Life is change...

Sometimes I wonder if I spend too much time thinking about what I see in my life.

It's been more than a decade since, and more has happened than I sometimes want to remember. Then again, I guess it isn't all that surprising when I look back at all that's happened in the last 40 plus years. That's one of the things that I never understood when I was younger, we never think of it, how our perspective has to change as more time passes. In a way I think it's inevitable, the longer our memory becomes the better able we are to see things that don't resolve well in short durations. It's like a very pixelated image, the larger the pixel, the further away we have to be to be able get a sense of what's being displayed.

But we still have to want to look to be able to see.

There have been times in my life where what I did next, as in within seconds, made the difference between life and death. I've found that in those moments there tends to be a clarity that is at best, elusive, in the normality of life. But it has also shown me the very real difference between action and reaction.

Most people I've known have never been faced with situations where split second decisions are needed. It's not their fault, in fact I hope they never do have to go through situations where they need to. But what has become apparent to me is that those same people are, by and large, completely unprepared for it if things get bad enough. Even when things get even slightly stressful they tend to lose sight of possibilities that can, and very often will, help us get through the moment in a far more favorable way.

The issue, to me at least, is in how each of us responds to any given situation. Scientific studies have shown that there are at least two distinct paths that information flows through our brains. The first, and oldest, path moves from out eyes and ears into the most primitive ares of our mind, the areas that trigger our 'fight or flight' response. The other path has the same starting point, but goes through our for-brain and frontal lobes where our more advanced thought processes can be used to make more reasoned and rational responses. The problem is that the more ancient path is much faster. The unconscious part of our mind will react almost instantly, while our for-brain is still just getting the information.

What life has shown me is that it takes training to be able to set aside those gut wrenching fears and adrenaline filled impulses and allow our minds to make a reasoned response. For myself that training didn't start until after my first child was born. I had entered a job program where, as part of the training, I was training as an EMT. The process is fairly simple, in it's basic form you work through possible situations you might find on a call. The process of going over it allows you to condition that animal instinct we share to allow us time to respond with thought, instead of fear.

In many ways I look back at my life and realize that was the true turning point for me. I know that I saw the world in far different ways than I had before. And it didn't stop there. I ended up joining the military and over time found myself in situations where I did have to make quick, but reasoned actions. Decisions where lives were on the line. Many times my own. And that was where I think I learned one of my hardest lessons, when a life was lost, and it had been my call to send him.

I spent weeks in the aftermath questioning everything I'd done, every thing I'd seen or maybe missed.

It was later learned that there was nothing for me to have missed, I'd done my job and had done right. It never stopped the questions in my own mind.

I've spent most of the rest of my life studying what I call failure modes. Thinking through how things might go wrong and then figuring out how to make it harder for them to happen. Believe me, I know I still miss a lot. I've had enough failures in my own life to know I miss far to much.

But my point for now is simple in it's own way..

How many of us have, or even can, tell that crazed, fearful, animal inside us to shut up and let us think?

To me it has become the surest way for me to...

lol...

yes... is it man, or beast, I must face today...

Crude, I know, but in a very real sense.. true.

And that, more than anything is the difference between action and reaction. Reaction will always be that animal part of us moving faster than we can keep up with, while taking that moment to think will always leave us with that sharp, bitter taste that reminds us that we are running out of time.

I know both, all too well...

Sometimes things get a bit crazy...

For the last few years I know I've been in a slow decline. I've been withdrawing from things I used to love doing, taking fewer chances, I even stopped looking for new challenges. I can't name any one thing that seems to be a cause, not even two or three things. But I do see the results.

Actually, it's been a trend for most of the last decade.

Of course some of it has to be due to the massive leap of faith I took back then. From the depths of despair I jumped at a chance and while it did start off well...

Let's just say there have been enough words written on that and leave it there.

But in the aftermath it was a heady mix of potential and fear battling to see which would shape my future. In a real sense, both did. Age old fears did keep me from moving on, but new possibilities gave me a whole new set of paths to follow. Of course, that meant that I was swapping paths whenever an old fear raised it's ugly snout and bared it's fangs. It's easy to rationalize and justify changes in direction... you know, "I'm not quitting, just taking a different way." We, and mostly I mean "I", are masters of using reason to support the ideas, and actions, I want to justify. lol... just watch a group of kids, it won't take long to see it in work.

