Photographic Catharsis

Catharsis. It’s such a rare beast. Of all the experiences I have ever experienced it seems to be the most endangered and the most short lived.

I’ve been pent up as of late. Old patterns of self-hatred have been rearing their ugly heads. Of course to distract my brain I drowned myself in beer and new projects.

The beer made the patterns more pronounced, the projects just created new negative emotions about all the projects yet to do. I want to do a million things and all that desire just eggs on the anxiety.

“You never see things through. Don’t start something new.”

“Where’s the profit in this? You’re spending money you’ll never make back.”

“There’s so many ways to get where you want to be. Why can’t you just find them?”

“Where do you even want to go?”

“This isn’t the life you wanted. You’re a failure.”

I bought cameras. I made cyanotypes. I made t shirts. I posted posts. I bought film (which I’m now terrified to use). I bought an adapter and a controller and two games for my old Nintendo 64. I ordered prints. I dug out old treasures from the closet.

Each and every time I hoped something would give me a little punch of endorphins that would push my negative thoughts and emotions out for good.

Nope.

But a few days ago I did find something that made me pause and *almost* crest that hill of tears.

As I’ve gotten deeper into photography I’ve started looking back through my old portfolio trying to find the gems. Unconsciously, I was also seeking some validation that perhaps I’m getting better. I don’t know about the latter (photography has its ups and downs) but I have found a lot of gems.

After listening to a podcast about street photography I remembered taking candid shots of a concert I attended just before the pandemic hit. At the time, the world was about to lose such experiences. I was about to lose my wife. She had already signed a rental agreement and at the time I was teetering on accepting her choice. The future was bleak for me, and for the rest of the world as well, though they didn’t know it.

I scrolled back through to that night, February 28th, 2020. The concert was at Jackrabbits in Jacksonville, FL. The acts performing were local: Hensley, Yellow Steve, Denver Hall, and Faze Wave. I went primarily for Hensley and Faze Wave as I had seen them before at Raindogs, but after this night I was a fan of all the acts.

Seeing that world in photographs smacked me so hard.

A world without social distancing. A world without masks. A world where people were just people, all colors, all ages, just enjoying a night out. This really was the last hurrah in a lot of ways.

And for me it was such a last gasp. I never even noticed the pandemic. My life completely fell apart and I didn’t have time to waste on the world outside. I wouldn’t even recognize the man who took these photos. He probably would despise me, and I envy him. He was as oblivious as the crowd was.

So many feelings broke loose looking at these. The very memories are tainted. But I saw the world through those past eyes. It’s a vision that eludes me right now.

I want to see that world again. To have those eyes again. But I can’t. I am a different person and the world has changed around me.

Is this catharsis? Have I purged the negative thoughts and emotions? I’m still working on it. Looking back seems to be one of the best ways to look forward. I see where I was. I see where the world was. Maybe some of that “innocence” is still there.

Even though I have been to many concerts and social events since, none of them quite have the feel of that particular time and place. Perhaps it’s my jaundiced emotions that make modern experiences less enjoyable. Perhaps the world truly *is* different. Either way, I’ll keep searching for that old world feel.

As for my emotional constipation, I don’t have to keep chasing newer and better things. However, there is nothing wrong with trying new and different things. They may not spark permanent joy, but they are worth doing, and doing as well as I can.

Perhaps in doing new things well, I’ll finally break the clog. If not, at least I’ll have fun right?

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“Document 13” A Dystopian Tale: Part 10

Welcome to part 10 of “Document 13”, a dystopian graphic novel I’m creating with my daughter. This week: an escape.

The year is 2074, the world has been plunged into darkness. One girl, Sarah Doe, will learn the secrets of the dark forces that run the ruined world. With the help of a few friends, her family, and her own powers she will fight to return the world to an order not known since well before her birth. Will she succeed? Read to find out!

If you haven’t read the other parts, go back and read them first!
———————————–—————
**Scene:** Just outside the secret hiding spot in the pantry. Sarah is zipping up a bag while Ruby waits.

R: You have everythin’?

S: I think so. You sure I can read well enough to understand your directions?

R: Girl, you read better than I do. You’re some kind of super genius or somethin’. You remember the signal?

S: Yeah. Stay behind you in the shadows until you put your hand behind your back.

