no regrets

Man tends to search for something bigger than himself to pay homage to when he finds himself beaten by life, and I think that’s a very valuable instinct of ours. When we are miserable and unable to view our lives through a perspective that makes any sense, we look to god, or reason, or fate, or nature, or justice… something concrete and absolute that we can lash ourselves to and guarantee our survival through the storm. We need to know when the winds of change turn violent and random, there’s still a rock or two we can hug tightly; and in that dangerous safety we find salvation. We find God, so to speak.

Ultimately, I think when we take a long look at the lives we lead, it’s safe to say that we’re pretty fucked up. The concept of emotional baggage is no colourful metaphor, no sneaky excuse, no simple explanation: we are burned by the pain of our past, the great storms of our time, that, waterlogged, we emerged from physically intact, but still deeply affected by the experience. I think a lot of the baggage we carry can be fairly characterized as such: water that beads off of us but leaves us saturated by the precipitation of the experiences had. Externally we bear no marking, no scars, but internally, the wiring shorts out from the humidity, the gears rust up.

You step inside from the rain, and you are heavier. Clothes damp and burdensome, your skin frozen but your body warm. Your feet feel eroded and seem to have lost their relationship to the ground; with each step you sink into the quicksand of a drenched sock and the yielding insole of an ice cold shoe. Maybe it’s your own fault – you didn’t check the weather before you left that morning. Maybe you knew full well it was going to rain, and petulantly decided to stomp headfirst into the storm. Or maybe it just fell on you, broadsided you, changing the course of your little ship and washing you into the reef.

You smash across the rocks. Maybe it’s the first time you’ve ever felt that jarring, abrupt stop, shaking you from the forceful but smooth movements of the current. The first time you heard the sickening crack of the rudder and masts snap like twigs and go tumbling into the sea.

The storm ends, and we float for a while, maybe being picked up by a big, solid fishing boat, or a luxury liner. Maybe our friends, or our family, or our cat, toss us a rope and cry out to climb up onto their ship, take a load off for a while. Maybe we simply get fed up with floating and row ourselves in a random direction until we hit land or die trying.

Even when you do make it back to civilization, you pull out those blueprints, that sense of who you were before the storm, and you rebuild your little ship. Plank for plank, every drop of paint and polish replicated perfectly. But that new ship is a symbol, a symbol of a choice you made to put yourself back together. It’s not the same ship, it’s massively different. The first ship died violently on the rocks back there. The captain of that ship is damn sure no longer the same for surviving it too.

The focus of this metaphor is not that change occurs. The focus is the choice; the moment of reconception, emotional rebirth, right after the storm. People set out to rebuild that ship the exact same, but the greatest advances and growth of the soul happen when we decide to change the schematics. Some of us add armor to the ship, some of us remove it. Some of us add a motor to speed it up, and some of us insist on the hard work of manning the sails or the oars. I think in the question of nature versus nurture, it’s the nurture that I value. It’s the choices I make in how I rebuild my ship, not the ship they gave me, that matters.

I can’t say we all crash, because some of us are so afraid of crashing we don’t even sail anymore. But I can say that I crash a lot. I crash all the time. And when I crash now, this waterlogged captain stands at the helm of his craft and cackles madly as I enter the reef again and again, sometimes night after night.

I know some men who chart their course when lost at sea by asking God for guidance. I know some who ask what is right, what is good, and head off in that direction. I know too, that after the life I have lead, and with the baggage I carry, that I tend to ask only myself what to do. I ask myself where to go, what should guide me.

When I crash, I don’t know how to turn to a bigger something, and for those who can and who do, I envy you. But while I’m stuck with the me that is me until I can create something better than I have, the one principle I tried to stick to when rebuilding my ship is the concept of no regrets. Can I do this thing, or try this idea, or commit to this change, without doubt and deliberation after the fact? Can I drop anchor on this, can I tie myself to *this*, so that when the storm starts up again I’ve protected myself?

The only thing I have never regret is my love, and so I bind myself to those decisions made. Of all the values and principles I hold dear, the absurd recklessness I allow myself in love is the most pure, honorable and correct thing I have ever done. I cackle madly, as I said, when night after night, I bring myself to tears, for I miss her so. I drift into those same rapids and splinter to pieces again and again, with no regrets. I choose not the lesser of two evils, and I am not simply choosing the pain of a broken heart over the pain of an unfeeling one.

I choose to lift, and thus live my baggage and scream for joy under it’s weight. I’m beautifully alive tonight, another scintillating night, because I hurt so freely, so unguarded. I’m bleeding out of every unseen scar and drowning in my storm again and all of it gleefully so.

I say to no one and everyone, but most and least of all her… I love you. Thank you for the easy times, and thank you twice for this suffering now.

God damn you.

~ Driz

~ by drizitche on January 20, 2008.