2008-12-01
thanks
My right foot adeptly adjusts the faucet, turning it more to the left. My body�s gotten used to the temperature, and I need to feel more warmth.
I�m breathing slow and my eyes still burn, and I�m trying to understand how I feel.
I�ve done an outstanding job these last ten weeks, I decide, on my ego-ful quest for implicitly convincing myself of my own importance, aided by self victimizing and peppered with half-hearted recklessness. I realize that is a harsh take on myself, and that such a critical view will compromise this account. But I have to find some way to form the words, even if they are skewed by my own judgment.
The water�s reached the level I know the bath won�t let it rise above. I sink in and swallow, thinking hard. My self-importance, conveniently nurtured by an atmosphere which helped support it, temporarily masked me from an unalienable fact of existence, one I always am somehow reminded when I return home. And that is, life is difficult. Not easy. And unfair. And I know mostly, philosophically, that life just IS. It�s the baseline, the default, the standard rate, neither unfair nor difficult, but just itself. I know that somewhere, and that everything�s ultimately not relative to something else--- no un�s or not�s about it--- but just merely what it is.
It seems near impossible for me to let go, though. I cling to feelings of pain and injustice, because everything somehow feels so relative. Value is dictated according to what is more and what is less than the thing being valued. At least that�s with objects. Maybe I�ve been objectifying things too much. Maybe the things that really make me twist with guilt, sadness, and contempt aren�t objects; maybe things like wealth, privilege, support, and diligence can�t follow the same lines.
My eyes are almost welling up again at these thoughts, the twist of intense guilt and shame for not appreciating what I have, yet also anger and indignation for not getting all I want and feel entitled to. And I know I am entitled to nothing, but the self-importance I�ve accumulated keeps me from feeling that truth. I cannot change people; I cannot have them be in the ways most favorable and convenient to my successes. I hate this lecture in my mind, embarrassed that I have to give it to myself. Is it possible to be humiliated in front of only yourself, besides in a dream? I let my shoulders plunge down, but the warmth is cooling off again.
What I really think would be best would be just to be so grateful. I want to teem with appreciation, like this bathwater spilling over the sides and earnestly splashing onto the bathroom tiles, sincerely soaked with gratefulness for my life. Just to give thanks, honest, authentic thanks, goddamn reverently, just for being here, breathing and existing and with at least some semblance of free will, graciously providing me the chance to give back-- not to mention the exquisite, singular blend of relations and circumstances that culminate into my existence.
Instead, I am tangled in pride and the strong-headed belief that I WILL succeed, despite lacking the abstract quantification of things desired. And I know I�m being evasive, that I�m not filling in the blanks here and providing details that could make it all the more coherent, but I just can�t. It involves people that won�t get the chance to speak for themselves, only to be subjected to my own skewed interpretations. It also spares me your judgment of determining whether I am asking for too much or not. Because I think it SHOULD be asking for too much, based simply (yet immensely) on principle.
Thank you, thank you. I want to believe my own voice as I say it, but I�m still not convinced. I let the water drain, just wishing all my emotional snags could go down with it. Just peel off me and get sucked away. What is this going to take? I need to be able to be appreciative without losing this sense of self-importance. Even if this self-importance is just a self-imposed fa�ade, I NEED it. It keeps me going, it gives me hope for my own life, it assures me that I matter when everyone else is too busy or selfish or oblivious to tell me (not qualms to that, really, because I myself am just like that toward everyone else). The self-importance, it�s hope I couldn�t acquire from anyone but myself.
Maybe I can start small. Being appreciative could be never asking for more than you are given, for starters. I sound like an awful person, I realize, tracing my eyebrows with a raisin-like fingertip, wrinkled by the wetness. Accept what you are given, ask for no more. Don�t ask for anything. Do not seek more from anyone other than yourself. My vision blurs and my eyes sting, in shame. I�m thinking of jealousy I feel toward others as I grab a towel. I know I don�t want anyone else�s life. But I wouldn�t mind some of their life situations, and I�m not referring to material things.
I won�t get what I want. Not unless I get it for myself, or unless it is given to me. But neither of those processes can occur without gratefulness. I must give thanks.
I�ll give it every day, make a habit of it, if I have to. I can write myself up a little mantra of gratefulness, and mindfully recite it often, to make it sink in. I need to believe it, I need to feel myself blessed. I think myself blessed already, but it�s not enough, it still leaves me unfulfilled, thinking of the potential for more, if only others were willing or able to contribute in the ways I want them to. But no, that�s not okay, and I know it. I want to be penetrated my own gratefulness, immersed in it like that bathwater itself, and also have it flowing through my veins, with gratitude in each pulse.
I must give this to myself. I must overwhelm this pain and indignation; I know I cannot rid myself of it- it�s there and it�s real, it�s part of me, entwined in my self-importance. But I can minimize it by maximizing my gratefulness. There I am, thinking in relative terms again. But it just might work.
I�ve since put on my robe and wrote this up, and I know my words are ambitious. But I don�t have much faith in myself, it�s hard to say, but maybe enough to do this for myself. I�ll thank me later.
leesah-likes at 12:49 p.m.