From my perspective, it seems as though secrecy has become somewhat of a sociopolitical norm. So much so that people are afraid to be transparent with their neighbors for fear of reprisal, judgment, and ridicule to name a few. However, it is understandable that this has happened because on the same token of sociopolitical norms it has become 'ok' to cast unwarranted judgment on others. This norm has taken root in the fertile grounds of human interaction to the extent that we have often developed preconceived notions about certain people and/or groups of people. These predetermined notions have infiltrated the courses of our interactions so deep that it has become common place for these ideas to dominate our thought processes when dealing with others.
Instead of recognizing the uniqueness that each individual shines forth, it has become socially acceptable to categorize, fragment, and separate others based our social constructs that have nothing to with who the person is. Instead, our prejudgments have every thing to do with the fixed ideas that we have agreed to. The major fault does not lie with having preconceived notions; rather, the notions that have been developed presuppose that those notions are fundamentally sound. As is often the case, the judgments we hold to about others often melt away when we 'walk a mile in the other person's shoes'.
In a world where violence has become the socially constructed answer to resolving conflict with our neighbors, we must revamp our understanding of the persona's we see as 'I' if we hope to resolve anything in the social and political arena.
Are we not here to grow as people and learn from what life offers no matter what it is or where it comes from? Or, are we so afraid of what people might think about us that we stay hidden in our comfortable cocoon safe, secure, and hidden away from judgment that may in fact never come?
My belief is that if we want to change societal norms to match higher principles or ideals, such as honesty, we must maintain a system that proliferate those ideals. If we can agree that being open and transparent along with being honest is also relevant, we must maintain an open and transparent stance. Transparency is the notion that nothing is hidden, there are no secrets; in other words, there is nothing in the way of seeing through to the truth.
In order to establish and/or maintain a movement of honesty and transparency throughout society I felt it was time that I offer a little about the development of my persona as it stands today. In other words, I'm going to tell you a little about my past and the lessons that I have learned along the way. In doing so, I hope that you will gain a deeper understanding about who I am and why I do the things I do.
My Youth
For the most part my early years were what I would consider 'normal' for a kid growing up in the Midwest. Then one fateful day changed all that. It was autumn, I was six and in first grade. That morning was nothing out of the ordinary for that time of year. A dense fog was lurking which made seeing anything a bit troublesome. My older brothers had already went to school, all except my brother just older than me. He and I waited for our dad so he could take us to school on his way to work.
We took our normal route, except the events that unfolded that day were anything but normal and would change our lives forever. About halfway through the trip to school we pulled up to a relatively quiet highway. We stopped checked for cars, as best we could, and proceeded to move on towards school. However, what happened next not only prevented us from reaching school that day, but it would also put us in the hospital for the next couple months.
As we crept out into the intersection another car was speeding down the highway at what investigators gathered to be 70-75 mph. Unbeknownst to us we pulled out just in time for the car to hit us and launch our truck into the air and throw us out, scattering us with the strewn truck parts.
From what I remember I was the first to wake up, there was no ambulance, no distinct sounds, just the person who hit us telling me she was going for help, and my dad and brother laying motionless. Everybody has always said that it had to be quite traumatic to see that scenario at such a young age, but from what I gather from my memories it seemed as though everything was just as it should be, almost as if it was supposed to happen. Then I passed out and woke up with rescue workers in my face, cutting my pants off, telling me to be still; from what I remember, this is when the trauma became pronounced.
For the next couple of months I lay in the hospital with a broken femur, fractured forearm and left orbital socket. My dad was a little worse off; he severed part of his spinal cord and remains partially paralyzed to this day. My brother broke some ribs and his collar bone and was out of the hospital in relatively no time at all.
For the most part, what happened is nothing more than what a lot of other people experience. In fact I'm sure there are a lot of people who experience even more traumatic situations than that. However, that day set the stage for the rest of my life and my family's life.
From that day forward life progressed according to the conditions we were afforded. My mom became the "bread winner" for the most part, as well as performing the rest of her motherly duties. Honestly, I still don't know how she made it through what she did. Other than my dad, the impact of life's seeming severity impacted my mother the most. Not only did she have cope with a dramatic change of life, but she also had to be the pillar of strength for the family, be a mom, and provide for and shape the lives of six boys.
Being the youngest of the lot I was unanimously left to care for my dad for the most part. Although he can still somewhat walk, he has a hard time doing the things that we often take for granted; such as getting dressed, standing up, fixing something to eat etc. Although the whole family helped out and still does, most of the care fell on my mother and I.
