Tag: lies

Warfare, Home and the Journey

January 13, 2020 / Tom

“Life is warfare and a journey far from home.” ~Marcus Aurelius.

What do you think when you read this quote? Do you think of places you’d like to visit? Where is it you’d like to go?

In Stoic circles, many suggest that this quote was advising travel to faraway lands, while others say it is evidence that the Stoics were travelers who sought adventure. I wonder though, can it have a much more meaningful connotation, one that directs us more inward in our own journey?

To me, stoicism always been an inward process that radiates outward. I see much of philosophy as inward activity generating an outward expression. Stoicism has become the inward displaying itself in the outer world and is a catalyst for who I wish to be. It is not, for me, so much a way of life as it is a way to life.

As I see it, this quote seems to have more to do with inward warfare and that journey we all undertake to varying degrees. It has less to do with traveling to exotic locations and more to do with traveling inward to places I rarely go; those places that scare me yet seem to have such influence over my life.

To understand what I mean, let me start with the second part of the sentence.

“…and a journey far from home.”

What is home to most of us? It is a comfortable place where we feel secure. We can lock our doors and close our windows if need be. We can walk around our space naked without judgement. The choices we make are ours, and we can live in a way that pleases only us. It is our safe place.

Stoics seek balance and in that balance, home is a necessary space. Yet, as with any place of comfort, staying too long at home is a waste of living. While spending time under the blankets in bed is wonderful on a cold winter’s day, it ceases to be a healthy way of living if we stay there too long. We need the discomfort of getting out of bed into the cold, and we need the outdoors to truly feel alive.

That is what I believe Marcus meant with he said, “Life is…a journey far from home.”

Many of us search for those comfortable areas within. Some of us choose to stay there, often for too long. Inwardly speaking, life is a journey far from the comfortable spaces we’ve discovered. Life becomes, instead, the journey away from our comfort zones into the relative undiscovered and uncharted territory of what makes us uncomfortable.

I will rephrase one of my original questions to reflect that notion.

“Where is it you fear to go?”

When I answered that years ago, I also decided that is where I had to go if I wanted to heal and live my fullest life. That took much in the way of the first half of Marcus’ sentence. It took warfare.

“Life is warfare…”

Many will misconstrue Marcus’ meaning when they read the first half of this quote so, invariably, they will be led to the wrong location for the second half. I don’t see life as a inevitable war outside my mind, but I could certainly have experienced the persistent warfare within my mind. Now we may battle those external forces that wish to push us outside our safe space, but that is just the outward expression of the battle being waged within. My truth has always been that when someone pokes at my internal fears the demons always rise to fight. My reaction to those who challenge me is often the reaction my mind has to it’s own journey.

Fear, as most of us know, can be one helluva ruthless bastard. It’s likely why many of us shrink from even the idea of challenging it. Especially the biggest beasts who we’ve ignored with such skill that they often need not even awake to defeat us.

Yet, if we truly wish to live, we must engage in warfare to beat back the beasts that keep us locked in our homes. We must fight them, defeat them, so that we can journey deeper into ourselves. That journey is not only the expression of life but opens up the trail toward living. When we no longer fear going outside our safe spaces we can unlock the door and journey to places beyond.

If life is warfare and a journey far from home, then living is the prize of victory. There is always a difference between life and living and that difference is usually expressed in the balance we must fine. Living can be both the swaddling under warms blankets and it can be the warfare we engage in to enter a winter’s landscape. Balance is in finding the right times for either.

Thoughts of my Dad

January 10, 2020 / Tom

My Dad and I had a complicated relationship. However, we did little to complicated it. Others, it seemed, sought to make it as complicated as they could..

Despite their best effort, he and I enjoyed a very good relationship. It was one that was all-too-brief.

My mother, a woman with many struggles and problems, kept me from my father after their divorce. I won’t get into details save to say her lies and betrayals caused me to hate him from the time I was around five through much of my adult life. He was, in her delusional description, a horrible man. I thought of him in the most terrible terms for the better part of 30 years.

She’d often tell me how much I was like my father, again in the most terrible terms. I thought I was doomed to a life of suffering all caused by a heredity I could not escape.

It was, however, all a lie. When I was finally told the truth about my father, I couldn’t tell if the lie or the unveiling of that truth was more devastating. It took a some time for me to reconcile the suddenness of the discovering that not only was my father a great guy, but he also suffered greatly in the loss of his children. I had to untangle decades of anger and the hurt of the lie that created it.

Finding Some Truth

Ten years ago I decided to find him. I searched in California first, where I was born. Nothing panned out. Then I learned that he was originally from Philadelphia, and my attention turned more local. Within a couple of days I had found him, and shortly after he came to my home in New Jersey.

