me me me
In an earlier post, I made the statement that Gandalf changed my life. Here is how that happened. I was working at for Sprint, on a terrible shift, doing work I detested, mostly on night shift, and in a deep and dark depression. After midnight, we usually watched movies between calls (which was allowed). One night someone brought in The Lord of the Rings.
I was thinking… “Oh God, not that again!” But there it was, nothing to do but watch it, so I did. And once again I got totally caught up in the drama. And once again I started to wish that life really was like an epic fantasy movie. And once again, I felt myself spiralling into that dark feeling of disappointment with myself and my life.
And then, Frodo said: “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” Which really resonated with me, I was wishing lots of stuff had never happened to me too.
To which Gandalf replied:
“So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
He went on to say: “There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.” But what I heard, that first part went straight to my heart. Something inside of me woke up. I could feel it stirring! It was as if he was speaking directly to me.
It occurred to me that I could decide what to do with the time that was given to me. That I could decide to live my life AS IF it was an epic fantasy movie. I could decide to be whoever it was that I wanted to be. And for the next several days – as we watched the rest of the trilogy – I mulled it over. I wondered who I would be if the Lord of the Rings was actually my “real” life… who was I in the movie? What part was I currently playing?
The answer was disconcerting to say the least. I came to the conclusion that I was “doing” life much the same as Denethor, Steward of Gondor. “Why? Why do the fools fly? Better to burn sooner than late, for burn we must. Go back to your bonfire! And I? I will go now to my pyre. To my pyre!”
If you don’t remember Denethor here’s the scoop on him: He’s a father, a good man, but he’s inexorably drawn to his own destruction because of his grief. He’s lost his son Boromir, and he almost lost his other son, Faramir. He’s lost his wife. He wasn’t the king of Gondor, only the steward…a caretaker. His city is under siege, his people are being slaughtered and he’s powerless to do anything about it. The situation is desperate. The armies of Sauron will come back. They will defeat civilization, and Denethor can’t see any way of stopping it. He can’t cope.
Ok, so I’m not a father, and I wasn’t in the situation he was in – but the grief was real, the feelings of loss and doom were real, I did feel powerless, and desperate, and unable to cope. And instead of standing my ground, instead of doing whatever could be done, I was plunging headlong into self destruction. Finding an almost sinful pleasure in being mean to myself, reveling in the self torture. Not even willing to allow the possibility of outside aid.
Now that I knew “who” I was in the movie, it was time to decide who I “wanted” to be in the epic fantasy adventure of my own life. I’ll blog that as a separate post. See it here.
By the way: This post was migrated from my blogger blog (shirleytwofeathers.blogspot.com) and was first published almost exactly 9 years ago, on 1/08/08.
There has been so much going on with me since Jan 1st that I think it might take 4 or 5 blog posts just to get it all said! I don’t even know where to begin. I guess I’ll start with The Lord of the Rings – because this is the background for the stuff I’ve been excited about and doing since the New Year began.
I absolutely love that story! I first read it in 1969. And I can remember that my family was huddled around the TV or the Radio, I’m not sure which. They were all excited because this was the day that Neil Armstrong, aboard the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander, along with Buzz Aldrin, touched down on the surface of the moon. What was I doing? I was reading The Lord of the Rings. Frodo and Sam were just begining the treck through the swamp with Gollum leading the way. My dad was really aggravated with me because I was not the least bit excited that the “Eagle had Landed”.
I did pull myself away from the book long enough to hear those famous words, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” And then I was back in Middle Earth. We were doing a lot of traveling at the time, driving from Florida to Michigan and back again, and when we drove through wooded areas, I was convinced that I could see the places where hobbits and elves still lived. The secret magical places in forests and near streams called to me.
When I finished the last book, I turned right around and started reading them again. And then, I read it again.
Years later, when the Fellowship of the Ring came out, I went to see it at the theater with a friend of mine. It was terribly disconcerting having it just stop in the middle of the story. And on the way home, I found myself falling into a terrible funk because my life seemed so ordinary and so boring and so NOT adventurous or interesting in any way, shape, or form. I decided it might even be better for me to NEVER see another fantasy movie ever again – since none of it was real anyway and that was just going to upset me. I didn’t watch another fantasy movie for more than a year. I didn’t go and see the rest of the Trilogy when it came out. I didn’t read the book, or even think about it for quite a long time.
And then, during one of my darkest moments, when I was going through what could really be described as a journey through Mordor, the most amazing thing happened. Gandalf stepped in and changed my life.
By the way: This post was migrated from my blogger blog (shirleytwofeathers.blogspot.com) and was first published almost exactly 9 years ago, on 1/08/08.
I’ve pretty much abandoned my Flickr account, but I was looking through my old blogspot blog and found this. It’s what I wrote for my Flickr profile, I like it, and it’s still pretty much true.
I am an artist, a blogger, a reader, a writer, a Reiki Master, a gypsy, a shaman, a psychic, a woman, a mother, a grandmother, a daughter, a sister, and a friend.
