Points of Light, never give up, never give out, and never ever give in!
Evansville Indiana is the small town I live in. Yes, I know there's a big world out there beyond these cornfields, but here in my town, the gravity is light and the atmosphere is both easy and breezy. But even in this effortless cornfield town, I carried a heavy load while I searched my soul, looking for everything that made me a bad person and therefore, an uninteresting person who wasn't worth a hang from anyone or anybody. Funny thing is, everywhere I looked, everything I wanted to find seemed to be patiently waiting for me. Besides me, who knew buried not so deep below the surface of this man named Tod, said rightly, inside of me, would lie so heavy a treasure of ugliness? Everything I found added to my load as day-to-day its weight seemed to become exponentially heavier.
There would be times when I would rummage through my load, picking up one thing and then another, and I was taking time to study each piece to discover everything that made it horrible, ugly, and useless. Everything I found I studied hard, being meticulous so as not to miss the minutest details. Those details always taught me the same thing - no one wants to come down this road toward me, they'd not want to come down this road with me, never ever would they want to stay with me while I'm on this road. More than that, the details taught me I had nothing I myself preferred, nothing I myself wanted, nothing I myself needed; in short, I found I didn't like myself or my load - period!
I call Evansville a cornfield but we've more than corn here. There's the most wonderful woman in the world living in this very town, she gives away encouragement and works at a tiny retail store. There's a beautiful young woman with a huge heart full of love and compassion who prefers to reveal her veneer of toughness while she manages a restaurant. There's a big, old, grizzly kind of man, owner of a chain of restaurants, who pays his employees well; and this big, old, grizzly man has this heart that makes him open to help his employees when they're in need. There are pastors in my town whose heart is to feed the poor and downtrodden - even during worldwide pandemics. In Evansville, this is but a minuscule recitation of the beautiful people I've had the privilege of rubbing elbows with. I feel I should do a much better job of explaining all the light, color, and beauty so many people who are busy living their lives in my town exude, I mean, I'm the painter of the color of light in word paintings, geez.
But for everything I've just said, the same beautiful light is shining forth from all kinds of people from all over the big, beautiful world. This world has afforded me the opportunity to visit a few of its wonderful ports of destination where of necessity - I breathed, moved, and lived a life. But no matter where I landed and had an opportunity to call home, rather it was Tampa Florida, Mt.Home Idaho, Ramstein Germany, Incirlik Turkey, or here in Evansville Indiana, the road I traveled was forever hard to trek because of the heaviness of the load I was carrying and tenaciously studied. I mean, concerning this load, like a tiger acts who's found his back against a wall, I would always guard this load with a fierce and desperate determination. Life, it seems, isn't simple nor is it simply understood.
Late in life, I eventually sought out psychological therapeutic help to push me discover insights into my life lived. For all the reasons I openly speak about in chapter eight of Fierce Honesty, "The Willis Tower and Five for Fighting", I finally understood how I needed to discover the better part of me, and I absolutely applied myself to make my discovery deep and profound. As an initial result, my journey's habits have finally changed, and while the load stayed, I don't look at it the same anymore. Why? Well, I started doing some brand-new soul searching. With this new search, I've learned my soul had always been so very lonely and felt like an outcast because it felt isolated, and cold, to the point my soul was always shivering. My soul found zero comforts in this aloneness. Looking deeper at this, I noticed my soul found the cold unbearable. Continuing to look, I discovered my soul didn't remember a time he didn't shiver alone.
Then, I realized the hardest thing I ever had to learn - of my soul; I learned it never looked up, so it never looked into the eyes of another person's soul to feel the warmth of their light, and that lack of action never allowed my soul a chance to find the happiness from all the beauty they were freely offering it. Still, this wasn't the hard thing, the hardest thing I had to learn was the reason why my soul never looked up and into the eyes of another person's eyes. Points of Light, it was precisely because I'd always been too busy guarding my heavy load so I could meticulously study it to find all the bad, hideous, and ugly things my load contained. That exercise commanded all my attention and left no time for my soul to look up and into anyone's eyes. I had to realize I'd always treated my soul badly for sure, of certainty I caused my soul to suffer severely. I mean, I made an exerted effort to be sure it was forever alone, isolated, and even shivering in the cold. So you see, when I've previously written to you about those hideous beasts with their razor-sharp teeth that were always growling at me while they nipped at my flesh, I had to learn they were always me! And that Points of Light, is the hardest thing I ever had to learn.
So, while for the biggest part of my life I may not have intuitively known this to be true for me, I'd been waiting to have colorful, beautiful, and warm light come shining on me so that I could finally find happiness in my life lived. Somehow, despite everything I've been telling all of you, I always held on to a belief that that light would eventually arrive. You need to know this light showed up in the person of an intelligent and kind young lady who asked me this question, "Why do you always work so hard to find the bad in something so good?" You don't understand because you can't understand. This was the question I had waited for my entire life, but it had to be asked at just the most precise moment in time and space when I was ready to hear it, decipher it, make sense of it, and apply it to my life lived. Before she asked her question, I can honestly say I'd always felt carrying and meticulously searching my heavy load was the correct, right, and necessary thing one does in life, or at least it made sense for me. With her question asked, I realized that feeling was so incorrect in every possible way and I dropped and never went back to retrieve that load. This brought about another happy and incredible result, those infamous beasts finally disappeared. With all the light, color, and beauty of her amazing question, she made everything worthwhile, and even though I'll turn 60 in twenty-one days, I finally get to say my life has changed for the good.
Honestly, my story may tell you my life has forever marched to the beat of a different drum, that's very much true; you need to understand my life will continue into forever marching to that particular drummer's beat. That's not important though. What's important is that my soul is warming up and for the first time, my soul is not feeling so isolated. Also, it's become enjoyable looking up and into the eyes of other people and freely accepting all the warm and beautiful light they desire to share with me.
As Always, Much Love and Peace Tod w/only one d
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