Molly was a good dog and as you can see, well loved. We didn’t expect her to make it through the night and the kids were saying goodbye. Although this was several years ago, I’ve been thinking about pain today. I made the mistake of watching the video on the news of the eight teenagers that beat up a girl and video taped it. I couldn’t finish it. How can people be so cruel? This type of things weighs me down. In addition, two people I care about are in a lot of emotional pain right now and I hurt for both of them. At least that type doesn’t weigh me down like the other example. Pain caused by love hurts but pain caused by cruelty is toxic.

I grew up with the teaching that we live in the “lone and dreary world.” Religion often teaches that this life is the test and the good stuff comes later if you pass. A core Buddhist philosophy is that “life is suffering.” Birth is suffering, death leaves a wake of pain, and in between is more sorrow than sometimes seams bearable. But what would I be without pain? My pain has carved and forged me into the person I am today and for the most part, I like who I am. I wouldn’t trade my pain. But the thought of future pain scares me and sometimes I hold myself back because I’m afraid of what is around the next corner.

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Curtis has been having a hard time with a kid at school. He’s tried to avoid him for the last few weeks because of teasing, name calling, and threats. To Curti’s credit, he’s ignored most of it. So I was pretty surprised when I got a call yesterday that Curtis had to go see the principal because he’d been in a fight and the other parents want to press charges.

I’ve been there and it’s no fun to be bullied. I used to try and make friends with my bullies…sometimes it even worked. One of my worst bullies in 4th grade ended up being one of my good friends through High School. In 9th grade (I was still short and an easy target), I gave a kid that used to push me around a Snickers bar. He went from bullying me to protecting me. We never talked and weren’t really friends, but if he was walking by and somebody was bothering me he’d put an instant stop to it. I felt like I had a personal bodyguard, it was great! But it didn’t always work. Once while trying to befriend one, he took a quick swing and hit me in the jaw. There was a lot of blood and my face was swollen for weeks. Twice I got hit in the face and never fought back. I go back and forth as to which is better. Sometimes I’m glad I didn’t, other times I wish I would have…

So I can’t blame Curtis. The other day on the way home the harassment was upped a notch and the other kid said he was going to beat Curtis up when they got off the bus. Curtis said he tried to hurry home but the kid came after him and threw down his backpack. There were other boys around egging them on, which made it worse, so when the kid came in close Curtis hit him in the face. The kid jumped on him and they were wrestling on the ground when the kid’s mom came and put a stop to it all.

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When I was 19, I was asked to talk to two 14 year old boys waiting for their murder trial in a South African prison. I was new to South Africa and my Afrikaans was weak, so I didn’t realize what I had agreed to do until the policeman started leading me through electric fences, heavy metal doors, and long cement walled hallways. I had been a Mormon missionary in Welkom, South Africa for only a few weeks; new to the country, new to the language, and new to being away from home. Bruno Gerber, the missionary I was teamed with, was speaking Afrikaans to the officer and I only understood a tenth of what was said.

We reached a large cement door that looked more like it was made for a bank vault than a prison cell. Bruno turned to me and said, “Andrew is Afrikaans, so I’ll talk to him. You talk to Sorrow, he’s English.”

The door creaked, light appeared through the cracks of the door, and my heart raced. What would I say to this killer that murdered a policeman. I imagined a hardened criminal inside, wearing a leather vest with a tattoo of a skull on his shoulder. I was scared and confused as to why Bruno had agreed to such nonsense.

I walked in the room and was shocked. Two clean cut teenage boys were sitting on the floor surrounded by comic books. They looked at the guard and readily nodded when he told them they needed to talk to us. Then the guard left. I walked over and sat by Sorrow. His eyes were not full of anger and hostility as I’d imagined. They were the eyes of a scared boy, looking for help.

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I’ve been burned before, we all have. And I can even think of people that I have wronged. I look back on these my actions and don’t feel I was purposely deceiving, but then, the people who have wronged me don’t feel that way either. That bothers me. Maybe I’m just justifying my mistakes.

Years ago I owned a small business and hired a seemingly well-balanced guy as my office manager. Over the months, I began to regard him as a friend. When my bank account started running surprisingly low, I audited the books and found he had been embezzling from me. A discovery that packed both an emotional and financial sting. For a month my friend had been smiling to my face and taking money from behind my back. When the cops arrested him he claimed he had done nothing wrong and that he had intended to pay the money back.

At another job, several high valued items of inventory turn up missing (quarter of a million bucks worth). The manager of that department reported to me and I worked with him to find out what happened. My boss didn’t trust him at all and suggested he was a thief, but I defended him. I wanted to trust him. As the investigation heated up, he finally came into my office one morning and confessed to taking all of it. I was stunned. Again, I was an idiot, right? Gullible and trusting when I shouldn’t have…I felt like a putz.

I have more examples, and I won’t even go into relationship betrayals. But believe me when I say I carry some deep wounds there. But in terms of trust, I not only carry wounds from the people who let me down, I have wounds from the regrets I have for people that didn’t get the proper treatment from me. I’m determined not to make the same mistakes in the future.

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I stumbled across this book a couple years ago before my wife and I were married. A friend had left it at her apartment and I started thumbing through it and couldn’t put it down. I left it on the coffee table and went home with the intent of finding it at the library. When her friend left to go home to New Zealand, she left it with Sandi to give it to me. I finished the book within a few days.

I’ve never understood how my dad could plug away at the same job, year after year after decade. He never complained, in fact, he seemed to enjoy it. It’s never been like that for me. I could digress into an entire disposition about my struggles with work. Maybe it’s my depressive nature, my existentialistic core, or maybe I’m just spoiled rotten and don’t know how to buckle down and work. I get bored with jobs. I like new challenges and I like to be doing things that actually feel meaningful. When those things fall into place I dig in with a passion that might be better described as an addiction. But I’m picky as to what “meaningful” means.

