Flickering

I have a light, that when I enter the bathroom, and turn it on, flickers. I think that something similar is happening with me. I am flickering.  My flame has grown inconsistent. I am only sometimes what I have been. I’m still bright, but only occasionally. I’m not sure, I can always be bright when I want to be. Lately, I’ve begun flickering.

This is a new phenomenon for me. Oh sure, I’ve had my bad days. Those happen occasionally, but more rarely, than I am now flickering. I believe this is a sign of what is coming. I’m nearing my pull date.

Getting near the end, is the kind of near-death experience (NDE), that almost no one wants to talk about. I’m not sure why. I’ve been in this terrain before.  My stroke held me near death for a long time. It has been the most provocative learning experience of my life. Ah, but then, I didn’t know if I was going to die, this time, I’m more sure. I’m on my way out.

I’m OK with it. Not too afraid now. I’ve had a long time to reckon with death, I’ve come around to realizing that I have been dying all along. Over the years, I’ve given up so much. Death has been a constant companion. In fact, Death has made my life what it is — a miracle way beyond me. So, I kind of wait, with bated curiosity.

What I find difficult about it, is that we seldom talk about it. I don’t mean the conversations about the end, they are starting to happen now, in Cafe’s, and other public spaces, but the conversations I look forward to, are the ones about how Death changes Life. Death has been a friend, I’ve gotten to know.

It’s causing me to flicker now. I trust it, but I don’t know how best to respond to this form of reduction. I’d like to be with some others engaged in this part of living/dying. I wonder, what does flickering offer? I know I am moved to hold my loved ones more thoroughly. The world is more enchanting too, but is there something I’m missing? Perhaps, somebody else sees some other aspects of the light.

Flickering is sort of impolite. Our culture still admires the stiff denial of death. So, maybe that’s why the conversation is so rare, but from my viewpoint dying is as natural as living.

I’m flickering now. My days are numbered. The prelude is well underway. I am more alive than I have ever been, because the end is nearing. I am not consistently able to express it, but my happiness and awe are growing. I think I may be brighter when I am bright, and darker when I am dark. Both forms of light are accompanying me home.

I live now, without later being assured. It is tenuous, a moment by flickering moment proposition. I haven’t a leg to stand on. The world is a strange wisp, a dream that seems to be dreaming up the next bend in the river. Letting go isn’t totally in my hands now, but strangely I have to keep doing it anyway. That’s part of the nature of flickering. 

 

 

  

Learned Helplessness

I put two and two together this week— and surprised myself — by coming up with a sum I knew, but hadn’t really seen before. What I realized is, that I have been blinded — as in, made oblivious — to just how weighty and difficult some things are to faPce. I can’t see what isn’t supposed to be there. While blind, I can feel something.  I haven’t wanted to know, how utterly disabling growing up in this cultural milieu is. It’s like, the waters I’ve been swimming in, are more polluted than I thought. Furthermore, the pollution is paralyzing. Not in any obvious, visible way, but in a subtle, yet pressurized way.

It makes we humans less than we are.

I came upon this realization through the silent suffering of others. While investigating this silence, I got in touch with a dense field, that is permeating life. The best I’ve seen it described, is through the words of Martin Seligman, who calls it, learned helplessness. He is talking about a state, that results from exposure to pervasive abuse. My formulation, is exposure to pervasive socialization.

Some of us are disabled, by the realities we’ve been subjected too. We have both an inaccurate self-image, and an inaccurate picture of what is.

Each of us has been skewed — deformed by a constant barrage of aberrant interactions. Others, especially those closest and most important to us, have inadvertently been passing on to us, the latest and most significant prejudices. I don’t mean racial prejudices — although those are included — I mean about what is real, and worth responding to, and what is not. This includes the pressure to conform. All of this subtle force is often called love.

Remember, don’t color outside the lines.

It is so hard to find words for some things. That is because some things exist beyond the lines, some things are not only taboo, but unacknowledgeable. The totality of who we are, is beyond the recognition of the world we live in.

Find words for that!

Silence can be deafening. The unspoken often conveys what words will not allow. And, worse yet, silence can reveal the mute disability of learned helplessness — the silent cry of the unacknowledged. It is painful to be in the presence of this kind of silence. Agonizing to be in the presence of swallowed lies. Lies that are passed on so easily, and become new generations of deformed people.

When we fight to free ourselves of conditioning, like some old people do, we are fighting the constant flow of cultural propaganda. Not a political manipulation — but a very human desire to provide protection, and guidance, in a mysterious and dangerous world. We are held down, zeitgeist-wrapped, to give us a leg up, in a world that is really beyond our control. It is loving, and it is disabling.

Going beyond conditioning is a way of freeing oneself from bondage, learned helplessness, and over-zealous love. To be oneself, a unique being, is to go beyond — to quiver in the unknown — and to be more than what is called for. It is a courageous act. An act that is anything but helpless.