The Nitty Gritty

 

They say we all die alone, the human fate. I see it differently. The most fortunate will see it differently.

When I was a youngster, surveying the world around me, the place I inhabited, it was like a puzzle I was trying to unravel. Who were these people in the family in which I was planted? I had this sense that I had been dropped among them like a Cuckoo’s egg deposited in some random nest to be hatched. I left home for a year when I was eighteen. When I returned, my feeling of isolation was reinforced. How could I relate to these members of my own family who had not shared my growing-up experience? I felt inarticulate, unable to translate what I had become to the people with whom I was closest. What hope was there for achieving that with strangers?

We go forward in life, like the Argonauts of ancient Greece, into the unexplored, the unknown. We gird our loins to confront the dangers we know that life will place before us, seeking the Golden Fleece. We all hope to overcome the challenges we will face, and achieve victory. We see ourselves as the heroes of the story of our lives. We are on our guard, not sure who is enemy and who is friend. Life demands that we keep in reserve all the strengths we have and hide the weaknesses of which we are too aware. The persona we present, whatever we feel inside, is the best weapon we can muster.

We confront a world fraught with danger into which we have mysteriously been cast. It is only good sense that we are full of secrets, and ingenious stratagems, to bend the forces before us to our will. How could we even contemplate showing our weaknesses to the people we will meet along our way? And will we find the treasure?

Was my experience unique? Do, did, others feel this way?  This sense of being alone in a hostile world was part of a secret internal life. We, alone, know of our secret fears, and our silent, sometimes desperate, aspirations, the failures and small successes that we hug to our chests. We know of the lies we tell others and ourselves. We have plots we spin seeking to achieve our ambitions. We cannot hide the gross deception or our petty larcenies from ourselves. We know when we have failed to live up to those principles by which we judge others. Too often? Too often!

Do we forgive ourselves, or do our crimes weigh us down like millstones at the back of our mind We avoid examining them, much less confessing them to others? Do we yearn for a return to those times at our mother’s breast when we were not judged, just loved without reservation? Can we ever feel safe enough to expose the nitty-gritty, the secret We that forever keeps us separate from those around us? Is it only when we are in the lap of G-d, the All-knowing, that we can truly be what we are? Questions we ask ourselves? Do we need a shrink?

Every day that we are alive we can have a fresh new perspective on life. I know I am like others. All of you out there have faced these things in yourselves from time to time. We toil away adding to the heap of humus that is human existence. All of us can feel that aloneness, that isolation inherent in our inability to share all the ferment in our minds. Some of that we yearn to share, and some, we, shamefacedly, hope to hide. I realize that I, O how fortunate I am, having achieved a kind of Nirvana. I have surrendered a need for an aspired self-image that I have to protect. I have found the treasure we all seek. I have found that person with whom I am prepared to expose all my nitty-gritty. It feels great.

Now, I am never really alone. If you can find someone you love unreservedly, someone that you believe can love you back in spite of your weaknesses, you’ve got it made. They may judge you harshly at times, but because of the love they return, there is compassion for your failings, and a kind of forgiveness. You can then judge yourself even more harshly, and try harder to be your better self, because you know there is redemption in the love you bear for each other.

Imagine, if you can, the sense of liberation you may achieve, knowing that in at least one place in this world you feel free to be open. You feel safe enough to share what you are, the good and the bad. How many times have we tested the waters, and, failing to see what we hoped for, have drawn back into our protective shell?

The spontaneity that creeps out when you can forget all that is exhilarating.  It may occur within a chance, or a permanent relationship. You had to realize what it could mean for your future when it happens. Even if you were just passing through, looking forward to a better time, you would know. It could occur with a stranger you never expect to see again. We know when we have made mistakes, and have to live with them? But while there is life, there is hope. I had to wait fifty-five years to achieve hope of Nirvana, and even after that, it took time to realize. Onward Argonauts!