*They walk out cautiously and Sarah lags behind a bit.*

**Scene:** Night time in the compound. All the orphans are asleep and aside from a few lights around the perimeter, everything is dark. Ruby is seen walking towards the suit room.

Orderly 2: What do you need?

R: I received a message that one of my family is hurt. I need a suit to see him.

O2: You know you have to get permission from the Headmistress to get a suit. Do you have it?

R: No, sir… I’m in a hurry, can we skip the formality just this once?

O2: Tell you what, the shift’s almost over, no one has been near this room for a month anyway, I’ll go with you and get her permission.

R: But sir, that will take too….

O2: Shutup! I’m not losing my job over you!

R: OK…

*She puts her hand behind her back and follows the orderly towards the office.*

*Sarah sneaks out of the shadows and approaches the suit room. Just as she gets in she hears a voice behind her.*

Orderly 1: So there you are! I knew if we gave it enough time you’d appear.

*The headmistress appears with Ruby and orderly 2.*

Hm: Send them outside. No suits.

Sarah: Kill me! Not her!

Hm: I can’t have any insubordination, both or none. I can always replace a cook…

Ruby: Girl, shh.

*The two orderlies shuffle them into the airlock.*

S: I’m sorry, Ruby! You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me. I should have just been obedient and left before!

R: No Sarah, you are here for a reason. The good Lord wanted me to find you. I don’t believe He’s gonna let you die, even if I do. You are special and if a noose didn’t kill you, nothin’ will. None of this is in vain. I’m not their slave, I can die with my head held high. I love you.

*The airlock opens, both women struggle to breathe, holding onto each other and finally falling still.*

Hm: Retrieve the bodies and dispose of them in the incinerator. Don’t mention this to any of the other orderlies. Do it quickly!


———————————–—————

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“Document 13” A Dystopian Tale: Part 9

Welcome to part 9 of “Document 13”, a dystopian graphic novel I’m creating with my daughter.

If you have missed it so far, check it out on my Drip Torch Studio page.

Love it? Hate it? I welcome any and all feedback!

The year is 2074, the world has been plunged into darkness. One girl, Sarah Doe, will learn the secrets of the dark forces that run the ruined world. With the help of a few friends, her family, and her own powers she will fight to return the world to an order not known since well before her birth. Will she succeed? Read to find out!
———————————–—————

Scene: One month later in the pantry. Ruby enters and shuts the false wall. Sarah has several books now. She also has a pencil and is tracing letters when Ruby comes in.

R: It’s gettin’ harder to keep you. The orderlies have been askin’ harder and harder questions, which is sayin’ a lot for them. I think they have their suspicions. I love you girl, but it’s gettin’ time for you to leave the nest. 

S: But how? You said they are guarding the suits. Robin died without a… 

R: They only have two guards. And they are dumber than bricks. You should hear the questions they’ve been askin’. Sure, they’ve gotten tougher, but when the early questions were softball questions… 

S: What are we going to do? 

R: They switch shifts every twelve hours. The next switch is in two hours. Gather your things. I brought you some extra rations and directions to the outside. 

S: The outside? 

R: Now, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten everything I taught you. The safe-haven outside the city. My friends work in a factory supplyin’ shoes to the floatin’ city, but they have connections to the safe-haven. I’ve managed to smuggle out a message to them with one of the other orphans so they’ll know you’re comin’. She had no idea what she was deliverin’ but I’m sure she got it on the right bot. I hope anyway… When the guards are switchin’, I’ll distract them and you sneak out. Do you remember where to go?

S: The library in the Northwest Quadrant. Stick to the safety corridors away from dogs.

R: Yes, they will meet you there and take you to the safe haven.

Scene: HM office, one week earlier. One of the orphans is standing in front of the hm desk. The hm is reading a note. 

Hm: Thank you my dear one. You said the cook gave this to you, correct? 

Orphan: Yes, ma’am. She said to hide it in bot Q105. 

Hm (taking notes): Q105? That’s a shoe factory bot… thank you again, you’re dismissed. 

The orphan leaves.

HM (picking up the phone): I think we found her. I have a plan. 

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Projection

“Tell a lie enough times, it becomes truth.” or so the saying goes.

Some of us are more susceptible to this kind of manipulation than others. Self-critical or self-effacing people, or just those who can’t stand to place blame on others are quite accepting of false charges laid against them. If something is off, it must be their fault, especially if they are told repeatedly that it is.