It was a glorious meeting and something inside me changed. I suddenly hoped I could be more like him, that I wasn’t cursed by my father’s gene pool. There was so much to learn about my ancestry. We talked about my family medical history. He described the trials and pain he endured in losing his first marriage and his children. I discovered he had fought for us over the course of years but in 1970’s family court he stood little chance.

He also confirmed for me that memories I had of him, memories my mother had dispelled as delusions of a hopeful child, were true. The happy times I remembered spending with him and his parents were confirmed. I found myself saddened deeply that this wonderful and meaningful relationship had been ruined for no reason.

I discovered I had two younger brothers and that my Dad had been married to the same woman for decades. They’d lived in Philadelphia all that time. They were all so very close yet so very far away.

We decided that we would keep in touch, and we did. He helped me in some dark moments of my life, challenged me to rise above my thoughts, and taught me that I was so much like him even as I lived as my own man. I was so much different, yet so much alike, the father I barely knew.

This meeting, plus my work in finding my father, further estranged me from my family. My sister, and it seems the rest of them, were angry that I would want to find him. Apparently, such an effort was insulting to my stepfather and offensive to my sister regardless of why the man who was my father had not been permitted in our lives.

I had no desire to estrange myself from my father to comfort those who had never done much in love, honesty or compassion to comfort anyone but themselves. It seemed to be more than a fair trade.

Final Words

There would be no pursuit of a relationship with my brothers, or their mother. I was happy just getting to know my father on our terms in our time. I didn’t feel that I needed a father, but I loved him. We actually enjoyed being around each other despite our political differences and our long period of estrangement. We clicked, and we could talk for hours.

I have had, to date, no conversations with my brothers.

The last time I saw my father was on his birthday in January, 2019. We met at a diner in Philadelphia and talked over coffee that got cold. He seemed to know many people there, and they all sat and talked with us. It was an enjoyable time.

He told me that he had been to Colorado before on a hunting trip and would really try to get out to visit. I told him he could stay with me, and we could take our time on the trails. He said “What makes you think you’ll need to wait for me?” I replied, “What makes you think I not sensing that I’ll have to run to keep up?”

He had turned 81, still walked for miles every day and went to the gym several times a week. My Dad reminded me that I was “big like my Grandfather but tall like me.” It was hard to believe he was in his eighties. “Movement is key,” he told me. “Stagnation is the death of us all.”

“Don’t worry, Tom,” he continued. “You have good genes on my side of the family. We have longevity.”

I reminded him I had had a stroke a few years before.

“That’s something else you got from me and your Grandfather. Staying power. It takes more than some bad health to keep us down for long.”

I laughed, but I got it.

A Final Call

The last time I spoke to my father was in the Summer of 2019. He called to tell me he had read what I wrote about my Grandfather, and to wish me a happy birthday.

“You nailed your Grandpop to a “tee”,” he said. “That’s the man I knew.”

“Thanks. I didn’t know you read my stuff.”

“All the time. You are a great writer. I enjoy it.”

We talked for a bit, and he told me something I don’t remember ever hearing from a parent.

“I’m proud of you Tom. You’re a good man. I love you, son.”

Today that memory brings me tears. Then, I could only muster a feeble “Thank you. I love you too.” I wasn’t used to hearing that from parents.

His 82nd birthday came on January 4, 2020. I texted him “Happy birthday young man!” He rarely texted back immediately, so I didn’t stress when I didn’t hear back from him that day. He had an old flip phone, and texting wasn’t easy for him. Calling wasn’t easy either for reasons private between the two of us. I expected he would text back or call as soon as he could.

A couple of days went by I had heard nothing. He was an early riser, so I went to bed believing I would hear from him by the time I woke up the next morning.

A Dream Goodbye

That night I had a dream. I don’t remember all of it, but I remember that he and I were walking by a stream in the woods somewhere. I think he was going to teach me how to fly fish, as I remember now we had waders on and were carrying poles with hooks dangling from our silly-looking hats. We shared a love of the outdoors, and we talked as we slowly walked along the trail. I don’t remember anything that was said but one word. One word that woke me from my sleep.

“Tommy.” He said it so clearly. It wasn’t loud. Rather it was like a crystal-clear whisper right into my ear.

I looked around in the darkness, half expecting to see him. That’s how clear his voice was to me. It was 5:14 am.

I grabbed my phone to check my texts. Still nothing. I went straight to Google and typed in my father’s name.

There, I found his obituary.

Sadness hit me like a truck. In the fractured way we lived our lives as father and son I was not there to say goodbye.

