Yesterday was my 25th birthday. I spent the weekend leading up to it first celebrating the birthdays of my mom and brother the week before and then thinking about what it meant for me to have lived 25 years. I thought about it both in context with just this past year and with all 25 together. You know, I consider myself to be pretty well-adjusted and I have a healthy self-esteem, but I also strive to be humble and I have a hard time just giving myself big-time compliments. That being said, however, I feel compelled to do just that this time.
I'm very proud of myself. I view reaching the age of 25 as a major achievement in my life. There is something significant about the age in general, but it means more for me. I had a chance to discuss it with my mom. She remarked lightly, "Who would've thunk it 25 years ago?" I thought about that a little more seriously, and responded, "How about 22 years ago?". Of course, this was a reference to the age of my diagnosis. And in 1986, the outlook in those informational pamphlets was grim for all boys by the age of 18.
Oh, I've had my chances to step out, as my friend would so eloquently say. When I call my most recent health challenge -- which ended in that most successful surgery -- a struggle, I really mean it. I was really weakened battling those wounds. I honestly believed I was at my bottom when I found out surgery was necessary, and there were a couple of weeks where I didn't feel like my body would be able to withstand that stress. But, I had to man up and do it, like it or not. This is the reason why I feel I have achieved so much in the last month. I found strength at my lowest point and willed my way through.
I read through the year in review I posted around the time of my last birthday, and there is definitely the sense of declining health for me as I read it. There are so many heavy topics for discussion in it. So much seriousness, so much pain. I was ready for it to be over then, but obviously there was much more fun in store. I'm glad for it, though, because now I feel stronger than ever. My breathing is good and getting better. I feel like I have work to do and the energy to get it done. My appetite is excellent, and always ready for more. I even feel my senses heightened.
For all these reasons and more, 25 is a big, big deal. And this year, I plan on bringing the focus back to regular, happy things. I'm going to work on my writing and continue to be published. I have to keep spoiling my nieces & nephews. I want to enjoy more of life's simple pleasures like good music or a nice bottle of red. Most importantly, I have a social life to renew. It is definitely grand to go from needing to find a surgeon & a way to get better to wanting to find a girlfriend & have a relationship. Enough seriousness. For now, I'll take the little things.
There's no time to lose!
Showing posts with label Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Monday, March 31, 2008
Once Music is mystical
Music seems to be very mystical. I'm always astounded by the way it can fill an otherwise still room with the most vivid, nearly tangible emotions. Depending on which emotion it is, the style of music can transport us to another place, it can cause us to change shape, or even disappear. At its best, it can take the musicians creating it and transform them into one organism.
If we reduce music down to its elements, those being (for our purposes) sound, rhythm, melody and harmony, we can see how it relates right down to the very basics of our humanity. We need life, first and foremost, which is kept thriving by the cycles in nature and governed by the order of the universe. Most every entity is greater than the sum of its parts. This is especially true for human beings. A human being, soulful and alive, is all those processes physical, mental, & emotional working in concert. The pieces are useless alone, and yet something is still missing within the mechanism of the pieces together. Music is still just a theory in this stage. It takes something more transcendent to bring music out of the void.
Creativity.
Something spiritual is necessary here. It is a giving and receiving. Just as I pointed out how music transforms a group of musicians into an entity, they must first create and nourish this thing before it gives back to them. The essence is out there, always. We give it form.
I saw Once for the second time this morning and can certainly say it is another favorite, a new favorite, of mine. It will be hard for any film to top Into the Wild for its depth of meaning as it relates to my life. But Once comes as close to that meaning as I can expect. I love, love, love how John Carney juxtaposes the down-and-out natures of the lives of both Guy & Girl with the purity and heights reached by the music they make together. This is an example of sublimation at its finest. Girl, while incredibly well-adjusted, is the picture of functional destitution. She is very poor but makes enough to feed her daughter & mother. Guy, while quite secure financially, is bereft of all social graces and romanticism. He has everything he needs, save for a crucial kick in the pants that is now necessary after losing his lover. Together in music, the Girl and the Guy live out their ideal selves in their ideal lives.
If we reduce music down to its elements, those being (for our purposes) sound, rhythm, melody and harmony, we can see how it relates right down to the very basics of our humanity. We need life, first and foremost, which is kept thriving by the cycles in nature and governed by the order of the universe. Most every entity is greater than the sum of its parts. This is especially true for human beings. A human being, soulful and alive, is all those processes physical, mental, & emotional working in concert. The pieces are useless alone, and yet something is still missing within the mechanism of the pieces together. Music is still just a theory in this stage. It takes something more transcendent to bring music out of the void.
Creativity.
Something spiritual is necessary here. It is a giving and receiving. Just as I pointed out how music transforms a group of musicians into an entity, they must first create and nourish this thing before it gives back to them. The essence is out there, always. We give it form.
