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A year ago I awoke with a melancholy song in my head and a knowing ache in my heart. Enter Springsteen’s Bobby Jean: his tender goodbye to a band-mate and dear friend. The song reminisced about their shared history over a sentimental soundtrack. Through this transmission I sensed that I had to reluctantly let go of someone I cherished–someone I was certain would be my forever person.

Spirit ushered me captive into those bitter mornings via such songs to soothe and broach that unwelcome reality in my preferred language and medium–these artist’s homages to those they knew they must release but couldn’t bear to do so. In those early days, dawn would arrive with a jolt–a caustic reckoning with the stubborn truth my mind could not fathom and my soul would not accept.

Bobby Jean, aka Steve Van Zandt, soon returned to the band, but our lovers often don’t. We find our way eventually, despite the loss, or because of it. Or maybe we don’t.

Perhaps these songs aren’t mere entreaties to loves lost, but are woven to serve a deeper purpose. Lately, Billy Idol’s Sweet Sixteen haunts me. A lament to his girlfriend while on tour, this song’s title invoked the story of Coral Castle and its creator, Edward Leedskalnin. He moved to Florida and built this impossible stone monument to his love, his sweet sixteen, who would not marry him and who never came to see his otherworldly creation. Yet thousands of visitors grace his halls every year and honor his testament to love.

Perhaps grand gestures like his are more than meets the eye. Maybe they’re not just for the love object. What if they are the hard labor of one’s soul excavation? Toiling in vain, these bittersweet monuments to those we couldn’t have—to unbridled love with nowhere to go. Channeled revelations, discharges of divine spark, harnessed with ghostly reverence. Pleading and shedding. Forswearing and exhausted relenting.

The nihilist in us can discount these odes to passion as empty melodramatic charades cast against a cruel and soulless abyss. What apparent folly, what hapless futility. Yet, perhaps love finds a way around the stumbling blocks. Yes, Pattie Boyd didn’t come back to Eric Clapton and Stills chased Judy Collins to no avail. But these titanic homages stand regardless as each artist’s respective magnum opus. Layla and Suite: Judy Blue Eyes preside atop rock and roll’s pantheon of lost love offerings—the blinding zenith of both artist’s towering creative capacities. They aren’t mere masterworks to be viewed in some gallery, lauded for their technique and tidy brushstrokes.

These open letters reached me. They engulfed and riveted me before I had tasted agony, before I had lost love, before my soul had been torn down. They lit up my circuits with an intensity and aliveness that forewarned and celebrated life’s impending tragedies and deep joys.

With each acrid gulp of loss and longing, they met me with understanding and permission to mourn and plead. To implode, to grasp and clutch. To need. They met me with grace and honor. With rage and confusion that accompanied me in the devastation. With the sense that I might trudge through my sacred wreckage in the windswept footfalls of these weary troubadours. By metabolizing my pain like they had recontextualized theirs: through creating art. Because there were no better options.

No wonder we revere our singers and writers and rock stars. They channel their pain into medicine for the listless listener. They lead by example. Risking everything to share their deepest secrets in hopes that they might be accepted, seen and loved for their flaws and frailties. In their smallness. This offers the listener permission to be small and sad and hurting. In return they humbly ask to be seen: naked before the world. They let us in.

Neither the singer nor the listener is above the other. The artist is not a god on a pedestal. The fan is not a supplicant in the cheap seats. Both are humans in pain, reaching across the void for meaning and love. And they each oblige.

Both are no longer alone. Love finds its way. Thus an inextricable bond is forged between these long distance lovers. The fans offer the artist the love he or she needs. The singer’s art heals the listener and makes them feel vested and linked to the pain of their heroes. We realize the venerated star is just like you and me: a simple human. We can heal through their words and sameness. But greater still, the artist shows the fan that true healing comes when we choose risk and metabolize our inner struggles. To consume art is fantastic. To create it, to reveal oneself, to offer this magic to the world: that is transcendence.

