Outside the lines

Monday, August 6, 2012

Our human tendency is to normalize everything.  We want to make it all fit within our expectations... to make it neat. 

We want to keep life "inside the lines."

Life refuses to conform.  We rationalize, explain away, continue to try to find a comfortable, familiar, acceptable path. 


Life stays messy.


Sometimes, finally, in the face of inescapable evidence, the sick feeling finally sinks into our belly (into our soul).  We resign ourselves to facing what is true, and painfully relinquish our grasping control. 


Never easily.  Never voluntarily.  Only when all the other choices are so far-fetched that the reality must be the one we have been trying to avoid.




I want my house to be secure.  I want it not to have been broken into.  But it was.
I want my housekeeper to be trustworthy.  I want her to not to have stolen from me.  But she did.

In the middle of the night, in the dark, holding my breath under the covers...












I want my father to be the same vibrant, alive man I've called "Daddy" for 42 years.  I want him not to be dying.  But he is.






It is easier to look away.  To deny.  To pretend that it is OK. 






But it's not.