A Complex Determination

When a child's parents tell that child to keep his or her hands to him or herself there is a certain complex determination born in the child's soul.
It is the combined desire to control him or herself to the point of obeisance and to secretly plan on waiting for the propitious moment to challenge the respected authority and find out, via practical experience, just why he or she was told to behave. Not to mention what might happen in the event of rebellion.

It might be said that this same complex determination is what matures to become nationalism, corporate loyalty, or dare I suggest religion. One is compelled to find a set of standards, a concise methodology for proper existence. But it is tinged with the notion of rebellion, the desire to dance on the wild side and challenge what one has chosen to embrace.

Present & Grateful

Six days ago I had no idea about the amount of distance I would be covering between then and now.
Since Monday, I have traveled somewhere in the vicinity of five-thousand miles, seen my whole immediate family for the first time in six months, slept a night in my old apartment, and spent time with a number of the friends who I thought I wouldn't be anywhere near until the end of the calendar year.

And all because of a death in the family.

My reactions to death have been elucidated in writing on numerous occasions and have always come to a conclusion that goes something like this: I'm not ruined at the thought of someone passing because I have yet to see the negative in death.

This is not to say that I will forever hold this stoic optimism. I very well could have someone taken from me by the silent black strength of death who I am in no way ready to be without. But the fact is that that has yet to occur. And until it does I shall maintain this somewhat ambivalent outlook.

Why? I already feel things far too deeply to allow something as tar-thick and compromising as the notion of a person's passing inside my clever walls. Like Meg in A Wrinkle In Time, I plan to look through the transparent atomic walls while not allowing anyone's passage through their see-through surfaces.

One might think of this sort of behavior as sociopathic in some form or another. But the truth is that it gets me up in the mornings and allows me to sleep at night. These are the key moments of any day- the start and the end- and I refuse to inhibit myself if it can be avoided.

Coming back around, the beauty to be found in this most recent bout with death is that I was permitted the opportunity to visit the family, friends, and places I have come to think of as my foundations at a time when I knew I needed some sort of direct encouragement, uplifting, affirmation.
In the end I was also able to obtain confirmation: I am supposed to be where I am, doing what I'm doing, trying as hard as I can to be present and grateful.

I guess that's really the best reaction one can have to the notion of death in close proximity: just be present and grateful.