Clearing

I wonder what will happen when piece by piece, I lay the little anecdotal eggs I have been carrying for so long, here. Will my mind be freer? Maybe achieve that transcendental goal, to live in the present? Perhaps go deeper - perhaps more thoroughly. That thought makes my spirits sink.

Everyone I consider interesting felt like an outsider in youth, so those childhood slights and exclusions seem par for the course, no matter how keenly they were felt. No-one confesses to doling out that misery either, we all did it carelessly to each other, then limped home to nurse our own wounds.

Judith Martin says that adults have an unspoken Geneva Convention, she was writing about the dating scene which is so uppermost here (USA). That after several journeys through the pinball machine we develop compassion, a little fellow-feeling, empathy. Tracing that pathway would be true biography. It is not universal though, I can think of plenty of people who have only collected grievances plus moments of maudlin sentiment, the Monster springs to mind.

I love far more people more easily in my maturity, that is the great blessing. I felt I was living behind cellophane until I had my own children, and then another layer was peeled away in long boring convalescence when I was thirty-two. Probably it just goes on and on like an onion, as Rumi says. Nicholson version, not Coleman-Barks.

I don't DO anything with it though, I am no philanthropist. At some point I should, and if not now, when? I don't want to sit on riches, how can I share? Is willingness enough?