Just The Way She Is

I’ve started listening to this song by Bruno Mars called “Just The Way You Are” and I’ve noticed that my friends don’t like it because 1)it’s horribly sappy 2)It’s patronizing to women.

I can’t disagree with the sappy description, it is sappy. But isn’t ‘sappy’ a requirement for a love song? I like the silly song; it doesn’t make me think too hard. When I hear the song, its upbeat tune shakes up the grey doldrums of my day. The chorus is:

 “When I see your face, there’s not a thing that I would change, cuz you’re amazing, just the way you are. And when you smile, the whole world stops and stares for a while, cuz girl you’re amazing just the way you are!”

Now the patronizing accusation is based on someone saying, that he’s singing about a very insecure woman and by extension, all women. I can’t assume to know what the songwriter was thinking when he wrote the song. I really don’t care; this is a cute little ditty that by next year this time I will have forgotten.

I like the chorus, because I know of one particular woman who fits the description of being beautiful with a smile that can stop the world turning on its axis (that’s a whole other story). But the more I thought about it, I can’t really agree that it’s a patronizing song, I over analyzed and came up with this hypothesis.

We live in a culture where young teen girls are considering plastic surgery to enhance their features, but to what end? Is every teenage girl going to be a movie star? Do they all need to look like one? Why? Are th

ey doing it with the hopes that boys will like them more or because they need to like themselves more?

When considered under that premise, can’t we just enjoy a boy telling a girl that he thinks she perfect just the way she is?

Birth

Into this world we are born, a wailing ball of detritus. We scream our fury; instinctively we know the fight before us. Do we challenge the fates then, with our wrinkly balled little fists? Or do we scream in frustration, only knowing hope as we learn the ropes of despair? Do we instinctively know that we are born alone, live alone, die alone and bemoan our destiny? Or is the scream one of anger and challenge, denying the darkness?

When we open our eyes, did we greet it with wondering awe or cold, angry disdain? Or are our eyes fresh sponges, waiting to absorb everything it sees? When does the spark of innocence in our eyes turn to blazing flames of passion? When does the passion slow to embers before it fades away?

I've been told I was born with an 'old soul', do my eyes look as if they have already seen too much after a day of life? 

Shadow

The reason we sleep at night is to allow our brains to rest, our minds to stop and our hearts to lie still. So when we stay past the stroke of midnight, the darkness starts to seep into the crevices of your heart and the madness begins.

The things you hide in the light of day return to consume you. The doubts, the fears grow with every waking moment that slowly gives way to the fatigue. But you struggle against that inevitable sleep. Your mind refuses to yield, your heart grows weary and the brain stops being logical. 

There’s no one to tell you it will be all right, there’s no one you believe can make things right and you rue the day of your birth because every moment has been nothing but a lingering agony. Life is not a gift, it’s a curse and you drown in your self-pity.

You give in to those dark moments when everything seems bleak and hopeless. As if tomorrow the sun will never shine, the future is just another looming abyss and you wonder if to jump means not because you want to fly, but because you want to die.

Your mind wanders across great stretches of emptiness, as you heart sheds its final tear and you become just another shadow, waiting to disappear.

Fighting the Doubts

Tear streaked windows, lashed by the early autumn storms; the road is slick beneath me. Twisting lonely roads slip by as ribbons of grey in a canvas of black night. I hazard to rush, the night slips from me, a slicked down flash of lightening. I flee into the night, searching for my destination. A turn, a curve, each mile an adventure of shadows and unknowns; it is deception and darkness.

Suddenly a turn opens into an expanse of wide, roaring surf and I’m buffeted by winds that snap angrily. I am rocked in my perspective and I must stop and pay homage to the majesty that is nature and all her surprises.

I stop in that moment, pondering the night, wondering where to proceed next. Each stop is simply a destination, a temporary respite. But where is my goal? Where am I supposed to be  tonight, tomorrow, next week or for the rest of my life?

Last night, I dismiss the doubts; in my numbed state of fatigue hoping the morning will find my sorrow alleviated and my hopes restored. Yet the bright sun of the morning glistens and bounces off dappled diamond sparkles amidst the leaves on the trees. The sun’s brilliance reflected on the surface of the lake. The beauty takes my breath away but just as quickly, the dark clouds of doubt rush back and beat upon my battered soul.

Life is fleeting, traces erase easily, but make your mark upon the shifting sands of time and know, every moment, how ever brief is worthy of song and celebration.

I will fight fiercely to find joy even if the fight never ends. Even if the moments are just fragments, sparse and small. I will piece together a mosaic of joy and happiness, imperfect, unfinished, but mine!

End of the Rainbow

Sometimes when in the depths of some of the worse times that you think you can bear, it’s hopeful to remember that sometimes someone else can see something that you can’t, while you are living in your nightmare. Sometimes they can see the rainbow that follows you.

Do they know they are at the end of the rainbow? That they are the pot of gold?

Whisper Tree

In the Philippines, my cousin told me that it is customary when you have a very bad dream that you would never want to come true, you have to whisper the dream to a tree. You can’t tell another person because it might come true, but you can whisper it to a tree who will keep your secret. Then once you’ve told the tree, you can walk away content that the dream has been released to the tree and will never come true.

But what do you do when you aren’t dreaming but you are actually living your nightmares? Where can you go when you are on the verge of being diminished, disdained and discarded?  When all that you hold precious and beloved is kept from you?

Professionally and personally, my life seems to be on the verge of imploding. Now my laptop, my big Huey is on the verge of dying on me again, this time permanently. Even my electronic devices are on the verge of abandoning me.

The Florida Keys

I have to find my whisper tree.

Pain Interrupted

Does anyone else feel that in the depths of our despair there is this keen, thin, strand of hope that pierces the darkness like a stiletto? It’s a thin, fine line that can get through the tightest spot. It’s a keen high C in a roomful of dull hums.

When I’m in physical pain, I imagine I’m surrounded by a raging storm. Where should you go when you are caught in a storm? Search for the calm at the center of the storm.  I have been in the center of a storm; there is a preternatural silence that stops your eardrums from thrumming, that you wonder if you’ve lost your hearing.

So when I’m caught in a pain storm, I dig straight into the pain and seek out the center. It’s a strange exercise that I used to do as a child. I ran into the pain, I fought it with a fearlessness that we are instinctively born with. I created a mantra:

“This does not touch me, I cannot feel the rain. I cannot feel the poison coursing through my veins.”

I’m reminded of it as I struggle with psychic pain, a far more difficult fight and not so easy to transmute.  By psychic pain I mean an emotional toll that shakes our confidence, our ego and creates a dark struggle of self-doubt. 

But even there, there is that thin line of hope. I may not be able to fight this storm, but perhaps I don’t have to, some storms just have to be endured. Like the proverbial sword, it’s strength, it’s sharpness, it’s endurance comes from its tempering in the fire and in the hammer blows.

I am a sword being tempered.