Childhood Wonder, Trust and the Value of Good Will

Monday, July 28, 2014

This morning, while waiting for a bus, I picked up a pinecone.  I have unexpected moments of great joy when doing the simplest of things.  I notice that small delights give me an immense amount of pleasure.  One small delight I find I repeatedly experience is looking (and marveling) at the intricate yet simple beauty of the world.  I don’t recall doing this very much when I was a child.  I was too worried about the state of affairs in my own home to spare much time for finding wonder in the world.  I would be dishonest if I were to claim I had no such moments as a kid.  I did.  But they were not consistent.  Wonder was punctuated by stress and the unknown.  It became easy to become fearful and mistrusting.  Now here I am, again, working to repair the harm decades later.

It’s quite clear to me that a primary issue I have (which derives in large measure from my childhood) is that of trust.  I find it challenging to trust people very easily.  And in the past I had a pattern of developing relationships with people who in hindsight proved not to be worthy of my trust.  Breaking such a longstanding pattern is no small task but day after day I am gradually doing it.  I didn’t have a full appreciation of how much my capacity to trust had been harmed until this last year.

More than once I have seen signs plastered on the sides of buses about how play grows imagination.  I suppose the opposite of this must also be true.  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  But I think it also must make him an unimaginative boy.  And that is most unfortunate.

I have felt quite apathetic in the last few weeks.  I suppose this is a reflection of the fact that I am now working full time.  I made a commitment to myself when I returned to the working world that I would allocate some time and energy towards finding my way towards the work I truly want to do in my future life.  And I am doing that.  I expect to meet with staff of the vocational rehabilitation services provider I selected last week at some point this week.  I hope that my hopes will be well founded.  As one can well imagine I had grown quite weary of placing my trust in people and organizations who did not merit my trust.

……

This afternoon, while waiting to take the bus once more, I found myself again marveling at the immense variety of colors and textures I could perceive with my eyesight.  While downtown at the intersection of 7^th Street and South Marquette I found myself looking at how the light reflects off the glass skyscrapers on a late summer afternoon.  I noticed the interplay of clouds and blue sky.  Once again I found myself noticing the trees and flowers fluttering in the breeze.  And again there was the question omnipresent in my mind: where have I been all this time?  How is it that I was perceiving the world for decades and yet not really present to what I was perceiving?  How was that even possible?  How did I not notice what I was doing?  I suppose the answer is somehow tied up in the findings of the shamanic practitioner I met with last November.  When you experience soul loss at an extremely young age it seems to me that it can profoundly affect your future development…and that you might not even be aware of it.

Tomorrow I will be paying a visit to my eye doctor.  I need to find some greater understanding of what is happening to me.  Stated differently, I suppose I need to contextualize what I am experiencing.  I have personally concluded that I was experiencing a many years long case of derealization…and I wasn’t even aware of it.  Now I am on the other side of that long period of time.  And I am trying to learn how to live again in a world that is both intimately familiar and strangely foreign at the same time. 

Adapting to a change that profoundly alters your perception of your place and significance in the world is no small matter.  I sometimes feel as if I will be adapting to my ‘new’ self for many years to come.  And yet healing is not a linear process so I can’t easily predict what future course the unfolding of my journey will take.  I can certainly say this: I never expected my life to look quite like this at this time in my life.

So what do I mean by the value of good will?  In essence I am alluding to a person’s willingness to participate in a larger society.  Participation in a society composed of many, many individuals depends in part on a society being palatable to those who would be active members of it.  If you find little appeal in being a part of a society it might be time to consider the very real possibility that the time for an immense change has come.  I have felt this way for a while now. 

Resentment strikes me as the opposite of good will.  Unacknowledged resentment can fester and poison good will.  I realize I have felt a lot of resentment due to the weariness I developed the last few years as I continued to look for a job that would make full (or nearly full) use of my wide range of skills.  As I continued to look around without experiencing the results I believe were very reasonable to expect I would enjoy the resentment began to build inside my heart. 

In time resentment can breed alienation.  And once alienation grows within your very being you are something like the amateur swimmer who suddenly discovers he has ventured too far from the safety of shore.

As I continue on my journey of recovery I notice that the same themes present themselves time and time again.  And one of my themes is that during my childhood I didn’t really feel there was any safe shore to look for.  I felt bereft and alone in a world populated by people who simply could neither comprehend nor fully appreciate me.

I want to explore a new shore now.  I want to find new vistas to explore.  The old way of life simply will no longer do.