Needless to say money problems mounted and we had to scrape to get by, which I'm sure some of you are familiar with. At some points we lived off tuna and bagels for weeks at a time, and the only reason we had bagels is because we got them for free from a friend of my mother's employer.
Eventually, my brothers started graduating from high school to go off to college, the Army, and build their own lives. Till one day it was just us two youngest, and my mom and dad.
Teenage Years
At that time I was around 13 years old and was considered by some of my teachers to be troubled. I caused fights, got suspended, cursed out my parents, typical teenage behavior; at least that's what I thought. School was a relatively easy, never really had to study that hard, but then again, I got c's and b's.
Being that I was the youngest and all my brothers played sports in high school I was indoctrinated into the system. So, sports became my outlet for life's frustrations. Playing sports allowed me to be someone who I wasn't otherwise. It gave me something to focus on and forget about being confused, disturbed, afraid, and all together angry.
Anger filled most of my life and fear filled the rest. Most people say it stems from going through what I did when I was in the accident. There were brief moments when happiness came in, but they were few and far between. For the most part I was that kid who played as if nothing was wrong, as I'm sure most do, kept everything bottled up, never talked to anyone about it, and never did anything to let it out, except play sports. Even then it wasn't enough to make the pain go away.
I think it's a pretty safe assumption that most people have something about themselves that they are afraid of, or otherwise cautious about. Either they did something at one point in their life where they witnessed the darkness that can overcome us all, or they have gotten glimpses through envious wishes, or something relatively similar. When I was fourteen I witnessed just how far I could go if I allowed myself to. To get to the point, I allowed myself to commit sexual indecency with someone who was younger than me and didn't know what they were actually doing. Looking back on it, what scared me the most was the sense of not having control over what I was doing. Fortunately, that was the only time that ever happened.
For the most part, I forgot completely about it, I guess you could say I repressed the memory until about 8 years later. Although I forgot it and never really considered my actions, it did have an effect on my life.
High school is high school, I guess you could say it's a time of self discovery. Going to a smaller high school allowed me the opportunity to go out for three sports, do theatre, and know everybody in high school. There were the ups ad the downs, the highs and the lows, and in between, at least for me, was a pervading sense of indifference and apathy. I was only concerned with me, although I still had to care for my dad; however, it became routine and it was something I began to resent until later down the road when I began to see it as a blessing.
About a week before going into my sophomore year a classmate of mine committed suicide. Being in a class with only 13 classmates we all took it rather hard, especially for my cousin and I who had another close cousin commit suicide when we were about 9. I took my first drink that year when I was fifteen and became quite the alcoholic afterwards. Except for football season when I didn't drink anything, I was usually drunk to some degree on the weekends, and if I couldn't find alcohol, it was rather upsetting.
After hearing the news that my classmate killed himself I became rather reclusive in the sense that I guarded my true feelings with a hard exterior. Life progressed, although at times I wished it would just end.
My junior year came and went, and the last day of my junior year I finally lost my virginity; which is all fine and good except I didn't really think of the consequences. To make a long story short, I had sex in my high school and got found out after the fact. Somehow the administration found out, confronted us and for some reason we admitted to it, call it guilty conscience I guess. Being that it was a Catholic high school they frowned upon that sort of thing, especially in their high school.
I would have been expelled because I wasn't the most upstanding student, remember when I said I caused fights, got suspended etc, except my superintendent stuck his neck out for me. He was our parishioner back when we were in the accident and I guess you could say he had a soft spot for my family and me. When I was handed the sentence for my actions, I resented the guy for about 4 years until I realized just how lucky I was to have him as a mentor. I had to do 50 hours of anger management counseling, which is all fine and good except at the time 'I didn't need it', at least that's what I thought; I had 150 hours community service, and I was suspended for the first three football games my senior year. To some that last condition may not seem all that bad except when you take into consideration that sports, football especially, was my life line. It gave me a reason to even go to school, and that year was supposed to be the year I shined so I could get a college scholarship.
In retrospect, that whole situation taught me a major lesson about seemingly insignificant actions and not considering the consequences. Life went on though, I graduated, decided to go play college football and a small university. To help pay for school I also joined the Army Reserves that summer.
