What Could Have Been

The Return of the Jedi.....ahhh. How I love the Star Wars saga, and I know I'm not alone. It
resonates for a reason, that simple reason being it rests on the greatest themes of all time.



Lately this image from the end of ROTJ literally keeps appearing in my mind. Trying to figure it out I've realized that I have many friends who are grappling with the permanent scars life is lashing on them. Myself, I have angled to try to convince myself and others that these dramatic and painful events aren't permanent, that we can overcome, that by lending our thoughts and our efforts towards good -- towards The Force, if you'll forgive me -- is the way out.



I've always identified with Luke Skywalker from the "could go either way"perspective. I'm not an Obi Wan, always clear and focused, without doubts and never truly in peril. I recognize and look up to those people, but I could never claim to be them. (Maybe in about 30 years....)



But I'm not an Anakin all the way, either. I battle darkness, and anger, and the occasional conviction that I can overcome what hurts me with more hurt. But I don't really believe that. And I don't want the people I love to ever believe that either.



So I look at my friends in pain, and I see their turning point. And I think about my own. There are clear moments to me when the woman I could have been, the woman I wanted to be, was lost to this life. My personal spiritual beliefs tell me that even if we go the wrong way, we will be restored to who we could have been through love. But you know.....I want to see that person, those people, NOW.

My heart is hurting for the turning point of losing ourselves in this life.

That's right, she said Tooth Fairy.

Well, actually it's not "right." But it is what she said.

This morning a friend of a friend compared climate change due to pollution as the same thing as believing in the Tooth Fairy.

Apparently as Americans we are continuing to exert our God-given right to believe whatever we want to believe, regardless of what research and science demonstrates. The person commenting was implying that "believing" in climate change was the same thing as believing in the Tooth Fairy, and that sooner or later everyone needed to grow up and stop making things up.

There are so many levels of frustration I have with this there is no room or time to go into it all, but here are some questions I have:

1) Why would anyone want to "believe" in climate change? What possible advantage does this provide to anyone in any way? It's making my life pretty damn inconvenient. Oh, wait......

2) Why are we still using words like "believe" when discussing science?

3) How can a person seriously argue that people are not having a negative impact on planet Earth through our rampant consumption and disposal?

4) I don't care who you are, if you're not a scientist do you seriously think your opinion overrides the peer-reviewed research of some of the best-trained minds in the field of biology and other related sciences? When did we decide the mood ring should drive public policy?

Another person commented on how the "enviro-tards" have the audacity to think that humankind can defeat nature, but I think that's missing the point. Yes, the Earth will go on. Nature will absolutely win......but here's the kicker: If we don't literally clean up our act, people and everything we currently know and love about life will be gone. Not in the lifetime of anyone reading this, but eventually.

If you're down with that, carry on. I'll leave a quarter under your pillow for you in the morning.

Photo credit: westerndave http://www.flickr.com/photos/westerndave/101849734/

It's All About Believin'

About fifteen years ago I lived in a great little house in Hillsborough, North Carolina. I was the second owner of a “spec” house in a new neighborhood. I’m not sure if it was the builder or the first owners, but that place was literally covered in, well, horrible wallpaper.

As with any wallpaper take-down project, the worst part involved rooms where no one had bothered to prime the walls before gluing the paper. That’s right, just glued down on drywall. I will admit, one room was too much for me, and I just painted over the wallpaper; but I made this decision after what happened in my bedroom. Let me explain.

My sister was there helping me. We used something called a Paper Tiger to score the paper, then used special glue dissolver to soak through the holes. It was a fairly big room, and when the paper came off, it came off in thin strips that snapped after about 2 inches. AND – total nightmare – we realized that only one layer of the paper was coming off. So after all the effort in any area, there was the same amount of work left to be done to get the second layer off. Chunks of the wall were starting to come off as well.

This is a lot of detail, but I really want you to “be there” with us. It was a total disaster. The glue stuff smelled bad, and we opened the upstairs windows, only to bake ourselves in the summer swelter. I was in despair. I felt like I had destroyed the most important room in the house, and I couldn’t go forward and I couldn’t go back. I was starting to freak out.

That’s when my sister said, “Look. We can do this. We just have to believe we can do this. There is no way wallpaper is going to defeat us, that is ridiculous. No one can make us stop working on this. This is your house, and if we have to scrape in here for a hundred years, we will because we will not be defeated! It’s all about believin’.”

“It’s all about believin’” became our rallying cry, and damn if it didn’t work wonders. Fingers bleeding? IAAB. Arms ache? IAAB. Light headed from the chemicals and thinking about passing out? IAAB. Somehow this hilarious phrase, whether screamed, whispered, sung or chanted pulled us through that craziness.

Now I’ll admit, it helped that I was 15 years younger on that particular project. But I have pulled this concept out a few times since to get through my most challenging efforts, and it still has a way of working magic. I use it sparingly so as not to diminish its power, and also because believing is harder now than it used to be.

It helps to have no massive failures on record when you chant, “It’s all about believin’”; but I can say from experience, even if you do, it still works.

Blooming

Over 20 years ago, someone gave me a Mary Engelbreit card with the phrase, “Bloom Where You are Planted.” At the time, I found it really encouraging. It seemed to be saying that I could be my best self no matter where I ended up, and that I had the power to “bloom” regardless of the world around me.

Since I became serious about gardening, however, I’ve come to interpret this saying differently. It’s a lovely metaphor, and it has an important message; but I’m not sure it’s a complete metaphor, and if you know anything about the natural world it’s hard to make this the simple Hallmark card that people so often want it to be.

As represented in this photo, botanical life can have an admirable tenacity. Those seeds and roots are driven to flourish and reproduce, and they will do everything in their power to make it happen, even in less than ideal conditions. (I believe it was Jurassic Park that coined the phrase, “Life finds a way.”) So we are impressed with this tiny plant, and yet isn’t there also a feeling of wishing it more soil, more sun, more room? There is something about this image that while it engenders admiration, also makes my heart hurt.

As a gardener, I like to determine the best place for things I put in the ground. I don’t expect things to bloom wherever I put them, and frankly they don’t. Over the years I’ve had many failures due to overenthusiastic planting, or due to the belief that things just ought to grow and thrive wherever I put them or want them to be. It ain’t necessarily so, and nature will school you pretty fast on what will work and why, regardless of your will. Accepting this is one of many life lessons I honor from my gardening pursuits.