The Holidays have come back around.
Let the screaming commence.
We hate certain cliches for their obnoxious condescending truth like we hate listening to a singer whose voice we can't stand. It doesn't matter to me that Jimmy Corrigan is a rock star, nor (more importantly, for the sake of this analogy) that he's hitting his notes spot-on. I don't want to hear him doing it. If he happens to be singing about something that speaks directly to my experience in a chiding way I am even less inclined to tolerance.
The cliche I'm thinking of is "you can only change yourself".
Yes, it's true. Sure it is. It provides little comfort when you're awash in family disharmony.
I will find my way through to loving those I care for without getting hung up on old thorns. I know how to get there. I got the basic pattern down from digging my way to Dad's self-murder and back out again and the prospect of being a disassembled motorbike scattered across my life's living room floor is endurable for the prize I know is waiting at the end of the grind. Self-work is always worth it. Whether you get the spark from Jung, or the Torah, or Tony Robbins carries less weight than the good you can do from a place of peace. I don't hold with the idea that God only shines light on those who do good in the Authorized Way. That's not the model that produced Mahatma Ghandi nor Martin Luther King...or Jesus, for that matter. Doing good is foundational more than fundamental.
It's a hard row to hoe. Sometimes I can see past the button-pushing, crazy-making family patterning to all the things I admire and love. Much of the time I'm holding the scream back right behind my teeth.
Well....you can only change yourself.
1 comment:
I honestly think you're one of the best, good people I've ever met. You have never been anything other than encouraging, kind, funny and caring to me. I've never sensed the scream; I'm not denying it, just questioning that it has that much hold on you. And I only question that in hopes to help you get away from its grip. I'd never seek to diminish your pain with mere words. All this and you're the most skilled artist I know. The threads between emotion and depiction are more akin to hawsers with you.
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