What gets me is that no matter how logical and reasonable I think I am, there is always some of that self serving, even at times,condescending, thought process that denigrates anything that dares to shed a bit more light on what I'm trying to hide from myself.

There's been a quote that has been bouncing around in the void that exists in my head... "Everything you hear is an opinion, not fact. Everything you see is a perspective, not truth." I can't even begin to count all the times I've seen the same thing with a new perspective and found that everything I thought I knew was either dead wrong, or so twisted by my former perspective for it to seem that way.

But what I think I find most interesting is how something I never expected can shift so much of what I see, feel and desire.

There is desire... after believing there was no hope.

There are challenges... where I saw no future.

There are words... when I thought I no longer had a voice.

I don't want to just exist.

Which means that I am the one who needs to get moving...

One of the habits I wish I had developed much earlier in life is that of just watching and listening to what happens around me. I know that as a kid it was probably how I learned, that ability we all have to mimic the behaviors we see around us. But I lost that habit at some point, I think we all do as we start to become aware of our own ability to make choices. It's still there, but I know for a long time I ignored it, all the time thinking I was still paying attention. But as the events of my life prove, I was far less observant than I wanted to believe. Even after I worked at a job where my life depended on my ability to recognize and assess the threats around me I know now that I missed far more than I should have. But it was also the foundation that has allowed me to see my failings and make changes. It's been proven that no one can change something we don't see. I f I ignore the effects of my actions it's impossible to even find a reason to change.

Recently in a conversation with someone, the person kept repeating the same statement; "I don't understand how (insert name) can live like that." The person named is probably one of the angriest and bitter people I've ever known, there is no humor, no curiosity, no empathy, no kindness. Everything is seen as if it's a personal attack on their person or opinions. The list of excuses I've heard for the anger and hostility are simple... "I've always been this way."

The issue is the same one I've had. It's the willingness to see that it has always been my own choice that has allowed me to see the need for change. What I choose to dwell on will always move me to act on. My thoughts will always change the course of what I do. "What you think, you become."

What startles me is how often I see people actively choose ignorance rather that accept something they think might be unpleasant. It makes me question myself every time, to look at what I do and say and wonder if I'm doing the same. I'd like to think I'm past that, but I also can't rule out the possibility. It forces me to accept that yes, I do sometimes choose ignorance.

The question for me has become simple.

I know what I am capable of accomplishing, I know that I have looked unflinchingly at some of my past and made the changes I saw were needed for me to become more like the person I wanted to be. It's simple in a way, if I can look past the emotions and conditioning of the moment and see the truth behind it, then I can act, make a conscious choice of where I would like to go rather than fall back on all the ingrained habits that are no more than gut reactions that have always helped me avoid the reality I so desperately do not want to acknowledge.

But, as always, it is choice, conscious or not, that will decide where my life goes next.

I've noticed it before, many times in fact, but even when I do, it seems that I tend to revert back to those old, ingrained habits.

It's fear, it's always fear.

Even with all the evidence I have from this life of mine, fear will still paralyze me. The threat of failure, rejection, of ineptitude, or worst, just giving up. All of them things that I've battled with all these years. I've had my victories, few may they be, but it's the specter of the failures that still keeps me from casting off again, to head for that horizon that calls me. Hell, it's an apt metaphor,  one of my deepest dreams is still to build my own boat and sail the Pacific until I die. But, that's just one of those dreams that I keep setting aside. What galls me is it isn't because I'm not capable, I know my skills, I've proven them over and over.

It's always the same, no matter the dream. Is it that I'm holding on to what is in the here and now? Maybe, ha, probably. But it's just as likely that I seem to always have this sense of doubt that overrides the desire, that masks it, tarnishes it, fouls it...

...and I step back.

The rationalization starts. We are rational beings, we humans. It's been proven countless time in our history that not only can we rationalize any choice we mack, but we do it almost every moment of our lives. There's always that little thought in the back of our minds that warns us of all the possible disasters, and we listen, we believe, and then...