I’ve often felt out of place in the modern world, like I just don’t fit. Don’t get me wrong, I have good jobs and I get good reviews from my employers. I just don’t feel happy about it. I feel like I’m wasting time and spending most of my time doing stuff that doesn’t matter at all. I often wonder if I missed my calling in life…my passions are writing and photography but I got a Masters in Accounting and computers. I can make good money doing those things so I don’t bail and pursue what I love. I keep telling myself some day I’ll do it. When take the time to write or take pictures I enjoy myself so much I feel depressed that I can’t do them all day long. That’s me, too often seeing the storm instead of the rainbow.

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I normally don’t play games like this, but as I was laying in bed I had some good ideas. I’ll answer my mom’s challenge to write about 5 things I didn’t expect to happen in my life. Rather than writing about what I expected at age 25, I’m going younger. Five things I didn’t expect in my life when I was growing up. They are negative, I’ll warn you now. But I had high expectations as a kid. The good news is that I’m getting used to being mediocre.

1. That I’d get divorced

I never imagined this one. As a child, there was no divorce in my family…extended family included (and my parents come from huge families). Later as a teenager there were two, but percentage-wise, it’s a tiny proportion. It’s just something that wasn’t considered. Families stayed together. Parents worked on things and stuck it out. It was hard to know which to rate first, this one or number two (below), but I decided this one has shaken up my world than anything else. I still often feel disoriented, like I failed in other peoples eyes, and sometimes like I’m standing out in the middle of a desert with no idea where I am and where to go. Up until the moment Kim said the words "I want a divorce and I’ve already seen an attorney," I didn’t expect it. There were clues, I knew things weren’t going good, but I never expected she wanted to actually end it. It sucked. The next three months were the worst of my life, but then ushered me into some of the best. Looking back it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Believe me, I never imagined I’d say those words.

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Getting our first microwave oven was a big deal for me. I remember being completely amazed that I could melt some cheese on a piece of bread in seconds. It changed my life! I also remember my dad stepping in with some fatherly advice, once, when I pushed the button to open the door while it was still cooking.
“Don’t open it until it shuts down. It’s part of the cooking process.”

What he really said or really meant I can’t be sure of. It was a long time ago. I know I love my dad and he gave me a ton of good advice. But I also know some of the advice probably wasn’t meant to stick with me throughout my entire life. Like the voice I hear in my head nearly every time I use a microwave, especially if I go to stop it before the counter has reached zero and the beep has sounded.

“Don’t open it until it shuts down. It’s part of the cooking process.”

I wonder what voices my own kids will hear as they grow older. I wonder what voices will speak to them so deeply they won’t even consciously hear them. It’s crazy to think that such an obscure indirect remark would remain with me throughout my entire life and forever impact my interaction with microwave ovens. Yet sentences that constantly replay all our heads, whether hidden beneath layers of unconscious fear or sitting at the surface, shape and define us. Read the rest of this entry »

Summary

I decided to post an older entry…from last year on Sept 11th. I may go through my journal and pull out a few of the follow-up entries. This is the raw, unedited, free-flowing text from my journal…

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Today I laid in bed for a while feeling depressed. Feeling like there was no meaning in life. Thinking about work, jobs, happiness… Then I came downstairs and fired up my journal. At the same time I tried to get on CNN.com but couldn’t….so I went to MSNBC.com and a horrific image filled the screen. “A Day of Terror” with a picture of the trade center towers on fire. I ran to the TV yelling upstairs that something big had happened. The TV came on and the live video was even more shocking. Shots of New York filled with smoke. One of the towers already fallen, the other on fire. I watched the live video as the 2nd tower crumbled to the ground. I stared in shock, my hands over my mouth and nose, my eyes in a blank wide stare. Beyond words. Beyond feelings. Beyond anything…like a nightmare. Surreal. I can’t even figure out myself how I felt let alone try to describe it. Watching that tower fall. This can’t be happeneing. This can’t be real. This doesn’t happen in the US. Something of this magnitude can’t happen.

Then to watch the following new reports. Seeing earlier video of a hijacked plane ramming the tower. Seeing the entire city of New York covered in smoke and dust. An act of war. How will this event today change my life? I mean, even the external factors. The effect on the economy, business, the loss of resources both people and other. The effect of air travel. Future acts of terrorism.

Now I feel stupid for feeling depressed this morning. My God. People are dying and I’m feeling sorry for myself. People are dying and I’m worried about making more money. People are dying and I’m worried about finding more happiness.

I found myself so angry. Wow, I felt ready to go to war. To kill. To get revenge for this act. Bomb the hell out of those countries. Wipe Iraq off the map. That was my initial feeling. Then I felt intense sadness. Tears for the anger and violence in the world. Why? Why is there so much hatred? Why do people do this? Why do we fight and kill each other? Why? Can’t we resolve this. Can’t we stop the killing and say…hey world, lets work this out. We bomb the hell out of places and it comes back to us. The more we bomb, the more it comes back to us. This can’t be the only way to resolve these issues.

I’m shocked. I’m in a strange place. There is a part of this I hate to look at. The part of it that I like in a twisted and strange way. I mean, I was thinking a while ago I wanted something “exciting” to happen. Something to stir up the world a bit. I didn’t really though. I mean, it’s like the action movies we watch. The horror, the war…we like that shit. People like it. Why? There is a part of me that loves to watch the coverage, that is glued to the TV, that soaks in the horror and terror. Why? What is it all about? Even at that, I don’t want it. It’s certainly not worth it for the entertainment, by any means at all. I don’t understand this and why I feel this way. I don’t think I’m alone though either. Maybe it gives people an excuse to feel and express emotion.