“You have anxiety” was drummed into my head for years. I accepted it as fact, I had generalized anxiety disorder. The fact that I was stressed all the time was ample evidence. It had to be true.

I was told over and over that my response to stress was disproportionate, that I was oversensitive, needy, too emotional. I had buzzwords and subjective terms thrown at me: “anxious”, “codependent”, “enmeshed”, “entangled”, “clingy”, “controlling”, “manipulative”, “unhealthy”, “obsessed”. Always negative terms, but never a description of healthy alternatives.

I became convinced that I was somehow defective.

Then the word “abusive” was dropped on me, over and over again, with no definition or explanation of what I did to abuse. Eventually, I was told my kindness and attempts to do the right thing while being abandoned, cheated on, and lied to were covert ways to control and manipulate. I was treating her “not like a friend, more like a wife who ran away”. I was too nice.

I was a sociopath. That was the only explanation. Not only did I not see my own abusive nature, I really thought it was kindness. If I could abuse the one person in the world who I promised to love, cherish, and protect without realizing it, who else was I abusing? No one deserved me blindly controlling and manipulating them to gain power and affection.

That was my breaking point. I literally ran away from home. I spent two nights in a sketchy hotel before my mind cleared.

I am not a sociopath. Abuse has a motive. Cruelty is nearly always abusive, kindness? Not so much. I do not use people for personal gain. I do not treat people well just so I can weasle my way into owning them.

We live in a subjective world. Words no longer hold objective definitions. When I looked into the words thrown at me I began to find many of them simply have no meaning.

“Anxiety” is a “disproportionate” amount of stress or worry about a situation or event. The first thing that popped into my head was “who defines what ‘disproportionate’ means?”

When I asked my therapist what the appropriate amount of concern is over a situation he replied that it has much to do with each individual’s resilience and experiences. The same applied to “what is the appropriate amount of affection one should have for or expect from loved ones?” and “What is ‘healthy’ and who defines it?”

There are many blogs and psychology articles out there that will tell you every single neuroses that you have. They will convince you that you are anxious, codependent, narcissistic, needy, unhealthy, etc but not one of them will tell you what “healthy” looks like.

Why I’m Awake at 4 AM (and Divorced)

Why am I awake right now? It’s 4:07 AM and adrenaline will not let my body back to sleep. It was probably a cat that woke me. Or a phone notification. Something. But now the adrenaline surges and the nausea begins. My brain will not shut up. There will be no more sleep tonight.

Why am I awake? Why am I where I am in my life right now?

Because in December 2019 I was told “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did.”

In March of 2020 I was abandoned and told “I’m not hurting you, you’re just hurting.”

Then I found a half empty box of condoms in her apartment. I was foolish enough to think her friends had given it as a gag gift. When I asked if there was someone else I was told “No, but if there was, this would be so much easier.” It would take me a week to break down and ask her point blank in the crassest terms if she was sleeping with anyone. She said she was sorry, but seemed more concerned that I had violated her privacy than sorrowful about her betrayal.

I’m awake because I kick myself for my naivety. I fought to keep her. I tried multiple therapists and counselors. I believed her when after four months of her abandonment she started saying I was abusive. I had to be the bad guy. There was no way she could ever be wrong.

“Even if you changed, I still wouldn’t like you.”

I’m awake because I still think in “what ifs” and wonder what went wrong. I’m awake because I know the truth. But the world sees her façade and supports her. I got off social media almost entirely because it’s mostly garbage. She blocked me shortly after she moved out. But occasionally her account pops up in my face because one of the kids leaves it up on the browser. I know the truth, but so many people are supporting her.

I can only assume they don’t know.

I can only assume they believe her story.

I can only assume what they think of me.

I was accused of “abuse”. She couldn’t give specifics. She couldn’t name times, places, actions. I was simply left reeling and questioning my own intentions. She convinced me I was a monster. What crime was I guilty of? I still don’t truly know.

How many people believe her? How many people think I’m the one who cheated? I’m the one who lied? I’m the one who left her? How many people believe I’m a controlling monster of a man?

I didn’t just lose a 20 year relationship. I have lost pretty much everything. Sure, I got to keep the house (she didn’t want it anyway), but where are my friends? Where is my church family? Where is anyone? Why does she get to have a life on social media complete with likes and comments about how cute she looks with her new man while I lie awake at 4 AM wondering why God hasn’t just killed me?

