The Purpose In Life

I cannot say for sure however if there is just one purpose in life for each of us then I would say right now that “to become who I really am” is my one purpose in life.

Of course becoming who I really am encompasses all those things that we speak of as our purpose in life, inclusive of the external actions to be taken that are the result of what we believe to be our purpose in life, or at least one of our purposes in life.

More importantly however is that finding our purpose encompasses all of our inner world. It means getting to know our interior selves, our feelings, our thoughts, our dreams and fantasies. It means expressing our inner selves which of course means expressing our own innate and individual creativity.

What comes out of my heart and soul, what comes from my mind is the creative expression of who I am in whatever form it takes. What I say, what I do, what I think, what I like, what I dislike, all of these phenomena are part and parcel of that which is really me.

It is not possible to dispose of the mask that we wear. It is not possible to dissolve the persona that we carry around, that “me” that I show to the world at large. It is not possible for me to dispose of my mask unless everyone with whom I come into contact disposes of theirs also... and we know that ain’t going to happen anytime soon. I do not think we are capable of doing this simply because I do not think we’re even aware of where we end and our mask begins. In our conscious minds the two have become one and it takes a significant bit of work and courage to investigate and dismantle that mask. So many people aren’t even aware of the possibility of doing this.

Dismantling the mask to the greatest degree possible – this is a challenge, because it means first finding the courage and this is the true definition of courage. Finding the courage to first weed through the garbage, the emotional garbage in order to get to what is really there and then to allow what is really there to emerge even though it makes us uncomfortable, even though we don’t like certain aspects of ourselves, even though what we may find flies in the face of everything we ever thought was right and true and especially in the presence and pressure of all those other masks out there now THAT is courage.

Funny thing is that even though those of us who sense that there is a purpose to our lives tend to look right past this really rather simple idea. In Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” it was his suggestion, or rather observation that those individuals who survived the horrors of Auschwitz were those that attached a purpose to their lives, not necessarily a definitive purpose but they knew that there was something out there, somewhere, perhaps in some future time and place for which they needed to stay alive in order to ultimately achieve. God wants me to accomplish “something” in this life yet that “something” is defined I think as something very specific. Something very specific that is as yet down the road, not yet realized.

But here’s the kicker: that “something” happens every minute of our lives. That “something” happens moment by moment when we exercise our ability to think and feel and do that which we can. That “something” is exercised when we stretch ourselves, when we reach for yet more of our potential, when we grasp for more, when we put ourselves to the test, when we seek for more or different from ourselves or… OR when we simply allow to emerge what we already know to be within.

Sometimes that “something” means nothing more than experiencing what is within us in that moment. That too is part of what it means to be me and is that not our purpose? To learn how to be Me? Sometimes that purpose, that “something” means trying to hang on to life because in that moment and for whatever reason life has become harder than we might have imagined. And so in that moment, and perhaps for moments yet to come the “something” is merely to try and hang on to life.

We are here for something that much most of us would agree to be true but what we seldom consider is how that purpose changes from moment to moment and encompasses not just some unseen, future event or activity, some cause that the twists and turns in our life force us to consider and oftentimes embrace as our “purpose” but that which is happening right now, in that very moment. That cause in which we are currently engaged, sometimes joyful, sometimes a painful struggle but either way an integral piece of our purpose in life.

The Story of Our Lives

Is not this...

Or even this...

And it ain't this as I had once suggested...

It's this...

Lay Down Your Arms

I knew what was going to have to be done. I would try to push it from my mind and a thought would spring to mind; maybe I can do this without going there, maybe I can find a way to do this and still avoid that, ‘this’ being psychotherapy and ‘that’ being the places of pain. The places of real pain.

But in my heart I knew. In my heart I knew that I carried around some exceptionally well-constructed defenses. Everything I ever did that I was truly motivated to do I did extremely well. I’ll have an order of control freak with a large side of perfectionist please. That would be under the heading of Adult Child of Alcoholic (among other things) on the menu.

My whole life was a defense. My entire personality was built on rock hard defenses. A great and quick wit and sense of humor, albeit at times cutting and dark and sarcastic, spilling over into caustic on frequent occasion. Uber-competent, fairly intelligent (although I have been forced to re-think my level of intelligence in recent months) and intense… always intense. I have an intimidating posture that I wield like a weapon and I have fine-tuned this ability as a well-trained artisan. I am so good at it I don’t even have to think about it anymore. I turn it on like flipping a switch.

Everything about the way I conducted myself was done in the service of keeping people at arm’s length. And I did it by issuing from moment to moment a warning, an unspoken warning to anyone who came within a twelve foot radius. I am reminded of movies about World War II when there were scenes of barbed wire and those criss-crossing poles to which the wire was attached with a big sign hanging front and center and a warning to those who dared to come near:

ACHTUNG! KEIN EINTRAG!

WARNING! DO NOT ENTER!

But no words were needed. I did not need to provide reasons, I did not need to explain why. Once people got a taste of my approach they rarely had the guts to ask why anyway.

This might sound a bit extreme, it was although truthfully I never gave it any thought. It simply was the way I had become. It became part and parcel of who I was. The extremity does not show it’s face until one starts to put it into words, which I have recently done in my own therapy. Sometimes it makes me laugh, sometimes it makes me cringe. Sometimes it amuses me that I could wield such power over others without even a word and at other times I am ashamed that I have perpetrated this sort of behavior on those that I call my friends and acquaintances.

