Leap Year

The count up is at 48 days, baby. I round up 8 weeks to be two months but that won’t come until April 8th. By that time, it’ll be 60 days. It’s strange how some months have more days than others yet we still round them up to a month. It only hits the mark like this because we had a leap year.

There’s so many leaps from one thing to another. Happy family in to a sad one. Your life into your death. Married into widow. Here to not here.

Leaps aren’t collapses — they’re jumps. Except I feel both sides at the same time. The leaps I’m mentioning are literal. The metaphorical is informed but the actual lived experience is a gray area. It’s an overlap. A liminal area. That makes me think that one way to look at leaps is immediate, instantaneous and another way to look at them is in slow motion, a transition. Secondary parent into primary parent.

Leaps aren’t integration or blending — except they are for a time. It’s like yellow and red making orange. Before the leap, you don’t think much about where you’re going because you can’t imagine it. A leap goes over a gulf of understanding. It’s the macro and micro. And yet you still have to travel the path. You’re never free of the blended color. You can’t go backwards to the old color. Any new, pure colors will always have a touch of the blended ones. You carry forward the lessons of the leap.

Perhaps the new color doesn’t stay the same. Almost like the skin gets inflamed red with a wound then gradually fades in shades of pink.

A deep wound forms a scar that while it may fade to almost the same color as the surrounding skin, stays raised and can always be found.

Others can see the evidence of the scar but they can’t truly know what it was like to get it.

There are some leaps we undertake on purpose and some, we are thrown into the arc. How complex it is to be thrown in and then work to take over the trajectory. Meaning is infused in every color.

Some leaps are anticipated as happy but we find when we take them, they have deeper, richer colors as well. No experience is one thing — at least the big ones. Even still the little ones — is it not until later that we get the full hue when we look back? Then there’s trying to control the trajectory — as if we could.

Perhaps we have no control at all — not even influence. What will be, will be. The anticipation of the arc and where it takes us is not always predictable. Are the leaps necessary to live your best life? Could you get through life without any leaps? That seems like it might be boring — at least uneventful. Is there a built in safeguard against safety, against not changing at all?

Is it better to embrace the leap, the change, or to let it wash over you? The difference is liking the journey of change I suppose. The locus of control — the world acts upon me or I, it. Can you change the colors by the way you look at them? If a leap is colors, then it’s refractions of the same white light. Can you filter or add light as you go?

I sit here in front of my happy sun lamp with the lights off. What would be my experience if I turned on the overhead lights. Is that a version of greater depth, insight, and experience because I can see more clearly?

It seems any experience is just that and we take from it what we will. The only directional movement is the leap.

But the leap in itself is a mere moment — at least the impetus for the leap. Some have greater ripple effects but all disturb the status quo. Are we writing this together, my love?

I write as if the individual experience isn’t influenced by those around them, the group. That another’s transition doesn’t affect mine and mine there’s. As if keeping my head above water, staying alive, doesn’t positively influence the boys’ experiences.

I could do this leap wrong but what is wrong? Experiences seem to be merely that — experiences. They guide us to the next experience. They point the direction for the next leap.

Wrong is a word we put on something when it hurts another. It’s a higher level assessment, an opinion.

You hurt me with killing yourself. That is a true statement. You hurt the boys, your sister and brother, and the wider network in which you were entrenched. But was it wrong? Wrong also assumes it’s against the trajectory of change and forward movement. It will propel us all forward because everything does.

What if it was also right? Right assumes some gift or alignment back to the arc. That works into some sort of grander plan. A fork in the road where there is no choice. But really, there is a sort of choice. The assumption in this case is the fork that you’d continue living or you die.

The longer I go down the path that you continue living when everyone else, including you, is on another path, the more I stray from the others. The more I stray from a version of myself.

I feel a pull towards the other path and it gets stronger every day. But to leave the path I’m on feels bad. What is bad? The word we put on our own experiences. It also feels good to give into the pull. Again, the colors mix.

It is not one thing — it is both bad and good but not in equal measure. To resist the pull seems to convey a sort of power, free will. What feels right in this moment for me. But to stray from the path feels wrong — who decides this and what does it say about free will?

You can choose your actions but you’re not free from the consequences. So can you actually choose then? Could I choose to arrange the consequences of my actions in the way I most desired? No it seems. And so there must be fundamental laws of the universe.

The boundary that envelops us all that we mostly try to ignore. Boundaries reduce anxiety. When you reach the horizon and try to cross it, anxiety increases.

Some people aren’t aware of the boundary and cross it anyway. They are still subject to the anxiety but it’s disconnected from the act. Almost as if they get the reward, then the punishment, in a linear and sequential mode.

The more we integrate the experience into one, perhaps this is the optimal path.

Life is a maze, it seems. Yes, we have free will to decide which turn to take but ultimately, the map is already drawn. We can’t change how many turns we must choose before solving it. And who created the maze and why?

The answer seems simple and easy — God created it for us to learn. Is it really the only way? There is an echo in the concept of pain fostering growth. The strenuous workout that builds muscle and endurance. But that speaks to the law of entropy. Unless one keeps up the workouts, all gains will be lost.

That doesn’t seem the same set of rules for a leap or change. Perhaps the gains aren’t lost but yet another experience. We do seem to retain the muscle memory and surely, the body is changed even if the muscle goes back.

Maybe nothing goes back and what we see is merely a similarity between former and current states? So much overlap that makes it appear the same. But underneath, small and even microscopic differences.

That seems to be the way of grief. The shades of color are imperceptibly different each day but are so subtle, they seem the same. And so goes for the comparison of colors between people.

If my grief doesn’t change as much as someone else’s, then it is wrong. If these greys stay grey and your’s gather color, I must be stuck. But even to notice this, is a mere moment in time. It ignores the trajectory, whatever end point it’s working towards. It assumes facts and predicts the path.

Is it that we want to be on the same path as another or don’t want to be on the wrong path? If someone grieves more heavily and for longer while another gets lighter, what is the nature of this tension?

The human brain is hopelessly reductionistic. We can only hold so much in our hands and so we seek to simplify everything.

The most profound way we do this is in summary. But summary is essentially a stereotype — a selection of one or a few key elements to represent the whole. A way of quickly conveying the experience to ourselves and others. A way of understanding something complex.

Lack of nuance threatens to steer us in a less accurate direction. And yet, still we prioritize the summary over accuracy. Like common core math, it is preferred to estimate rather than find truth.

We seek utopia and yet we thwart it at the most unfortunate times. It is the asymptote we strive towards, ever narrowing the gap but never quite reaching the brass ring.

It’s almost as if we are expressing, over and over again, the distance between life and heaven. We seek to recreate heaven only to overturn our creation — as if to actually say how we truly realize we’re not there yet.

A cosmic validation to God, this macro message reflects back to the creator that we see Him (Her). Another echo. Every experience, large and small are ripples — every experience circles back onto itself.

A snake eating itself or a halo — it is what we see. Whether it’s a result of the trajectory’s filter or free will to choose. We are still not free of the lesson.

I’d appreciate if you’d clap for this essay. Thanks for reading.