Refocus? Revolution?

Saturday, September 28, 2013

     Today I woke up, fed myself, and traveled across the continental divide to attend the wedding of an old friend. After a beautiful ceremony—against a backdrop of freshly yellowed mountain aspens and the striking blue of the Colorado autumn sky—I offered my heartiest congratulations, climbed into an old red Jeep borrowed from my parents, and drove off into the sunset. I traversed the Rockies once more and returned to Deer Creek. I visited with my parents and a couple of their friends as they played spades around the kitchen table in their little cabin deep in the forest canyon. Then I drove all the way back home to Edgewater.

     I left today’s wedding reception early, before it had really even gotten started. I didn’t storm away or slink out. I simply recognized there was nothing to be gained from my remaining there. I am uncomfortable at wedding receptions—or any party at all, really. I am no good at meeting people. Occasionally, a particularly outgoing or quirky character can draw me out, but those people are rare. With most people I run out of things to talk about within minutes. I went home tonight to figure out how to turn my life into something worth celebrating. I figure if nothing else, it will help me with the small talk.

     Tonight I made what is, for me, a strong assertion: Don’t ignore me, dammit, I am worth something! Now, it is time for me to make good on that claim. It is time for me for to stop languishing in depressed indecision. The way forward is unclear in many ways, but I have made one promise. No matter what else, I will create something.

     The trouble with figuring out how to deal with the setbacks I am facing is that when I contemplate any problem, I always try to trace it as far back toward the root as possible. As a result, I sit down to pay my bills and up despairing over the injustice and suffering plaguing the entire world. It can be difficult to organize projects with that kind of unsolvable problem weighing down your drug-fried, disorganized, emotion-tossed mind.

     I have wanted for years to write about all the myriad injustices I experience and learn about every day. I have wanted to decry with the eloquence of Tom Paine all the psycho/sociological diseases I see contaminating my culture from every medium. I have wished for years to be granted wisdom enough to write a manifesto of the great life all humanity could find if only we could see past our species’ hubris and embrace our role as a part of this incomprehensibly amazing, beautifully mysterious biosphere. But I cannot save the world until I put myself together, and I cannot put myself together until I am proud of what I create.

     I hope that somehow, somewhere in these digital pages I will stumble upon sentences and phrases strong enough to forge with heat and hammer into the swords, arrows, and shields needed to outfit a phalanx of battle-ready ideas worthy of leading a long-necessary spiritual revolution. But even if I cannot crack the foundations myself, if my words move just one person to let go of getting ahead just long enough to create something of their own, the chain will continue. If something I create instills independence, inspiration, comfort, or hope in one other being on this tiny little pulsing pebble, it will have been worth it. I have to believe that. There is no alternative.