I am equal parts relieved and repelled in putting this into words on a public forum. Sometimes the benefits of a very small readership are many however

those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;

they shall mount up with wings like eagles;

they shall run and not grow weary;

they shall walk and not grow faint.

(Isaiah 40:13)

*****

I do not want to have to give up this sword because I do not want to do what I know I’m going to have to do to make that passage a reality in my life. I know that I’m going to have to lay down my defenses and walk through so much of the pain that has been intrinsic to my life for so many years. A person as well-defended as I am is loath to even SAY the word pain let alone admit to any of it. And yet the rewards will be, I think, beyond anything I could have ever imagined for myself. You see I believe those words in that passage above. I believe, no, in fact I know there are aspects of myself that if tapped into will enable me to exceed anything that I could have imagined for myself, for my life. And I know that there is a way of living that frees up the massive levels of energy that have been necessary to maintain those defenses all these years. And I know that I am about to trade the expenditure of so much negative energy for the incredible lightness of being that is the positive and free-flowing energy of a life lived in service of who I really am.

And I am so excited about the possibilities and oh man I cannot begin to express how much I DO NOT want to do this.

Hollywood Fairytales

Last week there was a movie on TV. I don’t know the name of it and I could bother to find out except I don’t really care however it was apparently the story of the wife of the founder of the Alcoholics Anonymous movement who also happened to be the founder of the Al-Anon movement which as many of us know is the support group for the ‘victims’ of the alcoholic. Perhaps victims is the wrong word, although I suspect many of those victims would agree with me, however I cannot come up with a better word to describe it.

Anyway, I digress. Through the years I have never been one to watch movies about alcoholics, read books about alcoholics, go to seminars about alcoholics, etc. I was well-versed in the subject matter and I didn’t care to re-hash any of it. I had put it behind me, didn’t need to remind myself.

So they tell me that’s denial. Hmm. Well maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, either way I felt no need, I had no desire to walk that road again even if it was only in memories and theories and statistics born of studies. I was done with it.

And they tell me that’s denial. So be it.

This time I decided to watch the movie. Stop the denial, face it head-on, make myself watch the movie and so I did.

I managed to get about fifteen minutes of watching time out of what was I assume a two hour running time. It wasn’t because it brought back painful memories that I didn’t want to bother with it was because what I saw in that fifteen minutes of viewing time had no relation to my experience and certainly while I cannot know for sure my educated guess is that it had no relation to the experience of the movie’s main subject, the founder of the Al-Anon movement.

Here is what I saw in those fifteen minutes: a woman, dressed neatly in her expensive clothing sitting prim and proper in a chair quietly weeping with her face in her hands (as if nobody can see that) over the pain of it all, never losing her self-control, she was the brave and stoic victim of her husband’s alcoholism, accepting quietly and in a dignified manner the hand which God had dealt her. That’s what ladies do right? Accept the flaws of their man stoically. Now I will say that at one point her father did lose control a little and gave Mr. Alcoholic a good tongue-lashing when our heroine was lying stoically in her hospital bed after (I think) losing a baby, or maybe discovering she was pregnant or whatever it was. That was irrelevant. What was relevant is that gosh-darn, good tongue-lashing her father gave his drunk son-in-law. A good tongue-lashing albeit well controlled and diplomatic.

I have no basis for comparison for that picture because I can emphatically say that was not my experience. That was Hollywood’s presentation of what it is like to live in a home with substance abuse. Neat and tidy, everyone has on their make-up, nobody loses control, there is no yelling or screaming, it’s all so… presentable.

So I got to wondering what it would be like if somebody made a movie that depicted what it’s REALLY like to live in a home where there is a substance abuser. First of all the director would have to have first-hand experience, there is no other way. You cannot depict accurately the dysfunction, and when I say dysfunction I mean out and out CRAZINESS of an alcoholic home without having done it yourself. There is simply no other way. Then, in order to find actors to play the parts you would have to scour the country for Al-Anon meetings attended by trained actors because you simply cannot play the part accurately if you haven’t been there yourself. I would suggest excluding any actor that is classically trained in Shakespeare because that’s just too damned civilized for something like this.

Ok we have our director, we have our actors now it’s time for the screenplay and again and of course the screenwriter must him/herself have come from, well need I say it?

So what’s the screenplay look like? This was a tough one but I don’t think there’s any real, organized story-line, in other words we’re not moving towards any denouement. There are no heroes only people depicted as f**g NUTS and there is quite possibly no happy ending, on the contrary although the potential for an ugly and tragic Hollywood ending is great. I think the movie would be nothing but a string of scenes with people yelling and screaming, things being throw, fights being had, various sorts of abuses being perpetrated, you know what I’m talking about, that real and raw fear and anger and anguish that actual human beings exhibit in times of high stress. People would get hurt in the making of this movie, cameras would be broken, scenery would be destroyed, insurance rates would be exorbitant. You know what I’m talking about, the kind of behavior that the censors would never allow on TV. The kind of behavior that makes you cringe when you see it and causes you deep shame when you think about how you engaged in it.

There would be no Academy Award nominations for this film because we like our Oscars to go actors who can reach deep within themselves and pull out understated and poignant performances but there is nothing understated and poignant about this.  It is ugly and violent and destructive in the truest sense of those words and we seldom if ever hand out awards for ugliness and violence and destruction.

And then I thought nah, nobody would ever pay to see something like that. I know I wouldn’t.