Growing up and moving on
You know a million years ago when I wanted to be a writer of fiction, a whole host of people told me, “Why would you write fiction, when you have your family?” I said yeah, but that doesn’t interest me at all because it is MY family. Then I started this blog nearly five years ago and as much as I wanted to write about things that mattered to me in being a woman trying to figure out life one entry at a time, my family snuck into the picture, larger than life, and there they are.
Today’s meditation is #13 in the Tao te Ching – it is for those moments when I feel like “huh?” and how to know myself, know when what I’m doing feels right and what feels wrong. My sister said it is wrong of me to say anything about my mother having DTs because alcoholism is something you’re supposed to tip toe around and sweep under the carpet. I disagree, alcoholism has been around since days of yore, and so has lunacy.
Recently, I was thinking of Pat Conroy’s book The Great Santini, where he described his domineering and terrible father. The Great Santini is a Disney character compared to my father and actually I read somewhere that Conroy actually toned down his father’s pitch for that book. Remarkably, although Conroy’s family turned against him because of that book, it ended up bringing him and his father closer and the insight from the book helped his father remake his relationship with his son.
My own father died in 1985, so that isn’t going to happen, but writing about the forces that shape my life helps me understand them/me better, and I hope in some small egocentric way that it helps others understand their situation better. When Dorothy Allison wrote about how her mother basically turned a blind eye to her sexual abuse, you have to believe that she was helping some other poor kid understand that they are not alone in this big wide world with their problems and there is a way out.
But I digress – I write because I have to and that feels right to me – back to the Tao te Ching – Lucky 13:
#13
Success is as dangerous as failure
Hope is as hollow as fear.
What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
your position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance.
What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don’t see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?
See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.