metanoia's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Turning Points Are there turning points? If there are these points and doors and windows, they are usually seen in retrospect. While we enter (or do not) these doors or turn on these points, we are usually not fully conscious of their significance. I suspect on a certain level, we are quite aware, but if they do not lead where we feel we should be going, perhaps we discount their significance in our lives. It is only later, after we have done what we wanted and are in the jolly process of rationalizing our actions (to make us seem just, or �right� in our selfish choices) that we say, �Oh, I missed that window of opportunity; it will never come again� or something to that effect. But to see our lives as linear, the �life as a road� analogy comes to mind, implies there is an end; an end to which we are all marching, and of course there is the death thing; we are all marching toward that. But beyond the life and death thing, how do we define our lives? My life has been filled with shoulds, and usually not of my own making, at least not at first. It was probably one of the best learned lessons in my early life, however; how to strategically place �shoulds� as obstacles in the way of my realizing any dream. I remember saying I wanted to be a nurse when I was 4 yrs old, and being told, �Why a nurse? You should be a doctor.� Looking back, the intent of that was to encourage me to dream larger, perhaps. In practice, all it did was negate my dream and emphasized that I did not dream correctly � I did not know how to dream for myself. I �should� dream better dreams. There is a part of us that realizes these points when we reach them; these significant decisions we make each day that shape our lives in certain ways. Sometimes they seem small but we still �have a feeling� they carry more weight than appears on the surface. When I decided to drop out of freshman year at college, and spend more time with my boyfriend, it seemed insignificant to me at the time. Yet it shaped my future, and still does. I had the intention of going back the following semester, but by then I was married and being a housewife. I know I have shared what my father said to me when I told him I was going to college � �Why don�t you just get married?� I don�t want to blame him for my decision to drop out, but I wonder sometimes if it didn�t contribute to it. Would it have been that one thing that kept me going? I will never know the answer to that question. The window of opportunity to ask him is gone, buried in his heart 6 feet under in Inglewood, California. The window of opportunity to ask myself, is still open, but I am not looking quite yet. I sneak a peek every once in awhile, but I never gaze too long, it burns my eyes. When the plumber came to change out my water heater, if I had not called the phone number he left me, would I still be married to my first husband? I would have been married to him longer, that is for sure. That moment when I picked up the phone over 30 years ago, I remember it, was a point of no return. I knew it. I felt it; and still I continued � I barged on through it � and forced my own hand, called my own raise, won and lost the pot at the same time. And so, I suppose these things do exist � these doors, windows and points. Trying to differentiate between the ones that are important, significant is futile. The futility lies, I believe, in the fact that each moment of our lives is a door, a window, a turning point of no return. If we treated each moment with the weight and importance of its possibility, that would make a full and happy life, not without pain but knowing you gave each nanosecond of your life-time its due respect; that would be soul-satisfying. That would be pretty damned cool. 12:59 p.m. - 2006-08-18 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||