Our Thirty Seconds is a journey on which we are both passenger and pilot. We make hopeful choices every moment of every day, some more noteworthy than others. Ultimately these choices fill our Thirty Seconds...

[This is a very rough draft of the final chapter of my book-in-progress called, "This Trip..."  (Working Title.)  In keeping with my non-conformist approach I give you the conclusion first.]

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my life here on earth is going to be even better than it was before.  I say this with unequal parts of certainty and wishful thinking…but could there be a better way to think about the future?

As long as the Laura’s and Jenny’s and Kim’s of the world continue to touch individual people in their individual ways…we are all going to be better than OK.

I no longer believe life is meant to be hard.  Not just because of this trip to Washington Island…but from the larger, broader trip that is my life.

There is a common metaphor that compares life to the ups and downs of a roller coaster.  I think life is way more than a roller coaster ride.  I think it’s an entire amusement park that includes roller coasters…but also haunted houses…freak shows…fun houses…dog and pony shows and of course those spooky clowns.

The past few years hit me pretty hard and I felt like I was forced into some cheap, dirty carnival that I didn’t buy a ticket for.  I felt like I was at the mercy of the “Carnies” and no matter what I did…it didn’t matter.  Life sucked and it was something to be gotten through instead of lived.  That is one sorry-ass existence.

The Greatest Show on Earth

After all this time…from birth to now…after falling in love…and marrying…buying that first house…having children…making friends and losing them…building a business…watching your wife wither away and die…and after a solitary trip to an island…I’m starting to see that I created my carnival.

I see my amusement park for what it is:  something I built and continue create through my thoughts, decisions, actions and reactions.  There are times when I wish this trip would end so I could leave my amusement park…but even saying that shows me how little I mean it.  The more I evolve and learn and see what’s possible…the more I can see that this life…this trip…is the greatest show on earth.

The End/Beginning

Thanks for checking out my carnival.  I hope that somehow what I discovered helps you enjoy your amusement park a little bit more.  I really do.

[Very short because I promise I continue to write, "This Trip..." but sometimes I just need to do a quick blog post.]

I noticed something yet again:  I’m more of an observer of this life…than a creator of this life.  (Ironic that I observed that, isn’t it?)

I’ve been reacting to events…instead of consciously taking action to direct them.

I’ve been waiting for life to right itself so I can be happy…instead of recognizing all that I am and what I have…and being happy because of it.

I have more control over my life than I know…because my life exists mostly in my head.  The way I interpret things…the way I react…the way I move forward or stay in one place…my fear of not living up to who I think I am…or who you think I am.

I guess the point is I’ve let so much outside stuff control my inside stuff that I feel/felt like a victim.  I am not a victim…unless I continue to believe that I am.  See?  It’s mostly in my head.

I didn’t grieve.  I spent this past year avoiding sadness…attending to stuff and people instead.  I wrote a bunch…formed new friendships…lost others…found my heart and lost it again.  I thought I discovered the fast track through grieving (I hate that word) but I found out I’m not special at all.  I’m on my knees again…feeling stupid and wrecked.  Grief wins…as it probably should.  (For a little while at least.)

I am self-absorbed but feel it’s the right thing to do now.  (You might think that’s all I’ve ever been…but I barely scratched the surface.)  I tried to bury my emotional intensity along with Laura’s ashes.  She didn’t like drama and neither do I but I’m sorry…for me…this is dramatic stuff.

The fuse of a very large cannon was lit last year when Laura died.  I was in such a hurry to put the past few years behind me that I stuck my head inside that cannon…determined to block out the steady hiss of her loss.  The fuse burned down a few days ago and it blew my head clean off.

A Possible Lesson:

Pain is clearly a part of life albeit the suckiest part.  The more it hurts the more I try to avoid it…I don’t think I’m different from most people in that respect.  I’m also pretty sure that plunging headlong into it those dark places might be the most responsible course of action when they show up.

People still tell me I’m brave.  No.  I haven’t been brave in this part of my life.  I was the opposite.  I’m here now…standing in front of a big dark cloud…but as odd as it sounds I’m kind of looking forward to walking into the saddest part of my life thus far.

I’m going on faith that when I come out on the other side I will no longer be dismantled…but put together.  It’s time, huh?  OK…let’s do this thing. (Gulp)

Please indulge me for a little while.  So much of what I write and share is self-indulgent BS that ends with some sort of lesson.  I don’t think this will be one of them.  I can’t put it any simpler than to say that I miss Laura more today than at any other time since she died on August 15th of last year.