Has anyone ever loved me? Is every person just a selfish narcissist with varying degrees of skill at hiding it? Am I? Is there something wrong with me for wanting justice here? For wanting people to know the real story? Am I a sociopath? I still don’t know my sins which warranted abandonment and betrayal. A sane person would know exactly what he did wrong. A sane person would believe a woman who accuses him of abuse, because women are never wrong. Men are monsters, we all know that.

She tried to break me. She told me as much. “When I first moved out, I wondered how many men I would have to sleep with to break your love for me. Five? That seemed like a lot…” She didn’t break my love. That’s the unfortunate thing about love. True love doesn’t break. I still love her, despite what she did and continues to do. I’m just very good at being numb. I’m very good at redirecting my love to others. She didn’t want my affection, someone will.

She did break me as a person. This is why I am up at 4 AM. Two years and a new life later, I’m still sick to my stomach.

What is the cure?

Another Year Older

Isn’t it odd that we make such a big deal about birthdays? New Year’s makes perfect sense, there is a psychological “reset” button when that number rolls over to the next in the sequence. But birthdays? Every day we tick closer to our demise. A birthday is a luminous beacon pointing out that our death is looming ever closer.

Not trying to be depressing, but if one thinks about it, what is the big deal? We age at the same rate, so every day is just like the other. What is so special about the one day the earth just so happens to line up with where it was at one’s birth? Perhaps I’m too cynical. Milestones are important, and surviving another 365 days on this hellish globe is definitely a milestone.

My birthday happens to fall very close to the new year, so for me it’s a reminder of the “reset” of a new year as well as a reminder of my own mortality. Because of this closeness in dates, I started making birthday and New Year’s resolutions at the same time. It’s a habit that I continue this year.

Right now, my life seems less “pressing”, there isn’t much I am unhappy with. There are definitely logistical things that need to be improved. My house needs a deep clean and purging, my diet needs attention, I should definitely drink less and exercise more.

But mentally?

I don’t have anxiety. I’m still not sure I ever did. Circumstances can stress me out. Long term stress can wear me out and exhaust me. But real clinical anxiety? Nope. Any claim to such would just be excuse making. There is no lurking disorder controlling my mind. There is no chemical imbalance impairing my self-control. If I eat myself alive with fear of tomorrow that is purely my own choice.

How many of us hide behind “mental illness” to protect ourselves from having to do the real work of growth and maturing? I know I did it for several years. I don’t mean to imply that real mental illness does not exist, or that our minds can’t be so overwhelmed with circumstances that we lose them. Life is rife with pain and difficulty, and disease, even of our minds, is part of that. But if we aren’t careful, we can mistake our own sinful responses to life for victimhood.

The stress of the last two years has taught me how to be content. I could have wallowed in my circumstances. I could have blamed my anxiety or my ex for my feelings and actions. I could have shifted the blame for my circumstances to any number of places. But that would make me just as bad as the people who hurt me. My response to my circumstance is my own, even if I am not fully at fault for them. Sitting around pointing a finger or holding onto bitterness is not going to make circumstances change. So I had to be content. I had to accept my life.

Contentment is an odd feeling for me, I was always so driven and worried. But I have learned to appreciate what I have and savor the little bonuses. Nothing is guaranteed in life, except for death, so why not be happy with what comes to me?

Not only that, but how much can I truly control? The most discontented action we can engage in is trying to change what we can’t. How many things do we miss completely when we focus on those things? We can change far more than what we believe we can, but we get so hyperfocused on ridiculous notions (like the idea we can change people) that we miss those things entirely.

So what circumstances can I change? Or at the very least, influence?

Materially and practically speaking, I can control many things. Finances, the state of my health, and the state of my home and yard come to mind.

This year I fully intend to build more wealth and invest more wisely. I want to build my business and sell more resin crafts and photo prints. I want to have a more successful blog on Hive (sorry WordPress, you don’t reward me with crypto). I want to get out of debt as much as possible.

Physically, I want to fit into all the pants I bought in 2020 which “shrank” in 2021. I’m feeling my 37 years, which I shouldn’t. I want my body to stop hurting so much until I am at least 45. So diet and exercise it is until my waistline becomes more civil and my energy comes back.

