Through this window I view the world. It’s my window. It’s my view. It’s not your window or your view. I respect (for the most part… I still struggle with some of the hurts and some of my human frailties that for some reason of which I can’t let go) your window and your view.
Today, my window is a little foggy. I can wipe away the fog (like the steam or the frost on the windows of my childhood home) and it stays away for a brief blink of time, then returns. I know the fog will clear when my world warms again. But for now, the fog creeps in and obscures my view of the world. It creeps not on little cat feet, but like a huge iron door on a creepy old ghost ridden mansion. Creeking on its hinges. Slamming shut with an echoing metallic tasting thud. I chose the times when I should try to push it open. I pick my battles on days like today.
Through the fog, today, I have a friend. I’m sitting in a parking lot at the community college waiting for my offspring to wander back to me. My friend (not Richard Thomas who is kind of flatly coming from my speakers… A Course in Miracles is playing on the CD player. It’s not the book to be listening to today, but it is what is in the car. My friend is a chickadee. He sits maybe 10 feet from me on the topmost branch of a bush. He sings. His song calls to me, speaks to me, reassures me. I’m glad he’s there.
I watch the march of the students. In ones and twos they slowly walk. Most of them watch the ground at their feet, and don’t look up to see what surrounds them. Yeah, it’s a parking lot, but who is to say that there isn’t a bit of magic in the grass just three inches to their right or left, or a dirigible in the air over their head, or a pole or a garbage can waiting to be run into just a few feet ahead. I understand the desire to shut out the world. Too many times I share that desire. But for what purpose. How can all of the people who pass by my lonely little car world need to look at the dirt passing their feet. They don’t see the creepy banana yellow van pull through, or the shiny black hummer (or the shiny blue one or the shiny red one either for that matter) parked beneath the cloud heavy sky. How can dirt be that interesting? Or their toes? Do they wonder what they are missing? What is their window.
My window (at lest right now) sees a lot about the hurt that is going on around me. I don’t know if the people doing the hurting realize what they are doing or not. I don’t know if they understand that they don’t have to do the hurting. They could choose to look up and see the pain in someone else’s eyes and care. I guess I’ve started to realize that people chose to hurt other people. Sometimes I hope that the choice is an unconscious one. Mostly I’ve started to understand that it is conscious. Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that the pain (the words, the actions, the slights, the ignorance and judgement) feels so much like a kick in the stomach. But it is even worse than a kick in the stomach. It is a kick in the soul and that doesn’t heel as fast. It may not heal ever at all. It is sometimes like a wound that festers and rots and like flesh-eating bacteria eats away at someone’s self-worth.
Today, and every day, I work hard to find ways to counteract the rot that is in my own heart and soul because I understand that unless I can find ways to heal it, I can never quite be who I want to be (who I’m supposed to be). I try to find ways to help other people get rid of their rot. Doesn’t always work. but if I don’t try, who will? Be the change I seek in the world… if not I then who…
There are a few people who are hurting a lot lately and the reason they are hurting are because of the rot that is put in their hearts by people who seem to think they mean well, or a few who are just, well, mean…I want desperately to help them… sometimes I think I might actually help. Some times not so much. But I’m determined to try.
Maybe if I focus on trying to help other people carve out the pain in their hearts, maybe, just maybe I will either be too busy to hurt with my own, or I will start to feel the kick in the ribs less when it happens the next time.
A Figment Of Fitness 