He did, though, say goodbye to me. I felt the dream I had was his way of saying “Goodbye, but not really.” We’d still walk the trails together and maybe even fly fish together someday. He no longer had anything holding him back and, for some reason, he knew I’d understand that.

Thoughts

I have daily thoughts about my Dad since our reunion. Happy thoughts. There were limitations to honor, yet I consider meeting him and our brief time together as some of the best moments of my life. I got to honor him, know him, and see him for the man he truly was. In turn, I was able to understand myself and know me through the eyes of someone more like me than not. Years of pain were erased from my life.

We were imperfect men who met each other on unusual terms and made the most of our remaining time. Men who understood each other as two closely related human beings who were together not because we had to be but because we wanted to be. We finally had a choice, and we made it, together respecting each other’s boundaries.

I understood that those who had hidden the truth were angry with me for pursuing it. They can go fuck themselves.

I know that those who cannot understand the importance of a son knowing his father don’t understand my need to know my own. They seem to have been hurt in my undertaking. I don’t apologize, not even for a second. Their not understanding me is none of my concern.

I am grateful that before my father passed I got a few years with him. Those years uncovered a truth and burned the box of lies I was given to ash. I got to see my smile in his, hear stories about his childhood and get to know our ancestry through his eyes. When we sat together I grew to understand that we sat as two men hurt by the delusion and poor character of others but who had decided that would not be enough to defeat us.

Mostly what I got from my Dad was an understanding of our potential. Despite all that had forced us apart we were there, talking and sharing. There was something wonderful between us, and there always would be. It is something I will carry with me for the rest of my days.

I didn’t get to enjoy a lifetime of memories with my father. What I did get was a lifetime of healing. In him I had found a man who understood me and who would not lie to me to make life prettier than it was. I trusted him to tell me the truth even if that truth did not paint him with the prettiest colors. He never violated that trust.

Today, I am proud to say I am my Dad’s son and to say “Goodbye, but not really.”

The Roles We Play

December 12, 2019 / Tom

The jester says,

You cannot survive this. It’s too much for you to handle. You must surrender, give up, leave the field of battle. Give up the ghost, bend knee to the wicked wind, find shelter from this storm. You are nothing but a shadow meant to hide in the dark corners of the cave. The pain is too much, the risk too great, the mountain too high. Save yourself. Run and hide.

The beast says,

What life is there in running from the rain? I cannot, I must not surrender, for enslavement to the fear is a lifetime spent in death. I will set my feet, tighten my grip upon the sword of my own power and fight until my dying breath. I shall light the torch of my own ferocity and banish the shadows in this cavern. I bear the pain as a symbol of my victory, reap the reward from this refusal to surrender, and climb until the view promised my upon that summit is, at last, seen. I have saved myself in standing firm, and in pressing on beyond my mind’s limitations.

The warrior says,

I may retreat, but just to find more stable footing. I may drop my sword, but only to remove the shackles I have placed upon my soul. I may hide, but only to attack at the time of my own choosing. I may surrender, but only to free the parts of me enslaved. I am the fire that lights the torch that all shadows fear, and the storm that sets the trees to dancing in my wake. I am the hawk who sees and knows when to set upon the voices within, and the wind that carries angels up to heaven. Attack me at your peril, for if I so choose I shall crush your head under my heel and leave your carcass to the whims of the Sun.

Some moments I play the jester. Others, the beast comes out. Yet, I always try to summon the warrior, that wise part of me that always keeps me going. After all, life seems to be one successive act of survival after another, one role followed by another, multiple lessons followed by multiple tests followed by even more lessons. The essence of life seems to be in the way it flows; sometimes fast, sometimes slow but rarely stagnant for long.

The Truth of Me

March 7, 2015 / Tom

I’ve been quite a few things in the short time I’ve experienced this life. I’ve been a sensitive boy, an abused child, a raging lunatic with a violent streak. I’ve been in trouble with the law, an altar boy drinking wine in the sacristy, a cheater, a liar, and a man afraid of who he was. Mostly, I’ve been an unhappy soul left foundering in a sea of his own despair, blaming everyone else for the suffering in my life.

I have memories of little bits of truth that came out through the bullshit. Like the time I secretly cried after a fight where I had knocked someone out. The time when my daughter was born and I felt love for what seemed like the very first time.

There were many instances of truth, but they scared me into grasping at the lies. I truly loathed who I was, and in that self-immolation I would try to be whomever you wanted me to be. I was, of course, doomed to failure.

A liar isn’t, in my experience, someone who gets off by lying. I just hated who I was when I was telling the truth. There is no moment of peace for the liar. In my case I relieved the voices of my youth always telling me I was not good enough, strong enough, handsome enough, fit enough, or tough enough to exist. I needed to be everything I was taught I wasn’t, so I lied.

