Invincibility

Vernazza Italy, circa 2017, photo by Tara McGadden

Sometimes, I feel immeasurably invincible. Not to mention there is a global pandemic occurring. Regardless, I find this newfound power and certainty to be refreshing among the calamities. I feel such inspiration and motivation growing and devouring my waking thoughts. So many goals seem now more attainable. I don’t know if it is because of my new freedom or the lack of freedom. I know it stems from the greater responsibility and necessity I feel toward myself.

I suppose the greatest pursuit, in youth, should be for self. It doesn’t need to be the only desire, nor should it. However, wisdom is wasted on the wise. I have my own gospel to be enlightened by. Despite the certainty of struggle, conflict and obstacles, these deficits are surely self imposed. Outside interference will surely muddle the breakthroughs. It can be said; the most beautiful sunrises come after the longest nights. My dawn is approaching. The great golden warmth of my creative endeavors loom. I’ve just decided it here.

Doubt

The death of creation

Sits comfortably in uncertainty.

An antithesis to the hopeful dream,

Is the fear, of that kind of pain,

You feel lucky to have known.

The paralysis can be logical and useful,

avoiding something distasteful.

In freezing, halting, contemplating,

lost are those endeavors that are beautiful.

In acquiescing to a spun up pursuit,

Lies something fruitful.

Limitations to a discovery of self

Are those ideas that remain on the shelf.

Encouraging a fear of action,

Debilitating to a faith in absurdity,

Are those bittersweet mistakes.

Little doubts, that creep

Up and up, bubbling to a frothy poison.

Diluting burning passions,

that can change a people.

Letting the devil whisper to you,

But you know damn well,

the angel is there beside you,

Offering grace, for a chance,

At the wonderful unknown.

I would like to write this with my own hand but I want you to read it sooner.

Sometimes I really hate myself and I don’t know how to explain the random sadness that sometimes consumes me. In my eagerness to avoid weakness, pursuing perfection, because I want to be as wonderful as I can be for those that I love. I have questioned so many decisions in my life and still I am surprised by how many opportunities for failure and success always exist in even the most mundane scenarios. Every moment that I feel I have been a part of, my optimism has been pushed toward cynicism. I can’t help but want to hope for something still childish and joyful. I find myself so hateful lately, of all people and ideas. So close minded in my ideals and angry at the world and most likely myself. I feel numb of joy and of sadness and I exist in a limbo of uncertainty. Despite my constant attempts to retain a past passion for success, determination, discipline and the future, when I truly embark on my own I can’t help hanging my head in confounding surprise at what the world really is. Everyday I exist in an existential awe, at the horrible conceit, deceit, and relentless individualism that truly plagues people. There is so much insecurity that releases itself in violent ignorance. I am myself composed within a boiling pot of hypocrisy and I cannot seem to escape my own surprise at the dull and undeniable mundanity that possesses everything. I have been unable to find a beautiful thing even in the simplest moments recently. I can’t describe this degree of pessimism toward everything. I despise the feeling and somehow I have formed a hateful perception of myself through it: Not enough work being done, not enough planning, not enough discipline. I surround myself with this negativity and I am struggling to escape it. Please just know I am trying to make it happen so I can lead a life that surrounds itself with love and my family that I will never be able to go a day without thinking about. I can’t wait to see what can be achieved. I have a strong urgency in my desires to support others, make money, be happy, lead a positive kind of movement, bring people safety and security.

Sometimes I wonder just how conceited I am and whether or not to allow myself to be or whether to avoid it. Perhaps it is my inner ego that is creating obstacles for my own advancement. I have been reading about self Actualization. Maslow's theory on the hierarchy of needs. I always seem to forget to do the most basic ones that are necessary for a human to live. I am too concerned with the macro. And perhaps what plagues my mind is that I am forever unable to perceive or experience or touch this scale of living. It is too large for even myself to grasp and I cannot evade its poking and prodding in everything that I endeavor to complete. Nothing is ever quite conceptual enough, or the functionality of living is slightly diluted by the dull reality of its application. How do I mediate these dichotomies? I struggle to know. There is required of me, an understanding of the smallest, but only with regard to its relationship to the big. And so big and little are always tied together in an endless charade of love and hate. Only in the grey zone of neutrality can either exist. In this grayness, is so much nuance that it becomes shaded by the tinted lens of perspective that each person has tied to their souls.

I want there to be a rock somewhere from which I can grasp, within the churning undertow of a drowning current. The current of time, temperament and necessity. It is always dragging and eroding at the shores of my psyche. I question my own sanity in these moments and whether or not I should even profess such a thing. How can I, of a grateful and blessed creation, be unsure and lacking in a rock of ethics, or a foundation of belief, how can I begin to polish the coup de gras I have yet to dream, if there is no basis for beginning? I am shaped by such ever changing waves of contradictory information coupled with an unmoving childhood of sweetness and endless boundaries. I scramble between my own thoughts about which way this life I lead can expand into ever increasing options. The more options the more choice and therefore the gradual building of more possibilities. But in this endless quest for creation is a plaguing reality that only with action and decision can these be moved forward, with this progression is dejection and something “other” becomes impossible. Besides the obvious nature of this text, which proves the stream of endless thoughts that pervade my mind, I have over-thought through a series of life altering perspectives of which I cannot for the life of me decide which is the most important. It no longer becomes a question of simple right and wrong or doing and not doing; but I have rationalized a fiction for my own reality that dilutes the splendor of really living. I don’t want to do this because I have established my position too deeply and I don’t know how to unsee what I know. It’s like the vastness of knowledge that I have realized as compared to the even grander scale of unknown things have utterly confined me to fruitless pursuits reliant on when, where, how and why I seek the information that gnaws at my curiosity. I have become so free in choice and so wild in my endless wonder at the world that I no longer understand how to engage with it directly in a productive way. It seems so absurd I even question the truth of it.

My realization cannot go easily in the soft breeze. I fear to my core a world where my opinions are lost in my own brain. I want a platform and a means to build these thoughts that make up my life. I know I have value to bring to many. I have laughed to tears with many people and cried for many others more. I know these experiences come with some kind of wisdom, but I do not know how to leverage it.