It has been months since my last entry into anything that could be called my passion. However, the further away I get from it the more I think that I am just grabbing on to something so that I can say my life wasn’t for naught. I go to work every day with the need for money and some satisfaction, I return home with money. The more I work and gain knowledge of what I am doing the more I get dissatisfied from it. Why is that? Am I sabotaging myself like I have done many times before by not giving something my all so that if I fail at it I know I didn’t try my best? Am I going through the motions because I feel as if this is what I am supposed to do to be an adult? I look at my parents and my aunts and uncles for guidance; however, it doesn’t seem that they know the answer.
My aunt has worked her entire life dutifully and for her family. She amassed a comfortable amount of wealth, respect in her field and even was able to provide for people outside of her circle. But is she truly happy? From an observational perspective, I would say no. Maybe it was the retirement or the loss of power, whatever it was it seems like there is a piece missing. My mother is another example. She has done well in her field and makes a good amount of money. However, there also seems like there is something missing in her professional life. On the other hand, my father is an example of someone that made due with his profession and is personally happy in it. Albeit my father’s personality would do well in any field where he had to interact with people. How he managed to grasp on to an opportunity by chance and find comfort in it, I am not sure, but again with his outgoing personality and positivity he may have been destined to just be happy.
The best example of someone that carved out their own personal happiness is my other aunt. She pursued her dream no matter how broke or how trying it was. And here lies my problem. Statistically she had a very low chance of winding up within her field, able to support herself and able to reach the high level that she is. And as soon as I wrote that last line I realized three extremely important things. One, I have never seen any statistics published about people who pursue their dream doggedly and their rate of success. Two, I have based my notions on my own preconceived fears, the published rates of unemployment. And three, there is a dogma that has been ingrained in my head, from I don’t know where, that there is only room for a few at the top (defining top non-withstanding).
Why is it so easy to believe that you will fail before you even try? What part of the mental insecurity that we hold onto allows us to ignore what is in our hearts? I know that I can feel, and I am going to extend this to everyone, when something we have been told or something that we believe is erroneous. Why don’t we correct this, what is stopping us? Why can we hold ourselves back so easily from seeking and believing the truth that is so clear in front of our eyes? I think the complexity of human thought is what lays these traps for us. Humans not only have to deal with empirical facts, but also emotional realizations and opinions based out of the subconscious that we cannot even begin to explain. This may sound as an excuse and for all intents and purposes it is, however, I think realizing it is the first step to changing ourselves. If we can cut out the excuses we can take the first step in trying to be the person that we want to be. A very smart group of people once told me that “Excuses are the tools of the incompetent”, and then tasked me to define the difference between a reason and an excuse. As gray as the line is between the two, there only seemed to be one difference; excuses are things that you can go around, while a reason is something you need divine intervention, or in other words something that is totally out of your hands.
I spoke of truth earlier in this passage which brings me to a similar but different topic than that of career, truth in yourself. I through a period of self-discovery have found out two things about myself. The first is that I don’t believe in organized religion and the second I am not straight. Whether these have had causal effects on each other, I am not sure, but maybe. The thing is it is not god, divinity or a higher being that makes me think otherwise. It is the people. It is the bigotry. It is the pain that has been caused by the institution of religious closed mindedness. It is the absence of empirical fact or emotional self-actualization that annoys me. To me it seems like the religious fanatics that I meet have so intrinsically taken in the word of other people that may or may not have had their best interests in mind, so much so that they are willing to kill, torture and traumatize anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs. I cannot understand this, so much so that it makes me angry. However, I do understand that the human consciousness is a social and lonely existence that does benefit from feeling a part of something as well as having something to inspire hope. And religion in its true form does inspire hope, it has helped countless groups of people find comfort in otherwise bad situations. Although my natural cynicism points out that most of the bad situations have also been either caused or affirmed by religious zealots and idealists. I believe there may be a higher existence, whether it’s conscious or if it is a combination of life forces that is part of all of us it could exist. I think it would be a shame if it didn’t and we are all a product of chance that we came to be here and that the truly evil will escape punishment after death. However, I cannot say yes or no for a hard fact that it exists. I can say that in a sense all actions that revert the single human condition to something that is not mutually beneficial to all is against the very nature of living, which is the basis of all, dare I say, the true doctrine behind morality. In that, anything that prohibits life from carrying on and staying in harmony is wrong. The argument that animals and plants kill others to live is a valid argument. However, we as humans and arguably of a higher consciousness should be able to tame ourselves enough to better our condition without causing people who are different to experience such difficulties in life. We should also be able to maintain life on our own planet and not drive it to destruction because we are not willing to learn the truths that appear in front of us. Yes we need to question the truths to make sure they are truths, but we also need to read the “writing on the wall”.
Which brings me to my last topic, the writing on my own personal wall. I, to this day, have had 2 serious relationships and truthfully I would only really consider 1 of them to be real. And yes as I said before they were both with men. In high school and college, I met many wonderful ladies that could have made good partners; however, I told myself I was too involved in school, scared of having a kid, or just not ready to have a girlfriend. Again making excuses. Carnally, I had no problem enjoying the pleasures of the flesh with these ladies. However, I do remember that I would constantly be scared of losing my, let’s say, blood flow during these times. Whether it was the foreshadowing of what was to come or if it was just the manly fear of emasculating oneself, I will never truly know. I think when one comes of age they try to define themselves through the construct of their environment. I, as a black (multi-racial) man, was trying to live up to the virility and machismo that was associated with the territory. In some aspects I did, in others I didn’t. In dealing with women, there always seemed to be something that I was missing in my feelings towards them. Physically I was cool with them and did find them alluring; however, emotionally I was never quite there. I alwasy had this little bee, buzzing in my ear that it wouldn’t work out or that I really wasn’t into it. Maybe this was my lack of experience with the opposite sex when it comes to dating or just the seeds growing or rooted in my current sexuality. I lean towards the roots, but one can never be so sure when it comes to this topic. Of the mass of ladies that I was involved with, I don’t remember any of them stirring my feelings like my ex-boyfriend. And yes, that relationship has ended, and yes I have been confronted on having residual feelings even though I was the one that ended it, and yes I am still questioning the feelings because of lack of experience, but anyways they were there and they were real. I had this moment of clairvoyance that I never believed before that I could be happy with someone and not doubt it at least for a moment. There are things that I need to work on so that I can take the good with the bad for the right person, however, the realization that you may not always feel alone is a powerful thing. It is a feeling that someone should not be able to take away or to shame. The whole LGBT crowd knows they are different than their heterosexual counterparts, that part is obvious. They don’t know and won’t until they have experienced firsthand is that they can be happy, that the shouldn’t be ashamed to feel the way they do and that although it will be hard and can be depressing they will one day accept themselves.
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