Appreciation for the Process

A few days ago, I had this epiphany moment. I was taking to my girlfriend of a number of years.  We have been going through some rocky times, mostly me. As we were talking, it came to me, this understanding of how I had been living my life.

 I have been living with this deep wound in my heart. A wound caused by physical and emotional abuse, abandonment, and disappointment from long ago. And what I had done with each of these, was bury them, numb, and ultimately hide them away from myself, and also anyone who tried to get close to me. Why, and this is the part that I did not understand, until those few days ago.

 I was ashamed. I was ashamed that my scars, my pain and my disappointments weren’t significant enough, or big enough to be talked about. I had all of my body parts, I had food, I had a roof, and I had a life, where as many others don’t, and have suffered much worse.

 I was ashamed that my pain was not deep enough to be acknowledged, so I didn’t. I stuffed it, I numbed it, and I hide it as a darkness within myself, that made me choose hard and cold, as a defense to the hurt and the pain.

 My logic was that many others had suffered more deeply, so I had to suck it up, tough it out, not be a pussy, to accept and move on. Which I have done, but at a huge price – I was an emotional cripple, to myself, and to others who wanted to love me. I chose to be an emotionless man, like my father before me, and the men that I saw as role models.

 I was living a distorted “stoic” philosophy of emotionally tough, show no fear, be hard, and let nothing get to you, and it didn’t, or so I thought. But I also lost out on the joy, the pleasure and the love of life. When you stuff selectively, unfortunately, everything gets stuffed, the good, the bad and the ugly…

 The reason that I share this is, because, by talking to each of you, hearing your loses, your disappointments and your wins, I realize that we are all fighting our own inner battles and demons. We can’t fight those battles for one another, but what we can do is stand together, be there for one another, look and see one another as a man doing his best, and create a brotherhood of men, supporting and encouraging one another in the battle of life.

 We will be beaten at times, we will win at times, and at other times it will be a draw. But the truth is, that knowing that each of you are fighting these battles, gives me the strength to do what I need to do, knowing that I am not alone, that I have a community.

 Because when I look over to my left and my right in the fight, I see each of you beside me – strong, dusty, bloody, and victorious just by being in the fight, and doing the work that needs to be done, to heal and to move on from our demons that cripple us, with their imagined power, that only we can release within.

 Thank you, each of you, for your support and your trust. For having the courage to do what needs to be done, in this world to be a man, and to fight the inner battles, to free ourselves from the demons and the imagined shame that we carry.

“Namaste”, as the Tibetans say, “I see you, each of you”.