In a time where there is so little cultural cohesion, the musician serves as bard—as shaman to a weary and rudderless populace. This is not mere entertainment or distraction. That’s the surface, the trance. A circuit is created to heal all parties, to link them with love and solace. Appreciation and adoration. Each reveals their wounds. Catching the other as they fall.

Love Finds A Way.

Epilogue:

After 3 years of intense struggle and 1 year of the deepest mourning, life is starting to make sense again, thanks to friends, family, and the catharsis of receiving and creating art. I didn’t believe I’d ever feel alive again. The worst storm of my life has dissipated on all fronts. Never had I experienced such loss and despair–especially while so hamstrung by complex circumstances. Music and art purged what I could no longer carry. Such a transformation is uncanny to experience. It’s a process. Thankfully, I had my own vehicle—my writing, to help me process the losses and revelations. This helped me sidestep learned helplessness. If my writing does anything to you, let it be to coax you into your own introspection and creation. The world is waiting for your medicine, and so are you.

Like many, I knew the powerful, yet over-played Jefferson Airplane hits from the 60s like Somebody to Love, sung by Grace Slick. Yet, among others of the time, this band was deeply talented; their repertoire went far deeper than the singles. The Marty Balin offerings really struck me: his rich voice, his ballads tender and unabashed. The eclectic album Surrealistic Pillow epitomized the San Francisco sound and the Psychedelic era: a time and place of enchantment for me to this day.

My favorite number, the ethereal Today, occupies rare air because it behaves in contrast to our expectations of standard love-song fare. In lieu of glowingly describing his lover, he regales us with his overflowing love, his burgeoning reverence.

We know little of her, save the grandiose state she inspires. Not her perfume nor the shape of her eyes. Because he’s chosen instead to narrate the primeval force that subsumes him. His soul has become love’s vessel. Yet his is no parasitic possession, no mere infatuation—but an inner saturation, heralding the august arrival of the overman.

The song is a procession. As verses advance and pervade, the harmonic intensity grows—rippling, stirring, and swelling at the transcendent unity of his love experience.

As a listener and a lover, digesting such a song inspires similar states. Through these offerings, we acknowledge love’s embodiment. We relish the splendor of our love stores which the song captures and colors and translates. The towering adoration it reveals and reawakens: our majestic capacity to see and want and choose. We savor and project this affinity to the other, even in absentia.

There exists no feeling more certain or more rare. When reciprocated, the joy is boundless. Yet even as I awoke in the absence of she who I adored, my love radiated so pure, so humble and so alive. It would conquer any obstacle. No circumstance could deny this love’s veracity.

I stared back ensconced as she revealed with unguarded eyes and hushed sobs her innermost secrets. They kissed my heart and rang bells in my mind, these words lost on pages wet with tears. But the movie didn’t end that way.

Yet when I laid down worry and fear and the deep sense of loss, this unyielding Love was all that remained of me. An open letter, a promise, a message in a bottle, bobbing and floating up to eternity.

I tried to write this post about a movie but it turns out the movie wasn’t that interesting—except for one key scene and the meaning it imparted. X-Men Wolverine: Origins is that of which I speak. Logan is one of my favorite characters, and not just for the talented actor or the cool healing powers, but for the deep mythic meaning.

He’s a survivor, a warrior, but not a 1-dimensional cliche. He’s a reluctant messiah and an enigma who finds his own way to heroism when it counts.

In the pivotal scene, the villain began describing his treacherous plan: how Logan’s girlfriend’s death was faked, and how she was in on the ruse. And how their relationship was never real.

Logan didn’t flinch. He replied, ‘It Was Real for Me.’ I paused and let the moment sink in. I had seen the movie 5 times but I never caught that meaning, that scene, and that sureness. There’s exposition that would put you, the reader, there—the stakes, the nuance and the layers. But it doesn’t matter, really.

What matters is that Logan honored this moment and this love any way. By doing so, he served as a stand-in for us, for what we can be when we look inward for guidance. He had all the tools to be a mercenary—cold, calculated, impenetrable and stoic. But he chose vulnerability and risked everything to love any way. In so doing, he inverts and controverts all the bogus themes of men (and people) protecting themselves instead of opening to life and seeing love as a zero-sum-game.

