Of relativism … and all that crap

And by “all that crap”, I really mean “all that crap” – the slings and arrows of life’s outrageous shit; the stuff that comes your way to remind you that, yes, you really are a human being having a human experience. Why is life so fraught with it? What is the point? As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m not singling myself out as a special case. Nor do I claim some moral high ground, or superior knowledge, about what fear, pain, or loss is and isn’t to anyone else. Shit is personal, very personal. And yet we all go through it, and in that we all have something in common.

“In the absence of that which you are not, that which you are – is not” — Neale Donald Walsch

I know. When I first heard it, my brain decided it was all too much and twisted itself into a pretzel. You’ve got to break it down, one stage at a time, until you get something along the lines of this:

You can’t be anything unless you’ve experienced its opposite.

You can’t know what elation is until you’ve experienced pain. You can’t say you’re short unless you have other, taller, people to measure yourself against. And – most relevant here – it is only by experiencing shit that you can experience what shit isn’t. And there’s the alchemy – identifying the crap, identifying what that crap is showing you isn’t crap; and using that to create gold.

This is all theoretical, mind you. I make most of my gold way after the fact. When I’m in the thick of things – when the shit is really hitting the fan – then all philosophy, and all perspective, fly out the window. I’m very good at pointing out to other people where the gold in their situation lies. Oh yes! But I’d advise against doing that. First of all, I’ve come off looking pretty smug; and secondly, I can’t find someone else’s gold for them. They’re the one down the mine, in the darkness, the stink and slime, digging away. I’m simply up top barking instructions, thinking I see clearly. Really, I have little idea what’s going on down there.

But lately, I’ve been doing a lot of digging myself. And because no-one can dig for gold for you, it’s a lonely job. You can be surrounded by people, and you can also feel completely cut off from them, and from life. I’m beginning to realise that’s the point: time out. Enforced time out – to make sure the job’s done properly, so that every hidden seam that is there to be accessed is able to offer up its potential for gold.

A case in point: I am a trained life coach … but do you think I can find anyone to coach? Hah! Three years ago, I was all set: brochures and business cards printed, premises hired, a great friend to collaborate with. Ready, set … nothing. Absolutely nothing. Things didn’t gel. Our premises weren’t sound-proof, so we couldn’t use them; my friend was holding down another job that she had to focus on; all my motivation flew right out the window. A part of me might have wanted to start coaching, but another part had other plans. That part won, and took me on an odyssey that has led to a new relationship, a new family, a move to the countryside; and, with that, the loss of myself in the face of the useless armour, the neuroses, the role-playing that I assume when I’m in a relationship; isolation; and a bout of clinical depression – all of which are related.

When I was single a few years back, I felt vibrant, sexy, free. Lonely sometimes, yes. Far from perfect. But present to my own life. Put me in a relationship, and I hand my mojo over on a silver platter. I’ve given it away before I’m even aware of it. The result: a loss of self-respect, self-esteem, direction, creativity, sexuality. I lose my shine. I’m still the same inside, but I forget about it, I feel ashamed of it, even. I feel vulnerable. It goes underground.

And so I dig. It is there, it always is … under layers of guilt, shame, self-loathing, self-pity. And those in and of themselves aren’t bad things either. For me, it’s essential that I chisel them out, look at them, feel what they do. They’re the counterpoint, the contrast with which to experience the lustre. And when I’m done, it’s time to put them to one side, and get on with the business of gold. After all, that’s why I’m here, and I think that’s why we’re all here. Simply, to shine.

Tsunami

On December 26th 2004, a tsunami devastated much of the coastline in south Asia, even washing ashore and taking lives on the east coast of Africa. It sent ripples around the world; and I remember feeling so affected that I wanted to jump on an airplane and get over there to help any way I could.

A few days later, our family had its own tsunami. On January 3rd 2005, five days before his 74th birthday, my Dad died, taking with him everything I thought was holding me to the life I was living.

I hadn’t seen him for nearly a year: we lived 1,500 miles apart, and our old, easy way of communicating had gone, for whatever reasons, when he married my stepmother. However, I had talked to him on Christmas Day, and some of that ease was still there, thank God. It left me with good memories. Mutual wishes were exchanged; I thanked him for the gift he gave my husband and me; he and his wife thanked us for our gift. We arranged to speak again on his birthday. We never did, of course.

The morning of the 3rd January, I went shopping with a good friend who was staying with us. Dad had given me some money, and I picked out my favourite perfume – Chanel No. 5 – thanking him as I did so; and then my friend picked out a black dress for me – one I never would have chosen myself, but which I thought was beautiful. I bought it, again thanking Dad in a whisper. The timing felt significant, even then.

