Changes

“Maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.”

Chuck Palahniuk

It has been a while since I have written anything publicly here. I have been deciding what to do with this space, this place that I have had for so long (10 years now, even if it doesn’t show since my diary was one of those that was wiped in the great OD hacker attack.) This place has…changed. It isn’t what it once was. Not as vibrant. Perhaps it still is, just that a lot of my friends here, a lot of the diaries I read and who read me have gone away. And it has become a place with…too many connections, too many people who know me in real life. Not a place where I can bare my soul because there are far too many people who know the people in my life who I would be talking about, raging about, venting about, crying about. It is no longer anonymous, no longer a place of refuge from the real world. The real world has crashed into this world in a big way and it renders this place open.

I have been writing privately, and some of you have been reading that. And that will likely continue, and perhaps I will let more in. Eventually. Writing, as it always has, is a form of therapy. I feel better after I write things down, and it feels even better when I get some feedback. And the feedback I have gotten has been…amazing and thought provoking, helpful and challenging. I can’t thank each and every one of you enough.

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”

Joseph Campbell

What I have found out since I haven’t written publicly here is that life, marriage, family, friendships are far more complex and difficult than anyone imagines. That what we thought of as our life is not what it seems, that nothing turns out as one has planned. That life is full of surprises, good and bad, and that things change, for good and bad, and that one has to roll with the punches, take what comes, deal with it in the best way we can, for that is the measure of the person you.

“I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.”

Karl Wilhelm von Humboldt

Life is in fact a rich tapestry. There are threads connecting you to different people. Some have many threads and some have fewer. The quality of those threads also varies, and sometimes those threads, the pattern connecting you to others is ugly and worn and frayed. And sometimes it is glorious, beautiful, magnificent. And sometimes it is both at the same time. And this quality changes and flows like river. This is all cliched metaphor, but true nonetheless. The trick in life is to cultivate those beautiful threads and repair the frayed ones. And sometimes you have to know when to cut the threads, hopefully not often but sometimes necessary.

“We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.”

Frederick Keonig

This was all probably rather vague, and it has to be that way, for now, in public. I will write more, publicly, privately, in friend’s only. I need to write, more now than in a long time. This may all sound…down, depressing. And some aspects of all the change occurring is certainly that. But change is good, without change we die. It is how we confront change, how we embrace all that life throws at you, what you choose to value and strive to be that determines the success of your life. You all know me, the things I have been through, the things I have done, the mistakes I have made. Those are all learning points, mistakes to learn from. For it is not the destination, the goal, the end point that is the purpose of life. It is not the knowledge that you gain, the things you know and understand. It is the quest for all of that, that is the secret of life.

Life is a quest and sometimes you don’t find what you were looking for. But more often than not what you find is what you were really seeking in the first place.

 
“The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive”

Joseph Campbell

Zaphod