A pitched battle between seemingly natural adversaries, vying for control. A chess match but with real stakes. A sad and unnecessary zeitgeist that decimates our culture and civilization.

Logan didn’t need to win. He needed to be authentic. He knew that we gain nothing when we risk nothing. He knew that vulnerability was real strength, despite what the culture hawks on social media. Despite what everyone was doing around him. Despite the pain and disillusionment of betrayal and loss. He didn’t let these events make him cynical.

When he loved, it was real, even if the other person couldn’t meet him there. Even if he looked like a fool. Because it was real for him. Because he was real. His love was real. Because vulnerability is not weakness, it’s the opposite. It’s strength. We risk pain and loss in the quest to meet the other in the hallowed space of intimacy.

Our culture wants to sell us fantasies of control, stoicism and power moves. But Logan was at peace with being fooled. Because always operating from a position of advantage means never risking and never truly living. Only when we risk loss, failure, and blame, do we live.

As manly as Logan looks and often acts in these movies, it’s his sensitivity in this scene that makes him Logan and not some caricature of manliness from some collective fever-dream. He has a heart and it can be broken. Otherwise, it’s not a heart, but a wall that isolates and stagnates our energy.

Love is not a game. It’s not a competition. Love asks us to strip off our armor, to lay down our weapons. To soften and to view the other with the eyes of empathy. To humanize and forgive the limitations of our partners. Love is not at war. Even when we lose.

I read The Hobbit And the Lord of the Rings trilogy way back in High School. I still marvel at my capacity for such concentration in those far-gone days. It was quite an undertaking and a needed escape. Years later, I rejoiced at the movie’s capacity to craft the world the novel had transmitted to my mind’s eye all those years earlier.

The story centers around a powerful and evil magic ring that had been recently rediscovered. Thus, a noble quest to destroy it ensued. By doing so, the heroes aimed to save the world from the resurrection of the movie’s villain, the evil god, Sauron.

The ring’s discoverer, Gollum was a kindly character who became increasingly possessed by the One Ring—both for its powers when in its possession, and for its allure when he lost it. His was a descent into madness.

As the group began its quest, individuals rightly asked, ‘what is he doing here?’ But the ring didn’t just whisper to Gollum. It pulled at each character’s motivating narratives, promising to empower their righteous goals. Such is the nature of the ego’s insinuations. The ring sought to bring down all the members of the quest by overpowering their ethics and supplying them with rationalizations meant to bridge the chasm between right and wrong.

At the quest’s apex, as Gollum, Sam and Frodo were all that remained of the group, Sam would constantly lobby Frodo to cut Gollum out of the plan. Yet the viewer remembers when a wise wizard character hadpreviously warned that this wretch may yet have a purpose in the battle between good and evil.

Similarly, we can wonder what use the universe has with our pernicious and destructive parts.

As I look back on a recent personal quest, I see many parallels. I lurched through my quest—single-minded-of-purpose, much like Gollum. I sought the one thing that I believed would make me feel strong, seen, safe, and loved. A life that seemed to offer a deep meaning—like I was part of something bigger. I was trying to reclaim something external I believed I had lost. And yet, Sam and Frodo weren’t trying to find the ring, they were trying to destroy it. Notice the cross-purposes. This same tension can animate our personal lives in key moments that are rich with real stakes and rife with opportunities to fail.

Our lower self seeks to control, to manage, to grasp and clutch. He works alone. He refuses or distorts spiritual energy and information. He only sees fear and lack, villains and competitors. Every game is zero sum: you win, I lose. He is clenched. And he often argues for short-term ethical lapses in order to promise greener pastures, to co-opt our valid long-term goals.

Yet, much like Frodo and Sam, we have another facet, a higher self that is on a different quest: one borne of promise, expansion, acceptance—of love and trust. The higher self recognizes and eschews the pull of desire, the drugification of pleasure, and the deep and powerful grip that fear and loss can exert.

One entity wants to destroy the ring and liberate the soul. The other seeks to possess the very poison that conspires to imprison the soul. Both characters think they’re right. And in a sense, they are.

