the Journey of life

A parable of mites

Dust mites are pretty small little fellas, barely visible (to humans with good vision) as big as the full stop at the end of this sentence.

One day, there were these two blue dust mites.
..

They were just hanging around on a spot and wondering what was going on. They were in an interesting spot, high on what seemed like a long endless ridge.

It was nice territory but fell off steeply either side. Off in the distance was another ridge, just like the one he was one.

One being a bit more adventurous than the other decided that he'd go walking along the ridge to see where it led. He packed his stuff and promised the other mite that he'd be back.

So off he went on his adventure. Exploring the long and seeming endless ridge-world that lay before him.

On his journey the little blue dust mite met many other interesting mites. He had great conversations and learned many things. When he had time he looked up at the sky and saw that the view was always different, so he knew he was going somewhere.

One day he noticed that the view of the sky was becoming quite similar to what he remembered from years ago, and soon enough he realized that that (based on his ability to navigate by the sky) that he was pretty much back where he started.

"Well bugger me" said the blue mite. "I've come full circle", he said, "but where is the other blue mite".

He looked around and couldn't see him at first. Then he looked across to the other ridge and could see the other blue mite hanging around the same patch of ridge he'd always been on.

This confounded the mite, as he knew that he'd never crossed down into the dark and deep valley to attempt to get to the other ridge. He was even more confused when he thought about how much he'd seen and how far he'd come.

Of course you and I both know they were both living on this bolt ...

which has a ridge that goes round and round in a spiral.

So while it was seeming like the blue mite had gone around in circles, his journey wasn't quite a circle. Instead while he had moved far and come back to almost the same place, he most certainly wasn't in quite the same place as he'd started.

This is pretty much how I've found life myself.

I started out in this small town (well, back when it was a small town) and moved along and done things. I've gone away, and come back a few times. Each time I've gone off and explored the world I've come back (intentionally or otherwise) and found that while I've been journeying in life I have changed enough so as to make it impossible that I can see the place I return to in the same way as when I left.

I feel that while I've completed some sort of orbit of the earth that I can never come back to exactly the same place. So I've come to try to grasp this as a spiral: you're nearly back to where you started but subtly shifted to another place.

It feels strange to be sitting in the house that I grew up in. I feel like I am me, but while everything seems the same as where I left it, nothing really is the to me same anymore ... because I'm not.

Hardening up (the mistake of it)

It is often said that women are soft and men are hard. Any man who has problems in dealing with life is mostly told to "deal with it". Classic Australian vernacular is "take some concrete powder and harden up".

Its bullshit.

One of the myths of western culture (perhaps others) is of the tough guy. The self reliant guy who can go through anything, unaffected. It is the stuff of adolescent male comics.

This is of course a fantasy, something which has perhaps infected society as a romantic meme that such a thing as a tough guy exists. A warrior who battles through life, never needing to express emotions.

In reality it only serves to enable (mainly) men to justify thier distance, their disaffection from those that they love. They can pretend to be pillars of strength not needing to (and probably not knowing how to) love. The movie "once were warriors" is in my view an excellent example of this and its results in recent cinema.

Yet love is something we all do, feel and to various extents accept. Accepting love is actually not as easy as it might sound. Part of loving is learning to accept anothers care and help. In some ways learning to accept help results in relinquishing ones ability to do that thing for yourself. Like many things in human life when someone does something for you, you stop doing it for yourself.

In some ways this can make one vulnerable. There could be the threat of withdrawal of the love on the part of the other, which can hurt (this is something of a strategy in some cultures actually). There is also the fact that its easy to become dependent on the love of another, again potentially weakening.

Of course for one who truly loved you (rather than just using your affection to gain control) this not something that they would do.

So I can see why some men choose to harden up.

The reality is however that one does not really harden up, but instead puts on an exterior. A suit of armor in some ways. Its a barrier to accepting things and a signal (by behavior) to "keep away".

In accepting the care and comfort of the one that you love you must inevitably soften up, to prevent yourself from being hard towards the one who is trying to share difficulty with you and to offer you comfort. In fact this can help you to grow stronger and more resilient.

Delicate things like love do not grow on rocky soil.

As the love that I had for my wife grew I allowed her into my heart and allowed her to provide support and comfort. Which was something she naturally wanted to do (as I wanted to do for her). Her loss from my life (well, and from the lives of everyone who knew her) has left me with a softness that is now unsupported.

It is a paradox that at a time when I most need the care and support of the woman I loved, the woman who loved me, I am by virtue of her death devoid of that love and that support. In many ways that is one of the hardest parts to this sort of grieving.

But the solution does not lie in hardening up. Putting on the armor over my bleeding wound will not heal the wound nor will it go away. I have discovered that in the time before I had such love as I did, that I did not support myself, instead I actually hardened up, developed coping strategies, denied that things upset me. Now in the absence of the support and love that I once had I can see that difference.