I waved off the year mark like it was for other people and I’m surprised by the depth of my feelings as it approaches.  I thought I was better than this…stronger than this…but now I see that I have been ignoring the most obvious fact since she died:  I miss her.

I found an email that she sent me several months before she died and it set off a series of emotions…tumbling like dominoes…first warmth…then sadness…then anger…helplessness…begging…and finally submission to the fact that I will never see her again.

The email was a list of reasons why she fell in love with me.  It was all about ME…my faults…my gifts…the things that make me who I am.  I forgot so many of them over this past year and here I was…staring at me through the eyes of my deceased wife.  It killed me…and for the first time since she died…I lost it.  Completely.  I felt proud and humbled at the same time.  All I wanted to do was talk to her just one more time…and have her answer…just one more time.  It’s not going to happen and I miss her all the more because of it.

Maybe there is a lesson…

If you are married and reading this do something for me.  Write a little note to your spouse and tell him or her why you fell in love with them.  Feel that connection in spite of the busyness of your life.  Feel it BECAUSE of the busyness of your life.  There is nothing better in this world than having someone to go through time with.  Believe me…I know.

This promises to be an unsettling few days as we lead up to the actual year mark.  I’m lost again because I haven’t fully played out the character of grieving widower.  I honestly believed I could improvise my way through it but the Universe doesn’t play that way.  I guess I don’t have any choice but to see where it takes me and know that it will create an even better me.  So…play on you bastard…play on.

To dwell on things that depress or anger us does not help in overcoming them. One must knock them down alone.~Albert Einstein

[Thank you Laura for showing me who and what I really am.  Did I have to learn it in such a hard way?]

This is all happening at once isn’t it?  This life we have here on earth isn’t unfolding…it’s all happening in a single moment.

I’ll try to explain what I mean but may not pull it off.  I was looking at my gut…which I don’t like very much.  It’s not completely out of hand but a bit outside the lines of the skinny rock star look I like.  (Was that just a tad intimate for something like this?  I may be a bit too open.  Nah!)

I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, “I’m going to get rid of this little spare tire.”  Almost instantly I started thinking about something I read in The Complete Conversations with God …one of my favorite books.  This is a very loose translation of one of the 1,000’s of points that were made in the book…but basically it boils down to the idea that if we want something we must already believe that we have it and we will have it.

When I heard myself think “I’m going to get rid of my gut,” I understood almost immediately what “God” was saying.  If I am “going” to do or have something I’ll never get there.  That implies something that is in the future… which never comes.  We never reach that future point because the future…like the past…exists only in our brains.  What’s happening now is all there ever really is.  (Eckhardt Tolle fans know all about this.)

I used to have a perfectly flat stomach…which is a memory from the past.  I’m going to have a flat stomach again…a vision of the future.  Right now I’m in between those two places which is reality…or so we think.

Is a memory any less real because we can’t reach out and touch it?  Isn’t a hope or dream the beginning of  a new NOW?  Don’t all the individual moments of our lives add up to little more than a blink?  Push all that stuff together and here we are…in this spot…so it’s all happening at once.

My flat…insanely chiseled belly is already here because this moment is always happening.  (OK…insanely chiseled may be a stretch and just saying that means it won’t be.  I’m good with that.)

I have another example that I hope clears things up for both of us.

The Year of Living Aimlessly

It was a year ago today that I took Laura to the hospital for the last time.  She left our house feeling weak and tired…able to speak just a few sentences by sheer will power.  2 days later I brought her back home.  She said a few choppy words on our way out of the hospital which was the last time I would hear her voice.  That was a year ago but it might as well have been a sentence ago.

I will never see her again except in my head.  She will never say something new to me…or make me laugh…or angry…or less fearful.  It’s a been a whole f-ing year and I can still hear her last words…our last playful moment together…as clear and real as if it was happening now.  And for those brief moments…when I let myself remember…it IS happening now…and it will always be that way.

I’m starting to view life as one singular moment and less of a journey.  A journey has a beginning, middle, and end all made up of individual moments along the way.  But who’s to say when one moment ends and another moment begins?  (I know…we do…but how many times have you changed your mind about that?)  It’s all lumped together I think.  Everything is happening now…all at once…because we remember and hope in one single moment which is THIS one.  That’s what is real in my book.

I guess that’s as close as I can come to trying to explain what I mean.