We Should All Be So Lucky

 This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2018 at 3:14 pm

I’m not exactly sure when it started, but at an early age, from time to time, I had this image of my funeral and wondered if anyone would be there. I recognize that this is a bit of a dark thought, but it is reality. When I was younger and struggling deeply, I would imagine my mom standing over my grave, heartbroken. The picture in my minds eye of my mom weeping would absolutely destroy my insides, leaving me weeping outwardly. Quite truthfully, in my darkest times, it was this minds eye picture that would barely push me to push through.

As I listened to this video (https://youtu.be/2fG1AWTZrE0) this morning, I was reminded of my own death and what it will look like. When I watched and listened to George W talk about George HW I was deeply moved, more than anything at the end when a son was overcome with the deep emotion and welling of love that is now gone. We should all be so lucky.

We should all be so lucky to know that we have impacted others. To know that you have made a monumental impact on another human being, in my mind, is the greatest thing in this world. I want to have a funeral where I leave peacefully, not in deep hurt, strife, fear, and darkness.

When someone leaves before their time, we are all robbed. We are robbed of the comeback, the breakthrough, the watershed moment that leads to overcoming tremendous personal obstacles. We are robbed of the impact that personal overcoming has on others. We are robbed of the opportunity to bring real peace into our dark and private little worlds, by the connecting to others and helping them to also overcome their darkness.

I WEAR A THOUSAND MASKS

(Charles C. Finn)

I hope you won’t be fooled by me for I wear a mask.  I wear a thousand masks, masks that I’m afraid to take off, and one of them is me.

I am likely to give you the impression that I’m secure, that confidence is my name and coolness my game, that the water’s calm and I’m in command and that I need no one.  But I hope you won’t believe me.

My surface may be smooth…beneath I dwell in confusion, in fear, in aloneness.   But I hide this.  I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear of being exposed.  That’s why I frantically create a mood to hide behind, a nonchalant, sophisticated façade to shield me from your understanding.  But such understanding is my salvation.  My only salvation.  And I know it.

If I don’t keep the mask in front of myself, I’m afraid you’ll think less of me, that you’ll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.

So, I play that game, my desperate pretending game, with a façade of assurance without, and a trembling feeling within.  And so, my life becomes a front.  I idly chatter to you in the suave surface tones…I tell you everything that’s nothing, and nothing of what’s everything, of what’s crying within me.  So, when I go into my routine, I hope you won’t be fooled by what I’m saying.  I hope you listen carefully to hear what I’m not saying.

I dislike the superficial, phony game I am playing.  I’d really like to be open, genuine and spontaneous.  I want your help in doing this.  I want you to risk approaching me even when that’s the last thing I seem to want, or need.  I want this from you so I can be alive.  Each time you’re kind, and gentle and encouraging, each time you try to understand because you really care, my courage to risk sharing myself with you increases.

I want you to know how important you are to me, how you can be a creator of the person that is me if you choose.  But it will not be easy for you.  A long conviction of worthlessness leads me to maintain distance.

The nearer you approach me, the blinder I may strike back.  It is self-defeating but at the time it seems the safest thing to do.  I fight against the very things that I cry out for.  But I am told that empathy is stronger than walls and therein lies my hope.  I desperately want you to understand me in spite of my distancing tactics.

Who am I, you may wonder?  I am someone you know very well.

I am every man and every woman you meet.