At 9pm, the four of us were sitting outside on our verandah having drinks: me, my husband, our two friends – one of whom has played a significant part in my life. It was hot: midsummer in the sub-tropics, in the throes of a bad drought, mosquitoes whining around our heads, the night still and close. My cell phone rang. I walked through to the kitchen and picked it up. My brother’s name on the LCD. I didn’t answer it. I knew it was going to be bad news and I didn’t want to invite it in.

Fifteen minutes later, my brother called again. This time, I answered.

“Hi, sweetie. How are you?”

“Not good. Dad is dead.” His voice started to crack.

“Do you want to call back later, sweetheart, when you’ve had some time?”

He was crying now. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

We said goodbye and I hung up. I turned around, and my beautiful friend was standing in the doorway, silhouetted against the passage light.

“Are you okay?”

“My Dad is dead.” For a moment, it felt unreal – ridiculous, even. “No, really – my Dad has died.” All access to any feeling had gone. I was skating on the surface of life. I couldn’t reach down to grab any depth of what was happening. He walked up to me, put his arms around me, and held me for a moment; then led me outside, where my husband and our other friend was waiting. He broke the news.

For the next hour or so, I sat there, still numb; the only emotions I could feel were by proxy: I cried for my brother, who I knew was alone. For my sister, who was on a long-haul flight and would only find out when my brother met her at the airport the next morning. For my mother, who I knew would feel the guilt of leaving my father twelve years before. I drank and stayed sober, refusing the offer of a valium so that I could “feel my feelings”. But I couldn’t. I tried to cry to the backdrop of REM’s “Everybody Hurts”, and I couldn’t. I felt a desperation I couldn’t articulate – an empty longing to dive headlong into something that wasn’t available to me.

And then it happened.

In the distance, a roll of thunder. My husband and I were used to those now – empty promises made by rain clouds that disappeared as soon as they had gathered. Our town was on water rations, and we were due to run out in less than a week, while the council was making plans to bring water trucks and standpipes into the neighbourhood.

Another roll of thunder, and a flash of lightning on the horizon. I walked into the garden and looked into the sky to the south-west.

“It’s coming in.”

The cats were weaving around my feet, and the air suddenly felt fresher – more alive.

Within minutes the storm had unleashed its full power around us; but this time it was different. Storms usually terrified me. At the hint of thunder overhead, I’d dive into the pantry (the only room in the house without windows) with the cats, my hands over my ears, eyes squeezed shut, until it passed.

This storm didn’t scare me. In fact, it drew me to it. I kept standing in the garden, lightning flashing all around us. There were no wind and rain – just the light, picking up pace with every second – strobing across the sky. Then I felt it:

My Dad was in the storm. He was the storm. He was surrounding me, and I felt utterly protected. And alive. I had never felt so alive. What a beautiful, incredible gift he was giving me! I started laughing, stretching my arms out under the sky, face upwards, eyes closed.

Then sense got the better of me, and I walked to the verandah and took cover. Everything felt so mutable, the borders between reality and illusion so thin, that it seemed all too possible that I’d be hit by lightning and disintegrate on the spot. In those moments out in the garden, though, I had changed. And my friend saw it, a look of concern creeping over his face as he realised what was going on.

“You don’t think you … manufactured that storm, do you?”

I wanted to say, “Yes! Yes! Didn’t you feel him in there? Can’t you see what I see?” But he had put on his psychiatrist’s hat. It had detached him from the magic of the moment. So I lied.

“No, of course not.”

I held that moment to myself. I held my father’s love and presence to me, grateful beyond words for those moments where we felt inseparable. It’s a feeling I still carry with me today.

Part II: Finding the lock

Since then, things have become clearer.

That key turned up again in a dream I had two years later. I was alone in a beautiful museum – a Parthenon of giant columns and triangular cornice. Inside were marble, high ceilings, dusty glass display cases, muted light.

It was peaceful, but I wasn’t. I had to find the archives. That was my sole purpose. And I knew my friend had the key. He was the only one who could let me into the archives.

I waited. He didn’t arrive, but George Clooney did, and apparently I was all he wanted.

“No, sorry, George. No can do. You see, I’m waiting for the key.”

