Saturday, August 14, 2010

in this lonely crowd it's always time

It is a funny feeling turning forty and realizing you have basically not changed a bit. But at least you can see it clear now.

...can you. I put the above down only a week ago or so, and then found a friend from fifteen years ago. So the next two paragraphs are quoting what I told her about myself, maybe as a conclusion of what I started to think about when writing here the first sentence. Also an afterthought of an evening what I spent with a new friend.

The most interesting in it all is to find that I'm not a bit different in the very ego, and I'm not sure if I wonder whether that's good or not. As it seems like that entity, myself, is developing in many different ways, or call it gathering experience, but still stays the same essence. And it is so very different in each and every person, but is sharing one thing: a yearning and searching for the ultimate answer that fills in all the missing parts.

I guess this is my way of looking for God in all the diverse communities and various religions; it's a never-ending story. And it is so, because I don't dare to look for the answer in myself. This is more or less how I felt last night on that Shabbat ceremony and the family-like dinner afterwards. I think, the reason is that I know exactly how serious it is to answer a call so overwhelming. In a way that holds me back from giving in, fearing I might lose all I have now. Even though I know I have nothing in the whole wide world, but this chance.

A few days ago I met a friend (after long enough time so she could have born a baby almost one year old now) who told me she loved her plants, so she wouldn't want to get rid of them when moving, and would rather give a key to her place to a neighbor so they could water them if she needed to go away for a while. Actually what stroke me was the way she put it. She said these were her plants she loved, so she wouldn't leave them there or sell them when she'd move, but would want to take them with her, wanted the same plants to be around at a new place, too.

I remember I've always wondered when heard that people gave name to their plants, if there was something wrong with me not being so attached to them. I loved plants and flowers, but for me they could be substituted. Their loss didn't mean much to me, no matter what way it happened. When the cat who moved in with us for seven years, had to go, it was certainly much harder. Still I tried to keep the event or the fact of his irreversible absence away from myself, instead keeping his memory alive and laugh at all the fun we had together. Much later when I settled some fish in a tank, mortality showed faster and in a more aggressive way. They used to attack each other now and then, and though I experimented with all the knowledge I could gain, to keep them there for the longest possible time, I didn't succeed very often.

I could go further and talk about friends, and also about how much I dared to show love, being afraid of becoming too vulnerable, so that I couldn't bare the consequences. Maybe that would sound strange to derive it from my relationships with other living things. However a friend I'm missing now, probably because she told me that she needed to tear out faraway friends from heart, she taught me to give away with love the most valuable things I had to people I thought I loved. For me books, talking to me as if letters from faraway friends, used to be of inestimable value. And I could learn to give them away, and if you'd think I could always find them again, some were really old or editions out of print. Anyhow, then it meant more to think of the stories in them, and specially why it was exactly that friend I had given them to.

I think this all goes back to how I turned from a wild child into a so-called introverted nerd at an early age. Could a flashback of a half empty home, a missing dad and brother lead to a feeling of such uncertainty of what's real and what's fantasy that one can relate then from then on, to everything in his life the same way. When searching for explanations, and finding the acceptable reasons hurt too much. I guess within the books and through them in other people's lives and sufferings I found a way to understand the reason why. I have also found much more valuable things, too, that helped to search further beyond what a family event would mean for me. So I daresay I'm glad I found more people to help me to see what could cause my dad to act like he did, for instance, when reading his mum's diary about the world war.

At the same time all that brings up even more questions about people in general, the reason that can turn us into something so empty that we can cause such feelings to each other. Why we need to act superior trying to prove something or because we all felt at one point abandoned and valueless. I believe understanding this, and what's more accepting it without anger, or becoming/feeling indifferent, but with love, is only possible by accepting the only one who could become superior to all by completely humiliating himself and letting himself be hurt by becoming totally abandoned of all love. And accepting such a limitless and unconditional love takes humility that can be only provided by someone who went through all this. Why does this sound scary to me.


Story Sample - The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character
Silver Screen - Provenance & Providence (The X-files, Season 9)
Song Selection - David Bowie: New Angels of Promise