Dying in the Rain

It’s a beautiful and warm spring day, although by the calendar, it is still winter. The trees remain devoid of leaves,and most of the spring flowers are but nascent green shoots. The calendar tells me it’s still winter, but my heart and my spirit tell me it’s spring and so does the sunshine that seems more at ease today, less slanted, less strained and brighter and more beautiful than it was just a few days ago.

Spring in my part of the country rarely lives up my hopes for it, and perhaps this spring, when it does officially arrive, won’t live up to them either. But I’ll not waste my time on this lovely spring day worrying about what the official spring may bring.

Remarkable days like these remind me that too many people worry too much about what tomorrow will bring and in so doing they ruin today. No one knows or can know what tomorrow will bring. We cannot even foresee events that await us in our future – not even a few short minutes from now. That’s a good thing and there is a really good reason the future hides its face from us. I wonder who among us would want to know the hours of their own sufferings and sicknesses, or the exact moment of their own death.

We learn early in life that people and things are often not what they seem to be. And the longer we live the more we learn how easily we can be fooled and drawn into situations where we put ourselves in great peril. So it is that we learn early on in life not to trust easily lest we make fools of ourselves and fill our lives with pain and sorrow and regret. We learn early in life to build protective walls around our hearts in an attempt to shield us rom the pain and suffering that misplaced trust can bring.. The wisest among us know that no matter how strong a fortress we build we still cannot protect our hearts completely; we will still get hurt and our spirits will wither from the pain. And every time we get hurt a tiny piece of us dies.

When we live our lives in doubt, we live our lives in fear; and those who live their lives in fear live their lives dying in the rain.

“Bows and flows of angel hair
And ice-cream castles in the air;
Feathered canyons everywhere –
I’ve looked at clouds that way.

But now they only block the sun,
They rain and now on everyone.
So many things I could have done
But clouds got in my way.

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down and still somehow –
It’s clouds illusions I recall;
I really don’t know clouds, at all. “

(Judy Collins “Both Sides Now”)

We really don’t know clouds at all, or love at all, or life at all, or anything at all. We see life and people from our own perspectives, all distorted by our own memories, our own hopes, our own dreams, our own sorrows; we see life and people though different eyes, each of us with different pasts and different experiences.

While each of us has felt pain and sorrow, not one of us feels it the same way. We cannot know the true suffering of others, we can only empathize and internalize and try to imagine what the suffering of another feels like. And so we are always isolated from others no matter how close to them we may be. At birth we come into the world alone and at death we leave the world alone. No one can take our place at either end of life — no one can guide us through it.

I see the color red the way I see it and you see it the way you see it, because we were all taught as children to call a certain color red. But I can never know what red looks like to another and no one else can ever know what the color red looks like to me. Therefore, like so many other things in life -the color red is just an illusion.

The thoughts of others are illusions too. We can never hear the thoughts of others; we can never know what someone else is thinking. We can’t tell what they are thinking by what they are saying; what they say is perhaps only what want us to hear. But we all have a choice to believe whether someone is trying to deceive us and mislead us for their own reasons, or if they’re telling us the truth. But if we constantly doubt then we fear, it is the fear of being deceived and of being hurt.

Some people go through life not trusting anything or anybody because they’ve been badly hurt in the past and that memory of suffering resonates inside them. They find trust difficult and so they live behind walls and they live their lives dying in the rain.

Technology has been both a bane and boon to society. Instant images everywhere and instant thoughts shared anywhere any time, have brought us into the age of the supercilious and the superficial. An age where the superficial overwhelms and diminishes the substantial. We get news in thirty-second sound bytes or 140-character tweets. We don’t have time, or we don’t take the time, to look into anything too deeply, therefore our impressions of people and places are based on images and illusions – and seldom on substance.

Thus we have now, either intentionally or coincidentally, embraced and glamorized society’s need for image and illusion, until now it has reached a point where it has become more important to look good, than it is to be good. It seems to me that many are overly concerned with appearances: how good they look; how cool their smart phones are; how good they look in certain cars; even where they buy their coffee and what kind of coffee they drink…all those things become part of their own custom-made self illusion.

But you really can’t fool yourself, can you?

Too many are too worried about the face they present to a world immersed in illusion and image; not many people give much thought to the kind of person they are inside. Our society has become so dependent upon images and illusions, many are facing the consequences of having lost the ability to find the truth buried beneath the illusions. The have lost the ability to recognize and grasp the substantial, and worse, they have lost the motivation to care.

In this way, many have become terribly separated from themselves, and thrive on and depend on the attention of others. Some find it necessary to be in contact with someone else, anyone else, all the time. People are becoming afraid of the quiet, and afraid of being alone even for a short time, because they cannot easily separate themselves the images, the illusion and the cacophony of a society addicted to constant stimulation. So many fear being alone because they really don’t who they are – they have no identity beyond the social persona they themselves created. They have become bees in a technological beehive — only this beehive isn’t real. Too many people live in fear being rejected, or not getting enough attention, of not being wanted, or not being good enough, and therefore waste their todays in fear…and dying in the rain.

Surrounded by so many illusions we often find it very hard to trust, and yet if we don’t, we doom ourselves to spending our lives doubting everything and everyone, even worse, doubting ourselves. We end up living life being afraid to be ourselves and in so doing we hide the true beauty and true love I think we all have inside of us.

But no matter how much we doubt and mistrust, we will still get hurt. There are no walls high enough or moats deep enough to shield us from getting our hearts broken or our lives shattered or our spirits beaten down. There is no illusory sun we can create that is bright enough to shield us from the shadows of sorrows. Broken hearts and terrible sorrows will come anyway no matter what we do. When we spend our lives in fear of what might happen, we live our lives dying in the rain.

“A coward dies a thousand deaths, a hero dies but one.” A paraphrase of Shakespeare’s words reminds me to take time today to enjoy the moment – to enjoy this lovely spring day that awaits me just outside my door. I cannot chase away an April snowstorm by worrying about it today. Tomorrow will bring what it will. People will always be what they will be no matter what I do. However I am in charge of what i think and how I will react. I am in charge of my own thoughts and I can think the very worst, or the very best of someone. I can make the best of this soft and gentle spring-like day, or I can waste it worrying about tomorrow may bring.

I can spend today being thankful for the things I have, or I can spend it worrying about what I might never have. I can count the many blessings in my life, or I can live in fear and worry that someone may hurt me again. The memories of the pain and sorrow I’ve endured in my life are powerful and they are always present – but I will not let them control me. Like most everyone else, I’ve trusted people I should not have trusted and I have paid a dear price. So should I waste today worrying about the past and things I cannot change, should I worry about the sorrow and pain some tomorrow may bring, or should I enjoy this perfectly painted spring-like day. I’ll focus on the good things I have. I’ll take a walk in the sun and let the warm breeze ruffle my hair. I’ll enjoy what I have right now because what I have right now is all I have.

Not too long ago I decided to live my life and be the best person I could be. I decided to take each day as it comes and focus on the positive and to be thankful forteh good things I have, and stop wanting things I may never have. I learned not to compare myself to others or to want more than I have. And I’ve learned that the greatest things I find are found when I’m not looking for them. Tomorrow will bring what it will and worrying too much about tomorrow only ruins today.

I may be a fool and if so I’ll die foolish. I’d rather spend my life dancing in the sunshine than spend it dying in the rain.