If there has been anything that I have written, other then the humorous things that brought you a little smile of self recognition, yes, I know some of you can be as ridiculous as I have been at times – this to me is possibly one of the most important blog posts of my life.
There was a book, ‘Flowers for Algernon’ turned into a movie called ‘Charly’ that came out in 1968. I was a kid but I still remember the sad story of a man with retardation that was used to test a new treatment for his condition. He became a genius level person however he lost all of his friends as he got ‘smarter’, fell in love, then out of love, became a student of his own disease and eventually lost his mental capacities and returned to his former state by the end of the movie. The transition from what he was ‘held captive to’ in his retardation, to genius level and back is what stuck with me. He had a ‘flicker’ of a fuller awareness, only to lose it again.
There have been moments in my life where I’ve had these ‘flickers of insight’ around how to journey through life.
Though it’s been 25 years, I remember flying from Smith Reynolds Airport (Winston Salem) to Sugar Valley (Mocksville, 20 minutes west). I was following highway 40 west at 3000 feet in the school’s little 152 on a fall day. The sky was bright and clear and the sunlight was bursting down from the heavens. The trees had started their color explosion below me and these sights are one of the many reasons I fly today. What you see from 3000 feet is always breathtaking. One of the things I discovered when flying is that you don’t realize how many little ponds are out there when driving a car; but from the air, you encounter how much water is really down there in North Carolina. You can see how many little mirrors of the sun bounce back to you from these ponds. The reflections off the water are just like millions of stars that flicker in the velvet night sky. It happens literally in a flash, but from the first time I saw it I have never forgotten this sight. Many times as I am flying or boating, I ‘look’ for these moments. They always take me back to that first ‘flicker of exploding light’.
Something has been pulling me, calling me for years. It’s been flickering on and off like an airport beacon or a lighthouse, yet I never seem to be able to land or dock there. I ‘sense’ a different way to ‘think’ and ‘live’ but lose it every time. I am not sure where all of my negative, dread and fear started, but I know the loss of my daughter and the marriage ‘changed’ me. Where I used to be more ‘free’ and ‘playful’ in life, I have felt ‘held captive’ much like the character in ‘Flowers for Algernon’. Maybe that is expected and normal from the road I have traveled, but I now realize I decided to ride this road with the wrong or let’s say, ‘less healthy’ way to travel. As time has passed it is clear to me, sometimes the road we are on isn’t our choice but it is our choice on how we take that journey. It’s funny, I have two living examples of how to travel this road in a way that’s fully alive, parked right in my life, yet I never really knew how to do it, how to handle this path God has put before me. It’s been modeled to me in so many ways but I keep missing or not following the ‘flicker’. Two of the most influential male people are the 70+ year olds who guide me by how they live their lives.
My Dad and Bob Love.
Bob Love hasn’t had the chance ‘teach’ so much because he has come later in my life. My dad, well he has been there since day one.
Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now – There’s a scene where Duvall lands on a beach during the Vietnam conflict. Bombs are literally falling all around, bullets are streaking past and Duvall is standing in the midst and talking to all of the officers who are kinda freaking out about the bombs and shells falling around him. He is totally unfazed and just keeps talking about what needs to be done. You can tell he is in his element and just has this feel of, “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” and,”It’s all small stuff” …That is my dad. Positive to the end. Of course when the napalm comes raining hell down, Duvall’s character talks about how he ‘loves the smell of napalm in the morning’. That might take it a little far, but you get the point. My dad is the most stable happy general who takes life as it is handed to him with a smile and trust in God.
Then there is Bob. He is positive in the way that is reminiscent of Tom Cruise sliding into the hallway in his underwear ‘air’ singing in Risky Business. If he didn’t have a rope tied around his waist I am sure he would float away laughing the whole time. I have seen so many things come at him, and he just keeps trucking along with that smile on his face, contemplating the next playful thing he can come up with as he goes along in life. He ALWAYS lands on his feet! I actually fear for us as he ages, because there is NO telling what is really going on behind those playful eyes. He LOVES life and it emanates from him every time I see him. Both of these men have faced many adversities in life, yet they are the better for it. Like Steve Austin from back in the day, ‘better, stronger…faster’. 🙂
So what started this ‘flicker’ again? I was at the gym the other day and something came on the TV where the host of a show said, “Adversity means growth.”