George disappeared, to be replaced by Matt Dillon, who received the same response, and left. (I must have been dreaming!) An old man appeared behind a counter that barred access to the back rooms and shrugged his shoulders as I approached. He didn’t have the key either. I waited some more …

… And it has only just begun to dawn on me that, if I choose to, I can wait forever. You see, I never had to wait for my friend in the first place. Waiting is delaying life. Waiting is holding out for someone else to straighten my life out for me. Waiting is hoping for someone else to give my life meaning. Waiting has been wasting my time, and wasting his. Waiting is the wedge that was driven between us, which ended in his saying good-bye.

So, baby, these are my archives! I just didn’t want to recognise it. I could have walked straight past the old man in the museum, and into the treasures of the back rooms. But I didn’t because I didn’t believe they were mine to hold and to own. I wanted to hand over the responsibility of ownership to someone else.

I’ve accepted after much denial that the lock to which my friend had the key is not a lock that belongs to him. It belongs to me. So it’s not the lock to his heart, as I had hoped for so long. It may well be that he has his own lock to which I might hold a key; but that is not for me to know.

The archives are the lock. The lock is my life. My friend gave me the key to my life.

And so I’m learning about the alchemy of shit.

Part I: And so it begins …

Last week, a good friend said good-bye to me. It broke my heart. Maybe that’s too dramatic – I’m still alive, after all. But the pain in my chest, the shortness of breath, the crying that stuck in my throat spoke far more than my feelings did. Call them my surrogate feelings: my body has always told me what’s going on faster than my emotions ever have.

So what does this have to do with the alchemy of shit? Let me explain. I’m going to go back a little, so bear with me.

In my life, I’ve been dealt my share of shit. Much less than some; more than others. But everyone has their shit to call their own, and this is mine. Actually, I’m quite protective of it.

But “shit” is misleading. This blog isn’t really about shit. It’s not a tune played on a self-pity (self-shitty?) harp, nor is it a slinging contest to see where it sticks. It’s about what I’m slowly finding out. And let me say from the outset that I’m far from the first; this idea is thousands of years old, and has been written about in far more eloquent ways than this:

Shit offers you a key to your life. It offers you a chance to feel, to look deeper, to question, and ultimately to transform. And only if you want to.

Back to my friend. A friend who has been there at such pivotal times in my life; and a friend who, I believe, has been with me through lifetimes. Our relationship has never been plain sailing. It’s one of the most difficult relationships I’ve had … and this in spite of the fact that we are rarely together. I’m often struck by the impact that someone can have on my life without being present – physically present, that is. Because this relationship remains with me no matter where I am, or who I’m with.

Three years ago, as part of a life-expanding experience that I chose to enrol in in the US, I came together with a group of people and I did a lot of exploration of who I am. It was the start of something that has continued to play the central role in my life. Part of this course included a meditation and visualisation component; and part of this entailed meeting my guide. In a spiritual context, a guide is a more evolved part of the soul that accompanies you through life. I prefer to think of it as the aspect of my unconscious that has the most to teach me.

“Sorted!” I thought. “I’ll just conjure up my inner wise old man. And, as instructed, he’ll come walking over my visualised green hilltop, he’ll be wearing a long, white robe, he’ll have a long, white beard … Gandalf! Yes, he’ll look like Gandalf. Only more serious.”

Right?

Wrong. Over the hill walked my friend.

“Noooooo!”, I thought to myself. “Snap out of it! Stop fucking daydreaming and start meditating correctly! Reverse, reverse! Beeep-beeep-beeep!”

But there he was, walking towards me. I willed him away and still he came. So I decided to go with it and see what happened. It was warm, I remember that, and we were at the top of that hill, under a tree, the landscape stretching out below. I can’t remember much about the view, because I was entirely focused on him. More specifically, the fact that he wasn’t the same as the person I knew in my waking life. Here, he was calm, serene. A small smile on his lips. Just sitting there by my side, looking out.

“Can you see what I see?”, I asked him. He continued to smile. He didn’t seem compelled to answer, which seemed an answer in itself.

The voice of our meditation instructor came into the visualisation: “Now swap gifts with your guide. You have something to give them, and they have something to give you.”

I’d had enough of second-guessing my unconscious, and I decided to let whatever happens, happen. I saw my hand stretch out to him, and my fingers uncurled from my palm revealing a small, gold heart, which he took. Self-explanatory and not unexpected: I had given my heart to him in an email I’d written to him before I had left for the States.

I sat and waited for my gift. He stretched his hand out to me and opened it. In it, a key.

Now that was unexpected. I’d kind of hoped for a heart. I’d had my heart set on a heart. Why no heart?! Equally frustrating was the slap-bang-wallop realisation that there was no closure. A key, by definition, needs a lock; and I was damned if I knew where that lock was.