My house has always been a source of discontentment for me. I have spent countless hours trying to make it work only to find it a mess again. Living with children (and an ex who didn’t get out of bed much) means there are circumstances that I can’t fully control. There will always be a battle until they are out of the house. But how much of the struggle is my fault? What do I contribute to the disaster which is my home? I want to narrow down these things and fix them as well as I can. I want this year to be the year when I can finally sit down every night and breathe, no more constant movement and exhaustion chasing one mess after another.

Fixing physical issues can help me with many emotional issues, but not all of them. Some problems must be dealt with internally.

I want to build more patience and trust with people. I consider myself a patient person, but betrayals of several kinds have made me lose trust with people in general. The world’s response to betrayal is to get revenge, or to destroy the betrayer, or at the very least simmer with bitterness towards them. This mentality destroys one’s patience. You can’t overlook offenses if you are constantly vigilant for them.

Betrayal tends to make one paranoid and always expecting more betrayal, it’s almost as though bitterness spills out and washes over everyone the betrayed comes in contact with. I don’t want to seek fault where there is none, or over exaggerate small faults which should be overlooked. I shouldn’t blow up tiny “offenses” and let my pride destroy those who slight me. Not every wound from another is a betrayal. I want to learn the difference between the two and patiently bear the one and courageously confront the other.

I should not stand idly by while someone flaunts destructive behaviors. I am not the only one consumed in the flames of someone else’s selfishness. Selfish people destroy themselves. Selfish attitudes impair growth and joy in life. To stand by would be to hate that person and watch them die. So this year I resolve to confront selfishness in others close to me, no matter the consequences of their response to such confrontation.

Life is too short to let it pass without making the most of it. There are far too many people who live short pointless lives because they don’t fight for it. I intend to make the best of what’s left to me.

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All the Providences

Four months of silence? Really? Has my life been silent? Not at all!

Though all the facets maybe shining differently, God certainly never allows my life to be dull. There are dark corners and bright ones. What would life be without all the Providences, good and bad?

Sometimes we think God must not be listening. We think He is forgetful of our needs. Things don’t turn out the way we want and we get angry. We feel as though life should be a constant state of elation, that permanent happiness is the greatest commodity God can bestow.

But is God not sovereign even in His “no”? Sometimes it is in the “no” that we find God’s best blessings.

I’m learning one day at a time to accept the “no” and look for the blessings instead of lamenting the “losses”.

Finding Light in a Dumpster Fire Year

I bet you are ready for this cluster of a year to be over. It’s an understatement to say everyone’s year has been a dumpster fire, or more recognizable to me, a hell of a wildfire, and not the fun kind that can be successfully managed. For me, this year was the kind of fire that you just have to stand back and let go until the snows of winter douse it. But even after fire destroys a forest, new growth starts immediately. Despite every hellish thing I went through, I can honestly say that I have come close to meeting my resolutions for this year.

This year I was supposed to “Relearn to be me.” I had this idea to rediscover the person I was at 15, confident, warm, able to love. I hoped to embrace my own weirdness and build my self esteem. My intention was to accomplish those goals by sheer force of will.

That resolution was quickly forgotten about as life heaved one curveball after another at me. I was betrayed, cheated on, lied to, and all but told I wasn’t worth loving. I lost a job and bounced into a place of humility, earning barely enough to cover the bills. I won’t even bring up the dreaded virus that has filled the news with doom and gloom all year and kept me isolated from needed friends and family.

I was knocked very very low. For most of the year I was my own dumpster fire of old bad habits and coping mechanisms. I drank, I smoked, I wallowed.

It became quite clear that shear force of will was going to be replaced by a crucible. If I was going to accomplish my goals, it was going to be painful, destructive, and not without great loss. And definitely not on my timetable. It was going to be a hot, fast, fire, one that consumes everything in its path, large and small, and doesn’t stop until there’s no more fuel.

Almost everything in my life was burned this year. Three times I came close to ending it. Providentially, I am still here today. I say providentially because this year has taught me about the true Providence of God. My faith was pulled out from under me very early in the year. Foolishly, in years past I thought my life was awful, even more foolishly I thought my faith was strong. However, it turned out my idols were stronger, and when they were removed, I crumbled. My life truly became awful, and I discovered just how weak my faith was.

