shumway or another...

"you know I'm jealous of how you can just turn them off
those bad ideas that feel so soft" -matt good

It’s good that this post comes on the heels of the last, because they’re connected in a few small but vital ways.
I often end my posts with a question, one of the many things that I don’t know how to do, don’t understand, don’t have a solution for. This time, however, I’m going to begin with a question.
I do this because it’s THE question, it’s the question of all my other questions, it’s the tool with which I would most be able to construct the life I want, the one that looks most like the positive portions of my divided imagination. The question, then, is this:
“How does one make a complete decision, adhere to the resolution, and simply accept one single outcome?”
This is the quality that takes ordinary people and turns them into role models, examples, leaders, heroes. This is the ability that is often labeled strength, or steadfastness, or courage, or determination, or integrity. These are the traits I want for myself, the ones I can imagine, the ones I can even occasionally see within my heart, yearning to get out and express themselves to the world.
But the choice is always only partial for me. I decide that I want the feeling of freedom, the experience of release, but I just don’t want to sacrifice the possibilities that die in that decision… if I were to make freedom whole, it would mean negating forever the comforts of my captivity, and at times in my life, those comforts were all I had.
But how I would love, just once, to decide and not undecide, to lock a door behind me instead of wedging it open with a triangle of uncertainty, to walk without looking back, not because I’m afraid of the consequences of that backward glance, but because I’m excited about all the possibilities that exist without it, because I’m confident in my choice, and in my ability to adhere to it.
If only insecurities didn’t pounce so aptly.
An example. A simple one, one that I’m sure many will be able to relate to (not that I’m deluding myself into believing that many will read this post).
Eminem is very, very talented. His voice is unique. His rhymes are often clever, typically creative, and occasionally brilliant in a way that no other person has defined the word. His lyrics, however, are often filth.
To his credit, he generally expresses them in jest, be it a contemptuous jocularity. That’s fine. Most of the time, that’s also how I receive them. But, as I said in the last post, there’s the trouble of that pesky subconscious, ever listening, ever picking up subtleties in the messages. So while I might just be listening to some smart rhymes and some catchy beats and hooks, my subconscious is getting the impression that things like rape and murder and intolerance and degradation and objectification are suitable fare, and if for popular music, then why not for thoughts, dreams, life?
Hence the problem.
On the purely conscious level of superego, I am well aware that the short-term benefit to my life that this music offers is certainly not outweighed by the long-term benefit of simply discarding it. But as always, I fear the choice. And my fear grows a voice in the dark and whispers to me. “what if I want it back tomorrow”, it asks, knowing that it would be a waste to have destroyed it only to spend more unnecessary money getting it back again. “what if I change my thinking and decide that it’s fine? What a fool I’d look for being so rigid in my thoughts, for being so legalistic, so rashly judgmental.” And those arguments work, at least before the choice is made. And if I finally DO make the choice, there is an instant pang of regret. Knowing that, at that precise moment, it has lost, it lingers, hiding behind my inflated confidence in my own progress, my pride in having accomplished something difficult, my appreciation of freedom.
But when a moment of weakness comes (and they always do), when, for a brief second, I miss that which I have relinquished, regret pounces swiftly from it’s clever blind, eager to convince me that I was entirely wrong in my decision, that I was stupid to give it up, that I was deceived about my own lack of strength, that I’m silly and weak for having sacrificed something that, with a little more practice and exposure, would be inconsequential.
But it’s making these things inconsequential that IS the consequence. It’s the numbness to pain, it’s the blindness to sin, it’s the acceptance of the unacceptable, that hardens our hearts. Commonplace atrocities serve only to dull our senses and make us that much less aware of who we are, who others are, what love is, and how to express it in ways that are beautiful and real.
But I’m already convinced that I made a mistake, and in the end, once more secure in my own strength, in my ability to distinguish truth from lie, good from bad, and thereby consume them both equally without consequence, I wind up, after all of that, with 4 of his CD’s instead of the 2 I had to begin with.

I want to make choices that last. I want so badly to simply keep walking, to shatter the things that hold me back and not find myself frantically gluing the shards back together the next week. I want it with all my heart, with all my soul. My mind and strength, however, have to get on board, for it to truly happen, for true freedom to come.

soon. i can only choke on fur so many times before i decide that maybe, just maybe, celery would be better for me, regardless of the flavor to which i've become addicted.