When it came time to release the ring into the molten lava, Frodo could not relinquish his grip. What he had once possessed now possessed him. The ring had finally overpowered him. And that’s when Gollum, possessed of his own craven desire, lurched at the ring and knocked it and himself into the flames, destroying the ring and saving the world, however inadvertently.

As I look back on my quest, I sheepishly note my grasping and clutching. And yet, these attributes somehow served the higher self’s purpose, despite their intentions. By reaching for my ring, I destroyed it. I lessened its death grip on me. No more could I tarry with this fulsome fantasy of external completion. I had been surreptitiously served a summons to my decades-delayed individuation—stamped: attendance mandatory.

Somehow, events played out where the goals of the higher self were served by the typical small-self folly: trying to control everything and everyone. And just like in The Lord of the Rings, the ego at its worst saved the day.

I shudder to think what would have become of me had I gotten what I wanted. So lost was I in the ego’s projections. So narrow was my focus.

Even days later, the ego had concocted a scheme to stealthily override the test results, to veto the ruling handed down by the high court. I could have easily rationalized it too. It took all the power I had to relinquish this idea. Yet, as I did, a fog lifted. A deep ache in my solar plexus subsided immediately.

I had found myself at the Crossroads of Power and Force. I only barely chose power at the urging of my intuition. My conscience won out, but only because every alarm was blaring at full volume. And only because the truth had been made plain to me days before. Each test we encounter is an ethical test. Ethics are the currency of spiritual ascendance.

Sometimes we may need to subdue the ego or to co-create with the ego. On other occasions, the higher self sees the folly of a situation and thus lets the ego clutch at and lose the very entity it so deeply desires. Not to merely prevent self-immolation, but to manifest an unseen and higher aim.

Because it knows better. Witness the elegant efficiency of a higher perspective. Wrapped up in every situation is the key to freedom or bondage. Each choice promises either rejuvenation or retrenchment. There is no neutral option. Time’s a-wastin’ and the stakes are higher than they seem.

Yet we must credit ourselves—and even our egos—where and when it’s due. I passed this test and others recently. Sometimes such acknowledgements can feel like faint praise when experiencing deep loss. And yet the soul implications can be staggering, despite the lack of fanfare. The ego seeks constant validation, applause and awards. The higher self has no need to accumulate such trinkets because its nature is timeless.

Since I passed this test, I wonder at the where-and-when of the next test. What are the spoils of such victories? Perhaps an increased sense of stability, integrity and peace. Perhaps a watching universe offers subtle opportunities to build on this momentum. It may quietly beckon us to join a quest where we impart wisdom and discernment, to show a way through these battlefields of the mind so that others may be emboldened. We can be our own medicine. To demonstrate this for others can empower them to take heart and join their quests anew.

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I posted some months back about the choices we face in life in a post entitled:

We can distill these options, these stances, down into Love or Fear, Power or Force. I was discussing the many similarities between two seminal books in my library: Power VS Force and Love is Letting Go of Fear. I need to re-read these books constantly because I so easily get swayed by my fear thoughts, my attempts at control, and the folly that these states can create.

It was in this vein that I’ve been considering the personal and political implications of trying to use both power and force to get results. Sometimes it may be force masquerading as power. Perhaps we delude ourselves and others into thinking we are operating from power, from love and from assuredness, when the foundation is built on fear. When the actions are gentle in form but fearful and forceful at their core. When their design is to prevent fear’s prognostications from coming true. When we don’t know what we’ll do if it doesn’t work out.

This brings to mind my favorite heroic movies and myths. We see ourselves in our heroes as they face tribulation and search for meaning, purpose and victory over the forces of chaos and destruction. We want to take bold actions in service of our goals. And yet, the hero’s journey is as much about the character development that proceeds the grand finale as the event itself. Sometimes the hero loses and gets a bitter dose of unrequested character development.

Time after time, these heroes are asked to choose: self-service or surrender? Will they be consumed by anger, resentment and helplessness or allow themselves to empty such emotions from their container so as to be a hollow vessel for spiritual power.

