Alternative Approach 10/10/09

Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

Joseph Addison
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Read on if you've a mind,
or even if you don't.
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Happy talk, keep talking happy talk,
Talk about things you'd like to do,
You gotta have a dream, if you don't have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?

(Oscar Hammerstein)

I have had continual trouble all my life in one form or another. I don't like to write about it in Vagabond Journeys, that's not what this journal is for. But sometimes it's necessary just to clear the air and let people know, if they care, where the person is coming from who writes these words. Unfortunately some people, who seem to enjoy what they call my eloquence and poetry when I write "happy talk," turn sour and call it histrionics and dramatics when I have to address something sad and troublesome. Well, I'm sorry, but if I can't make poetry out of my pain then of what use is pain? Or poetry, for that matter?

One of the things I fear, when the sky turns dark and life grows gloomy, is that I might lose my sense of humor. I don't remember when I first discovered that I had one. Maybe it was the first time I got a good solid laugh from an audience. My boyhood was certainly humorless. It was filled with ridicule and sarcasm, the shadow land of humor. But somewhere along the rocky road I began to see the funny side of things. I learned to laugh, not at people, but with people at life. That is not to say that some people aren't very funny. The more self important they are the funnier they are. And that was another big step around the rocks. I eventually learned to laugh at my own self righteous pomposity.

So why, you ask with an appropriate smirk on your face, aren't you laughing at yourself now? I don't know. Maybe I did lose my humor. If you see it laying around anywhere, send it to me, Express Mail, COD. Thank you.

Another reason for the sadness everybody (okay, many people) suffer is the realization that the dream of one's life is not going to happen. One of the changes that took place in me the other day was the despair of accepting that the life I was holding in my mind as what I wanted for myself was never going to be. That is a deep sense of loss that plummets right down to the bottom of my invisible being. They can take away my family, my home, my money, my health, my work, my career, my books and my journal. But surely they can't take away my dream. Can they?

I stare at the table top like a nut and await an answer even though I know it won't come because I already know what it is.

And another great loss that shakes the ground one depends on is the loss of faith. Why does one's expectancy of good have to be a cheat? We come to have faith in so many things: the law of averages, casting bread on the waters of life, recognition of efforts done well, proper acknowledgement of ownership and rights, the rule of law, adequate compensation for work, friendships. But when the evidence of any of those is lacking in one's experience, and particularly of more than one, faith in the rest is shaken. I had to come to face how much faith I have lost over the years. It's frightening. Then, when all else fails, there faith in some form of deity. I tried that. I guess it works for some people. But when honest, earnest prayers produce the opposite result of what one is praying for, that faith has failed.

If you have followed me this far in today's journal entry and aren't looking for something to criticize me for, I will think of you as a friend and tell you that my sleeves are rolled up, my boots are beside me and I still have a sense of adventure around here someplace. I may have an old man's puny strength and not much else to help me except my wits, but I can't implode and won't. I shook my fist at heaven more than once and I will do it again. I feel I have been tragically let down by promises, people and events of my life and I resent that very much. But my life isn't over yet.

I will post a cheerful entry one of these days. I promise you.

DB
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