So I just finished my This I Believe post/essay. As I state in the post, one of the guidelines is brevity. If you know me by now, you've gathered that a) brevity is not my strong suit, b) I am aware of that fact, and c) don't care. I say what I think needs saying. You skim, and cull from it what you think needs reading. Deal? Okay.
Because of that, editing this essay down meant cutting out a whole lot of stuff that got me around to my point. I'm posting it here, because I still want to say it. So, This I Also Believe:
This I believe: I believe in mere destiny. I believe that every sentient being walking the Earth has a purpose. But see, too often those who speak of destiny speak of some grandiose Destiny, some Ultimate Purpose - and too often, they are speaking of love. If the entire point of my life is to find whomever I will love who will also love me, and to spend the rest of my life with her....how will we not drive each other crazy? You can't -- no, I'll speak for myself, I can't put that on any one other human being. Too well, I know what the twin weights of expectation and disappointment can do to the psyche, no matter how benign the expectation or how minimal the disappointment.
People will always disappoint you. It's a reality; it's not a particularly sad one, for me, because it flows quite nicely with what I'm getting at. People will always disappoint you because (just to pick one reason off of the tree of human nature) their ideas of what they need to be doing are not always going to be your idea of what they need to be doing. In my adolescent pride and arrogance, I often tried to lead my most cherished friends about - not by the nose, but rather by a gentle hand at the small of the back, saying to them that this or that would be better for them than their present course of action or inaction. That this person would be better (or worse) for them than the current object of their desire. I thought I was the benevolent director, who came, who saw a production that was an utter mess, and set things to rights without stepping on any toes. I saw chaos; I thought I could gently impose order.
I got what I deserved. Three or four of those ten people (yeah, we kept track) are still in my life today, and even now, when discussing this particular portion of our shared history, they may grow a little silent, a little taciturn. They have never quite believed that they are free to offer any (constructive!) criticism they wish to me, or have simply never chosen to offer such criticism for their own reasons, but that's fine. I know what this silence is. The playing out of the last of my "Just Desserts" - for when we try to control what we love, do we not destroy it?
People will always disappoint -- If you place expectations upon them. Don't expect anything of them. Let them live their lives. You've got your own to worry about, and I'll explain why I believe that no matter who you are, that's an exciting proposition.
I believe the phrase "Intelligent Design" is nothing more or less than a two-word description of a central thesis of every organized religion of which I am aware, a spiritual commonality. In defense of a God, or an overarching Order to things, people look about themselves and see a world that is so complex, in a universe so incomprehensible, that there must be some "outside" force or power that ordered it all in this manner. A divine hand, whose will imposes order: the Titans and the Olympians, the Aesir, the Egyptian Pantheon, the forgotten gods of Sumer, the Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva; and, of course, the great god to whom they must all bow, the concept into which they have all (courtesy of the Holy Roman Empire) been subsumed: the Judeo-Christian triune God, who is called Lord, Abba Father, Adonai, Allah, but whose name is seldom spoken by those who believe. I don't write it here out of respect, as much for those who believe as for my own upbringing, but I mention it because when I say God, I am not referring to this most benevolent of He's-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. I speak of the God-Consciousness. The part of us that touches the divine. I don't attempt to define the divine (heh), that's beyond me. But I know it's there, as sure as I know my name. (Hold on.....yep, check. David Alan Sherrell.)
Your life is important. Your mind is utterly unique - if you happen to be an identical twin, you know this for sure. The twinned mind is said to operate according to the principle of quantum entanglement - that what is done to affect one brain at a certain level, will affect the other, no matter the distance between them. And yet, you and your twin have developed completely separate identities, have you not? What I believe this means for the rest of us is that what goes on in our heads and our hearts is intrinsically indispensable to the latticework of life on Earth. So do not allow your mind, and most especially do not allow your heart, to become Dumpsters. Don't settle for survival, for sustenance, for food, clothing, and shelter. Climb the Hierarchy of Needs. Self-Actualize. Live, truly live. Love, get your heart stomped into little-bitty emo-bits, and love again, this time with gusto, next time harder. Wring this world of every experience that comes across your path, seek out whatever others interest you, and wonder actively about the rest of them.
If you live this life, you will have fulfilled your mere destiny, though you know not what it was. Perhaps some average functionary's mere destiny is to raise a child who goes on to be a doctor who saves the life of the woman who develops the vision that leads mankind into the next Enlightenment. This little cubicle-dweller, who thinks no big thoughts save the occasional idle wish to be the Jerry Maguire of his office, who merely walked through life with the sole purpose of succeeding - essentially, living the real-world equivalent of the Game of Life - could be that integral link in the chain that produces a kinder, less violent, more self-aware and self-loving human race.
I spent my youth and the lion's share of my adolescence not belonging, and hating both that fact and myself. I was a frail and sickly child, and only appeared healthier as a young adult. By eighteen I had already survived more than a few bouts with death. And yet by my nineteenth birthday, my life would be called 'successful so far' by any standard: I had a 4.2 GPA, I'd been accepted to my first-choice school (and my mother's alma mater), Vassar; I'd successfully performed not one but two lead roles in the school musical, my last hurrah on the high school stage - it's like starting in the last game of the season senior year, for us theater kids; I had a girlfriend who was the sweetest girl I knew; I had my pahtnas, my brothers, on either side of me, two men who - if they didn't always get me, always accepted me for me. I had three short months until I was three thousand blessed miles away from my family, and yet close enough to my mother's best friend (as good as family if not better) in case of emergency or homesickness. Even chronic illness characterized by debilitating pain could not break my inexorable march forward.
Addiction could, and did.
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