Turn back,  back to the paths that have been shoved down our throats all our lives.

I can count three times when I threw all cation to the wind and did follow that call. And no matter what happened, I am abetter man today because of it.

And, I think that is why this is...

Mmmm...

once again a little bird has touched me without ever knowing that it has happened.

we shall see...

I don't remember when it happened for me, but I know there must have been a day, a moment, when somehow my perspective was changed and I saw something familiar in a way I never had before. I know it changed me. Maybe not then, at that moment, but each time I was shown that what I saw wasn't what I thought it was. Perspective is one of the things that drive me now, working to find different views of how I see anything. There are so many possible lenses we can use to shape how we see, each has it's own way of distorting our view. In fact, nothing we see is ever without some form of distortion.

With only one lens, we're doomed to see only fragments of the truth.

I wonder how many times I said that, or something so close it doesn't matter. I know I hear it almost daily.

As a kid, growing up, it was something I probably spat out far more often than it was warranted, because, lets face it, our parents probably do understand what and how we feel from their own lives. It just seems they have forgotten, at least that's how it seems to me, or more likely, I refused to believe that they could ever know what I felt or they wouldn't be subjecting me to at the time.

I know that now, when I hear it from the people I work with, it's most often used as a expletive to shut me up. OK, not just work, but more there than anywhere else.

My problem isn't that I always disagree with people when they say it, there is far more that I know I don't understand than I ever will, it's that they use it as an accusation, to blame me for not understanding. They use it to absolve themselves of any blame. But that's the point...

It's true that there are many things I can do to learn to understand something, but it's also true that when it comes to very personal things, like love, religion, hate, there is no possible way for me to understand unless you are willing to teach me. I can't know how you feel, or how you see the world, the future, your beliefs, unless you make an effort to show me what I don't see.

I've come to conclude that there many times when the understanding of something isn't my responsibility, not unless the person is just as willing to teach me, as I am to learn.

And that, is the point...

Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. ~ — Henri Nouwen

It's a simple thought, very straight forward in many ways, but it's like many of those simple ideas that turn out to be more complicated than we imagine. It is also just another variation of other thoughts, but if what I know of myself is true of most people, it takes repetition to get through this thick skull of mine. The basics never change. Even when we keep looking for more elaborate, complicated, "profound", raining down upon us from heaven, concepts. It's the basics that count, the details we tend to overlook, that truly change who we are.

"What you think, you become."

What you choose to think, is the path you have chosen.

Diabetes and complacency do not mix well, or more correctly, they mix, it's the results I don't like.

Sunday started as a normal day for me, working my 12hr shift. Got home and did my usual things and still, no issues... that is until I took my socks off getting ready for bed. the second toe on my left foot was swollen and the inflammation ran at lest halfway up the top of my foot. There was a puss blister easily the size of a large pea right behind the cuticle.

The worst part... I didn't feel it, no pain, no pressure, no heat...

Not a fun thing to find out.

Two days later and two doctor visits and it's looking much better, but the long term prognosis isn't going to get any better. After twenty years with diabetes I no longer have sensation in almost half my toes. I had been hopeful recently because new medications seemed to helping and indeed, for most of my feet, they are. It's just too late for the toes that were the worst.

I don't like this, but there isn't much I can do except be a lot more vigilant about checking my feet.

sigh...

I figured this day would come, I had hoped it would take longer.

It's strange, in a way, to be where I am right now.

I know that ten years ago I expected to be dead by now. I planned it that way. But plans don't always go the way you want them to.

In a couple of weeks it will be ten years since I did something I never thought I'd have the nerve or strength to do. I expected it to fail, that I would go through with all those plans I had been making, that a month, maybe two, and I'd be gone, good riddance, no more pain, no more fear.

What strikes me is how little it took to change my life, just one voice, just one , that's it, that's all it took to turn me from a path I'd been working on for years.

Don't get me wrong here, yes, my life changed, but that doesn't mean it's been all flowers and light either.

Just one voice.

Even after all that came with it in the end, I am a better man today because of that voice.