I never realized my late forties would slam open the floodgates of my past. Swelling with emotions I can’t seem to wrap my head around and even understand why.
Why now?
They have always been there, creeping around, but in vagueness and in the sense “it happened.” Yet now, I watch television or am in the middle of work and vivid memories come to me. In detail to the point of the smell of my surroundings, the temperature, the colors, and worst of all, the feeling I had at that very time.
Happiness. Sadness. Fear. Determination. I remember how I felt. From that little boy to the man in his 20s and 30s.
It feels like I have taken the wrong path in life. The “what-ifs” and “could have’s” saturate my open mind at times. Thing is that you only get one life and one chance.
The young kid that loved school and excelled in academics. My penchant for drawing and creating art, my musical abilities, the unusual physical strength I had as a kid and throughout my adolescence and early adulthood. What did I ever do with these things?
I imagine most of the world feels the same way. The feeling of several options for directions in life, basically paths. Although, we fell prisoner to our surroundings or environments. Whatever the many reasons, non-sustainable surroundings or lack of opportunities, they went by the wayside.
There are many reasons we feel like we failed in life. With all those reasons, one main factor controls the rest.
None of us picked the world we were born into. It was already here, and it already had its mind made up about what a decent life looked like, long before we had any say in the matter. Sunday school telling you exactly how the righteous life unfolds, if you play it right, you will receive your reward. A rerun on the couch where the dad fixes everything in twenty-two minutes flat and the family sits down to dinner like nothing ever happened. A magazine at the checkout stand promising a flatter stomach and a bigger paycheck, six weeks, tops, results guaranteed. Now it’s a phone doing all three jobs at once, and doing them faster, and somehow making every bit of it feel a hell of a lot worse.
This is our first enemy. Not the parents who couldn’t afford the lessons. Not the town that only had two jobs and a liquor store. Those did real damage, in their own time, but they came later. This came first, quiet, years before we ever had a fair shot at clearing a bar some strangers set without once asking if we even wanted to jump. Nobody asked. Not once.
We spent our whole childhoods absorbing somebody else’s idea of what we were supposed to become, and none of it had us in mind. It couldn’t have. It was built for nobody in particular, which is exactly what made it feel like it was built for you. So, when the actual life didn’t match the picture, we didn’t think to question the picture. We blamed ourselves or others instead.
That’s the whole con. The mirage.
The enemy never shows up looking like one. It shows up as a Bible verse, a sitcom, an epic movie, best-selling fiction, a stranger’s highlight reel on a screen you check before you’re even out of bed. By the time you notice you’ve spent decades measuring your one life against a thousand that were never yours to measure against, the comparison already feels like it was your idea all along.
It wasn’t your idea. You were in the simplest form, brainwashed.
Let’s think of the things we need in life, the key components to survival and even some comfort. Nutritious food, clean water, shelter from the elements, and a safe environment. Add in our tribal instinct (friends, family, etc.), yes, you need them even though you think you don’t. In these days, an automobile and mobile device have made their way into the “necessity” bracket, but could you live without them?
Creature comforts are different, things such as a big fancy house, state-of-the-art automobile, a mate who mirrors what you see in the media. Fancy clothing, accessories, belongings. What do these things do to make your life better? Some things can make life easier, but at what expense?
Most of our ancestors grew their own food, hunted game, and traded amongst one another. They survived. For most, it was rough as Mother Earth can be a formidable foe as well as your best friend. Those who learned to respect Her tended to live better.
The thing a lot of humans forget is our souls. The one thing given to us as a gift from our Creator. If you feel it’s science, so be it. If you call it God, so be it. Whatever the name or cause of it, we received the most powerful thing that is known to humankind.
Emotions. The ability to love and feel. Life.
When life becomes dark and hopeless, those things have temporarily left us. Something caused us to doubt this, lose this, and push it away.
We were also given the ability to heal. Physically and mentally. Doesn’t mean it always occurs the way you “feel” it should, I am just stating we are given the ability. The rest is up to us. To create or further healing and repair.
I opened my soul to bigger things long ago, unfortunately, I let in darkness. I let in a negative energy of our universe that many of us carry. We are not born this way, it is, again, our surroundings, experiences, and environments that mold us. It is up to us to break that mold. Whether it be as a child, teenager, young adult or all the way until we are 100 years old. It is up to us.
The past is going to pour through you and remind you of good things, and bad things. The past IS the past, and the future will always be different. It is up to us to learn from the past and make a consolidated effort daily to make sure our paths get constantly corrected. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t finish school, go to college, have the fancy job, the luxury life. The bottom line is one thing.
Are you respecting our home? Earth.
Are you trying to better yourself? Physically, mentally, emotionally, and once you have that harnessed to a controllable point, help your neighbor.
I have to take what my mind gives me on those moments I stated. Letting them run again through my head and reminding me. Then I take those and use them to conceptualize my next step in life. My next decision. Not using them for blame or crutches, for moments of inspiration. No what-ifs or what abouts, just what is.
My therapy is speaking to others and listening to others about my and their memories and past. Organizing them in my head slowly and methodically as to not drive the wrong emotion out. A nice peaceful walk with my dog, sunlight, eating something clean and healthy, drinking a glass of cold fresh water…these all contribute to my healing AND my future. The one I control.
While you are living and breathing, you owe it to yourself to put the right nutrition in your body, your vessel. You owe it to yourself to constantly learn, and never stop. You owe it to yourself to be free and clear of mental abuse and pain. Doing what it takes to remove yourself from the environment and never going back, learning from it.
That flood I told you about at the start, the smell, the temperature, the colors, the boy turning into the man in his 20s and 30s, that was never just mine. Strip away my specific rooms and my specific years, and what’s left is every person’s flood. Somebody else, right now, in a kitchen you’ll never see, is watching their own past walk back in with the same kind of detail, carrying their own what-ifs, wondering about the same one life, the same one chance. Different smell. Same flood.
Help yourself, accept it from others, and return the favor constantly with everyone. We are one. Not separate. If you want to classify us by race, we are the human race.
In the meantime, be yourself and remember, it’s never too late.
Dak