What's Left In Pandora's Box

Sometimes we become so despondent that we cling to the wrong things.  A man sinking in quicksand might reach for a poisonous snake if he thought it could support his weight and help him escape.  Desperate times call for even more desperate measures.   Cliches as long as your arm will come to mind.

In your life, you may find yourself having to open a Pandora’s Box.   You do it, not because of curiosity, but because there is no other way to begin the healing process.   You dread it.   You rationalize keeping it closed.  You bargain with yourself that it will get better without getting worse.   However, in the end, the box gets opened, consciously or subconsciously.  All you can do is let it envelope you and swim against the current to dry land.   The worst part is that you can’t see the shore.  You have no bearing on where it is.   You could unknowingly swim back towards the whirlpool that looks to suck you down into the dark abyss, and almost not realize it.  

Yes, there are days when you want to crawl into that hole, turn on the depressing music, and poke at the scabs on your soul because feeling that pain is better than nothing at all.  And in that hole, you see the one thing left that wasn’t let out of Pandora’s Box.  That’s when the evils in the world look friendly and safe.   Drugs.  Alcohol.  Harming yourself or others.  And there in the darkness is that one thing, above all else, that you could cling to.   Hope.   

But sometimes, we need hope.  Sometimes the pain is too deep and great to simply let it all in.  Sometimes to get through the darkest parts of the process, we need to latch onto a life raft full of needles while we wear a suit of armor made of water balloons.  We could ultimately end up drowning from within, but there is a chance we can survive it and that is better than drowning out in the open.   Hope is something that if handled correctly, could be a lifeline. 

The problem is that you can put too much faith in hope.  Hope is still an evil.   You may hope that you can fix everything and go back to the way it was.  That could very well be, but most likely, it won’t.    Hope can also push you blindly into another direction.  You can put all your faith in hoping for a certain solution and you don’t see that it’s not a solution at all.   When that hope gets dashed, you fall faster and deeper back towards the brink.  You may even go over.

I’m saying you shouldn’t rely on hope.   It can be a powerful thing.  Hope can be a light in the darkness.  It can be a magical sword that slays any and all monsters in your path.  

The one thing to remember is that hope best serves you in limited stretches.   It’s like the star in Super Mario Bros. that makes you invincible, but it’s limited and will run out.   It’s that tire in your trunk.  You put it on, when you have a flat, but you can’t drive fast or take on tough terrain.  You slowly work towards the goal of getting a new tire at a service station down the road.  Don’t abuse hope or put all of your faith in it.  It’s just a temporary fix.   

If treat hope with respect and fairness it will help.  If you use it as a shield, running headlong into danger, it will crack and leave you defenseless.    But, sometimes, in the darkness, it’s the best choice to light the way out.  That is why hope was trapped in the box.  If left open, it would have escaped with all the other evils into the world.  In the box, you can use it when you need it, but you have to put it back or it will escape and betray you.   Never lose hope.

Other people can be your hope, but not your savior.  They can give you hope but you are your own savior.

Religion can be your hope, but without faith in yourself, it’s only temporary.

Trust in you.  Trust in the process.   Trust that hope will carry you to the shore and will then let you lead, never interfering with choosing the right path.  If others are with you, then that’s great.    However, if you are alone, that’s OK, too.  You are all you need to survive.  You and a little hope tucked away.

Those Quiet Moments In Time

You make plans.  You dream.  You plot out every step until you are the astronaut, actor, sports star, scientist, or homemaker you thought you would be in your mind at age ten.  You enjoy moments in your life where the world is at your command.  The room may be quiet but your mind is buzzing so loud, it could wake the dead.  Life is good.   You know when you grow up that you will conquer the world with your dreams and schemes. 

Then you grow up and those moments turn on you.

The reality is that very few of us actually end up where we thought we would and that’s OK.    There are things in my life I’d like to change.  There are decisions that I wish I could do over, as if I hadn’t taken my thumb off the page I flipped from in that Choose Your Own Adventure book called my early 20s.    But that isn’t the case.  In fact, you have to be careful not to dwell on those thoughts of what you would do over if given the opportunity.  Your past isn’t a do over. 

When you’re a kid, no one is dependent on you in an everyday scenario.   But when you’re an adult and on your own, others may be dependent on you.  Your decisions can be as important as a chess move against Bobby Fisher or even Death himself.  

I could be wrong, though.  Your life may be a world of rainbows and unicorn fluff, but for most people, it’s as monotonous and plain as your mother’s curtains.   What’s worse is when you think you’ve made all the right moves and life decides to change the game.   Doesn’t seem like much, the days go by like they normally do but then you look back and a week has gone by, a month, a year, and you haven’t moved.