I saw Once for the second time this morning and can certainly say it is another favorite, a new favorite, of mine. It will be hard for any film to top Into the Wild for its depth of meaning as it relates to my life. But Once comes as close to that meaning as I can expect. I love, love, love how John Carney juxtaposes the down-and-out natures of the lives of both Guy & Girl with the purity and heights reached by the music they make together. This is an example of sublimation at its finest. Girl, while incredibly well-adjusted, is the picture of functional destitution. She is very poor but makes enough to feed her daughter & mother. Guy, while quite secure financially, is bereft of all social graces and romanticism. He has everything he needs, save for a crucial kick in the pants that is now necessary after losing his lover. Together in music, the Girl and the Guy live out their ideal selves in their ideal lives.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
The Vigorous Pursuit
Today is the anniversary of my lung reinflation procedure. In almost every respect, that procedure put me in a completely different place today as compared to a little over a year ago. It's probably typical that I believe most of the changes are positive ones. However, I'm still left with some negative feelings and certainly some emotional hangups.
I feel vulnerable, and I can't get around it. Obviously, I've always been vulnerable, but the collapse really made it tangible for me. Whether or not my vulnerability was tangible to others is really beside the point. It's not exaggerating to say that until I underwent the procedure, I truly was not aware of my vulnerability. I already knew how precious life was and I had a very healthy, and unusual for this society, view of death. But I finally got an in-your-face example of how fragile the human body really is. It is an emotional realization. Not only are there untold forces outside of my control, but those forces can hurt me and the ones I love. A pessimist could have a field day with that statement. However, I actually took a lot of good from it. I feel more alive now that I've had that realization.
I have always believed in enjoying life and being happy. What changed in me is that I have accepted wanting to feel good. I embrace my desire. That thing about suffering being caused by desire can be confusing. I realize now that it is not a teaching that shows me how to remove suffering from my life. Rather, it is a statement about the human condition. For all the pain and fragility we endure in our bodies, simply being alive also affords us so much pleasure. I choose, now, to indulge in it happily and without remorse. More of us should do that, I think.
My choice to accept the desire to feel good has made me even more optimistic and given me a ton of self-confidence. Granted, none of this happened overnight and my ideas here have been tested many times. It did take the whole year. Since the year has passed, I have grown in my self-acceptance and I don't find too many situations in which I feel uncomfortable.
When it comes down to it, the emotional vulnerability caused by the collapse can only be cured by me. For better or worse, the memories of the procedure itself will always be with me. The fear of it happening again will only go away with time. The emotions are also connected to me physically by all the parts of my body involved in fixing the lung collapse. My skin, my chest, my muscle tissue there, and that part of my lung, those things also physically feel vulnerable. It is difficult to describe and primarily psychological, but it is there. Every once in a while, little pains come back, just like memory flashes of the procedure.
Some of my emotional vulnerability cannot, or better yet should not, be cured. When time begins to move us away from a major event in our lives, whether it is a trauma or some special occasion, it is inevitable that we revert to an everyday routine style of living. In that regard, I almost feel like I am more alive during my crises than most other times. My emotions were very close to the surface around the time of the collapse. Now, it makes me glad to experience strong emotion. For instance, I actually feel good after some song or film moves me to tears. I certainly don't want to cure that. My emotions are my connection to the times in my life in which I feel most alive.
I have grown in my fondness for the people I love. Appreciating them is something I have always done, but I feel like I am now more consciously aware of the delight I take in my relationships with them. I know what it is to enjoy their enjoyment, to feel achievement in their achievements, and to be happy because of their happiness. In most of the aspects of my life, quantity is something I hardly experience. It's all about quality. I don't have an enormity of close friends I would call brother, or sister, or lover. I don't get to see them terribly often. So, I make up for it by maximizing every moment we spend together which allows those relationships to be enriched in a truly special way. I see my family more often, but I put the same spiritual energy into the maximizing and the enriching.
One thing that has not changed over this year is my love of writing. It has increased, increased, increased exponentially. I think the crux of this thought and all of the thoughts I have had about my anniversary is that I feel affirmed. My way of life, my beliefs, my current place, my direction, my character, all of these things have been affirmed in me. After much thought this year, I have discovered that writing is my vocation. It was simply something I was good at until 2004. That year it became an interest and an intense hobby. In 2005, I changed it to my major in college and in the fall of that year my fate was sealed when I took Intro to Creative Writing. Writing had become my occupation by the fall of 2006. And now, I can feel deep down that I am called to write.
I wrote before that a pessimist could have a field day with the idea that we can be hurt by so many uncontrollable forces, and that includes other human beings. I can understand why that looks negative at face value. Digging deeper, however, look at all the good. It is completely useless for me to worry about those things I cannot control. Imagine how liberating it is, then, to accept that there are all those forces out there and stop stressing about them. Imagine all the time and energy saved that can now be used for better things. The preciousness of life, the realization that, in a split second, everything could end or change makes it so easy to live in the moment. I'm all for giving up on guilt and instead focusing on how special it is to get to see this universe. The wonder it offers us is amazing and it should be enjoyed with exuberance.