Other words that apply to me include: out of the box, unusual, outspoken, odd, eccentric, free spirited, employed, unemployed, foolish, wise, stupid, smart, funny, sad, ridiculous, sensible, practical, down to earth, driven, gifted, calm, relaxed, freaked out, dumb, mental, open minded, bound and determined, stubborn, persistent, opinionated, ambivalent, physical, emotional, spiritual, human… the list goes on and on.
Wow! It’s been a long time since I blogged about anything, and even longer since I blogged something that wasn’t self serving, or found somewhere else, but was – instead – deeply personal and intimate. I’ve been too busy wallowing in the mire of self pity, self doubt, regret, angst and guilt. I totally hate getting older and older and still not feeling like I have actually lived up to even my mildest aspirations.
What I have been doing is hiding out, becoming more and more reclusive, avoiding the internet entirely, reducing my circle of friends to the few who dare to push their way in (meaning nobody), hanging tight with my family, doing the barest of minimums every day, and burying myself in the Sims 2. Creating elaborate neighborhoods and scenarios, and pretty much losing myself in the fantasy of a game where I can always get what I want, where lifetime happiness can always be achieved, and friends and family can be found and created with only a little bit of effort.
I was starting to feel as if I was dying a slow death of lethargy and immobility. Actually, it was more like I had already died inside and was just waiting for my circumstances and my body to catch up with me. The walking dead… that was/is me. Shambling through the shambles of a life I have allowed to fall down around me.
Sometimes, the numbness would give way to a sort of nameless anxiety, that “Oh God!” feeling of having forgotten something really really important. And sometimes I would have glimpses of … I would almost feel something … like grief, a desperate sorrow, a heart clenching longing for … I don’t know what. Home maybe? That comes closest to describing it… something sure to hold on to, fall into, belong to, be enfolded in… And that, of course, was very uncomfortable and immediately sedated with food, television, the Sims, whatever was immediately available.
So what happened? And why am I here, blogging it?
Well, it was interesting (at least to me), because everything I know about life I’ve learned from playing The Sims, and in the game it was becoming more and more apparent that in order to get along in life, in order to achieve lifetime happiness, it is extremely helpful to have people. And I started trying to figure out how to have people in my real life without actually having to go anywhere or do anything. Which is partly what social media is all about. You can have a bunch of “friends” and never have to interact with them at all. I know this is true because I have 520 facebook friends, and not including my family, I actually know less than 20 of them, and maybe only 1 or 2 of them have my actual phone number.
At the same time, I realized that much of my lethargy and angst is fueled by regret. All the things that I did that I wish I hadn’t done, all the things I didn’t do that I wish I had done, so much that I could’a – should’a – would’a … if only… and I really didn’t know what to do with all that. So because everything else I know about life I’ve learned from books, movies, and television, I thought I’d take a page from the Debra Morgan book of coping with the un-cope-able, and do some time on the treadmill. Remember Deb from Dexter running and running on the treadmill, working it out that way? Well, running is beyond my capabilities at this point, but I figured I could at least do some walking. And I have to tell you… it turned into yet another form of self torture. I tried just walking slow, I tried walking fast, I tried walking and watching television, I tried rewarding myself for walking, I tried listening to music and walking – which worked best, by the way – and ultimately the music was what saved me. But not yet…
It occurred to me that maybe what I needed was religion, a spiritual experience that could be revisited, something that would give me absolution, and comfort, and a reason to get up every morning and carry on…. Something larger than my baggage, my bullshit, my perennial self doubt… So I talked to my angels, and I talked to my guides… all the while convinced that they were disappointed and disgusted by my failure to make something special and interesting with my life, and had left me long ago in search of someone better, someone more authentic and real.
I looked up churches in the yellow pages, I contemplated becoming a Catholic. “Forgive me father for I have sinned” sounded very appealing to me. Plus, there would be – you know – actual people there. But in the end, you have to believe in that stuff for it to work, and while I am a believer in some things, I am not a believer in the conventional sense, and mainstream religions with their rules and dogma do not appeal to me, I have never been a rule follower, or a believer in dogma. I am an asker of questions, a skeptic, a rebel, and a rule breaker… there’s no church that I could find where I thought there was even the remotest chance of fitting in or finding what I was looking for.
Then, suddenly, surprisingly, my angels and guides came through for me and gave me… a church to go to, someone to listen to, something to cling to, and no – not comfort, not absolution, but something real that (right now anyway) resonates so deeply it has brought me out of my lethargy, and back to the world of maybe not the living, but certainly the not quite dead.
So what was it? This is the strangest life I’ve known… because when I asked for Church, when I asked for spiritual guidance, when I asked for something that would give me back my connection to life, I got The Doors and Jim Morrison. And I’m like… really? And yet from the moment I played that CD I have felt more alive, more understood, more real, more OK with the mess I have made with my life, than I have in years. So, of course (since I never do anything half way) I got the movie, and every DVD I could get my hands on… all the CD’s… the books…
And here I am online again, looking to connect with the larger world. Morrison’s voice resonating in my head, unable to just sit and mindlessly play the Sims, thinking that maybe, just maybe it might be possible to break on through to the other side.
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I think it's time to go shopping... maybe even buy some really cool stuff at my online shops!!
