It has been four months since my previous post, but I don't care about "keeping-up." I don't feel any assignment implied along with having this blog. When I'd had blogs in the past, I had been assiduous about posting, but motivation for that had been integral to the momentum of the era. Not only have I eased-up on the gas pedal of my musical vehicle, I have gotten back into photography and video, which has gotten me out of the house a lot more for the past three to four years. That has been integral to some gradual, but radical, changes in lifestyle and mindset that I've undergone, though they have mostly been on-purpose.
One major change was removing what had seemed like a minor variable, but which I realized afterward had had much more of an effect upon my life (as it will upon anyone's) than I'd supposed. It's interesting to assess how much an effect upon one's mind, one's health, and one's life even moderate drinking will have. For the first few months after quitting even moderate, but regular, drinking (i.e., wine-with-dinner), the depression can really slam you, as the brain is having to learn how to make its feel-good chemistry on its own again. After a couple years of near-abstinence (permitting myself one adult beverage per season), my allergy symptoms are greatly mitigated, and my thinking about everything, past and present, has become clearer. There have been other experiential and medical "factors" over the past few years; though I won't go into them, I still have to declare that I have been quite fortunate to have found a few particular people who have put me on the Road to Wellness. As for alcohol, I just don't miss it at all.
Along with clarity comes a measure of pain, however. Having had to closely examine myself and my past motivations and involvements is nothing new, and though it does get easier with practice, it's in some way worse when one is older than when one had done it in the past, because the time lost is even more precious. Some people can write-off their entire 20s, but each successive decade demands more of a return on one's investment; time and intention wasted become more regrettable. It comes to asking oneself, "When will I ever learn?" and replying to oneself, "How about now?" With clarity, the patterns and habituations reveal themselves – but there is also the relief that one feels in knowing that one doesn't have to think or act in such a way anymore.
Each time I come to such a rest-stop on the Highway of Life, I breathe-in the fresh air, take a long look at the scenery, stretch some more, and get back in the car, and keep driving; suddenly without what I realize had been a heavy load, now removed from the trunk. I don't exactly let myself off the hook, but I have to forgive myself for having let myself and/or others down, somewhere back there, in order to look ahead to times without those thoughts and attitudes in my way anymore. "Owning" them for too long ties me to them internally; I am prone to slipping back into them if I don't let them go as completely as possible.
The cicada takes a long time to work toward becoming the locust, but the moment of transformation is sudden, dramatic and irrevocable. One can't just go to a revival meetin' and get "saved" and declare, "I'm a new person in Jesus Christ!" Usually, one remains the same old sinner. The process of transformative redemption is personal, private and arduous. It may result in an ecstatic burst of self-realization, but it's usually an anti-climactic epiphany, an instantaneous emptying-out, a feeling of having survived one's own sudden death. It can be as simple as some moment when you look at a pair of shoes that you usually wear and wondering who had left them at your place. The person whom others consider "you" seems, suddenly, their fabrication, their self-interestedly-maintained ideas of you. You wonder how you had let yourself get involved with them. Something with which you had persisted for years starts to look instead like everything to which it had blinkered you or had kept from your grasp.
I can see why people might avoid confronting such moments, since they can present a feeling of abysmal loneliness or frightening anomie. The temptation can be to cling to whatever might maintain how one has known things for so long, solidifying an otherwise-tenuous sense of self or purpose. It can also be that it's too late to back-out of a series of life-decisions involving other people, finances, and other unshakeable obligations – but it's the stark change in one's inner sense of self, threatening to unravel a person, and one's life from the inside-out, whose chaos is a fearsome threat.
The feeling of "So, what now?" is terrifying. The answer, as vague and insufficient as it may seem, is to do something of a nature which one wants to characterize one's life from that point onward. For example, don't go buy a bottle of wine, learn from the depression resulting from abstinence. Look for new places to go, new scenes to check out, and don't want or expect much from them; don't feel that your future is riding on how you get along with the next new person you meet. Listen to what other people have to say about their own lives, rather than focusing on the shambles of your own. Don't act like you need anyone, even though you desperately do. It's hard to admit to yourself that you had, for too long, stuck with something which dead-ended or could not have worked-out despite what you had hoped for it. It may be difficult to believe, but things can get better, even if you may not have nearly as much opportunity available to you anymore. At least there's now so much less to distract you from what there might be.