Thinking Aloud Blog

 

Part 1:

I used to be an intense young woman. Sullen at losing my mother to cancer. Perplexed when my father left me in an orphanage. Bitter at police, politicians. An angry leftist.

Almost enjoyed the anger, even though I didn’t relish being angry. It was such an effortless way to define oneself in my twenties and early thirties.

But then at age forty-two my partner died in a car accident. And I bellowed out the anger in tears and mourning, eventually letting go of its hold.

In the devastation I discovered I was more than the definitions I allowed to define me. I discovered my soul, and my need to hold onto anger became trivial. Unnecessary.

My pain could not hold anger, only love. Love for whom I had lost. Love for myself. Love for my father who in his own loss had done his best for his children.

For all the experiences that brought me to anger, they also brought me to myself.

I was a beautiful soul, no less or more than the beautiful souls around me. I suddenly could no longer judge another person, because I couldn’t judge myself, accepting my faults and learning to change.

From the devastation of loss I was reborn into love. Released anger.

Part 2:

I am who I am. As I accept life’s absurdity, the world’s zaniness, I become saner. A contradiction. But a oneness.

Yet my mind doesn’t stop testing me. It loves to work overtime. A perpetual life challenge of mine. So I have finally come to an agreement as to when it controls me, and when I control it. It was a battle for a long time, and sometimes, still is.

When my mind and I turned fifty, we decided it was healthier for both of us to settle our differences instead of getting divorced.

So we set aside time to make lists and set goals, time for worrying, time for feeling guilty – and time to be silly.

We gave each other space from the other.

On my time, I play music and my body dances around the house to Lord of the Dance, Saturday Night Fever, or The Nutcracker, wherever my body takes me.

If not dancing, I sit in meditation and watch the clouds carry away my thoughts.

Sometimes I sit and wait for words to move my pen.

And in those moments when mind is fully at rest, I meet my higher spirits:

Archbishop Penelope Doolittle, who takes me into the Kingdom of Silliness, a place to laugh at everything, no seriousness allowed, or

Rabbi Maya, who walks me thru the Library of History, an expansive round glass building with many rooms and cushiony chairs, and I sit quietly with the majestic souls of wisdom.

My quiet mind is granted the privilege to discover all new insights to ponder on its allowed time.

We now act more as one than separately, and mind happily dances and writes with me, both of us unafraid to let go.

And when it all doesn’t work, we enter night’s dreamworld.

© Roberta S. Kuriloff