I promise to write each and every day.
I promise to write each and every day.
I promise to write each and every day.
I promise to write each and every day.
I promise to write each and every day.
I promise to write each and every day.
Etc. Etc. Etc. times 100. (that's for you Syl!)
Am I a liar or what? How can I possibly write each and every day? Is it possible? I have no idea. But let’s find out. It has been over a month since my last blog and I think I must have lost the handful of faithful readers by now. Or maybe I lost them long ago anyway. But listen I really am writing for myself anyhow. I love the clicking plasticky sound of my keyboard as I hunt and peck my way through this form of expression. It is music to my ears…
Symbols take shape into words and those words have meaning (we can only hope) and maybe even create a feeling inside as they are read. This is my intent and my way of saying something meaningful out of all the words that escape my mouth and have little or no meaning during the course of my day. I talk a lot in my line of work. I also write a fair amount too all in the form of email. That’s informational writing and the tone is most often lost in that very simple form of communication. Here I attempt to allow the words to convey more than the business at hand. Here the feeling of the message is what is important.
So what’s up you ask? Well it’s funny cause I’ve been thinking about how we continually reinvent ourselves throughout the course of our lives. Or maybe not. Maybe some individuals remain pretty much the same after a while. No major shifts no big “aha’s”. I don’t know how that’s possible but it seems to be the case with so many. But there is another tribe out there that always seems to morph into something new, a better version of itself. Or at least that’s the challenge. That’s what I want to talk about tonight – the ones who have found a way to keep it fresh.
Today as I was walking our dog back home I saw a young man turn the corner ahead of me and walk down the street. Some kind of strange recognition jolted through me. I didn’t know who he was as I’d never seen him before. But he was my build and had very long blond hair tied loosely in a ponytail. As I watched him walk away I had this eerie feeling I was watching myself thirty years ago. That earlier version of Jamie (long hair and all). It was mind altering to watch my former self and feel or better yet, know, what that early Jamie was like. Twenty-one years old and not a bad guy but also not all that aware either. And as I watched I could feel what living those additional thirty more years had done to my inner world. There was still a ton of fire no doubt but it burns slower now and is less combustible if fire can be that way. The love I have now runs deeper and is much less conditional. The dreams I have are so much more fulfilling than the ones that moved me thirty years ago. However in the watching of a former version of me I had so much respect for that young man and his uncanny ability to turn a pile of horse shit into a pony. To keep getting up off the ground to find a way home through the blackness of doubt and uncertainty, through the pain of heartbreak and disappointment. In some ways it’s about being a survivor. And that made me respect that younger me all the more.
I thought of all the self images I adopted to make sense of the world. All the masks I put on that helped me to feel like I fit in. The incarnations of me that were really simple strategies to cope with this thing called living. Being alive. But where was the “real me”? The authentic one? The one who no longer believed the mask?
Well duh, that didn’t happen overnight of course. This lovely gift called day in and day out, the good fortune to stay alive and keep getting a chance to see the sun rise and the flowers bloom and the babies be born and the world get smaller and people get more compassionate and the hum of humanity get more soothing and all the questions get answered and all the love increases and all the masks fall away…
That’s what I saw in the flash of a similar looking human to myself. And in all the reinventing of me I saw a link between then and now. That somehow it all made sense when I saw the younger me and felt the twinge of admiration for the path he took that got me here today. Remarkable, truly remarkable when you ponder it. Isn’t it?
So if you are feeling stuck go find an old picture of yourself. Stare at it hard and see who was it there that got you here? And how many reinventions along the way did it take. And how much can you love what you see. And how much can you love what you are.
Right here. Right now.
Later gater-
J
I promise to write each and every day.
I promise to write each and every day.
I promise to write each and every day.
I promise to write each and every day.
I promise to write each and every day.
Etc. Etc. Etc. times 100. (that's for you Syl!)
Am I a liar or what? How can I possibly write each and every day? Is it possible? I have no idea. But let’s find out. It has been over a month since my last blog and I think I must have lost the handful of faithful readers by now. Or maybe I lost them long ago anyway. But listen I really am writing for myself anyhow. I love the clicking plasticky sound of my keyboard as I hunt and peck my way through this form of expression. It is music to my ears…
Symbols take shape into words and those words have meaning (we can only hope) and maybe even create a feeling inside as they are read. This is my intent and my way of saying something meaningful out of all the words that escape my mouth and have little or no meaning during the course of my day. I talk a lot in my line of work. I also write a fair amount too all in the form of email. That’s informational writing and the tone is most often lost in that very simple form of communication. Here I attempt to allow the words to convey more than the business at hand. Here the feeling of the message is what is important.
So what’s up you ask? Well it’s funny cause I’ve been thinking about how we continually reinvent ourselves throughout the course of our lives. Or maybe not. Maybe some individuals remain pretty much the same after a while. No major shifts no big “aha’s”. I don’t know how that’s possible but it seems to be the case with so many. But there is another tribe out there that always seems to morph into something new, a better version of itself. Or at least that’s the challenge. That’s what I want to talk about tonight – the ones who have found a way to keep it fresh.
Today as I was walking our dog back home I saw a young man turn the corner ahead of me and walk down the street. Some kind of strange recognition jolted through me. I didn’t know who he was as I’d never seen him before. But he was my build and had very long blond hair tied loosely in a ponytail. As I watched him walk away I had this eerie feeling I was watching myself thirty years ago. That earlier version of Jamie (long hair and all). It was mind altering to watch my former self and feel or better yet, know, what that early Jamie was like. Twenty-one years old and not a bad guy but also not all that aware either. And as I watched I could feel what living those additional thirty more years had done to my inner world. There was still a ton of fire no doubt but it burns slower now and is less combustible if fire can be that way. The love I have now runs deeper and is much less conditional. The dreams I have are so much more fulfilling than the ones that moved me thirty years ago. However in the watching of a former version of me I had so much respect for that young man and his uncanny ability to turn a pile of horse shit into a pony. To keep getting up off the ground to find a way home through the blackness of doubt and uncertainty, through the pain of heartbreak and disappointment. In some ways it’s about being a survivor. And that made me respect that younger me all the more.
I thought of all the self images I adopted to make sense of the world. All the masks I put on that helped me to feel like I fit in. The incarnations of me that were really simple strategies to cope with this thing called living. Being alive. But where was the “real me”? The authentic one? The one who no longer believed the mask?
Well duh, that didn’t happen overnight of course. This lovely gift called day in and day out, the good fortune to stay alive and keep getting a chance to see the sun rise and the flowers bloom and the babies be born and the world get smaller and people get more compassionate and the hum of humanity get more soothing and all the questions get answered and all the love increases and all the masks fall away…
That’s what I saw in the flash of a similar looking human to myself. And in all the reinventing of me I saw a link between then and now. That somehow it all made sense when I saw the younger me and felt the twinge of admiration for the path he took that got me here today. Remarkable, truly remarkable when you ponder it. Isn’t it?
So if you are feeling stuck go find an old picture of yourself. Stare at it hard and see who was it there that got you here? And how many reinventions along the way did it take. And how much can you love what you see. And how much can you love what you are.
Right here. Right now.
Later gater-
J
Comments
love ya
Moish