Erase The Dark

There's much to be said for challenging fate instead of ducking behind it.

Diana Trilling
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It seems that many people throughout the stretch of my life have had, what they thought, were certain prophesies and projections about what is going to become of me. At each level of my years the predictions changed but all were generally negative and about dire circumstances.

It all started when I was a child and my mother, for some unknown reason, told me I would always have trouble with my teeth, So as a good obedient son I developed life long dental problems. When I got a bit older I learned to start challenging these edicts. As a so-called rebellious teenager I was told I would live to be a lonely old man with no friends. Well I'm a senior citizen who lives alone, but I'm not lonely and I have some good friends whom I trust.

Then, as I grew, some former friends told me that at my age I would start suffering heart problems, lung problems and my kidneys would do this and my mind would do that. Decades ago a neighbor held up my pack of non-filter cigarettes and said If I smoked those I would soon be dead It's inevitable. It's fate.

Well I've successfully challenged all of those prophesies. Even more insidious were the teachers who told me I wasn't able to understand certain things, that I wasn't intelligent enough. A very poor teacher at a New York City film school informed me that I didn't know anything about acting. That one was amusing since I have a collection of programs from theatres all over the eastern United States and a box full of excellent reviews.

Lately I've been told I have only ten more good years of life left and that I should be bed ridden by now. A year ago I was walking with a cane. Now I don't need it except for when there are snow banks to climb over. My expectations about myself are not unrealistic but they are real. Why haven't I crushed into a helpless lump and fulfilled my artificial destiny? What's the secret DB?

Simple. I agree to disagree. Opinions are not scientific facts. I have managed to unplug the radio that is broadcasting all the dire news about my disintegration and demise. When opinions attack me either from others or from myself I mount an immediate challenge. The challenge is in two parts: Second, affirmation and First, denial. Denial must be accompanied by affirmation or we are staying in a state of denial, and that's no good because we are making a fact out of the thing we're denying, a "graven image." Denial is like erasing the false equation from the blackboard so we can write the true one. Compassion is true, hatred is not. Forgiveness is true, revenge is not. Fulfillment is true, remorse is not. Well being is true, illness is not. Denial is easier than affirmation, we generally know what we don't want. We must be thoughtful and certain about what we do want for ourselves.

Denial and affirmation require work. It's a daily job. And it requires faith in the natural laws of human thought. Thoughts have power and nature doesn't care how they're used. We can choose to use them for dark, negative things, or we can deny those things and replace them with positive things that enlighten our lives and the world.. That's our right.

DB - The Vagabond
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Weekend puzzle: STEW

change Internet provider (6)
switch from off to particle (5)
Calloway born old (7)
auto rust (6)
pan to the office (6)
crush a hotel unit (8)
vigor for each )6)
sounds like a basement type thing (6)
worn around the neck down south (8)
southern California jungle beast (8)
answer to exist (5)
drink to the king (4)
beer joint to the left end, yes (6)
bad humor afoot (4)

Enjoy your dish.
DB
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