So when we wonder what to do next, we need to read between the lines. I know I can become myopic: single-minded-of-purpose. I see only achieving the goal before me. But I want us to adjust the perspective lens to glean more information and perhaps, see the deeper goals that are possible. Goals that may make the spoils of the specific quest seem inconsequential or at least transient.

When pondering a specific quest today, I realized that at some level, I was being tested. Perhaps we always are. The way I behave and what I emanate are my legacy. Just watch the movie Cloud Atlas. This movie helped me consider the possibility that our actions and choices do matter, even if they may seem futile in the moment. Courage is rewarded. We rise and fall with our ethics. Our lives are full of seminal moments, battles between the forces of good and evil, within and without. Every step is a new crossroads.

We can be haunted by regrets or choose our release from bondage by our willingness to be brave, bold, and kind when no one is looking. Or we can let fear guide us into grasping, clutching at what we see as ours in a world that we merely borrow for a time. A small voice is often speaking, asking, beckoning. Will we honor what we know to be right at our core? Or will we rationalize its suppression via the ego’s machinations?

This leads to the aforementioned unholy alchemy. We may find ourselves at a station where we are being asked to relinquish that which we most cherish in order to fully become that which we could embody. It feels like a fool’s bargain. We finally see the prize. We may not have believed it was possible. And yet we are asked to hand it right back in service of spiritual purification. Our mettle is being tested. The ego’s last stand.

Power or Force. Love or Fear. It really does come down to a binary sometimes. I want to pass the test this time. And perhaps, like in certain tales, we may inevitably receive that which we relinquish. Surrender is the final test.

Let’s be careful to realize that we can choose power and love in big moments but unconsciously toggle between love and fear, power and force, in a way that creates a defacto blending of these vastly different motivations. We’re human. Fear can keep us alive. We worry, we consume media, and we interact with other fallible humans. I think we need to take the time to consider our motivations. We need to consider what the outcomes may be if we get what we want. We need to realize that to acquiesce due to bad timing or temporary misalignment is not giving up. It’s patience. We can employ faith and trust. Let’s be careful to root out the force, the rush, the impatience, the rationalizing. These are warning signs that we’ve entered the ego’s realm. The ego misleads and confounds with deft.

Good-hearted souls need not only fear domination from the Dark Side: becoming the enemy and falling down into the clutches of evil. We need to recognize the ways that darkness insinuates itself into and dilutes and spoils our legitimate goals and enterprises. The ways it cheapens and poisons our relationships. How businesses formerly aligned with quality, value, and concern for society and workers can become an abusive cabal of wealth extractors in a generation. They, like we, rise and fall due to our choices and their implications. Weed out the darkness from your enterprises of light. Do not let the unholy alchemy of power welded to force be the downfall of all you hold dear.

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In popular culture, being called a fool is an insult. Fools are not taken seriously and are often ostracized. Being foolish means to waste time on non-productive aims. In literature, fools like don Quixote are lampooned for ‘chasing at windmills.’ They misunderstand and are easily tricked.

But I argue that we dismiss the power and importance of the fool at our peril.

One can be a fool intellectually, buying into quaint notions of romanticism or stringent ethics. Fools often go against the grain, speaking up and out about government, business, when the mood of the society doesn’t reward such speech. A fool can be a culture’s bulwark against a slide into corruption or hedonism. Fools often see a problem coming before it manifests fully.

In a King’s Court in the Dark Ages in Europe, the fool was an important character. He provided entertainment for the court, often at his expense. Though he may have been tormented, he was granted the special privilege of challenging the King’s decrees and behaviors via his mockery. Since he was viewed as a simpleton, he was tacitly granted this quarter.

Mythologically and esoterically, the fool is an archetype with greater depth than our modern understanding would indicate. Often mentioned with the overlapping trickster archetype, the fool may help us see where we’ve been too serious, too certain, and too stuffy. The fool shows us where we have been blinded by our arrogance. When we reconnect with our humility and our purpose, we can look back in gratitude for our comeuppance.

