12/31/95

Things have happened. Myriads of things. There's no time to cover all that has happened now, there's been simply too much. I wouldn't want to shortchange any individual thing by leaving it out, or describing it in less detail than the thing has decidedly come to deserve. No. The things themselves shall come to reflection in time. The most important or influential of them might even pass through this long-ignored tomb of preponderance.

For now ... holy shit, what to say?

Noting that I have no children to my name and my dear family is still intact [knock on wood], the worst of my immediate fears have all played out in the last six months' time. I have been shipped to the country in the name of career advancement, a place usually reserved for good dogs to run when children are too young to understand death. I have witnessed bad things committed unto myself, vaguely similar but different from bad things I have committed unto others. I have gazed off into the distance and known that by the curvature of the earth, I had not one friend within 10 viewable distances across 10 earth curvatures.

In high school, I was afraid of college. In college, I was afraid of the working world. In relationships, I was afraid of failing and being failed. In friendships, I was again afraid of failing or losing touch. Even in music, I was afraid of missing notes, missing pitch, missing entrances, missing releases. In everything, I was afraid.

If I have learned one thing in this time, it's that facing your fears frees you. Of course there are some fears that will and should remain eternally inexorable. Losing a family member stands out for me, as an example. Parent, child, brother, grandparent- there really shouldn't be anything that can prepare you for that, or help you conjure a rationality behind it.

What I'm talking about are those recountable fears- fears that may lead to loss, to hurt, to suffering, and (most importantly) to change, but not to life-ending events. The only things that cannot be taken back in this world are death and the creation of new life (e.g. babies). Everything else is truly just a transition from one point of falsely static positioning to the next. I say "falsely static" because there is no time in your life when you're not moving, developing, or shaping yourself in some way. Even when stagnant and disheartened, we move, albeit in directions we may not have desired to move to at the start of our progress. Becoming jaded is movement, technically speaking. Becoming cynical and uncaring is movement. Learning to feign to care about yourself, or others, is indeed movement.

The reason facing your fears frees you is that, once the fears are known, there is often much less reason to fear them. What's the worst part of a roller coaster ride? The bottom of the drop? The double-helix? No. The worst part is every moment until the top of the first drop, when your momentum swings just that infinitesimal amount and you realize your fears are immediately and unmistakably going to come true. The worst part is standing in line, sitting in the car, riding the incline up ever so slowly until finally you stand at the top of the sky, look down and come to appreciate- what else?- being alive.

The working world is fine. Just like everything else, there are good days and bad. There are excellent people, and not-so-excellent people. There are an infinite number of ways of doing everything. There are opportunities that suck, and opportunities that might not suck, and opinions contrary to both on all points. To turn a Louisiana phrase, I guess you could say simply "it is what it is." And you know what? Like so many things- that's all it's ever really been, and all it's probably ever going to be.

As for everything else ... well, there's always a chance bad things might just happen. They might happen for the reasons you anticipate, or they might happen for the reasons you can't even begin to fathom. Either way, they're gonna happen. And I have to say, they did hurt. They really did. But interestingly, I haven't found myself losing faith. Not in anyone or anything. There's just too much stuff still out there for these types of fears and losses to drag anyone down forever. I'll be sad for a while- I'll be angry for a while- I'll be absolutely destroyed for a while. But you know what?

It's a magical world ... [so] let's go exploring.