I’ve always found that I am the type of person that connects with people before I connect with things. What that means is that I find an interaction with a person to hold far more importance than a collection of stuff. Possessions have always been a burden of sorts they seem to weigh down the freedom that I feel and they make me feel enslaved to them in a spiritual way. The expression “things can own you” rings a certain level of truth for me.
Like any great turning point in life, after you go through it you can trace back usually to the key point at which things begin to change. There is always a specific moment in life where any transformation begins to take place, be it an emotional, spiritual or a physical transformation. The event can be a conscious decision, a lifestyle change, or a specific event or grouping of events.
The trick with things in life is that the test comes first and the lesson comes after. One day you can be sitting minding your own business, checking what your friends are up to on one of the many social networks intended to connect you. The thing with a social network is that it cheapens the interaction you have by making it possible to connect with many people quickly, and easily. I found that I had been using social networks exactly how they were designed, and was essentially using them to keep tabs without actually connecting with people. I felt because I had a growing list of followers and connections, that I wasn’t alone in the world.
It doesn't seem like anything out of the ordinary, for most people, it becomes a matter of routine. Once there was a phone call, now its a post, or a click. You don’t realize how much your life has changed, you tell yourself it hasn’t changed you. Then one morning, you find yourself staring at a page, reading a message from someone you don’t know telling someone that you do know who you’ve considered a dear friend ”Rest in Peace”. That is when a small part of you falls off, and flakes away, and you realized that you’ve lost a part of yourself. The realization that you have changed is hard enough to contend with, much less dealing with the concept of what made you realize it to begin with.
Society programs conditions into how to handle events, and what should be expected of you in response to certain events. It wasn’t long after finding out that one of my dear friends had passed away that I found myself going through the motions of grief, struggling with the loss. I didn’t know I was struggling, or having trouble with any of it, until much later of course. I felt like I just needed to do what was expected. You tell yourself that it will be okay and that life will go on. Life doesn’t actually go on, it is forever changed, the loss never gets easier. You just get more accustomed to how you feel and it becomes your new normal.
As you trace back the events in your life, you remember the pivot points that had the most significant impact. My story is no different, its the proverbial fork in the road that one path leads you to one fate, and the other along another path. These forks present themselves at the most bizarre of times, and somedays you find yourself at a fork that feels like a traffic circle where all the exits have spikes to prevent you from making your way out without some damage from the route. Life does this, it’s how we learn.
I was sitting in a bright yellow shirt, the front row of a community centre, with the rest of the pallbearers. Feeling like you are undeserving to be there with the rest of the people. Feeling guilty that you were too distant, and didn’t try to spend more time with your friend. You feel the emptiness of the void that exists knowing you will never be able to have the chance ever again. You sit there, with a box of kleenex to wipe away your tears for the amazing people that you knew, you think about the things they taught you in the fourteen years you’ve known them. You smile from time to time at the good memories. You hear other peoples stories about them, and you remember how much a part of their story you actually were. You realize how much of your story they are a part of. You remember how you felt the moment you walked in, and how the rush of emotion came over you when you don’t recognize anyone, and their sister comes across the room to hug you. They tell you how great of a friend you were, you had the whole car ride to think about how you have become self absorbed, and how you wished you would have done more. You cry. Once the stop is pulled out, you wont stop. The seal has been broken and your emotion is free to flow without restriction. No one is judging you. This moment will never be forgotten, it will live with you forever. You will retire the greeting “Hey Beautiful!” which was once reserved for this friend. You start to change things in honour of the loss that you’re feeling, it’s part of the process of honouring the person that has left the world. It’s a gripping feeling that takes over. You leave the event, feeling like you shared your grief with others, and you are reassured that you aren't alone in the loss. There is a certain aspect of everything where you are reminded again of the value of your mortality, and you begin to yearn for experience in ways that are true to what is important to you, and the people that you want to honour.
You remind yourself of the values that are important to you, and the things that you and your friend shared. You try to live to honour their passions, and carry on their legacy in some way. You go home, thinking about your day on the car ride home. You stop and see family along the way for comfort and support. You think to yourself, no one else knows how I feel right now. I’m alone, even though you were just in a room full of people that shared in the feeling that you had, but you have internalized what you feel and you made it about you, and the guilt that you feel for not being a better friend. The drive home isn’t memorable, nothing of any importance happens. You just make your way down the highway in a daze and programatically go through the next year just trying to remember who you are and how your life will be different going forward. A few months and you’ve adjusted into the new normal.
Before you know it a year has passed. You’ve resumed your life, and you didn’t even realize it but you snapped back into your routine so quickly that even you didn’t notice, and you didn’t see it in retrospect. The months click by, and before you know it you are staring down the brunt of another friend who has left the planet. You question where you are at in life, you question your happiness. The evaluations that you are living for you, and living your truth are questions that weigh on your mind. You don’t feel the hurt because you’re so caught up in life. It is easier this way. You remove emotion from everything you do. Passion has died in your life, and you think that this is what life is. You convince yourself that you are alive, and you are happy. The goals you are reaching for have convinced you that they are worthy and they are important. You don’t question that things are exactly as they should be.