The Fool is innocent, playful and childlike. Modern adults, often institutionalized by work, suppress these characteristics.

I have always wanted to write a treatise on this character and this short essay can’t do such an intriguing subject justice. My purpose today is to challenge my readers to reconsider the value and the meaning when a fool shows up in their day. Perhaps someone teases you, beguiles you. Maybe you feel like a fool for believing someone. We can chide ourselves for being a fool. We can believe in the ideals of our nation when others have capitulated to corruption. We can act with moral clarity when others are self-serving. We can honor our spiritual beliefs when challenging times come. We can feel fooled in love or friendship and feel exposed. Our instincts may be to shut down, to harden and to ‘Do as the Romans Do.’ But our foolishness is no curse. And to retreat from our child-like innocence means betraying our truth.

Perhaps greater discernment is in order, but being the fool means to try, to extend ourselves and to stay open. A fool believes and trusts and plays. A fool maintains his innocence while others choose cynicism and group think.

To be a called a fool in a culture that is sick and dying is an honor. A fool is steadfast and self-soothing. And often, a fool is doubted until his prognostications come true, and then he is lauded. If someone calls you a fool, thank them. Discernment means seeing ourselves and our true nature. Be willing to be wrong, to try and lose and to fail. This practice shows you who you are and what you want. This information is a blessing. The fool is here to help us individuate and rediscover ourselves: our meaning, our purpose, our essence and our value. The fool is the archetypal counterbalance to cynicism. Cynicism is the death of community, of spirituality, of trust, of faith and the social contract. Cynicism is a slow decline into soul-death. The fool is the antidote.

I was busy working in the sun—immersed, trimming things, and feeling the crisp aliveness of the wind on my skin. Then suddenly it dawned on me that there was a time before I loved her. (I know this is trite, but humor me for a bit) Such was the inner non-sequitur that interrupted my link with nature that day. Similarly, this love pulled me from the dazed tunnel vision I had been employing. She became so central to my experience. I instantly felt as if her presence had always been there: despite our years of mere acquaintance. ‘Past lives’ is the default response when we can’t place why someone’s presence is so important to us: when this feeling comes on like a switch that we can’t and don’t want to turn off. As if they had been missing all along. A sense of relief, of coming home. Of excitement of being truly seen on a deep level. A level of compatibility that stuns and speaks of destiny.

I was bewildered in the best way. I knew enough to immediately call both parents the morning after the first date to tell them I’d found the One. This was Not a pattern of mine. Such was the point of departure from my previous life.

I was enthralled from the first kiss and before. Everything after was a dreamy reverie of union and bliss. One night in the dark, as the moonlight shone through the blinds, I looked in her eyes and told her, our faces inches away, “I love you.” I couldn’t possibly hold it in anymore. And I’ve been in love before, but never like this. After 50 years of life, I recognized the auspiciousness and the rarity. My feet greeted the hallowed ground of this sacred space.

We were wide open and full of promise. I sensed her courage as she came to me and requited a few nights later, after a careful caucus with her guides. I felt her words waft their way to my ears as they glimmered and danced, lighting up my heart, sending little shocks of frisson through my body. Our souls were intertwined as if they had always been. I was absolutely certain this would never end. I had finally found her.

Months passed and we became each other’s person. So much joy and laughter, togetherness and union. And yet, our stage was set with chaos and intense, seismic transitions. Our lives were layered in crises when we met. I didn’t stop to think that those impediments could mar our celestial affiliation.

Then, in silence, the avalanche overtook us. A spell was cast and we were banished from the Garden. Everything stopped. The link was severed via bonesaw. We stopped sharing our lives and our days, our troubles and funny videos. No more walks and talks. No more. We just stopped one day.

I know all the reasons and yet I still don’t know why.

My love has deepened in absence, despite the shock and awe.

Maybe one day I’ll understand, in the sweet bye and bye.

I guess part of me got scared that I won’t remember these details after a while. They’ll just blur into a few peak memories. This caught me off-guard: that I’d even lose the memories. An intrusive thought, a message from within about the wrecking ball that tore down the dilapidated structures of my old urban core. The new skyline was just in the planning stage.