One of my best friends reminds me often of my lying self. He tells a story of when we first met, and how much he hated me. I had created a shell of toughness, one that often instilled fear in those around me, one that often created the space I needed to exist in. I put out an energy that said, “fuck with me and I’ll hurt you”, with the size and swagger to back up that energy if you challenged me.

So, this man disliked me. Or rather he disliked the liar. Then, as he puts it, he talked to me. Somehow, some of my truth must have leaked through the cracks in the shell I had created. As a result I gained a friend, someone who’s been a trusted, beautiful person in my life for well over half of it.

Someone who I love dearly.

Someone I will always cherish.

A cheater isn’t always someone who gets off on cheating. In my case it made me sad beyond words. Yet, there was always that horrible fear I had in trusting someone else with my chastity, my faithfulness. I had seen people I trusted, those who were supposed to teach me things like love, chastity, faithfulness, and honesty do some of the most horrific things. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s victim, so I’d act out in ways I thought would give me control. Instead, I became an asshole, not to be trusted, and ruined some of the most beautiful experiences of my life.

And, yes, I played the victim. I was not, I was the victimizer who had grown a false strength through playing the victim. I thought I had an excuse when, in fact, all I really had was a choice.

It’s hard for me to write about these things given my current state of being. My life has changed so dramatically from then until now. I look back on the casual and not-so-casual debris that litters the fields on which I’ve walked and feel a tinge of sadness. Such sadness is only tempered by the realization that nothing in this life is permanent, especially when a man realizes his own power of choice, and the power of his own agreements.

A coward is not always a coward. Sometimes he just needs to find something to fight for. Similarly, misdirected people are not always misdirected. Sometimes we can finally take the compass out of our pocket and find our true direction. At some point and time the voices that send us off on wild goose chases can be replaced by our own strong, steady voice and our choices reflect the power in our purpose, the strength in our hearts, and the truth of our being.

All of us are, after all, liars. We hide feelings that make us vulnerable, or temper our opinions in the fear of offending others. We choose to wear suits when all we want is to put on sweats, or heels when all we want is a good pair of slippers. We stay in relationships that no longer serve us, often catering to voices not our own, trying desperately to make them happy.

Which begs a question. Do we even trust ourselves? Are we so busy wondering if we can trust the other person that we’ve lost sight of the fact that we no longer trust ourselves? Have we become so accustomed to hearing the voices of others in our head that we no longer hear our own?

How many of us have caved to a fear later proven unjustified? How many of us have fallen in love and never told the object of our affection? How many of us never even board a plane to jump out of, even though free-falling through the air is all we can think about? How many of us tell ourselves that we have no choice but to work for the bastard who refuses to pay us what we are worth, or that women deserve less money than men, or that all blacks must be doing something wrong to be harassed by the police?

I know, I am getting off on a tangent. I guess my point in doing so is to show us all that not one of us can truly throw a stone at an accused, and that not one of us lives in a house completely devoid of glass.

That’s not to say we must keep liars and cheaters in our lives, or maintain an abusive relationship with a liar and cheater because we, too, are liars. Instead, we must do what is best for us out of pure love for ourselves and, yes, for the person lying and cheating. They may, like me, have to lose everything in order to gain the truth of who they are. Suffering is a wonderful springboard to great things if we simply choose to focus less on the suffering, and more on the lessons that suffering is there to provide.

There is hope. If I can transform from a lying cheater into a man of principle and honesty anyone can. It’s about self-love. I love myself so much that I see nothing wrong with my truth. In fact, I see each example of fear that predated this transformation as something that was completely necessary, something I needed to experience for some purpose yet to be uncovered. I can’t change anything I’ve ever done. All I can do is understand what purpose the experience brought into my life, and what I should do with the lessons I have learned.

Remember, all of us are transformed from perfect, loving, honest babies into something else. If this is true, we can transform those parts of us that make us unhappy simply by choosing to and then practicing something different.

Today, when I am told I’m an asshole, it’s for a far different reason than in the past. I’m usually too honest, and people often don’t want to hear the truth or the way I offer it. I have not yet learned the subtle art of telling the truth without giving someone a blade to cut themselves, but I am trying. I don’t mean for my words, my thoughts, or my truth to hurt you, and I realize I can’t. All I can do is be me, what you decided to do with that is your business.

I am, yours, in complete honesty and truth. I’m mastering my own voice, not yours, so the process is a bit new to most, especially the easily offended. Still, I trust in the journey, and realize all I ever need do is tell the truth of me in the moment. There is great power there.