Silence and love

I wrote this in 2012 after a particularly hard year.

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I keep odd hours these days.

There’s lots of quietly tip-toeing around the house as not to wake up my wife. I’ve learned to be a fat silent ninja, of sorts. Part of being so stealthy and silent is that it opens the door to a wealth of opportunities to learn about yourself. You have the chance to open up to what is around you. To face it and to meet what you’d rather avoid.

You learn that truth is right in front of you if you’re looking for it with the right set of eyeballs.

I find myself completely un-distracted in silence. No TV. No Video games.

Just me in a chair in the dark. Sometimes there are sandwiches.

When I take that pause, I have an opportunity to look inside, and reflect on life — real life, not errands or bullshit — but how I live. How I struggle to deal with a life that can be painful, mean, and cold. I take this time to settle in. Once I get comfortable, the realization comes that it’s just as hard for anyone else to get to this place as it is for me.

It is so much harder to turn toward the suffering around you than it is to be distracted or turn away, but it’s worth it.

So, now I’m in the present. I take control of breathing from my subconscious. I realize how aligned I am with others, regardless of if I want to be or not. I hate to feel like I’m the same as other people…but I am. People delude themselves. People need to feel different. People need to feel unique. I’m no different. They find reasons to be distracted. Reasons to cover up what is real with what is “important” when it’s really of no importance at all. Everyone wants to avoid the reality that nothing is guaranteed, that shit happens, and that we might not all still be in the car at the end of the road trip.

This is a prime example of “Buy the ticket, Take the ride.”

I’m at this point recently for awful reasons. Seeing something you love go right in front of you dampens all the buzz and lets you really process things that aren’t broadcasting in the frequency that normal life operates at.

The process of grieving opens you up to the reality of your link to others more than just about anything else. You connect. You notice how we’re all connected. You also notice who is completely tuned out to anything remotely resembling reality. You realize how no matter what path you take, or what decisions you make that it is all going to end in the same way for everyone.

That’s not the part I personally dwell on. I know it’s going to happen and that fine.

I make my peace with that regarding myself every time I’m on an airplane.

Every time that I step behind the wheel.

Every time I do anything.

The part I dwell on is that most people can’t get past the distractions and enjoy the things like honesty and truth and sincerity. They’d rather sit in the stagnant, murky sludge of bullshit that is money and possessions and brand names and hierarchy and class systems instead of understanding that none of that means anything.

None of us are really any different on a molecular level. (Except for gypsies. They’re awful.)

This goes to something that was mentioned in Chuck Palahniuk’s book “Fight Club.” The narrator can’t sleep because the noise of the world has taken over his every waking thought. The only sincerity that he can find is when he goes to support groups for people trying to deal with life-altering tragedies. Testicular cancer, Post traumatic stress disorder, Alcoholism, etc.

It opens him up. He cries. And he sleeps like a baby.

This ties into the fact that when you are vulnerable that you have the ability to make the change in yourself that you need to make. To really and truly evolve as a person. To have the compassion to turn toward suffering again and again, and the ability to respond with sincerity and kindness to others. Cynicism, in this short-lived period will take a notable nosedive, and you won’t miss it for a second.

I’ve put a lot of thought into it, and I believe that the most painful part of living a life where the people and animals and things you love die is that you don’t have the opportunity to continue letting them know that you love them.

This is a point where a lot of people are, I believe, fundamentally incorrect. We’re not thinking of the most outright emotional response that is there to have…

The grief you have for when they are gone.

That UN-repressable feeling of loss, deep in the pit of your stomach, sitting in the back of your throat, making you bawl and hurt and feel like you’re dying inside. In that moment, you are the most yourself that you will ever be…

I don’t know what that is but the purest example of love.

Grief is love expressed.