So I guess what I need to do now is to learn how to give support to myself in the way that she did. Of course I can't actually do that, but knowing what she did I can learn to do that for myself in a different way.

No matter how hard it is to loose the one you loved, it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved before.

So I keep climbing ...

built on solid foundations

There is a song written by Linda Creed called "The Greatest Love of All", as a young person listening to it I often wondered about the focus of the lyrics on the self. I felt it was somehow selfish.

As I grew older I became re-acquainted with the song and (having journeyed some more in life) understood how many people suffer from problems of self worth and self respect.

While I now understand the reference to the self esteem it still seems just a prelude to the greatest love ...

Linda was (so I am told) struggling with cancer when she wrote the song lyrics, so perhaps she was going through a bit of an existential crisis (suffering from breast cancer and struggling with understanding her own mortality).  Having battled with the loss of my lovely wife and in parallel battled with my personal health issues I think I can relate to personal existential crises. From the lyrics something that resonates with me is the theme of needing to love yourself and teach others to love themselves.

I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier

I agree with so much of that. However to make what easier? For me that comes in the lines:

Everybody is searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I never found anyone to fulfill my needs
A lonely place to be
So I learned to depend on me

which is at the same time both profound and tragic.
It is profound because the truth is that you must love yourself before you can find strength and before you can even accept love.
It is tragic to me that so many people go through life never loving. Never loving themselves and also never feeling that love from somone else. Linda seems to have learned (from the harshness she found in life?) to depend on herself. Perhaps from that trust then came love.



Loving yourself is a truly important step, but should be the foundation for the love that comes from outside. Its like the base of the Maslow hierarchy if you will, a foundation to be built on to allow you to fulfill more in your life.

Great houses can only be built on strong foundations.

Only from the foundation of loving yourself can come the love for and from others. Without that base the love of others will fall on difficult soil. I believe that without that foundation, that accepting others love will be somehow skewed, as will the love you feel for others.

I'm glad that Linda found the love of her self, for it is a truly important step. But that she perhaps never found another to love her as she (I hope) loved herself is a tragedy. Without that it can be difficult or perhaps impossible to build a loving relationship with another. The love that my wife and I shared was built on the foundations of self respect and self love. From this we developed a relationship where love is given and love is received.

As I examine what I have lost in my wifes passing, I have come to understand just how fortunate I have been to have been able to feel that love (from her to me) and to be able to give her that love too. For no matter what has been taken away from me, I still have the love of myself and (it may seem strange) the love she gave me.
Love is made to be given, so my view is that Linda's song about the Greatest Love of All is just a prelude, a prelude to the greater love that can grow in the hearts of two people who love themselves and each other.

Learning to love your self is the first step on the road to knowing love.  I'd like to write as well as Linda, but I can't. So instead I'll just change the lines a little:

I found that the greatest love of all 
was happening to me.
I found that the greatest love of all
beside of me.
...
It is the greatest love of all

The song ends on a note of hope:

And if by chance, that special place
That you've been dreaming of
Leads you to a lonely place
Find your strength in love

Sadly now I have gone from that special place, to a lonely one. But I have some strength to face it in the love we have. I say have because it can never die.

:-)

its not warm when she's away...

From the time I fell in love with her every time we were apart I felt a little anxious and a little sad. Even when we began sharing a house, whenever she went away for some days (to help her grandparents for example) I felt sad.

But there came a time when I had certainty that she would always be there, that we would be together for all our lives. Of course I knew that one day I would be dead. Its strange that we both always acted on the obvious thing that I'd be the one to die first.

Life can be unexpected.

Tonight I was watching a movie, and there was this Bill Withers song on in the background.

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
It's not warm when she's away.
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
And she's always gone too long
Anytime she goes away.

Wonder this time where she's gone 
Wonder if she's gone to stay
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
And this house just ain't no home
Anytime she goes away.

I know that she has passed away, but (unlike the dyed in the wool atheists) just don't know if "she's gone to stay". By this I mean simply ceased.

Perhaps I'm just twisting reality to see it as I wish, but little things keep telling me that while "shes gone to stay" that like when she walked onto that plane in Incheon that she still is somewhere, and that I'll make a journey to the furthest point in my world to be with her when its time.

Today I've been out riding around in the sunshine of a perfect day on the scooter and somehow feeling her presence. I felt overwhelmingly sad at times, perhaps because I can feel her presence. Personally I'd rather go through feeling sad when I feel her around than not feel her around.

Anyway, as I went to write this I turned on my tablet and was surprised to find a 'theme' of raindrops had been applied to my FTP app, yet I had applied no theme. It was like a little smack in my face (or a tug on my ear as she used to do).

My heart is inclined to feel that she put it there. She liked rides on the scooter, so I'm glad she could come along.