Believing

I wrote this a while back, so just wanted to get it out of drdaft status. Ihave no idea why it stayed a draft, but whatever. I need to start downloading stuff from this site so that I don’t lose things.

I guess believing is about faith, because you have no tangible proof of what you accept as reality. I was having a converation with someone about violence once, and she said, “I don’t believe in guns.” This puzzled me, because guns are a tangible reality, so there is not really a choice to believe or not believe in them. They exist, they are here. You can believe or not believe in them as a solution to conflict, or as an intimidating force in that conflict, but the gun is a reality.

Then again, the corona virus that causes COVID-19 is a reality, and some claim they don’t believe in it. Ultimately, what they are really saying is they have no faith in the sources of information regarding the virus, and choose to disavow any of the guidance or advice from those sources regarding the virus.

If this sounds like semantics, I suppose it is. Unfortunately, semantics has replaced logic in much of our common public dialogue these days, so that’s the reality of the current time. It’s very sad to accept that for many people today, it is worth their lives to deny culpability, or error. They would rather die than admit they were wrong about this virus, or the science that explains it. Pride, I suppose, but I must admit it does prove incredibly traumatic to admit that you have been betrayed by someone or something you once believed unconditionally. If you were wrong about them, what else might you be wrong about? If they betrayed you, who else might betray you? Sometimes it’s too frightening of a proposition to contemplate so better to stay in the middle of the non-reality.

While I understand the emotional and even spiritual implications of conditional reality, it frustrates me no end to deal with the illogic and the cavalier denial of collateral damage. When you live with several billion other humans on a big rock hurtling through space, there is collateral damage for just about anything we do individually. Before admitting problem drinking, alcoholics are known to say, “Don’t bother me about my drinking. I am not hurting anyone but myself, so get off my back.” This is proved to be incorrect 100% of the times, because alcoholic behavior impacts everyone around the alcoholic whether by poor job performance, costly mistakes, emotional fallout from the lying and the self-absorption, financial consequences resulting from lost jobs and extreme risk-taking, or any number of other things.

So, if I want to live in the real world I have to make a conscious choice in favor of reality. Reality in this context is life on life’s terms ultimately involves acceptance of what I can engage with my sense, or that which I have enough evidence to prove. I don’t quite comprehend how a person can maintain and opinion or position when all the evidence proves them incorrect. Simply repeating a denial of some circumstance or fact does not change reality.

I must admit that reality comes to call at the most inconvenient of times. Within the past thirty days I’ve had to spend $1850 on my truck, had to acknowledge that I’ve done nothing I said I was going to do toward getting a job and leveling off my weight, broke a front tooth, and coughed up $200 on my dog who has a bladder infection and can’t pee. Nobody asked my opinion about any of that, or gave me a choice about having to deal with those situations. Continuing to say that none of it happened really doesn’t get me anywhere except into collections with the respective service providers, and probaby an exploding dog. I suspect evidence will yield that it’s cheaper to accept reality and respond accordingly.

Today, I watched the eaglet in Juneau fledge and fly from its nest. It was an amazing sight to see – the adult-looking bird was quite obviously a bit taken by the prospect of leaving the nest and the only habitat it has known since birth. It jumped and hopped a bit, and flapped its massive wings, but you could almost feel the hesitancy and uncertainty as it contemplated flying free of the small area it has called home for the past 60+ days. When the moment was right, the juvenile eagle – really no longer an eaglet – surged forward and lifted from the nest hesitantly. But lift off it did, and then it was flying free and out of view for the first time. The world had suddenly gotten exponentially larger for the young bird.

Neither parent was present for the fledge, but were more than likely very nearby. They’ve been within earshot, if not eyesight, since the little one hatched. I asked the moderators of the live camera site whether the parents would be alarmed when they returned to the nest and found it empty. They said the parents more than likely already know their youngster has fledged, and once it begins calling out when on its own, they will be able to find it. The nest site does not band its eagles, so at some point we’ll lose track of the fledgling relatively soon. It will probably return to the nest sporadically for a month or so, then it will disconnect and start a new life on its own. Goodbyes are hard, even with an eagle.

I don’t do goodbyes well. I don’t separate from even old and unused belongings, let alone people. I’m not entirely sure what that’s about, but it is what it is. I don’t know if I have not accepted that something is over and done with, or am still in the bargaining stage of grief over the loss. When I have tangible evidence of something that once existed, I usually believe that as long as I have that ticket stub, or that piece of broken jewelry, or that picture the event is not really over. Sometimes I fear that if I don’t have that tangible evidence that something happened, I will lose the memories as well. Or that somehow the reality will be erased.

I don’t consider myself a hoarder, but I save things. I don’t buy new things to proliferate fantasy, but I save relics of the past. Sometimes it’s a favorite jacket, or t-shirt. These are usually out of style and probably worn and no longer my size, but…I remember when and where they came from. I’m not quite sure what the memory is supposed to do for me, or why the relic causes me to feel closer to the memory. For the most part, the relics connect me with good memories of some event, even if it was a bad time in my life.

One of the relics I came across the other day was a ticket stub to an Indigo Girls concert from 1996 or so. I enjoyed that concert, because I do truly enjoy the Indigo Girls and more so in concert. Who I was with wasn’t all that special, but she had gotten the tickets from a perk offered to her father, who worked for Sony Records I believe. So we got free tickets and they were great seats and it was an awesome concert. I still don’t quite understand what that ticket stub does for me except maybe to be a place holder for that memory. So what if I forgot about that event? It wasn’t life changing, it was just an enjoyable evening. If it’s not in the forefront of my memory bank, the pleasure of the event is not diminished, nor erased. So what gives?

I keep saying that I want to fly, but I can’t fly with all of this baggage. Maybe what’s in the baggage isn’t the memories themselves, but what was going on at that time in my life. When I went to that Indigo Girls concert, I was doing OK, but I was becoming more and more despondent about not having a romantic partner. I was lonely and feeling ugly and undesirable and totally useless. I went to that concert with a friend, who was in a relationship with someone else, so it wasn’t anything like a date. I was not interested in her that way, so I had no issues about being there as her guest. However, I am pretty sure I had at least some disappointment over not being able to find a companion of my own for the evening.

So, ‘m not sure if retaining relics of something like this is more about recalling a pleasant event or about remaining tied to disappointment. Maybe I’m overthinking this (my inner voice is shrieking “YA THINK???”).

Whatever the case may be about my seeming inability to let go of things and carry baggage, I accept that this is the way things are now. I accept that such a pattern doesn’t really work in my best interest, or at least it doesn’t get me any closer to things I want. It doesn’t make me light enough to get off the ground and fly.