A Time for Reflection

A Time for Reflection


I have been something of a wander and a wonderer pretty much all my life. I could never sit for long in one place, and wait for life to come to me. I concluded early on that I had to go out and make it happen, so that is largely what I did. I also knew I needed diversity to keep me focused and entertained, and as a consequence, I ended up living and working all over the globe, and having some fairly interesting adventures along the way.

Now that I am older, I get to sort and sift through those experiences trying to make sense of them all. I literally get to pull the strings of the tapestry of life out one by one, and examine them at my leisure, looking for any truths I might find.

Things seldom went the way I thought they would or should. I was often surprised at the difficulties I encountered. I suppose I thought life should have been easier than it turned out to be. Things had a way of working themselves out though, or maybe I was just lucky.

From a pseudo-religious point of view, I figured everything happens for a purpose. Life is no accident. Those difficulties I faced were necessary, though I often didn’t think so at the time. Each one of them contributed in some way or another to who I am today.

It seems a valuable exercise going back through and reflecting on the life I have lived. Things look much different in retrospect. I get to look at what happened, and rationalize why that had to happen. I have come to the conclusion that I can rationalize damn near anything.

Even with the difficulties, it has been a good life, all in all, one full of unexpected twists and turns, and I think I have learned something about life along the way. Maybe the real purpose of having lived the life I lived was to teach me a thing or two about life. I wasn’t always the best student.

Certainly my childhood years were not easy. I had a mother who hated herself and the life she lived, and apparently held me responsible since I was the oldest. It was I who got her into the mess she was in. If it hadn’t been for me, her life could have been so much better, or maybe just different. My father was married to someone else at the time, the niece of President Roosevelt I understand, and his and my mother’s relationship was something of an East Coast scandal. They eventually fled to California together, and took up residence near my father’s sister, who we called Dofeen, down in San Diego.

My mother tried at every opportunity to make my life a living hell, punishing me for some perceive fundamental transgression that I was only able to put together and understand years later. She was not the first woman to blame her first born child for her fate, nor would she be the last. All I can say is that her hatred manifested itself at every turn, and resulted in protracted physical and mental abuse that dominated the first fifteen years of my life.

What I endured defied all rational. There was no making sense of it. If I protested, it only got worse, so I learned the art of passive resistance. I developed a tendency to avoid dealing with intolerable situations head on. This became a problem for me later on because I would allow unacceptable conditions to fester, and become much worse than they would have otherwise been had I responded sooner. To this day, I am still working on when, where and how to stand up for myself. It was not the first defense mechanism I developed that became a liability later on.

I also developed a pretty vivid imaginary life that effectively isolated me from most of what was going on during that time, kind of an alter-reality. If I was being beaten or starved, I was off somewhere else, completely disassociated with what was happening to my body. While this was a valuable tool at the time, it took a lot of self-control to stay focused and in tune with what was going on in life later.

I would often find myself walking around in circles inside my room, doing little more than wearing a hole in the carpet, not really present to anything around me. I would look at the clock every now and then, and notice that the hands seemed to be skip-jumping around the clock. There were conspicuous gaps of time I simply couldn’t account for. I wasted a lot of time that way. It really became an issue for me while I was a student at the university. I could easily spend an hour and get only fifteen minutes worth of studying done. I had to learn to control my mental escapism in order to function effectively in the real world.

Escapism is one possible genesis of multiple or split personalities. I find that many of us are escape artists at heart. If we don’t like the reality we have, we invent another one. I suppose I could have gone that route, but I learned to control the urge once I left home. I discovered I couldn’t have the life I wanted if I wasn’t in it. I have witnessed countless others who sought an alternate reality provided or fortified by booze or drugs, but fortunately, that never appealed to me. I can understand, however, how some people would fall into that trap.

I left home when I was 15 and never went back again. I had to work through the sense that life should have been some other way than the way it was. That took a long time for me. It was 27 years before I talked to my mother again, and when I finally did, all her hate and bitterness had dissipated. She had found someone who genuinely loved her, and she had made peace with life. I suppose life is a pretty bitter pill to swallow when no one loves you, not even yourself. Today my mother is a long-term patient at an Alzheimer's Care facility, and has no recollection of who I am.

In reviewing my life, I realized that I had been trying to prove something to someone who wasn’t even watching all those years. I was driven to accomplish many things during that time, but nothing I accomplished seemed to matter all that much. Sure, I had gone on and gotten a masters degree in Civil Engineering, been a US Peace Corps volunteer, become a registered professional engineer, and engineered some fairly major projects around the world. In my mind at least, no project I did ever proved anything.

Living under the mistaken belief that I somehow had to prove myself to the world, and especially to my parents, gave me no sense of freedom. Every accomplishment seemed hollow. Later I concluded that none of us really have anything to prove, except to ourselves.

I also got married, and had two children and went on to become a widower during those twenty-seven years. My wife died of cancer after seventeen years of marriage. My mother never met my wife, and never saw my kids as they were growing up. My father had passed away many years before, so he missed out on that as well. Maybe it would have helped each of us find peace in our lives earlier if we had realized that things had a way of working out in spite of life not being like we thought it should have been.

