STAYING OUT OF FEAR...

Fear. It is such the killer of life. Of souls. Of dreams. And often, of Dreamers. I remember hearing for the first time many years ago, a comparative juxtaposition of fear with two competing notions. Faith is one of hem. Love is the other. And I get it in my gut. When I am in a fearful place, it's effects can be - are, for me - all permeating. It infuses everything. Both love and faith can trump fear any day, when we breathe through ourselves with those inner, core truths. Of who we are. Even when we are not fully seeing, or feeling, it...ourselves...in our most full. When we are not feeling, as my dear friend, Claudia Handler calls it, "Me at my Me-ist." No matter what, we need to surround ourselves with those who both help us shine a light in all the corners, even the dark ones, who cry out for truth, while also seeing us in our bigness...not big as in famous, big as in who we truly are.

"IT IS WHAT IT IS..."

This has become one of my new favorite expressions...phrases. Reminders. Of truth. In that way that can be both so personal and individual and yet objective and global at the same time. What I mean is that once any of us come to our realization about the way something "is" - a situation, a relationship, a person, etc. - in a way that gives us complete "aha" clarity, on both the smaller and larger scale, "it is what it is." Embracing that phrase has lubricated some of the gears in my inner shifting mechanism. Gotten me, who has too often been drawn to unnecessary drama - both inner and outer - further into simplicity and "truth" (yes, even if that notion of truth is completely mine). Because once I can look at a situation, an experience, a feeling, a set of circumstances, whatever or whomever they may be, from the perspective of "it is what it is", it removes so much of the stories. That drama that is inherent in the "why's" or the "why not's" or the "how come's" or the "I don't understand's" or the inner clamoring that keeps me from what really is, acceptance. Of truth. Often of facts. And it allows me to step further into the breath of the moment, the space of the heart, instead of being ensconced in the noise in my head. At least for awhile. I am learning to feel and see what can and will occupy that space that would otherwise be filled up by my stories. It's a process. Like any new piece of clothing that may reflect a change in style or self-perception, I feel that I am growing into it...getting more comfortable...

MARILYN AND JERRY...

Monday was the 38th anniversary of the death of a woman whom I have come to realize I hardly knew. My mother. It really just hit me. Obviously not the fact that it's been a long time since I looked in her eyes and had a conversation. Or that it wasn't her death, but her getting sick ten years earlier, that was the REAL game changer for me. It was simply looking at facts...circumstances...in a new way. Not emotionally, as much as simply from a "it's just the facts, Jack" perspective. The realization, from a different angle, that Mom was physically well for such a short time in my life, and that her unexpurgated, as my mother, was so fleeting. I don't remember what she was like, unburdened, whether by the anxiety of sickness, the frustrations of life, the fearofdeath at a time when no one talked about it. It simply struck me, as I was riding on the subway, that this force in my life, this person whose presence, as limited, powerful, loving and dark as it sometimes was/is, is someone whom I not only hardly remember, but really have no idea who she was. At her core. At her most open and/or whatever might be the opposite of that for a woman whose life, and that of her only kid, was inexorably jettisoned into an unexpected place on a Spring morning in 1962. When people really didn't talk about this kind of shit. So, in an attempt to connect with the only other person who lived in that house with us, I woke and called my father, to simply connect, to open up the possibility of calling up the memory of a woman about whom he never speaks, at least in an offering. In an attempt to give his son something, from the inside.

"Good morning, Dad, just wanted to connect with you on the anniversary of Mom's death."

"I don't know when it was, Jon, I'm not sure."

BREATH.

"No, Dad, it's today. The same day as JFK. I just felt like talking about her a bit."

"Yeah, I remember it was around Thanksgiving."

BIG PAUSINGSPACE.

"OK, Dad, enjoy the day, I will speak to you during the week."

"OK, Jon. Feel good."

"Love you."

"Love you"

And, I let go. Not in the dramatic tears flooding out of my eyes kindofway...they simply trickled all day. Simply, in a realization that my 91-year old Dad can't give it to me - the perspective, the grounding, the bridge that might provide some granular connective tissue to a place inside that always is longing for that. And while it's easy to say that "he's 91" as a reason for this shallow, yet kindly-intentioned well, the fact, the truth, is that it was, he was, no different at 81 or 71 or whenever. The difference for me, on Monday, as sad as it may be, is that I was able to simply let this/him be. To have it be what it is. Not get caught up in (T)HIStory, or this disappointment. To accept it. To tell the/my truth. To be able to hold the facts and my father in a true place, and not become angry or (re)burdened. To love him and love her, in any ways that I can. Whether I remember or not.

