It's been quite an emotionally draining week of struggling to come to
terms with unexpected and tragic loss. The heavens were sorrowfully weeping
with torrential tears at the funeral with the sudden arrival of an angel in its
midst. It was the heart-wrenching wailings and tears that made me think about
a recent David Brook's oped piece, "What Suffering Does." Having had an
unwanted but seminal volcanic epiphany in 1991, having survived a bout with
cancer in 2004, and somehow "miraculously" having come through an unexpected
massive cerebral hemorrhage unscathed in 2007, I know what he is talking about:
there'd be no bravery or courage if everything in life was without challenge
and all was hunky-dory anymore than there would be any learning without
failing. But, I wouldn't use the word "suffering." It's too narrow for me. I
prefer the broader and more inclusive term "experience." Yet, I don't think
suffering or experience have much intrinsic worth. I mean, so you've gone
through stuff; or, as have I, you've looked into the abyss. So what! What
are you going to do with it? Is it a spur? And, if so, what are you going to
learn from it? How can you better yourself because of it?
You see, using Brook's word, while there is a lot of suffering around
and in us, there also can be lot of dealing with, coming to terms with,
casting off, overcoming, and getting up and keep moving within us as well.
That is to say, experiences need a catalyst to acquire a meaning. That
ingredient is "And so?" honest reflection. That honest and deep reflection,
that looking at yourself in the mirror, gives you a shape-shifting option: to
see how what you might let bring you down can give you a leg up; how it can
morph challenge from barricade into possibility and opportunity; how it can
transform mill stones into dream catchers; how it can offer the ability to
bring the blessing of gift out from under the weight of curse; how it can offer
a power to choose the way you see life; how it can offer you the way you live
life; how it can give you a strength to push away adversity; how it can give
you a power over frustration and disappointment; and how it can give you the
strength and courage not to succumb to views and demands of others.
But, for too many, looking back is TMI. How many of us really want to
hear the past voices of ourselves? Not many. I sure didn't want to on that
fateful day in September, 1991. In fact, I sobbed. Of course, the truth is
that you can't help it. As an historian, I can tell you that the silent and
unseen, buried, rationalized away, or otherwise past is always present. More
often than not, reflection is a hard, maybe painful, autobiographical interview
and confession. Sure, you'll hear stories that might surprise you, tighten you
up, make you shudder, hurt, hurl pangs of pain, tear your eyes up, induce a
shudder, cause a nervous laugh, and/or create a smile. But, you'll also may be
able eventually, as did I, to empathize and even sympathize, to see
possibility, and to seize opportunity. Each chapter in your story will help
explain parts of who you were, are, and maybe will become. For me, reflection
is crucial, for it pulled and still pulls me deeper into myself, beneath the
surface of daily routine, to plug into the passion of my soul. It's a reverse
macro lens that broadens into a wide-angle lens. Reflection can take a
negative cursed experience and give it a positive blessed bent if you ask
yourself, "How can I grow and learn from it?" It gives me a living serenity
prayer, better knowing what I can and cannot control.
Now, reflection is not something you can be phlegmatic about or bog
yourself down in wonky talk about “vision” “priority,” “empowering,"
"authenticity," and "meaning." For me, having "down and dirty," "foot in the
real world" reflections on my experiences has given me a holistic serenity with
which I have deeply engaged, with which I have become enmeshed, and which has
allowed me to live at a place closer to self acceptance and peaceful power.
Make it a good day
-Louis-
Louis Schmier
http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org
203 E. Brookwood Pl http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Valdosta, Ga 31602
(C) 229-630-0821 /\ /\ /\ /\
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/ \ / \
/ \/ \_ \/ / \/
/\/ / \ /\ \
//\/\/ /\ \__/__/_/\_\/
\_/__\ \
/\"If you want to climb
mountains,\ /\
_ / \ don't practice on mole
hills" - / \_
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