Pain

One of my favorite feelings in this world is pain. I have sought it out, provoked it, fought for it, asked for it, and inflicted a great deal of it on myself. Your whole life its "stay away from the stove you might burn yourself and get hurt", or "wear a helmet on a bike so you dont crack your head open". There are good reasons for protecting yourself from that type of pain, at the same time though pain is a good learning experience, and possibly the best motivator. There is no way to protect from emotional pain. Most people feel pain and want it to stop, they go to the DR. get a pill, feel better. These are all just band aides in reality they go on easy and then fall off even easier like in the shower when you are not even realizing it. Real pain gets worse, much worse, before it gets better. Some people take drugs, get a new girl, buy fancy things, or convince themselves they are ok to alleviate this feeling of pain. Some people do nothing whatsoever and just cover it up adding it to the baggage they carry around with them in their daily lives. I feel for these people a great deal.
A person like me loves pain. I lived it most of my life, I am very comfortable with pain. I frequently would put myself in situations where people who were close to me would then hate me or be really mad with me so I could reach that comfortness that comes with pain for me. I enjoyed pain so much and was used to it so much that I would go numb and detach from reality on a lot of drugs which became more and more and more over time. How many 18 year olds do you know that had liver damage from drugs and alcohol. I was never and until recently, have never been comfortable with happiness, or normalness, balance or success. Those feeling made me want to get high and go back to the feelings I am more comfortable with. I dont enjoy people being happy for me, congradulating me, or praising me. Those feeling I never experienced for a good 21 years of my life. I wanted to fail, give up easy, and make it almost impossible for myself to come out on top. So that I would feel pain and live in it.
Later on in life I have learned that pain is good but happiness is too. Just like anything else in this world, daytime daylight to nightime darkness, winter to summer, up to down, everything is about balance. Today I am not numb to pain or peace, I feel both, sometimes simultaneously, it lets me know that I am alive and not detahced from reality and most importantly sober. People these days only want happiness, with all these happy pills, alcohol, self-help books, material things and sex. People avoid pain and put themselves in worse positions to feel more pain later then to just accept the pain they are feeling right now. Its our culture. Just like good and evil there is two sides to everything. This is why marriage vows are in sickness and in health, better or for worse, both sides of the pendulum is balance, is love, is peace. Pain is not a quick fix just like happiness does not come over night and you cannot buy happiness. Pain takes time to deal with as does happiness and acceptance is the key. NO ifs, ands, or buts, no one more, last time, can'ts or won'ts, we all are smart enough to see truth and know truth but we deny truth because of the pain involved with reality. Thats ok for a while and is only natural eventually acceptance is it.
I encourage people in pain to feel it, accept it, enjoy it, be grateful you are alive enough to feel that pain and to make it your own, go through it. Of course those that are happy find peace with it and dont take it for granted because it will not always be that way. Pain and peace are a part of who we all are and in how we deal with these emotions enables us to grow and become more spiritual beings.

Past and Present

The other night I had the privilege of escorting a beautiful girl to a surpirse concert in the middle of the woods on a rainy night in Raleigh North Carolina to hear one of her favorite singers of all time none other then Sir John Hiatt. Not being too familiar with this man and his band beyong songs like "Have a little Faith in Me" and "Cry Love", the lovely lady I was with shared with me everything that John Hiatt has meant to her throughout her life, especially in her past. Growing up John Hiatt's music was always on the radio at family gatherings, trips and most of all vacations at Schroon lake with family and friends. From the opening note of the evening this girl was glowing with excitement and radiating vast energy with this love for the music, what the music means now and back then. I could see the happy childhood in her eyes, feel it in her movements, and hear it in her voice. Knowing that she was loved so much and that I love her so much now was a heart jumping out of the chest feeling. I love how music can do that to people. To bring back emotion and create new meaning for the same sound during a different experience. I also love seeing how some things never change, but grow deeper and stronger as time, which is irrelevant when you have forever, goes by.
My childhood was not such a happy one. There are no memories of lakehouses, family laughter, carefree events where everyone gets along and is "nice" to each other. I have different memories because I am a different person and made different choices when my different options and circumstances presented themselves. I dont regret any of the things that I went through because I am exactly where I am supposed to be today.....the Proudest Junkie. Although I definitely am sorry for alot of them. However, being able to see that not all people go through the things I did and that my life is COMPLETELY different today, I know someday, I will have moments that will be linked through time with my family that bring that certain type of energy and happiness to my being. Who knows, they may have happened already. I was completly in awe of being able to share that moment the other night with this particular loving girl.
The past shapes who we are today. When I venture out into the world when people meet me or even get to know me, they have no idea, not even a thought in their mind that I would be the type of person to have done any of the things I have done and been through what I have been through. I know it, think it, feel it and breath it, it will always be a part of me and in every essence it is who I am. The happy girl who had a happy childhood continues to live a happy life. She also has added a great deal of happiness to my life, which without her past I may not be living my current days or my future to the extent that I am. So you never know which moments will change your life...just showup rain or shine. I am a Proud Junkie and each day that passes that feeling grows deeper and stronger.