College and Beyond
I went for the first semester and played football like I planned. The second semester was spent at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO. learning how to be a soldier. The Army taught me a lot of things, one of which is self-belief. In other words, believing in yourself that you can do more than what you think you can. I came back from that and tried to get back into the swing of things; took a summer class so I would be eligible to play football. However, I didn't go to school that fall semester for some still unknown reason, call it laziness I guess. The next couple years I was in and out of school; I transferred twice, and ended up at a school I swore I would never go to playing football for a team I told myself I would never play for.
Anyway, during these last couple years I spent most of the time on my own, thinking, wondering, and self searching. Along the way I started to find myself in bits and pieces. Started reading philosophy, took some drugs, sold some drugs, almost got sent to Iraq three times, hated the army, liked the army, literally prostituted myself (interestingly, I never really liked sex, yeah it was exhilarating, but there was something about it that disgusted me. Later on down the road when I remembered what I had done as a teenager, I realized that I wasn't allowing myself to truly experience the power of 'making love' because I resented myself for what I did). Funny thing is, at the same time I was selling drugs and being a prostitute, I was also was selected as soldier of the year for the 95th div. (for those of you who don't know, a soldier of the year is considered to hold themselves to higher standards of excellence, and for the most part I actually believed I did); if my actions at the time do not exemplify hypocrisy, I don't know what does. Then I started to hate the army again, eventually I realized that all these things that I hated doing, which was basically everything, was because I really hated myself and didn't want to accept the fact.
Throughout those 4 or so years, from the time I graduated till about a year and a half ago I considered suicide almost daily, and several times it was all I could do to not do it. Then one day I was driving down the highway, seriously considered turning into oncoming traffic and then I realized something, 'what's the point'. I thought to myself 'I could either turn in now and never really know who I am, or start believing in myself and get my life straightened out.' Fortunately, I chose the latter.
During my wanders through several different schools the most interesting class I ever took was on Transpersonal Psychology. There for about two years prior to that class I considered myself an atheist although I was raised in a devout catholic setting. I didn't know what God was, if there was one, and didn't really care. However, that class introduced me to a whole new revelation about what life is really all about. I also learned what meditation is and the power of prayer. From my readings in philosophy I learned what constitutes thinking processes, how the mind works, and among other things, how to just BE. Over the next two years or so I applied all that to my life and basically became my own 'guinea pig'. In the process I dedicated my life to the higher principles, the highest of which is unconditional love. I soon realized that after I decided to forgive myself for everything I did, everything that happened to me, and ask for forgiveness, life became happier. I started to realize what self-acceptance really means and stopped trying to fight life; instead, I let life be my teacher.
Its funny how when I look back at my life I spent all that time trying to figure out who I was, when all I had to do was stop and accept myself for who I was. I was looking to the world as juxtaposition for the definition of who I was. When I realized that the world 'out there' is not there to define anything; rather, it is there as a teacher to show me what it is that I must work on to be of the best service I can be.
It is not that the world does anything to us; it is our agreements about what we perceive that tells us what we are allowing to happen. If we hope to change anything about what we perceive 'out there' we must first change what we agree to 'in here'. If we believe that we can't, then we can't. However, if we believe that we can, then there is no limit to what we can create for ourselves.
I have found that it all starts with a brutal honesty towards self, just as I would not accept the fact that I hated who I was, I could not get over it until I came face to face with how I saw myself to be. However, when I accepted the fact that I made mistakes and that those mistakes taught me some of the greatest lessons, I let go of the hate I harbored for myself.
I would be lying to say that those thoughts don't find their way in every once in a while, however, I now know that when they do find their way in I'm not right with myself. In other words, I have become out of balance, let my self-acceptance hinge on certain conditions, and let fear back in to dominate and control my actions. Fear should not control us, we are meant to control ourselves. If we fear something it is because there is usually a lesson to be learned, or a service of the highest kind to be administered in doing what we fear to do. Fear should not keep us from doing the things that our heart screams for us to do.
I offer my past as an example to show that no matter what we do or where we have been, we can still find the light that shines forth to all would search it out. It is there, ever present, ever luminous, calling us home through the dense fog. Fear not that you will never find it, for in that fear is the seed of obscurity and confusion. Fear no that you will never truly know who you are, for in that fear is darkness that veils you from who you truly are. When you do find the light, let it shine bright for all to see. Worry not what others will think about you or how they will judge; instead, be concerned with being in a supreme state of balance with self and from that all disharmonies will fade into the glorious color that shines forth from your soul.
We must come to terms with all that we have done and all that we perceive ourselves to be, for in doing so we come to know that which we are.
OneLuv
Michael