23

Apr

Milan Kundera shatters my mind every single time.

“But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.” — Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

Forgive me,  I’m on my Milan Kundera kick…it comes around every few years to remind me what an unbelievable genius he was.  The quote, however, rings true – doesn’t it?  Haven’t we all had a moment where we held such a power over someone, something, anything, and out of nowhere it became our weakness…and in the end the object of our affection worked up enough strength for both of us to leave?  Don’t answer…just think for a moment about ‘the one that got away’ as it could commonly be referred.  Do you have one…or two?  If not, I’m sure you’ve hurt someone – we all have.

I’m fairly certain I’ve hurt a lot of people in the past.  Some I’ve made amends with and cleared the karma, but others that I couldn’t – for whatever reasons – clear the air to dissipate the karma stones I threw.  I’ve been stoned enough to know that it’ll come back around like a baseball to the head. Nonetheless, these dreads have made me push ahead.

“We pass through the present with our eyes blindfolded. We are permitted merely to sense and guess at what we are actually experiencing. Only later when the cloth is untied can we glance at the past and find out what we have experienced and what meaning it has.” — Milan Kundera (Laughable Loves)

Conversely, I’ve had some amazing people in my life.  Some that have stayed, some that have blown away with the wind, and some that left but cross my mind with every single breath.

“The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people.” — Milan Kundera (Laughable Loves)

The latter – those that leave but forever change your life – are typically the ones that got away.  Whether romantic or platonic, they have left an impression and a time stamp of their existence in your soul and I really hope you know what it feels like to have existed in theirs.

“The heaviest of burdens is simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into new heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?” — Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

And, if you do know – existence beyond yourself – then you know how all-compassing it can be.  You also know most times it doesn’t last forever, which is why hindsight 20/20 is such a powerful vantage point.


14 years ago Short URL Comments

The Prop Arsenal

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20

Dec

Repeat Adjectives Gargled In Resolve

At about 140 pages, adjectives start to repeat themselves and it got me thinking…after about 35,000 words don’t we all start repeating ourselves?  The thing about writing is that you can’t stay silent, and the art isn’t in the pauses like in music.  You can’t really listen to anyone other than yourself, and your pseudo multiple personalities (that are more aptly called ‘characters’ to make us feel less insane) cannot speak for themselves.

I’ve been rehashing, objectively of course, past mistakes and how I could have handled them better.  Hindsight 20/20 as it’s called.  I’ve prided myself on my new age thinking of no regrets, lessons learned, growth happens from failure more so than winning, etc., so this is especially confusing.  Spinner, my therapist, tells me it’s coming up because it was never fully resolved.  This is probably the case because you see my resolving hierarchy started more like an upside-down triangle in which I fell into its abyssal downtrend and tried to swim up.  Thankfully when I was five-ish my father, from the school of hard knocks, gave me swimming lessons. After he threw me into the creek and yelled “swim” from the edge of the ravine, I gargled the dirty Oklahoma water and got somewhat control of my flailing arms enough to beat the water underneath me so that I did not drown. Apply this swimming lesson, attach it as a pattern, and use it in adulthood.

Luckily, my mom paid for real swimming lessons and it was much less painful. Apply this swimming lesson, attach it to my paycheck, and use it in adulthood.

All parentage influence aside, sometimes regret stems from a past action that does quite align with who you’ve become and a desire to return and change it for a more desired outcome that’s more closely associated to who you are now. If you’re lucky you get this type of rare closure, but if you’re in the majority then you have to be okay with your old self’s actions so that your new self can accept it. Once I realize I can’t return to the source of the regret and make it right, I have no choice but to learn to accept the regret and grow from it as to not make the same mistakes again.

Unlike the characters I create, the aspects of my personality magnified, I know the story before they do and I control its outcome. Symbols of my life, overarching theirs, repeat adjectives and all.

14 years ago Short URL Comments

Literary Devices

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