Coasting

I am not a believer of coasting through life or anything else for that matter. When I think of coasting images of a hill with two sides one up and one down comes to my mind, where is there time to coast, if the hill is flat where is the momentum to coast. My idea is that I am always either moving foward or backward with no in between. To be a "dead head" for a minute, the quote "when life looks like easy street there is danger at your door". Easy street could be coasting and the momentum is about to end.
It has always been harder for a crazy minded fool like myself to move foward then to move backwards. I generally will take seventeen steps back and a huge one foward only the break my hypothetical ass and fall back again. Because of this struggle I view the hills of balance going up is hard and going down is so easy. Wouldnt it be nice of we could all act crazy and have no regard for anything or anyone and not care that this was the life we chose. In reality most of us are better people then that dramatic idea. Going down the hill is so easy though, almost like coasting.
I felt like I was coasting at one point in my life. Routine of normality, boring, predictable, safe....or at least I thought. Thats the thing I didnt realize that I wasnt cruising up the hill but was coasting down it and I couldnt see or feel the end of the ride that leads to a big fall I was oblivious that I was feeling how I was and that I was not living to my own knowing of my own potential. The standards we live to are our own. Depression follows and the devils reach up to pry down to a dark place.
I live day by day with the notion that I am always in motion not just going through the motions but in a motion. Trying to do the next best thing, in the next good or bad situation, to the next person, place or thing, trying to live my dreams, and help others live thiers, when those actions stop I know I am in trouble. So I question which way I am going in situations and try to take just one step in the right direction, where that takes me I dont know but I'll get there someday.

Reminders

Each day that goes by the older and busier life becomes. There are more responsibilities, commitments and distractions from the important things in life. Being a passionate person and an addictive being I can get lost in anything and let the focus or ego get out of hand. I have been lucky enough to find a place where I am forced to remember how lucky I am and where I came from. The ocean.
I have been alot of places and seen and done plenty of things and the ocean is when I am reminded of how truely small I am in this life. The waves were crashing and receding far before I was even an idea and they will be far after I am gone. In a world where everything is in a hurry and everything changes the ocean is consistent and balanced. The waves still come and go in the dead of winter when noone is there to see just as they do in the summer when the beaches are over populated. This never stops, never changes and nobody has any control or say over it. The tide is balance in its purest form, waves crash and go foward, then the tides pulls backwards and the water follows. Giving of life and taking away of life simple natural order of life. Whenever I feel as if I have done something amazing the ocean lets me know where I stand just as when I am not so well, the ocean puts the perspective back in order for me.
Not being able to see a definite begining or ending also has a strong impact on my perspective. The world is huge and the sun will come and go everyday no matter what we do even if we have millions of choices in are lives, which technology has made even more plentiful, these are all distractions from the deep seeded meanings of life. Every form of spirituality involves water as life. The ocean can replenish life or take it away with rip currents or hurricanes, flooding, tsunami's all of these things out of our control, a reminder that no matter who we think we are or what we think we mean to this world that it is not about us as a person but us as people. I am reminded of the excellent movie "Cast Away", were Tom Hank's character is stranded on an island. The sun and the water are the only reasons he is able to survive but they are also the greatest threat to his mere existance. The saying "you never know what the tide will bring" are the reasons we live. Things we have no control over at all, vulnerabilty, humility, love. The ending of that movie he finally gets one choice, his only choice, of which way to go.
Some people dont have a choice and some people have too many choices but I hope everyone has something out there that reminds them of just how small they are and how big this existence truely is. This past week I was stressed over the small things like school, work, and of course money but it was nothing seeing the ocean couldnt handle. I felt the hot sun, the cool breeze, smelt the salty air, and heard the waves crash on the sand looking out to a diamond blue forever that I will never comprehend and I felt loved and at peace.