I am a slow reader and a slow writer. I type quickly but write slothenly.
I am also a disappointingly slow reader. As many books as I devoured as a kid, they were piled up by my bed, usually several going on at one time, reading in the dim light. Whereas one might have guessed that I would have ended up with glasses and book savvy, just the opposite is the case.
I am a painfully slow reader. But I enjoy it. Depending on the book. When I was young, I couldn’t stop reading a book until I reached the end. I now put down whatever book does not catch my interest. Especially now, it needs to be really sharp, else I am satisfied with halfastory.
Not much else about me has changed since I have grown up. Still dorky and awkward in all the other ways I had hoped I would grow out of at 14.
Not too long ago I was listening to a radio program where a radical rabbi was being interviewed on his god out of the box theories. His point was to get folks in touch with their spirituality, beyond atheism and religion. He told us listeners to take our age and half it. 16. Now I am supposed to reflect back and spiritually advise my 16 year-old self.
So the first reaction of course is to look back and visualize that young woman, who she was and what was on her mind. I was convincing my parents it was a good idea, then saying good bye to friends and boyfriends (yes, in the plural) and going to Mexico for one year as an exchange student.
At 32, I feel like I need to take advise from her. Pre-adventure I think I am always at my strongest, and we always look back with nostalgia, but it is really tragic that, as spiritual as I think I may be, I can’t say that I have gained anything since that time. Philosophically I think I am probably about at the same level. I had left our family church two years before, and done the bulk of my ‘god’ search. In Mexico, smoking weed with a bunch of the European exchange students on a crowded bus out to some beach, I found I had come to pretty much the same conclusion as the rest of those blokes. There is no god.
Yet I still prayed. Dear Lord this and that. This masculine image that didn’t seem quite right, yet wasn’t shakable. Justifiably so. I had felt god strongly, and there was still the feeling that some an omniforce was on my team.
I no longer claim to be atheist, and where I called god a crutch I would now say that it isn’t god, but religion.
So I am a slow reader and a slow philosopher.
Half of my life has passed since I made these conscious decisions, one to abandon the religion of my youth, and the other to abandon my family and country.
Both decisions I embraced with a whole heart, and never ever felt an ounce of regret, no matter how complicated or lonely my situation got.
A few years after my parents divorce (also happened when I was 14…) we had to give up the house I grew up in. Later, the memory of lying in that bed, safe from any feelings of regret was achingly painful. I would never lay in that bed again.
Doubt is the greatest hindrance. Knowing the words doesn’t make the concept any more real to me. I doubt myself to the extreme nth.
I have spent so many years choosing so many paths that my resume either looks like circus confetti or swiss cheese. A colorful smattering of things, or an unaccomplished milky blah.
Sometimes I doubt, and that makes me regret the past, and that makes me needabetterfuturelikerightnow. I get pissy and to combine phrases my parents have offered me, I have a chip on my shoulder like I have something to prove.
Its true. I am afraid of wasting all the opportunities I have been given.
In that same childhood bed, I would often cry myself to sleep. I wasn’t comfortable being comfortable. I felt no guilt at my own doing, but guilt because I was born. Guess I could blame church for that one, but I really think it runs deeper than religious guilt tripping. It’s the human bond that doesn’t allow one to sleep while the other is hungry. When we are young, and we see visions of Ethiopia, it affects us deeply.
This is a good thing.
But somehow I got it in my head, and I am sure it was a direct result of images on the evening news combined with a soft heart, but it was in my head that I, as a young girl in Africa, had stood to the side while I watched my family suffer, and promised the dear lord our god whatever he is, that if I were given the opportunity, I would come back and help.
Bam! A child is born in Southern California with a purpose.
So I sometimes look back and wonder what took me so long to go there.
And then I see the answers. Justifiable they must be, because this is my life.
But I feel regret for being 32, with a ready to go family with nowhere to go.
What could the future possibly bring?
How is it that I am no closer to accomplishing anything at this age than I was at 16?
Lately, I have been looking around me and seeing that things are going too slow as far as building a life that suits my family as well as my own dreams. So I get impatient, ansy, bitter, quiet, weepy, hot-tempered, aloof, hyperactive and clumsy. To name a few symptoms of the syndrome.
But tonight, I took my medicine: the family loaded into the minivan and we jumped on the expressway, all the way to swing dance night, had a wonderful time and came back and made love.
I knew that I needed things to be a challenge for me. I needed to overcome a challenge in order to escape the torture of privilege. But at the same time, my devious self insists that if I were on the right path, everything would be very Tao and fall into place. So obstacles become cosmic omens saying WRONG WAY!
I analyze my pattern for making big life decisions. I find none, sometimes it is confident, sometimes I hem and haw into paralysis (my career!) and sometimes I jump right of the boat, headfirst without looking (my family).
Either way, when I am feeling anxious and embittered that I need to be moving a litter faster down the ol life path, I take a little southern California medicine and jump on the expressway, and totally enjoy the night, and the now.
