I was 22 when I started my own training business. I had no business really beginning. I started my business to survive. I started my business to be with a person who didn't love me. I started my business to help people, and to help myself.
That is, simply, how it all began.
I looked like this when I sat on my front stoop:
I wrote this then:
http://cbs3.com/topstories/Welch.Acciden
Parle come magni. "Speak the way you eat", they say.
So I will.
It seems it's my lot in the world to be around those who are grieving, to grieve myself when no one near me seems to be particularly bothered by a thing. I'm sulky, what can I say? But I have always been this way: dreadfully happy, because life is so light when you allow it to be, and terribly broken, because life is simply, so hard.
And I still say, anyone left standing after the sun's gone down is brave. VERY BRAVE.
I remember being small and attending prayer services with my mother that would last for hours. Korean mothers lining the aisles weeping. The sound rings in my ears.
When I was 12, I watched my grandfather's life slip away from his face, like water running through your fingers, so tangible, but nothing you could grasp. And I remember being fascinated by grief, by the absence of what was just there, by the finality.
And when I was older, I spent my weeks in music, in singing sappy songs crafted to bring forth emotion and allow people to feel that some greater being knew why. And I would make people cry. They would come up to me, eyes gleaming, hands shaking, faces pink with the glow of feeling: "The Spirit moves in you."
And how could I help but believe them?
My time in other countries plots me with roommates who have been sexually and physically abused, and those who bear the scars of abusing themselves through their insecurities, their need to see the wounds they cry about. And I have seen real poverty. Social, psychological, economic poverty. Miles of waste down beautiful hillsides, the vibrations of bombs felt through sand on beaches, and addiction everywhere and to just about every thing. My year as an RA was nothing short of one tragedy after another. Rapes, suicides, deaths. And on and on it goes.
And I'd be lying if I said I didn't have those wounds as well.
I'm not saying I've a magnet for sorrow and suffering so much as I'd just like to say that I'm awed by the prevalence of such things. Because I forget just how horrible it can all be.
I've thought about this, an old Buddhist teaching: "The world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore the wise do not grieve, knowing the terms of the world."
And yet, there is a time for everything in the book of Ecclesiastes. I have not learned to be wise, so much as patient.
The terms of this world are that we can only ever do as much as is humanly possible. And even if the Universe is a manifestation of loving Will, the truth of this place is the old cliche: death is a part of life. How death comes, is brutal, unpartial. Death is a blind judge as he should be. As Life is.
And you say it over and over again to yourself until you realize that the particularly frustrating thing is that some part of you will never believe you're mortal. Not really. Because mortality is not a thing you are acquainted with. We're led to believe in life from the moment we're born.
You're not given the terms of life before you walk into it. You're thrust through like the rest of us and you learn the terms. You learn just how bad it can get, just how little you must learn to appreciate, just how beautiful something so simple as time can be.
And so I'll say it like I eat it: I'd like to live life deeply. I'd like to love my friends more, and continue to believe in the good, in spite-in spite-in spite of all the horrid things in myself, in people, in the world. I'd like to be less afraid, and more brave about things that actually matter. I'd like to fuck the terms of the world and be where I am as long as I can. I'd like to create and wonder at creations. And I can't say I'll ever stop searching for God like a man looks for water with his head on fire. Because it matters. THIS is it.
"Life's too short to make things last." -Haley Bonar
^^^^^^^^^^^
Who WAS this person?
That is, simply, how it all began.
I looked like this when I sat on my front stoop:
I wrote this then:
http://cbs3.com/topstories/Welch.Acciden
Parle come magni. "Speak the way you eat", they say.
So I will.
It seems it's my lot in the world to be around those who are grieving, to grieve myself when no one near me seems to be particularly bothered by a thing. I'm sulky, what can I say? But I have always been this way: dreadfully happy, because life is so light when you allow it to be, and terribly broken, because life is simply, so hard.
And I still say, anyone left standing after the sun's gone down is brave. VERY BRAVE.
I remember being small and attending prayer services with my mother that would last for hours. Korean mothers lining the aisles weeping. The sound rings in my ears.
When I was 12, I watched my grandfather's life slip away from his face, like water running through your fingers, so tangible, but nothing you could grasp. And I remember being fascinated by grief, by the absence of what was just there, by the finality.
And when I was older, I spent my weeks in music, in singing sappy songs crafted to bring forth emotion and allow people to feel that some greater being knew why. And I would make people cry. They would come up to me, eyes gleaming, hands shaking, faces pink with the glow of feeling: "The Spirit moves in you."
And how could I help but believe them?
My time in other countries plots me with roommates who have been sexually and physically abused, and those who bear the scars of abusing themselves through their insecurities, their need to see the wounds they cry about. And I have seen real poverty. Social, psychological, economic poverty. Miles of waste down beautiful hillsides, the vibrations of bombs felt through sand on beaches, and addiction everywhere and to just about every thing. My year as an RA was nothing short of one tragedy after another. Rapes, suicides, deaths. And on and on it goes.
And I'd be lying if I said I didn't have those wounds as well.
I'm not saying I've a magnet for sorrow and suffering so much as I'd just like to say that I'm awed by the prevalence of such things. Because I forget just how horrible it can all be.
I've thought about this, an old Buddhist teaching: "The world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore the wise do not grieve, knowing the terms of the world."
And yet, there is a time for everything in the book of Ecclesiastes. I have not learned to be wise, so much as patient.
The terms of this world are that we can only ever do as much as is humanly possible. And even if the Universe is a manifestation of loving Will, the truth of this place is the old cliche: death is a part of life. How death comes, is brutal, unpartial. Death is a blind judge as he should be. As Life is.
And you say it over and over again to yourself until you realize that the particularly frustrating thing is that some part of you will never believe you're mortal. Not really. Because mortality is not a thing you are acquainted with. We're led to believe in life from the moment we're born.
You're not given the terms of life before you walk into it. You're thrust through like the rest of us and you learn the terms. You learn just how bad it can get, just how little you must learn to appreciate, just how beautiful something so simple as time can be.
And so I'll say it like I eat it: I'd like to live life deeply. I'd like to love my friends more, and continue to believe in the good, in spite-in spite-in spite of all the horrid things in myself, in people, in the world. I'd like to be less afraid, and more brave about things that actually matter. I'd like to fuck the terms of the world and be where I am as long as I can. I'd like to create and wonder at creations. And I can't say I'll ever stop searching for God like a man looks for water with his head on fire. Because it matters. THIS is it.
"Life's too short to make things last." -Haley Bonar
^^^^^^^^^^^
Who WAS this person?
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