After three brushes with suicide, I have to declare that I owe my life to prayer and the support of the Psalms. If it weren’t for various verses running through my head, and several hymns lodging themselves in my ears and playing in my mind while I put my head through a belt (at which moment I thought “I probably shouldn’t meet God like this”) I wouldn’t be writing this today. God stayed my hands with His word and feeble human words about Him. (Though an overreactive gag reflex helped as well.)

Sometimes I am not even sure who I am anymore. The years and the turmoil they brought eroded my sense of self. This year all but broke my core. Foundations have been shaken this year, with many of the “truths” I had embraced since childhood being challenged and even removed from my memory. No tree is going to be unscorched, everything has been or will be questioned. I am certain there are absolutes (God is Sovereign for one), but often I learn those absolutes are not so easy to pin down, if they are to be comprehended at all.

So numerous are layers that have been immolated away that in many ways it seems my life is back to where it was at 15. It’s like a clean slate. In the midst of all the chaos I found love, friendship, contentment, faith, self-esteem, and little bits of joy here and there. I now have a foundation to rebuild confidence, find more love, and rediscover my old hobbies.

Big changes came this year, and bigger changes are coming in the next. The unexpected and unwanted changes almost destroyed me. In 2021, I’m determined to make those changes count for better. I won’t be destroyed by next year’s troubles.

I can say honestly that somewhere in all of the mess, I’m beginning to find old glimmers of the person I once was. Only in the past few months has anything good come out of the flames. If the last few months are any indication, things can only keep getting better. Right?

2021 is going to be “the year of rebuilding.”

This means a continued dismantling of my idols. And continued breaking down of my old destructive habits and coping mechanisms. No more wallowing. No more self-pity, no matter how much I deserve it. I will not be a victim, no matter how strong the temptation. I’ll take better care of my health and sanity, even if only for the sake of my children.

I’m going to lose people in 2021. I’m probably going to lose many things. But in losing, I hope to gain far more.

I hope to gain the ability to love again, better and deeper than ever. I hope to love everyone well, my kids, romantic interests, friends, and family. The loves look different in their actions but the underlying desire to put others before self will be there. I am not the person I was told I was, I am loving and worthy of being loved. My desire to love and be loved is not a defect, it is a strength.

I hope to find my sense of humor again. I found some old cassettes that I made with my friends at 15. I was a happy, wisecracking goofball. Somewhere I lost that. Having been through a hell of a year I can only go up. I want to feel that happiness and confidence once again. I have many talents and skills. I have potential. There is no reason not to find joy in myself or in my ability to put a smile on other’s faces.

I hope to succeed in my art. I’ve allowed a lot of my passions to slide this year, in favor of TV and sleep. Trials drive creative output for many artists, for me they have the opposite effect. The concepts may come, but the will and the strength to produce evaporate in the blaze and heat of struggles. I intend to focus on production this year and not let projects go unfinished. I won’t let my own harsh inner critic keep me from building my abilities.

I hope to cut ties with the old and destructive. People, habits, thought patterns, nothing is off limits for the chopping block. It’s only when these things are cut off that real growth can happen.

All in all, I want a reset. I want the old me in a new, better, wiser package. This year seemed a destructive wildfire, but it was just what I needed to put nutrients back into the soil of my life.

The Hunt

This winter we have an open season on ducks of only 30 days, and a daily bag limit of 4 ducks. If we look around, we will find that some men bought guns, ammunition, licenses, duck stamps, hunting clothes, boots, and rented boats and hired guides. Many of them had time for only one or two hunts. It is beyond reason to believe that these men went to all this trouble and expense for the pleasure of merely killing four or eight ducks. We must remember, too, that some of them killed no ducks at all. Evidently there is something to hunting that is beyond the mere killing of game.

Although we cannot separate individuals into classes, we often do it for convenience. We will divide hunters into three classes. The first goes out to find and kill game, and no more. This type we call the “pot-hunter.” He kills merely to eat. We are not interested in him here. The second goes into the woods or fields to find, not game, but themselves. The town or city man who loves the country is out of this type. They find city life artificial and go out in the country to get in tune with nature. They call it “getting back to nature.” A day in the woods often does them a lot of good. Their kind are usually more interested in things than ideas…nature lovers. It is the third class of hunter in whom we are interested. The name hunter does not fit them very well. These are the seekers.

