Dear Pneuma,

I am trying to be wise.  In a desire to live deep and to continue to have a positive impact on the human community in which I love/live, I am trying very hard not to re-invent a rigidly defined set of rules by which I make decisions.  One of my weak edges is an intolerance for mistakes.  I fear failing to live up to so much, I rarely experience the liberating reality of being human.  I refuse opportunities to "give up," and "give in;" to be weak, stupid and stubborn enough to simply shrug my shoulders at life's arrows and move forward; and I believe that "past" living, that idea that things in life would be better if they never changed, is FALSE-is, in fact, Life-Denying rather than Life-Affirming.

I tell you this because I first learned control from you.  I learned a certain futility and resignation from you that makes me doubt the future.  I also learned to fear being myself, lest who I am be something you would despise.  I am sharing this because our recent conversation really bugged me.  I was sharing my inclinations, my hopes and my relationships with you, and you started focusing on your own idea of where I should be putting my energy.  This kind of dialogue still hurts.  It depersonalizes me.

Here is what I think:
     I am sensitive to certain kinds of disapproval.  I hear you tell me that giving of myself to the support of my Beloved's career is wrong, harmful, painful, and unsatisfying.  I feel shame that I have chosen a "follow" role in my relationship with my Beloved (specifically where "work" is concerned).  Shame feeds guilt.  Guilt feeds despair.  Despair leads to anxiety.  Anxiety leads to fear.  Fear strangles life, and I wake up angry, unmotivated, and distrustful of my Beloved.

What I don't say, or  perhaps more accurately, don't communicate effectively is that I do not think I am you.  I do not think my Beloved is your Beloved, and that, because each of us are individuals, each relationship dynamic is different.  What you find stifling, I might find liberating.  Where someone in your life may have failed you, someone in my life may have held up. In life's dance, with the right partner, the roles of lead and follow interchange flawlessly.  In choosing to follow this lead, I may be setting up the shift of footing for a sudden change of direction.  

I do not want to discount your experience, Pneuma.  I have no place in your own relationship dynamics, and I do believe that your concern about my current unemployment stems from your love, but my full personhood depends upon my making decisions from myself and bearing the consequences.  I cannot become completely human without that.

Some part of me absolutely rejects a life built on decisions to show the world I have as much talent, expertise, professionalism or competence as that superstar over there, even as some part of the child in me feels inadequate.

Yet I know, and this is where the desire for wisdom plays in, achievement of "greatness" doesn't fill in the childish gaps.  Achievement works like shampoo: it plumps up and shines dead stuff.  I am struggling to let my addiction to status and respect go so that I can nourish the evolution of my true life.  I need to stop feeding an image of self so that I can be myself. When you express your worries by suggesting that I am not living up to my potential, I begin to feel that you do not really know or value me, and that you have little faith in who I am trying to become.

I woke up one morning, a few years ago to the realization that my death is something only I own, and if my death gets to be mine alone, so does my life.  My choices, my mistakes, my triumphs, and my goals.  Since that day, I have not regretted one single choice I have made.  I have stood in places of Divine Compulsion, and mind-numbing humility. I have achieved unrecognized greatness, and filled up with joy in the knowledge that whatever I am to this world, it is something that breathes life into people.   Pneuma, I love you, but I need you to listen for a while, and let me find my own path through to discernment of how best to bestow my gifts, and how best to love the life I have been given.

Faithfully Yours,
Cobalt Dreams

Dear Pneuma,

We have been out of touch for a while.  I hope all is well with you.  My life seems to be going well.  It is kind of strange here, though.  I am drifting.  A part of me thinks this must be a bad thing.  After all, aren't we always supposed to be striving?  Isn't it the lazy and the weak that simply float through life?  Where is the fire and urgency?  Maybe I am getting old.

Nonetheless, I am rather liking it.  It is odd to have time for just about anything.  It is odd to be able to plan trips and choose classes to take around desire and not around schedule.  There is decadence in a day spent practicing music.  It has been a struggle, too.  Guilt and anxiety arise with so much "free" time.  Friends get concerned that I might be unhappy, and suggest jobs or volunteer activities to pursue.  I am increasingly aware of the luxury of time.

So many gurus tell us to seek time.  They tell us to "be in the moment" and to "choose the now."  That has always come across as self-indulgent to me, and now that I find myself in a place where I don't have any projects pressing, I find it hard to simply accept the gift.  I feel like I need to justify myself to the world.  I feel unfairly advantaged that my household is holding together without a great deal of worry or trouble on our part.  I fear I am squandering my gifts-that a world in need is suffering and I am not responding, not doing enough.

It's humorous, really, because aren't peace and assurance the things so many strive for?  Aren't contentment and appreciation virtuous states of mind?  Have I become so good at whipping myself, I seek the discipline rather than its surcease?  If I would wish such simplicity for my loved ones, why do I deny it for myself?

I am guessing that worth is at the core of this tension in me.  Do I believe a human being is only worth what it can make, or do I believe there is an intrinsic value to each of us?  I find it simple to assign the intrinsic worth to others-to my pets, my friends, my family, the suffering and sad, students and strangers, people caught between roles and genders, women and men whose I names I will never know-but harder to assign such value to myself.  Yet, a life spent seeking to contribute to society at the expense of relationships was not a good pattern for me.  That is why I am going to stick with this vague, drifting experience for a while.  I am going to lose myself in little pleasures and small conversations.  Maybe, by doing so, I will find a way to reconcile the conflict in myself; so that whether I am striving or ceasing to strive, I will be satisfied.

Love Always,
Cobalt Dreams