It may not hit you at first.   But there are those moments when you’ve put your kid(s) to bed, you’re sitting alone on the couch, looking over some Facebook posts, and it hits you.  There are no distractions, like broken toys or spilled milk.  Panic sets in.  You think about your age.  You think about your life.  You think about death.   The quiet scares the hell out of you.   What the hell have you done with your life?  No one expected you to keep to a 20 year plan when you were a kid.   But at almost 40, just getting through the day and accomplishing one task seems like a huge victory. 

Like I said, though, you’re life could be perfect.  You could have a healthy kid and a wonderful spouse.  You could live in a home, safe and secure.   But what happens if all that were to go away.   What about some of it?   What about one thing?  What could turn your life upside down and force you to shelve all those hopes and dreams you had/have?  Can you deal? 

We live in an age where everyone is connected and yet we find ourselves more alone than ever.  It’s those quiet moments that kill.  I remember sitting in a hotel room in Nashville, alone.  I was on a business trip and at nine in the evening, I was sitting there, no television on, just being.  I had already talked to my wife and most of my online friends were somewhere else or just disconnected.   I had a brief panic attack because I was just there, invisible.  

The same thing happened to me in 1993.  I was a freshman in college.  I was at Coastal Carolina University and it was any Friday night, I don’t remember which.   We didn’t have the Internet or cell phones.   I didn’t have the money to call my girlfriend.   One of my roommates had gone home for the weekend and the other two were volunteer firemen, hanging out at the station.   I was there, alone.   No cable, only a handful of computer games, and I was in the quiet.    Granted I was 18 and my whole life was ahead of me, but it was like that night in 1993 and 2008 somehow connected to each other in the universe.   The quiet of my room in Nashville ripped open a wormhole back to 1993 and attached itself to that 18 year old in Myrtle Beach and sucked the life right out of him, leaving him near hyperventilating from panic.  

Some nights, I look for the quiet and see if it opens to another time in my life; those nights when my kid is sick and she just lies there, not wreaking havoc across the house.    I wonder what childhood moment will they attempt to steal?  What hope they will choose to supplant with crippling fear that I will have failed everyone around me as an adult?    I feel like I’m in a horror movie and the noises and distractions are like a light shining around me to keep out the evil monsters.    Then I wonder if there are others like me.  Maybe the quiet comes to them and finds their childhood moments.  Maybe we connect to each other’s moments and cancel it out.    

Life is never what we intend it to be.   It’s what we make of it.  We need to make the quiet work for us.  We need to master our own quiet moments.  We need to reverse the flow, allowing those childhood moments to come back to us.  We need that positive force pushing out the quiet.   Our lives are still under our control.   We can make it better but we have to try.   Our intent should be to augment, not destroy, though.  We still have those around us that depend on our stability.  They are balanced on our shoulders and too quick of a direction change could dislodge their footing.  We need them as much as they need us because they are part of that new future, a better one, one where the quiet is ours for the making.

Kids These Days

No, this is not another rant about the decline of adolescence in today’s world. So, feel free to stay on my lawn for the time being. But after I’m done, go away. [adjusts old man cap and hikes up trousers]

Actually, I had the chance to observe a few different children this weekend, either in person or over the web. Some of these experiences are touching, some heart breaking, some well, let’s just say it’s my kid and as bad as an influence I have been on her, she makes me laugh… and that’s why she’s still alive. [finger snaps, guns, wink] Kidding.

Let’s start off the weekend with Finley Pletcher. I did a hap hazard write up on her for Friday to help boost the opportunity for her family, old high school friends of mine, to get some additional exposure to their daughter’s fight with LCA. I could have taken more time but I was doing it quickly to get it up before the weekend because they were doing a fundraiser on Saturday.

I got to meet Finley at a concert this weekend and she is as adorable in person as she is in the write-ups I’ve read. She’s a brave little girl in a scary situation. We spend the early years of our childhood learning from experience. We learn by associating concepts based on our senses. Balls are round because we can see the shape and feel the texture of an object that lacks corners and straight lines. We hear the sound of a ball bouncing and know what it is. A big part of these experiences hinge on our perception based on sight. Not to rely on television as a crutch, but my own daughter has learned more from watching PBS and…. unfortunately, The Family Guy, than I could hope to teach her. More on that later.

I work in a field that is dependent on my ability to be able to look at and read information. And, on the side, I have the other business that relies on graphic design. Well, I know it looks like I’m blind or at least nearsighted when it comes to my work in that respect but just think if I couldn’t see at all. Still, growing up, I was a very visual person. I would have taken a movie over a book any day. That’s pretty bad for someone who had aspirations of being a writer. Even when it came down to books made into films, I was more about being handed all the information then having to do the extra work when I was reading. I’ve sort of shifted my concentration whereas I read more than I see. That goes with the notion that I don’t get to watch as much television and film but I am still not reading literature. It’s mostly tech writing, blogs about my line of work, or simply distractions from life.