All I knew was that it felt good being loved, and loving in return. Those kids sure had a way of wiggling their way into my heart, and making a nuisance of themselves all at the same time. I guess that is what kids are for. In one way or another, they challenge me every step of the way. I am sure I made my share of mistakes raising them, and each of them in some way thinks I didn’t do it entirely right, but I did the best I could, and in general it worked out either because of me or in spite of me.

I think learning to accept your parents exactly the way they are, and exactly the way they aren’t is essential to making peace with life, and learning to love the life you live. I have met far too many people reacting to their parents long after they are technically out of the picture. I know because I was one of them, and I see plenty of others with similar crosses to bear about the events of their childhood.

It really didn’t matter what happened. The choice I had was what to make of what happened. It was only later that I realized I actually had a choice in the matter. Now that I look back and review some of those memories, I let my relationship to those long ago events evolve. They had a hold on me just as much as I had a hold on them. What is important is that I survived, and through those experiences, gained strengths and character I might not otherwise have developed. It gave me some insight into human character and psychology.

It is not infrequent that I meet people who have been traumatized by things that happened to them, especially in the case of rape or childhood molestation. It seems a common thing these days. I have observed that they can go on being a victim of that experience virtually forever until they find a healthier way of viewing what happened. A person can go through years and years of psychological counseling, and still continue being a victim of that experience. They can become the “walking wounded.” It can haunt them until the day they die and it can color every aspect of their lives. We can’t look back and change what happened. We can only change our relationship to what happened, and what we have that mean about ourselves. This is the power we have over our circumstances.

I have observed that such traumatization is especially common in the realm of relationships. People get hurt when a relationship fails, and their natural reaction is to protect themselves from that pain in any future relationships they enter. Perhaps an element of vulnerability is necessary for us to truly be related to one another. I just know that for me it never worked to try to protect myself from possible hurt while simultaneously being open to relationship. I never figured out how to manage that.

One thing I know about myself is that relationships are critical to my sense of wellbeing and aliveness. If I don’t care much for anyone around me, I don’t care much for the life I have either. By myself, I don’t need much in life, but when I have other people I care for, I find myself wanting and demanding much more out of life. In spite of the hassle it sometimes is, I like being married and having kids.

Face it, I’m a sucker for relationship and in my humble opinion, I have spent far too much of my life lone. I like having someone to tease and please. I don’t always enjoy the process of getting related, but I sure enjoy being related. When my first wife died, I couldn’t believe how hard it was for me to find another relationship to take its place. It took a long, long time for the wound of losing her to heel. A widower may want another relationship soon after losing a spouse, but he or she is not apt to be really ready for one for quite a while.

Just like the death of a partner, the dissolution of a relationship can take a lot of healing before we are really ready for another relationship.

My second wife was also from the Philippines as was my first, but there the similarity seems to stop. We struggled from the first day we met being related, and somehow we never really got it to work. Neither of us got what we wanted, and I think we were both glad when it finally ended. It would be easy to find fault with each other, and claim that was the reason for the demise of the relationship, but that serves no useful purpose. We just weren’t right for each other, plain and simple.

I spent a lot of time contemplating what makes a good relationship good, and a bad one bad. Obviously it takes two to tango, but if the two don’t tango in sync, then it never works. Trust and respect are critical, for without those, there is no chance for the relationship standing the test of time. For me relationship always involved an element of vulnerability and compromise. We had to genuinely care for each other, and take the other into consideration in my decisions. Sometimes I was more prone to think only of myself.

For a while I even did some relationship coaching. It was a lot easier to see other people’s relationship shortcomings than it was to see my own. Coaching relationships was easy. Being in relationship was far, far more difficult. It was crystal clear when it involved someone else’s relationship, but the waters got muddy when it is my relationship on the line.

I have always been a cheerleader for relationship. I enjoy seeing relationships that work and take pride if I can help a relationship get going or stay going. Seeing couples fall in love with each other reminds me what life is all about. I remember what it was like for me when I was head over heels for someone, and I secretly envy the vitality of all new lovers.

I fondly remember how one of the proudest accomplishments of my first wife during her life was in the role of match maker. She connected two people who might never have broken the ice with each other had it not been for her, and they hit it off big time and eventually got married. I had the same experience with a couple friends of mine, and they are still happily married to this day.

Sometimes I think it is easier to match someone else than it is to find a suitable match for myself. The biggest challenge is to what extent I am willing to get involved. I meet so many people who would probably be good for each other, matching them should be easy. The only question is whether or not I am willing to risk their possible animosity should it not work out. Too many times in my life I have played safe.

What if I lived in a world where people assumed responsibility for the quality of each other’s life? Would I get more involved in putting relationships together? Would I be more active in helping couples work through their difficulties, and find happiness together? Maybe.

As I get older, I notice more and more how many opportunities I am given to make a difference in the world. It all depends on how involved I am willing to get in other people’s lives.