In another dimension, these special memories would reside in a consecrated space between these lovers: cherished as the magical, germinal moments that they were. In a photo album casually perused at a wedding reception, an anniversary party, and a funeral. But not for these two star-crossed lovers.

These two deeply sensitive souls

Perhaps too sensitive to bear the burdens and stay open and connected

Too calloused to trust one more time and for the first time

Too jaded to believe what they knew to be true

Unmet needs and complaints co-mingle and fester when left unspoken

Old wounds conspire and bedevil

Generational curses shackle the unsuspecting

Karma arrives with a thud

An ancient spell, bound and superheated in a cauldron of fate, bubbling over with consequence. All the injustices of our lives led to that promontory point. The detritus of lifetimes of sleepwalking, only to awaken to devastation. The dishonors absorbed and meted out. Our parents and our parents’ parents. Witness the totality of our ancestral lines: their losses, their heartaches and their toil. The weight of a thousand lifetimes, the yearning of a thousand souls. And yet there is the promise of the new.

I suppose the only antidote to such black magic is stronger magic. How does one lift a curse of such scope and scale? What does love ask of me in this moment? Maybe some day I’ll break that spell. Maybe those same ancestors will assist me and rejoice. Love finds a way.

This one is personal to me, but perhaps it’s also a universal response to the vagaries of life. I love how we keep excavating more of what makes humans tick. We used to say fight or flight. Then we added freeze. Later we began discussing fawning, people pleasing, as a new trauma response.

Well I think we need to add force to the list. First, let me define my term. In this case, I mean when we push, cajole, demand, stay up all night and attempt to overpower a situation in order to get the desired result. When the s**t is hitting the fan due to previous inaction.

This behavior can come up for multiple reasons. Consider someone who, under accumulated stress, freezes. He does nothing. He tends to avoid problems until they accrue. When the bills and deadlines come due, he springs into action. He forces outcomes and pushes others to comply in order to evade the undesirable natural consequences of his freezing, his typical trauma response.

So his forcing is needed and in response to his freezing. I wonder if we might just force things as a direct reaction to stressful situations. Others among us have learned how to force from family members. Whatever its genesis, forcing creates its own problems.

We aren’t at our best when we force. Others feel the strain. We can push so hard that we begin another cycle of burnout where we want to go freeze again. Our work is rushed and the results are usually poorer. Sometimes we must force things. But only because we are usually reacting to the last mess we’ve made responding to the trials of life.

I’m looking at my life with the intention of seeing where I have forced things and how that may have limited my results. How it may have pushed people away or blocked opportunities. But deeper, I wonder if forcing things shrouds our authentic self: our art, our true feelings, our talents.

Forcing is done in response to fear. Sometimes fear is a good guide, but its effects are hard to shake off. We can be consumed by fear if we are not careful to notice where and when it overstays its welcome. Noticing the urge to force outcomes might be a good litmus test, indicating we are once again under the spell of fear.

I love movie macguffins. In Ghostbusters, crossing the streams was the ultimate taboo for the characters to avoid when using their proton packs to catch ghosts. Egon was afraid doing so would cause a cellular chain reaction that could do untold harm. And yet, spoiler alert, it was the only way the boys were able to prevail against the enemy in the final climactic scene. They had to break the rules. They had to risk everything to win. They had to face their worst fears and go against conventional wisdom.

This happens again and again in our favorite movies, especially those centered on Joseph Campbell’s teachings on the Hero’s Journey. In Return of the Jedi, Luke went against Master Yoda’s protestations in order to leave and save his friends. He finally drew his guidance from within. He finally trusted himself, despite the fact that he didn’t finish his training. This is individuation. And this, like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters, was the only way for the hero and the rebellion to succeed. It was the only thing the character couldn’t do and yet the only choice that would save all he held dear.