The best thing we can do is to acknowledge it all because all of it is necessary. Know that bad things threaten us, realize our precarious position, and appreciate the good that makes it worth while. I really mean it when I write: it's all good. We need one thing to understand the other. Be glad that this world is so fragile, for it gives us the passion to delight in its pleasure.
Life is the vigorous pursuit.
I feel vulnerable, and I can't get around it. Obviously, I've always been vulnerable, but the collapse really made it tangible for me. Whether or not my vulnerability was tangible to others is really beside the point. It's not exaggerating to say that until I underwent the procedure, I truly was not aware of my vulnerability. I already knew how precious life was and I had a very healthy, and unusual for this society, view of death. But I finally got an in-your-face example of how fragile the human body really is. It is an emotional realization. Not only are there untold forces outside of my control, but those forces can hurt me and the ones I love. A pessimist could have a field day with that statement. However, I actually took a lot of good from it. I feel more alive now that I've had that realization.
I have always believed in enjoying life and being happy. What changed in me is that I have accepted wanting to feel good. I embrace my desire. That thing about suffering being caused by desire can be confusing. I realize now that it is not a teaching that shows me how to remove suffering from my life. Rather, it is a statement about the human condition. For all the pain and fragility we endure in our bodies, simply being alive also affords us so much pleasure. I choose, now, to indulge in it happily and without remorse. More of us should do that, I think.
My choice to accept the desire to feel good has made me even more optimistic and given me a ton of self-confidence. Granted, none of this happened overnight and my ideas here have been tested many times. It did take the whole year. Since the year has passed, I have grown in my self-acceptance and I don't find too many situations in which I feel uncomfortable.
When it comes down to it, the emotional vulnerability caused by the collapse can only be cured by me. For better or worse, the memories of the procedure itself will always be with me. The fear of it happening again will only go away with time. The emotions are also connected to me physically by all the parts of my body involved in fixing the lung collapse. My skin, my chest, my muscle tissue there, and that part of my lung, those things also physically feel vulnerable. It is difficult to describe and primarily psychological, but it is there. Every once in a while, little pains come back, just like memory flashes of the procedure.
Some of my emotional vulnerability cannot, or better yet should not, be cured. When time begins to move us away from a major event in our lives, whether it is a trauma or some special occasion, it is inevitable that we revert to an everyday routine style of living. In that regard, I almost feel like I am more alive during my crises than most other times. My emotions were very close to the surface around the time of the collapse. Now, it makes me glad to experience strong emotion. For instance, I actually feel good after some song or film moves me to tears. I certainly don't want to cure that. My emotions are my connection to the times in my life in which I feel most alive.
I have grown in my fondness for the people I love. Appreciating them is something I have always done, but I feel like I am now more consciously aware of the delight I take in my relationships with them. I know what it is to enjoy their enjoyment, to feel achievement in their achievements, and to be happy because of their happiness. In most of the aspects of my life, quantity is something I hardly experience. It's all about quality. I don't have an enormity of close friends I would call brother, or sister, or lover. I don't get to see them terribly often. So, I make up for it by maximizing every moment we spend together which allows those relationships to be enriched in a truly special way. I see my family more often, but I put the same spiritual energy into the maximizing and the enriching.
One thing that has not changed over this year is my love of writing. It has increased, increased, increased exponentially. I think the crux of this thought and all of the thoughts I have had about my anniversary is that I feel affirmed. My way of life, my beliefs, my current place, my direction, my character, all of these things have been affirmed in me. After much thought this year, I have discovered that writing is my vocation. It was simply something I was good at until 2004. That year it became an interest and an intense hobby. In 2005, I changed it to my major in college and in the fall of that year my fate was sealed when I took Intro to Creative Writing. Writing had become my occupation by the fall of 2006. And now, I can feel deep down that I am called to write.
I wrote before that a pessimist could have a field day with the idea that we can be hurt by so many uncontrollable forces, and that includes other human beings. I can understand why that looks negative at face value. Digging deeper, however, look at all the good. It is completely useless for me to worry about those things I cannot control. Imagine how liberating it is, then, to accept that there are all those forces out there and stop stressing about them. Imagine all the time and energy saved that can now be used for better things. The preciousness of life, the realization that, in a split second, everything could end or change makes it so easy to live in the moment. I'm all for giving up on guilt and instead focusing on how special it is to get to see this universe. The wonder it offers us is amazing and it should be enjoyed with exuberance.
The best thing we can do is to acknowledge it all because all of it is necessary. Know that bad things threaten us, realize our precarious position, and appreciate the good that makes it worth while. I really mean it when I write: it's all good. We need one thing to understand the other. Be glad that this world is so fragile, for it gives us the passion to delight in its pleasure.
Life is the vigorous pursuit.
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