Some of us have a feeling that wild things live in a world of their own, on a plane of consciousness that is entirely different from ours. We would like to stand for a while on this plane, to feel as a squirrel feels. But it may be impossible. We are wild things no more. We are tame, domesticated, civilized, far from the nature of wild things. Just as the druggist, if he doesn’t change clothes , carries the aura of the drug store around with him, so we feel that the squirrel is never far separated from his plane of consciousness. If we could get close to him physically, possibly we would find ourselves on his mental plane. But wild things are difficult to get near to. So we shoot them. And their consciousness ends with their life , the “thing” we hoped to capture in capturing them escapes us. Just what is it that we seek?

Have you ever heard the call of wild geese, passing far up, before daylight of a cool fall morning? It is a sound that is thrilling to many people. They feel, for a time, that they would like to be geese, flying with these others. (No cracks, please.) There is about these geese an air of mystery. They come from far off places and are on their way to points unknown to us. The thought of unknown places is always a lure to our imagination. For we feel in one of these unknown places might be found that which we seek.

Some Musings on Fear and Pain

Everyone has fear.

I had tons of fear, it leaked out of me. I allowed it to run rampant in my thoughts and actions. My life became a blur of awful. What happens when your life becomes a blur of awful? The lives of everyone around you become blurs of awful. Soon you start making your fears a reality.

You see, fear is typically irrational. You latch onto the idea that something catastrophic will happen and then you let it run your thoughts. From your thoughts come your feelings, and from those feelings are born actions. We act on the irrational.

Some fears are rational: death, losing someone else to death… actually, that’s about it. Death is the only certainty in life, therefore it’s perfectly rational to fear it, for most of us. For Christians, not so much, but that’s another topic.

This fear of death can manifest in both rational and irrational fears. We fear out of self-preservation, which is rational, but most things we fear won’t ultimately kill us. Sure, they may be painful, but pain itself doesn’t kill. There is a fine line between rational and irrational though, and sometimes we take some pretty stupid risks because we don’t categorize correctly. And what may be a rational fear for some, like rock climbing the face of Half Dome if you’re an untrained couch potato with literally no experience, may be completely irrational for someone else, like a trained and experienced rock climber. It would be absurd for that person to refuse to climb what is probably easy for him.

But as I said, most of the circumstances we fear won’t kill us. Most things we fear won’t even come close to killing us. Why do we fear those things?

Why do we fear our feelings? Why do we fear rejection? Or losing material things? Why do we fear taking chances? The words of others? None of these things can kill us.

Ultimately, we fear pain. We are comfort loving creatures and pain is what we seek to avoid the most. Even our fear of death is largely tied to the pain of it. We all want to die peacefully in our sleep, not in some horrible drawn out pain. But pain doesn’t kill us.

Depending on what we do with it, pain can injure us or it can strengthen us. Our goal should be the latter. What we think about pain ultimately determines what we do with it. If we think negatively of it, and begin to fear it, we will act in ways that weaken us. We get hurt and think “I’ll never do that again.” and instead of learning how to work through the pain and become stronger we give in to fear and become weaker for it.

If we think of pain as an opportunity to learn and be strengthened we fear it less. Sure, we hate it when we are in it, but we are less likely to cower the next time it comes or avoid it all together and miss out on some of the best things in life. This applies to both physical and emotional pain, accepting both can be a tremendous step towards growth.

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is a cliché, but it’s a true one. However, it’s only true if you let it be. Sometimes we let the things that hurt us damage us and hold us back. We allow the hurt to create fear in us. We fear that we will be hurt again. We then allow this fear to drive our actions and end up getting hurt. Our fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Often the process of creating this self-fulfilling prophecy is subconscious. No one wants to be locked up in fear. But our brains are cautious creations. Our brains want to keep us from pain, and will do anything to keep us safe, even things which make absolutely no rational sense. This is where anxiety disorders, PTSD, dissociative disorders, and other such trauma illnesses come from. Our brains would rather function in disarray than allow us to get hurt. Ironically, this disarray ends up hurting us more in the long run.

Outside of those particular disorders, which require professional and often spiritual help to overcome, our fears are in our control. We can turn them around. We can use them to our advantage just like any other negative emotion in life. Fight your fears, face them, you might just find yourself stronger the next time they attack.