‘Flicker’… I said to myself, “Something’s up about that,” and I did what we all do… I looked inside to trace this emotion to it’s source. That ‘flicker’ of recognition hit me and I knew God was speaking. I had a snapshot of my life with my negative attitude toward adversity.
‘Flicker’ again… I have been spending a GREAT deal of time and burning a lot of neurons trying to avoid adversity or trying to meet up to some stupid standard or idea of how things ‘ought’ to be. Adversity wasn’t my friend. It was my enemy and I had to get up in the morning with a plan, a very methodical well thought-out plan, to keep myself from having to run into it, with the full knowledge that I was going to fail and be a failure again another day. Do you ever feel that way? Of course, you can image, everyday there is plenty of adversity to go around, and what I found is that no matter how good I was at planning and trying to get away from adversity, dodging conflict and trying to keep things smooth, I just kept running into it. I’ve become inconsolable and discouraged every day because I just can’t seem to stay away from the adversities of life.
‘Flicker’… Strange thing about adversity… no matter how hard I tried to dodge it, no matter how I changed course to get around it, I somehow still ended up going pretty much the same direction. Reminds me of the construction team in a Bugs Bunny cartoon who tried to smoke Bugs out. They eventually had to go ‘around’ him but still ended up going in the same direction with the highway but it took a lot of effort to built the highway around his rabbit hole! Oy… that is my life for sure. Still going in the direction the road is leading but spending a lot of time trying to get around the potholes! 
I’ve come to realize that much of what I have been doing around this ‘flicker’ of positivity and life in general is more like trying to dodge something in life. I’ve keep thinking that if I can ‘dodge’ or ‘dance’ my way around these things I could be a positive kind of person, find an inner happiness or ‘something’… it’s hard to explain. But do you know what I found in my pursuit to ‘dodge the inevitable’?
Misery, depression, emptiness.
Call me stupid, but we have two choices – accept in joy, or revolt in hate. The more I fought against adversity, the more I attempted to dodge it, the more bound to it I became, as it was my most loathed companion. I helped create my own trap and the more I worked at it, the more energy and power I gave it to hold me more tightly. It became my companion, not God’s Holy Spirit.
I have been such a horrible example to everyone, for which I am so sorry.
The trick seems to be, at least for me, to look for the ‘flicker’ that keeps reminding me, “It’s all small stuff, don’t sweat it.” Learn from adversity but don’t sleep with her! Put on more leather to ride when it’s colder, take off some layers when it’s hotter, take a dramamine when it’s bumpy, and put up the umbrella (something a lot of guys don’t do), when it rains, but keep moving, keep experiencing every moment, every day of joy God has put before us. Trust me, I know about dark days. My story is peppered with tough times. Truth from my heart, and please hear what I am saying, “they are but a season… not forever.” When our heavenly fathers says he has ‘set us free’, He really meant it. Guess it really is time to live like a ‘Narnian’ for sure.
I had a voice teacher in college, my dear departed Mr. Smith from the years at Piedmont. He used to tell me our bodies were instruments and we needed to learn how to play that instrument with no less skill than a violinist would play his instrument. I’ve come to think it isn’t just our bodies so much as it is this life, and we need to ‘play’ it everyday. I would like my life to be played out in such a way that it actually reflects the good, joy, and happiness that the leading of the Spirit has for me… where there is color, laughter and peace even in the midst of storms. I don’t want to go back to living the way Charly did and I don’t want any of my readers to ever ‘live’ in the traps of their own making the way I have done.
A strange thing happened when I stopped working at dodging adversity. The sun came back out.
Peace on your journey this week.
