Reflections

Well, it has indeed been a while.

Almost every morning for the last month and a half, I've been making my pilgrimages. But when being in your happy place doesn't feel happy, and walking in sacred spaces doesn't feel sacred, you know something is up. Things that once brought pleasure and joy are only echoes. I go to "church" to soak in the healing and beauty of nature and know I should feel something but no emotions bubble up. I feel empty. I'm spent.

I imagine this is a bit how Frodo Baggins felt when he returned home after destroying the ring. I remember a line from the books that went something along the lines of "how do you pick up the threads of an old life?"

As usual, I feel like I'm being a bit dramatic. I haven't been on an epic journey to save the world.

Well, not exactly.

It may not have looked epic to the outside world, but inside, to me, it was.

I spent a month fighting the good fight. Working with others who were also fighting the good fight with the goal of a brighter future for everyone. The goal of fighting the rising darkness in the world. And in the process learning so much about myself and what I'm capable of.

If you know me at all, my attempts to cloak my meaning in this language won't disguise in any way what I'm actually talking about. That's fine. I stand by my words.

We are living in a dark age in so many ways. An age where people are more concerned with upholding the systems we have created and our ideologies than we are in humanity itself. Where the lives of our children are secondary to some elusive promise of a strong economy. Where peoples' fears of change are running away with them and they are electing representatives that know how best to capitalize on that fear to their own ends. Where the people that are supposed to be leading us forward to a bright future are trying desperately to hold onto a past that doesn't exist any longer.

A past where men were men, and women were women and everyone knew their place. Where there was order, but where certain people benefited from that order by no particular virtue, just the luck of being born a certain way. Those with that benefit have become so accustomed to it that they don't really see that it's just been rigged in their favour and the threat of losing that favour is so unthinkable that it results in a sometimes violent backlash.

That's not the future I envision. The future I envision has all voices at the table and is a world where we accept and acknowledge our differences as a strength. Where the crumbling of the old order isn't feared, but is embraced as a natural progression of our humanity as we move towards a future where all are loved, cared for, accepted, and can live out our true natures without fear.

So "losing" has many layers of meaning for me. I'm not just grieving losing my job and what that means for me and my family, but also nursing a deep disappointment in my fellow humans. To me, the choice was made to give in to fear and to try and recapture the past instead of to be courageous and move forward.

The only emotion that feels accessible is anger. But I know that it's really only a mask for a deep sadness.

I've spent the last six weeks or so feeling a bit like a stranger in my own life. Everything is the same and yet I feel so different - it's incongruous. I guess that's what grief is like though. It's a process. It's not a "getting over", it's a getting used to. It's reintegrating. It's picking up the new threads and trying to figure out how to integrate and weave them into the fabric of your life.

You see, the difference between Frodo and me is that Frodo was successful in his quest. I wasn't. I gave everything I could to it, and it wasn't enough. The opposing forces of darkness were too strong. This time.