You’re sitting in a pew in a church, watching videos of your friend who lived a full life. They tried to maximize every moment of their life once they realized that their mortality was at stake. Only then did they seem to live with intent, and strive to have moments that were marked and memorable. The guilt and questions of life flood back as you think about where you are at and what is important to you. You become retrospective about the things you have accomplished in the past year, six months, and in your life. You begin to evaluate the possessions you have and you question their value to you. You’ve lost a piece of yourself and you aren’t sure exactly how to get it back. If you were standing having a heart to heart conversation with your twenty year old self at thirty, you wouldn’t even be able to see eye to eye. Was this personal growth, or was this selfless compromise?
At twenty you had simplicity, your life was comprised of a few suitcases of clothing, and memorabilia that was sentimental. You had a teddy bear that you slept with, and you had photos of friends that you didn’t see often. You had memories and were generally care free and stress free. You thought life was one great adventure. People who you perceived were older and wiser told you things like, “You need to have some roots, you need somewhere to settle down and build a life” or “you can’t ride on other peoples coat tails forever.” You believed them because they were role models to you. If you thought about the things that were important to you at the time, having a car, or a house, or furniture didn't really mesh with the priorities for you right now. You bragged about the fact that you could move all of what you own in one compact car. You were truly mobile, you had nothing to really tie you down.
As you look back on your life, you realized that at some point, you stopped being so fluid in life, and you started slowing things down. This comes along with acquisition of possessions and things that you don’t necessarily need, but can no longer borrow or use because other people around you will not share them with you. You contemplate what kind of home you want to build for yourself, and you think about what that would look like. You miss some opportunities and you feel like you’ve missed the boat, and you don’t really know where to start with any of it. You think about the kind of relationship you want to have, you have a list of criteria for the person that will make you feel engaged and alive. The list seems impossible initially, but then all of a sudden the universe delivers what you’ve thought would never be found. It’s not perfect, but you accept that perfection doesn’t exist and you find a way to make the most of the situation because things are pretty close, and that’s enough for you.
You begin your new life adjusting to all the changes, modifying your goals blindly, changing what is important to you for your new life with someone. You begin to plan and move along a path of a couple, working with each other to make things happen collectively. It’s fast paced and things move quickly. It all feels right so you go with it. You don’t really stop to evaluate, or check in with yourself as an individual and that individual person gets lost slightly in the shuffle of the new couple. In my case, it got lost entirely in the shuffle. Looking back, it was clear to see that I was party to a plan, that wasn’t my plan. I was a financier in a high risk investment with no financial pay back. What I received in return was experience, memories, and life experience. There isn’t a moment I looked at what I was doing and said, what a waste. We are the sum of our experiences and this was an operation in the formula of who I am.
Then you look back in retrospect from the perspective of being a thirty year old. You wake up one morning, you have two properties, a fleet of vehicles, and you run around scrambling trying to pay for it all. You’ve become consumed by life and paying for your possessions that you aren’t living. You think you are alive, but that is the stress that reminds you that you exist, but you are not existing. You’ve become so obsessed with the pursuit of goals and a collective ambition that has been adopted as yours that you forgot what was important, how do you get back to what’s important to you again once you have strayed that far. How do you make way to rein it all in.
The beauty of retrospect is the clarity in which we can see where we strayed. Unfortunately this type of clarity is usually the result of a cataclysmic event in life that has become the catalyst of change or the “a-ha” moment where even though at the time we didn’t know that a pivotal change was taking place, that was exactly what was happening to you. We can pin point this moment once we have gone through the terrors of the transition, but not before or during.
So, logically you need to decide where to go from here and you think to yourself. What is it all about. How do you get back to the path that is right for you. Theres no escaping the life you’ve created without some drastic measures. It seems that it is easier to get into these situations than it is to get out of them. That is true. Typically, when one realizes they have followed the wrong path in life, they feel a sense of entrapment and hopelessness. You don’t know what steps you need to take to get out of what you’ve been telling yourself you’ve wanted for so long. Then, as you sit around wondering how you got here, how you get back, and what to do a cataclysmic event takes place in your life that jars you into action. You may be jarred into action by force or out of a desire to change things for yourself. Whatever the reason, it’s starting to happen to you.
The cataclysm will come in a variety of forms, a death, disease, breakup, or some other moment that causes you to question your very existence. In my case it was a number of deaths followed by a breakup. It took me a while to see that the life my partner and I were building together was the life that they wanted, and not the life I wanted. Our collective goals were a mirror of their goals. This was a compromise I made as a result of being indifferent about most direction in life, and my core values and beliefs that put humans and companionship above all other goals. I enjoyed having nice things, but those things were not a reflection of the person I was. Material items were something I didn’t want to hold too dear to myself because they could be taken away from me. Humans could be taken away as well, but at the same time there is value and return on the emotional investment you make in people.
The great thing about cataclysmic change is the opportunities it provides you with. Things that when your life is going smoothly seem to be far from mind. I had no idea where I was going with this, so I’m stopping now. Hope you enjoyed.