THE OLD YO-YO...

It has struck me recently - and not for the first time - that in those moments in my life when I have elected to explore a singular romantic relationship with a woman, that person has tended to be someone who isn't what I would call "emotionally reliable." It's not about being good or nice or kind or giving. What I am talking about goes to their ability to hold an emotional space with another, starting with their own. It's a "default" position that prompts a visceral withdrawal from emotional vulnerability when the spark of a beginning, the intensity of possibility, the hope in the draw of the "other" inevitably leads to the reality of self. The work and responsibility within that is required when the mirror reflects back with the message that it's about us, not him (or her). Whether its emotional reliability, or consistency, what I have experienced it as is a "yo-yo" effect. The here now, not here now, back here now, maybe I am here now slippery slope that while at times has been painful and challenging, is something that has felt like "home." What I know. In those ways that I wish I didn't and have to admit is true. My natural attraction to women who can withdraw the emotional connection on a dime. Who (say that they) want to be present. And are for a moment. And can't hold on. Whose emotional bowl seems to turn into a colander in a second. And as the water starts flowing out from the bottom, I am there feverishly trying to pour it back in as quickly as possible. Pushing back against the innate understanding that, inevitably, this process cannot, and will not, work. At least in the longer-term. And each time that I have been drawn like a moth to a flame, I know that it's a painful, and slippery slope. That feels too familiar. That "Hey, look at me, I'm great, I'll SHOW you" trying too hard to get something from another that I know can only be substantively provided from within. Yet the second "yo" part of the yo-yo, the push piece of the push-pull, the maybeoutnotsureaboutthein, is something so seemingly DNA-driven, it's taken deep work to learn to nip that process earlier in the bud. To stay away from that drug that inevitably leads me down a well-traveled path to a place from which the recovery is challenging. The irony, of course, is that in my desire to feel "safe" WITH someone, I have often chosen to put myself in the line-of-fire with those with whom I can never GET that...feel that...well, SOMEtimes, yet not consistently. It's not that it's taken me this long to know that it's not what I ultimately want. It is - simply - that now I seem to be able to "just say no"" at an earlier and earlier acknowledgment of that particular feeling in my belly. In my soul. Surely in my heart. And as that opening to a new truth has unfolded, the reason, the story - about the WHY - doesn't really matter as much. To be willing to take a breath, a pause, and say - TO ME first - "No, thank you" is what has made the difference. It's surely an ongoing process, a step along the way. The notion that our shit, our Achilles' heels, simply disappear at some point, just isn't the way it works. I have often thought that a new 12-step program might be AHA...Achilles' Heel(s) Anonymous, because - as I see it - once a vulnerable place, always a place to breathe through when our internal signs go "here we go again." They don't disappear, hopefully we just figure out healthy ways to transcend the autoresponse. Because as I dove in to what was behind it, and very real, I realized that it's not just in romance, it's in biz too. Attracting people to whom I have often given my power away. When I wanted something from them. Maybe not wanted. NEEDED. Well, more accurately, FELT I needed. It's when that paradigm got created - me with another in that way - that the dynamic got created inside me. Feeling like "home" once again. And, as I noted, the story does not matter. It's what we do for ourselves, to first see, or feel, and then tell the truth. Both about whatever IT is, and that IT isn't working for us. That we don't need IT. Anymore. And then to get - stepbystep, littlebylittle, momenttomoment - that as we stretch our "known", when we lift our comfort zone, when we unbox our own box - that we can fill that space with something better for ourselves. Even if that something, is nothing at all. The sitting with IT. The being with it. Not having to DO anything about IT. To be able to be there for ourselves in a new way, coming from a different angle, and allowing us to possibly even create an opportunity to acknowledge the bounty of our personal journey, harvesting some of what came from the emotional seeds we may have planted. To take pride in our process. To take on, and accept, what may actually be pain (the notion of short term pain transforming into longer term pleasure), as opposed to simply being reactive to my most Pavlovian dogmode reactions (short-term comfort seeming to equate to long-term pain, every time).

All I know, at the end of this day, is that I am way more joyful than I have ever been. The comfort in my spirit, in my skin, is reflective of a willingness to steer clear, as often as I feel in charge of me, of those old smelly blankets in which we find comfort, yet which in the end, keep us where we don't really want to be.h