View from the side of the road

Can there be an introspection overdose?  It may be too many years of stillness, of seeking - not just for self but for larger truths - of assuming what vexed me were complex situations with complex solutions.  Today I'm not sure.  Today my obstacles seem to be resistance and fear.  Stubborn and frightened, no matter what the cause, there I am.  What DO I know?  That compassion without enabling might be a step toward deflating these hovering airships of inaction.

I really, really hate feeling stuck.  I am not necessarily wise enough to know the difference between stuck and marching in place, waiting for a cue from the bandleader.  I have outside resources, places to turn for a combination of words that could relieve this vapor lock, the balking engine that has me by the side of the road.  It feels as though so much time has been, if not lost then certainly spent stalled.  In another life, a Morgan Plus 4 would suffer vapor lock each autumn on the drive from LA to Yosemite.  The weather was always warm, we were often the last car in the caravan, sometimes able to limp into the rural, time-warp gas station for help, sometimes not. 

Modern cars, I'm guessing, don't have vapor locks.  Whatever new afflictions beset them, that particular problem seems to have been solved.  I, however, am an older model, much older.  Heat, high altitudes, and finicky working parts are elements of the big picture.  We always got under way again, always reached our destination, were cheered by the other drives who were, of course, waiting in the bar.

I have two choices:  find what there is to enjoy about this detour, this delay, or be angry and resistant, worried, fearful.  Aren't there just days when you wish someone would come and fix it, fix it all?  We can all have a good laugh over that.  Onward and upward.

Angelou, Basquiat and fear

Illustration by Jean-Michel Basquiat.

There IS a difference between frighten and befuddle, though when the lights are out and the water is rising, one might be mistaken for the other.  As I shiver in our 40+ degree dawns I think of Long Islanders who are still without electricity, for whom 44 might seem almost balmy.

I want a magic charm to keep up my sleeve.  I want rows of charms, worn bandolier-style like a Girl Scout sash with amulets in place of badges.  I want pockets for my ammunition in case life breaks out in forms too unexpectedly unwelcome.

Blog writers whom I follow as consistently as I can, which could be defined at the present as not very, confront daily events that would leave me shell-shocked, immobilized.  "Don't compare pain" is advice carried from various recovery group sessions.  Still.  Most of us are given circumstances that we are expected to endure, for it is not within our power to change them.  Once the whimpering, in my case, stops, comes time for the winnowing.  How can I see this (or these) differently, what CAN I change, is there peace to be found within discouragement, certainly within multiple imperfections?

Definitions can be adjusted, the word imperfect changed to read ideal.  How much are we handed that is ideal?   Life is a make-do business.  Mostly.  Am I frightened or am I resistant?  They are not the same.  Am I capable of evolving, of becoming the flexible, adaptable creature that survives growing older with optimism and good humor?  Can I believe in myself and my work when connections to the numinous suddenly feel thin and fragile?

Certainty would be a fine thing, certainty of the good outcome,  unfailing trust in resilience and the transcending of all which is irksome or unsettling, guarantees of safety, of wisdom, of ability.  Wish for the moon, then go back and read the contract.  The word guarantee does not appear.

When I feel, because of orbiting planets or undulating chemistry, that I am flimsy and vulnerable, fear starts to wriggle in under the tent or over the transom.  I forget that I am both wave and particle, solid and gas, earth and sky.  I become foggy and forget the only thing we can count on is change.  I lose the grasp on my gifts, that I am one among the great shape shifters, the mind changers, the course adjusters.  I am most frightened when I fail to remember who I am.