I am what I am

A recent shift in my life has carved out a gap, a break in what I had labeled as happiness. This gap or empty space occurred because I am losing someone dear to my heart. He is moving on and the place he has occupied in my recent days will be big and cold and hollow. My mind takes a snapshot of this void and tries to gives it a name. This negativity holds an unfortunate place marker and I am stuck now waiting for the happy to resume. My flow is interrupted and I feel stuck in this quagmire, longing for something else, someone else, or this loved person to reenter. I am determined to mind the gap. My journey is now and these interruptions need not trip me up.

My zen teacher tonight pointed out something very interesting. When a child trips he or she will not turn around to seek out the culprit of his fall. The child simply gets up and keeps moving along. When an adult trips he or she will turn around and find out what it was that caught her foot and caused her fall. By looking for the cause, we end up naming the interruption and these repeated named interruptions inevitably lead to scar tissue making the continuity of mind body flow impossible. I caught myself looking behind me to scrutinize and examine the large slice of pavement that just tripped me up. The scar tissue runs deep, raised purple welts, with silver striae marking my flesh. However, today I refuse the interruption. I will not look to the pavement cracks and I will not feel for the raised reminder of repetition. This stumble will not mark my hide like the past. My flow will resume and my journey will bring me home. Tonight was filled with talk of the journey of subtraction, peeling layers of the construct of self to find out what is real. I understand I am real. "I am what I am" -Popeye

My wedding anniversary would have been this Saturday. While weighing the heavy this day held for me, I found myself tripped up with yet another unexpected relationship shift and began thinking about several ideas, one of them was the concept of self and being real. This incidentally reminded me of my wedding day. During the ceremony, the minister read a passage from one of my favorite books, The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams. This passage touches me deeply and reminds me to look at my self, and to be true to my experiences and how they rub away at my velveteen as I become more real.

"What is REAL?" asked the rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the skin horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
"I suppose you are REAL?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the skin horse might be sensitive. But the skin horse only smiled.
"The boy's uncle made me real", he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It last for always."