because they think they see god and claim a righteousness based upon that image. it is in this sense that the dispossessed and downtrodden are closer to god than the church, for their eyes are broken. god can only be seen and called upon by those who "cannot see" any longer, who cannot believe that any man-made, fixed conception ever is a satisfactory god. there are too many cracks to slip through, too many ways for a man and a soul to be unacceptable and unforgivable. if god truly is what s/he is, that which embraces and creates all, then there can never be a way to speak of him/her without limiting him/her, and god's salvific and redemptive power. you will help him, but not her? you will love that person, but not this? you will allow this one to win, and be righteous, and that one to fall away?
NO.
there is something more important (and fundamental) than being right.
***
tonight, in the midst of the hissing winds outside, i will "pray" for shadows to fall away. i will pray for love to find me, wordless and plain, a good person with a good heart, who can do simple things to uncover the goodness in the world around him...
