The theme for the last few months has been change. The kind you don’t necessarily know you possess until it shows itself, in this case showing itself pretty overtly. I realize the change is there because the behaviors and historic thinking patterns have been altered, they feel different, they are telling a different story today. There is a greater acceptance, the tolerance is more readily available, and the ways to cope with life opened up into another large chunk of gratitude. While I was trying to pin down the thoughts on this more recent round of changes, the acceptance and tolerance were fairly easy to understand, but the thought didn’t stop there.
There was more to this inner shift of substance, like I said, the acceptance and tolerance were the easiest parts to see. It was the glimpses of a bunch of other aspects that kept me from putting my finger on it. The conversation I had that started this all, while dealing with politics, was also about the free press, because I had just written a piece on that subject. In that writing, the word truth was used often, and the truth was that the messages about acceptance and tolerance were not the only essence that I was supposed to see. That writing about the free press used the word communications as well, and when the political angst and resentments didn’t appear, the thinking went to I wonder what they believe? Communications all over again. This was about communications too, this was about conveying the many areas of meaning we have surrounding us. But the real essence went deeper than that, the real passion and purpose broke open for a nanosecond. This was about me.
Since I was very young, when I just began to speak, make noise, and garner attention. I have always held some kind of odd belief that I was here, on Earth, to be a buffer of some sort. Always feeling like being the mediator, the observer, the sander of rough edges. Whether environmental, genetic, or some combination thereof. This is what the thought track was showing me, this is what that glimpse instilled in my noggin. That in those insights lay the groundwork for the behaviors and psyche that I evolved into. To have this kind of grand insight piggybacking a notion of an entirely different track had me wondering which way to go? Is this more fixed, or more broken? How the heck was I supposed to know? So I let it cook…
In that cooking, which is still continuing, the thought came to me that this is like moving your neck in a certain manner and finding your big toe is directly connected to that movement. I was moving and stretching my neck looking there for the acceptance and tolerance notions, but the thing that lit up like a throbbing big toe, was of my history, of my building blocks, and the mannerisms I utilize in this life. Because that thought that went awry, went all the way back into my earliest memories, which confused my psyche. It was trying to show me that purpose that I feel so bereft of, the way to go, and the fears that I still hold too close. It allowed me to see that my whole life was filled with learning about conveying messages, of communications in all of its forms, of using myself as buffer of sorts to help others understand something, or each other better. At times to be a physical barrier, a third party to those things destructive to themselves. That thought track went to how I learned things, why I developed these abilities.
I am the youngest of nine, I had a mother and father, and Aunts and Uncles. There was 52 kids on our block alone when I was growing up, and I was a part of all of their lives. In being the youngest I had to continually be aware of ten different personalities and their moods, their likes and dislikes, how to, and when to engage with them, their body language and intonations. I learned that to be heard through it all I could sing a song, write a story, or draw a picture. People would stop and actually listen. I could get a message in there, I could express how I felt. That was also tied to the feeling that my voice was not heard or understood, unless I was either yelling or screaming, and kicking the walls. Others thought, and reacted to my actions as anger, when I can honestly say it was out of frustration. All of this fairly well understood by the six year old me. I was learning communications, I was shaping a lot more though.
With that kind of foundation, going to school was difficult. I couldn’t use my familial tools, the observations on all of the communications going on. I was overwhelmed, all of this input, and they expect me to try to concentrate on their subject matter? I managed to do well enough, but the experience was exhausting, just the ignoring of inputs was a full time job. I had to learn to communicate in a very different manner, I thought that everyone had these thoughts, these abilities, I was very mistaken. The fact that these gifts were a part of a bigger collection of connections didn’t come into focus until I was almost fifty. I spent my younger years writing songs, picking up body languages and intonations, discerning the truths through the lies, and finding myself in the editor’s chair of a number of newsletters. I taught communications dynamics, a Zig Ziglar program, to adults when I was a teenager. I did more public speaking than anyone I know of at that age, I won awards and praise from all those attending. This is what that thought zoomed through, this is what it bounced off of when I was just looking for a piece to write.
It showed me that my truth, my purpose, involves writing, communicating, promoting a better understanding of areas sometimes unseen. It is as comforting as it is painful, a conceding to the painful existence as much as an embracing of my being. Unable to do the work I did before, and finding a new treatment to life has been, and is still a daunting task. Without income, without the ability to do physical work, and trying to find some manner of value, I write. I don’t do it well enough to make a living, or even a dime, but I do it because it is who I am, the way I was built, the way I was raised. I know this now all because of following a thought, as it went thataway.