Summer is fast approaching and the temperature is rising. While my inner “desert rat” normally revels in the warmth, this time the heat brings no comfort or warm nostalgia. Instead I feet that I’m in the fire, spread thin with my angst fueling the erosion, feeling everything at stake in each passing moment. It’s global warming on my own microcosmic scale.
In float the words of Otis Redding, “Ooh… a change is gonna come”.
The timeless and transcendent mystic in me knows to trust the design. But as a parent, a single parent, a single parent with an angry and litigious ex, a single parent struggling in a failing industry; the laisse fare approach in which, with no responsibilities other than to my own I held trust for the energy and flow of the universe to bring me into the opportunities that I needed, no longer feels like a complete recipe.
The tensions in combat inside at this point revolve around having dutifully assigned myself to a career path that was absent of heart, though was essential for the duration up to this point to stabilize the transition, shock and responsibility that makes up the vortex of my life following some difficult life experiences and transitions.
I have been trying to shed my layers of dreams and “idealism” in the face of the needs and wants of my daughter and myself. But the lack of balance, the absence of a sense of fulfillment and meaning has begun to catch up with me. It is time to really regain balance, to shift my assemblage point. It is time to find the path and pursuits that will not only provide the financial stability that family, broken or not, deserves, but also one that allows me to shine the example of the secrets of life that I have discovered along the way.
Inevitably this pulls to questions that I am afraid to ask; afraid because I feel that there have been times in my past, which feel like lifetimes ago, when I could face and answer these questions with confidence and courage, regardless of naivety. And now these questions frighten and perplex me because I don’t know where to find the answers. But perhaps this is exactly the right way to feel, the right place to be. As I’ve always known deep down, the answers are somewhere INSIDE and the path comes forth from within, shaped by each moment of the present, not something that is laid down before us.
- It’s always darkest just before the dawn –
With introspection triggered involuntarily by the profound and the inane, I have to believe that in my own story, I’m on the brink of metaphorical death or the explosion of life. The deep, sincere and protective love for Amara mandates a refusal of the former. Perhaps I must step through the metaphorical death, in which I allow the world to define me, to reach a personal rebirth of how I define my place and role in this world.
Above all else, I want to instill in Amara the belief, the knowledge, that inside of her are special gifts that are unique and filled with purpose. Unique in that her gifts are imbued to her for the sole purpose of contributing to a greater good in the world in which she lives. Just as each individual possesses their own unique gifts impregnated with the potential to be a link in the chain of conscious evolution. I want her to know that within her spirit is a seed crystal that is germinating that can be part of a chain reaction of change and growth that will bring meaning and solidarity into a world that, with each passing day, seems to move in the opposite direction. Done by listening and living to her spirit.
So I stand at the same mundane crux that millions of other human beings have faced in their life cycle. How many others have stopped listening to their spirits as their guides. How many others have forgone their dreams, labeled them with the now derogatory title of “idealistic” in lieu of the tangible, the creature comforts, the material security devoid of the rich woven fabric of belonging, of community, of intangible substance and meaning? And I have to ask, while I hold tightly to the dream that within each being lies the potential to incrementally or cataclysmically promote positive change, whether the man-made magnetic pull to forego exemplifying this dream to our successive generations works to cement the status quo, the “American dream, the cogs in the machine? For I have to believe that every loving parent dreams for their children a world full of much more than flat screen TV’s, two car garages and bank accounts with high balances. I have to believe that every loving parent dreams for their children a world of real happiness and meaning in addition to the quantifiable security and comfort to answer the needs and requirements of this world. I am not saying that material comfort is a bad thing or in any way absent from that dream, but I think that the notion that material wealth and happiness are synonymous, that meaning and connection in life can be acquired solely through base pursuits, is a fallacy.
If I seek to inspire within Amara the passion of these ideas with my words alone, while with my life I sell myself as a dispensable cog in the machine of economy, what example do I set for her when she reaches the same crux? If our children truly are the evolutionary extensions of ourselves, as I believe with all my heart and sole, then isn’t it our footsteps, not our words and orphaned dreams, that create the foundation and springboard from which they live, move and grow?
I know, without a doubt, what holds me, and perhaps many others back from truly stepping into this space. It is uncharted, uncertain; whereas the alternative is established, indoctrinated and well worn. To put it plainly, what holds me back is fear. On the surface it is fear of the unknown; trading a certain measure of security, trading a step-by-step process of the material philosophy underlying the lie of the American Dream, which has spread far beyond the confines of this continent. It is trading a socially expected and accepted common path for a path that risks incomprehension or flat out disapproval by society, peers, or loved ones that have long ago closed eyes to a way that’s different. To venture into my own direction carries the heavy weight and fear of risking the material stability that is required, especially of a parent raising a child. But on an individual level, it’s essentially fear of change, fear of failure, and perhaps most accurately, a fear of my own untapped potential.
