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, the place I inhabited, it was like a puzzle I was trying to unravel. Who were these people in the family wherein I had been 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. Was there any hope 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, as we seek 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 into which we have mysteriously been cast, one we fear is fraught with danger. 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 my secret internal life. We, alone, know of our secret fears, and our silent, sometimes desperate, aspirations, the failures and small successes that we hugged to our chests. We know of the lies we told others and ourselves. There are plots we have spun seeking to achieve our ambitions. We cannot hide our 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 may 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 hopeful 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. II confide that I, O how fortunate I am, have achieved a kind of Nirvana. I have surrendered the need for an aspired self-image that I have to protect. I have found that person with whom I am prepared to expose all my nitty-gritty. I will pay a price but it feels great. My weaknesses are fully exposed and there is no place to hide. I, and you, may be judged harshly at times, but because of the love the intimate partner returns, hopefully, there may sometime be compassion for your pain, compassion for your failings, and a kind of forgiveness. We can then judge ourselves even more harshly, and try harder to be our better selves.

This may not be the way for everyone, and once begun there is no turning back. But, imagine, if you can, the sense of liberation one may achieve, knowing that in at least one place in this world is totally free to be open. One can feel safe enough to share what we are, the good and the bad.

How many times have we tested the waters, and, failing to see what was hoped for, have drawn back into our protective shell? Woe betide us if we have placed our trust in the wrong person. I have chosen to endow the person I love with all the superhuman qualities I seek in her that I hope I have myself. I will bear my scars bravely because I have chosen this as my way.

If you are alone now do you remember when you had something like that in your life? Don’t you wish you could have that again?

What’s happening at your house?