But, if I were to lose that sight that I so dearly relied on, well, I’d be lost. To see someone at the precipice of total darkness and still being very much a kid and enjoying all the privileges of that age is very brave and inspiring to me.

Next up is little Selma. Selma the two year old granddaughter of my wife’s boss. Selma, and her three month old sister have an exciting and scary life. While they are both native to Southwestern Pennsylvania, Selma has spent almost half of her life in Vietnam with her parents who both work there. Her sister is going to be returning with them in a little while and will spend probably close to two years of her life, there, while her parents continue to work for the government.

Imagine being a small child and having to board a big plane for a 19 to 20 hour flight. All the little bumps and jolts taking you on a rollercoaster trip of sorts. Then, you are dropped into a distant land with no familiar faces. No uncles or aunts that you are used to seeing. No grandparents to come and visit and for a few hours of the day, your parents are gone while they work. Granted, at such a young age, most kids haven’t formed a huge attachment to the comforts of living in your native land. Canada is the only other country I’ve ever been to and for all the similarities between them and the U.S. there are still things that look different than I’m used to around here.
My own kid makes this list just because of her biggest adjustment. She lost one of her closest relatives this past April. My mother-in-law used to regularly babysit my daughter and when she died, my kid really put things into perspective. For being only three she gets a lot of concepts and knows that “Grammy” is no longer alive and, as she puts it, is at Kevin’s. [Heaven] We blow her a kiss every night and she is really easy going about it but there are times when she looks at us and says, “I miss Grammy.” Just last week, she broke my heart. My sister-in-law called to talk to my wife and my daughter wanted to speak to the person on the phone, no matter who it was. When my wife put her sister on speakerphone and she said, “Hello” her voice sounded a lot like their mother’s causing my daughter to yell out, “Grammy!” It devastated us to have to tell her it wasn’t. Now, she still has her other Grammy and they spend time together but losing one makes that one even more special to you. We hope she always remembers what a great person my mother-in-law was and never forgets their time together.

Lastly, I’m going to have to close this out on a sadder note. The final child I had need to mention was a little boy named Carson Rudick. My wife went to school with his mother and over the weekend, Carson died after a long fight with cancer. He was only five. The updates we received over his mother’s facebook page just killed us. We had just returned from a concert in my hometown. The lead singer of The Clarks, Scott Blasey, returned home for a solo performance in the town square. Although, he did not perform entirely by himself as two of his daughters arrived and took over the concert. They sang some covers with their Dad, including songs by Taylor Swift, Train and rounding out their set with a duet of Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite. Honestly, how many children, under five, know that song off-book? Not many. Anyway, our little one got to meet Scott after the show and get pictures taken and once we returned home and had settled into our evening we saw the updates on Carson.

I have known people in my life who have had cancer. Some have beaten it, some have continued to struggle with it, and unfortunately some have lost their battle. And while the death of my mother-in-law was hard, she didn’t ultimately die of cancer. She had given cancer a run for its money and in the end a stupid brain hemorrhage killed her.  But a little girl, named Samantha, had bone cancer and did die of the disease. She was only 11 and was a fighter. She was the granddaughter of one of my former bosses, when I worked in a hotel. I got to meet her and saw, first hand, how courageous she was. And as a man who does not put faith in a lot of things outside of what he can see or touch, I prayed for that girl.  I prayed hard for nights on end. I asked for anything and I was never answered. That is what sucks most of all. A child with their whole life ahead of them taken from this Earth way too soon. I couldn’t even begin to fathom what my life would be like if I lost my little girl. For all the gray hairs and broken toys… that I didn’t contribute to, for all the Desitin painted walls and nail polished comforters, my life is constantly filled with joy on an hour to hour basis because of her being in my life. You truly discover a whole new level of love when you have a child and you will protect them with your whole being from the dangers that exist in this world.

So, for as much as I bitch about kids these days I just wanted to let you know that I still find inspiration, joy, bravery, and sadness in those I’ve had the honor and privilege to meet or read about. I won’t get on any Whitney Houston sing along but I do feel that the only thing out there that’s going to save the lot of us is our children. Hug them often. Hug them tight. Never forget the good and the bad. Give them your love, protection, and undying devotion. Raise them right and they’ll repay you in something more valuable than gold. Kids these days are special and we really need to be the best person for them to look up to.

And then, of course we’ll embarrass the hell out of them with pictures of their childhood. They’ll buy us just as many crappy gifts as we buy them. Socks, come on! We’ll put them on a golden pedestal and claim they are the best singer, actor, athlete even though they aren’t. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Now, get off my lawn and take your ball with you.