One of the biggest roadblocks I have faced in moving forward to my purpose is pride/humility. Who am I to spout the seemingly random pontifications that pass over my lips? Who am I to tell anyone anything when I can’t even manage to take the garbage out for months… literally… at a time?
I am one who has always been painfully aware of the human condition. Fascinated… Nay, obsessed with it. I realized , very early on through pure circumstance, that we are all creatures of our context. And, that everything we do has as much, if not more, of an impact on it as it has on us.
Fear. Isn’t that what stops us all? Well, I do fear that the world finds me unacceptable. I know that is how I feel about it. Always have.
I have always been a sensitive soul with a penchant for truth speaking, even as a small child. It became glaringly apparent very quickly that my nature was not “acceptable” and I had to tolerate that I was intolerable. I do know the messages I feel compelled to share are uncomfortable. I was roughly seventeen when I first wrote about feeling like I was sitting in the Garden of Gethsemane. Twenty when I told “god” that I did not want the suffering I saw coming if I allowed myself to rock the boat. My thirties were spent, seeking a way to to responsibly contribute to a world that drives us all to focus on the take. Just to be broken in my forties by the fact that I had built a life that was, for all intents and purposes, everything I never wanted it to be. Despite trying to assimilate; of trying to be “professional” and rationalizing my role as being a “meaningful cog”, I do not have an “inside voice” and “small-talk” is, simply, not in my vocabulary. Further, as much as I will claim that I am tired of the suffering I have been caught in, it is what I know best. I am, if nothing else, a valuable, albeit cautionary, tale.
The truth is, I cannot deny the cup. It still hovers, waiting for me to take it. I am a messenger, like it or not. And, I have to accept that I will be shot at.
It is all necessary. Someone has to dampen the fire so that the shadows dissipate. So that the pure light of truth, blazing beyond our illusionary cave of “civilized” ideologies, can seep through it’s entrance and lure all of us prisoners from our willful bondage.
It is not about me. It is about the message.
I am relearning how to embrace the discomfort and realize it’s purpose. To move us all toward Good Orderly Direction.
STEPPING OUT OF THE GARDEN was first conceived as the title of my personal “manifesto”(for lack of a better term) and will be a series, if not the title of, my podcast in development(hoping to launch by September).