In Richard Donner’s Superman from 1978, Superman found Lois dead in a car after an earthquake where he was too late to save her. His long-dead parents had sent along teachings about earth and how to make his way there. Chief among these rules was not meddling in the history and natural order on this new planet. But the hero chose differently. Enraged at her death, he chose love and risked his honor to do what his heart commanded. He turned back time to save his love.

Star Trek had a great concept called the Prime Directive. This overarching rule reminded Starfleet officers to not meddle in the affairs of the people and planets they encountered. But in the real situations where these explorers found themselves, they faced situations with no easy answers. When this directive was violated, the violator might be tried in a court marshal. Under extraordinary circumstances, these choices were excused. Maybe they chose to save lives of those who didn’t know the rules. Situational ethics can be tricky. But the basic theme is the same: sometimes we just know what we have to do and the rules don’t or can’t apply. Conventional wisdom doesn’t get the last word. We take the ultimate risks for what really matters. when events corner us into the clarity brought on by necessity and conviction. Sometimes we just know what we have to do.

So victory awaits beyond fear, beyond conformity. Self-assurance is a choice, a practice and often a threat to the sensibilities of internal voices and of those we esteem. Risk elicits fear, and yet these movies captivate us with moments where the stakes are so high that the characters must face their fears in order to protect and defend those in their charge. To do what must be done. So fear becomes the final gatekeeper to rites of passage that offer freedom, transcendence and power. Instead of viewing fear as a problem to be solved, we can see it as a compass, as a guide to the next stage of individuation. We can choose to not identify as the fear itself, but as the person experiencing it as a temporary condition or experience.

However we choose to address fear, we can use these movies to remind us that the answers are sometimes counter-intuitive. When our logic hits a wall we must dig deeper to find the answers. Perhaps fear is the messenger that one of these seminal moments approaches.

We intuit the need for compromise when we think of meeting in the middle. Both sides give ground and are willing to lose in order to negotiate peace. But the insight I’m experiencing isn’t encapsulated by the former frame of reference.

I had been asking for miracles in my life from the perspective of learned helplessness. Then I considered some of the situations where I was grateful for recent gifts. A common denominator was that I took a leap of faith and was rewarded in these situations. I was lonely so I asked for companionship. Soon after, I had the opportunity to adopt a senior cat. I gave her refuge and found myself accompanied by a sweet furry old lady cat. This was despite the financial concerns I had and the responsibility this added to my often hectic life. I had to be willing to see past the fear.

I found myself lamenting the loss of previous homes where I had transformed the properties into a lush jungle. So I took the time to start making cuttings and planting a few plants in areas that were barren in my new yard. Now I have a morning routine of caring for these plants and watching the wonders of nature as I walk barefoot through the rain-soaked lawn. This is just what I do. This is me being a Green Man. I don’t feel right until I establish this connection with the land.

In both situations I had to initiate. There are others too, but you get the picture. From work to health to relationships, we pay our dues to the universe and hope the universe meets us in the middle.

This realization has brought forth insights. The first is that I have to meet the universe in the middle when I beseech it for answers and relief and guidance. I have to try, to listen, to stop and be still, to sacrifice and to choose. I have to keep my side of the street clean and hope the universe recognizes my gesture and bestows upon me that which I need and seek. I have to do the work.

Similarly, I now require that others meet me in the middle if we are to create something together. I’ve been both the taker and the over-giver. Neither extreme feels right at a soul level. It may not be the exact middle either. It’s not about keeping score. We need to maintain a willingness to give, to humanize the other and to question our perception of events. The middle might be just one step past our comfort zone. All the victories, all the connections, businesses, activities, animals and memorable events I’ve experienced were because I tried. Because I stuck my neck out. Because I moved past fear. Because I wanted it more than I was afraid of looking silly.

This is how I discovered talents like writing and drumming. This is how I met lovers and discovered myself. How I found my passions and pastimes. How I made connections that mattered and lasted.

I don’t have all the answers. While I believe we can and should manifest what we want, sometimes the universe has other ideas. We must factor this into the equation. We may have a spark of divinity within us, but we still live in a mysterious world. We don’t know why we’re here or what comes next.

I am willing to meet the unfathomable halfway and see what happens.