I have spent my entire life seeking. Starting at around the age of ten I had three questions that seemed to plague me.

Who am I?
Who are you?
Why are we here?

When I say they plagued me I mean it would be intense at times. I wondered. I wanted to know. I wanted concrete answers. I wanted certainty. I wanted definitions that were tangible enough that I could hold them in my hands and examine them until I reached an understanding. I needed to end the nervousness that had me going to doctors for medications by the age of eight. I wanted to stop biting my nails, and end the other neurotic habits I had already developed. I wanted to end the confusion and doubt that troubled me even as a child. I wanted relief. I believed everyone else had this information and that I was defective in some way. Way to much for a child to understand or deal with in a positive manner.

But the relief I sought managed to elude me. As a child I did not have more than a superficial feeling of being loved and wanted. I always felt awkward and out-of-place. Maybe it was the times or the place; who knows. Even as a child I felt unanchored but in a way that caused me great distress. I have not retained many memories of childhood but I have a few. In the ones where my mother was the closest, gentlest and most loving that I remember her, I felt as if there was a shield between us. I did not connect with the boy she was holding. I could see the love on her face, I could just not feel it.

At this moment I reflect on why I write this. It is not for sympathy, It is not to release anger or bitterness. It is not to portray my relationship with my mother or anyone else in any particular way. It is definitely not about blame for myself, my mother or anyone else involved in my childhood. It is to simply state a recollection I have as it became a major component of the role I lived for years.

While I do not know and have no way to confirm it, I bet there were many more boys and girls learning to live a part. Like Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players;…” This is funny in a sad sort of way.

Since at least birth I have been scripted. I have been labeled. I’m a boy. My name is Jim. My hair is blond. No, now it is brown. On and on since day one people have been telling me who I am, how I should act, how not to behave. What to believe and think, all of which lead to much contradiction and confusion.

So, what does this have to do with today? Now? Today, slowly at times, I am finding my freedom from all of this. Conditioned speech, thoughts and actions are but habits and these conditioned behaviors are so difficult to change, And by change I do not mean getting rid of them, I mean understanding them for what they are and allowing my true nature to be. Being able to to be present in the day and make decisions based on the facts, not the habits.

This morning I sat on the porch and watched the fog as it slowly uncovered the mountain peaks. The ridge was unveiled as the morning light brightend the sky. It was neither good nor bad. It did not make me happy or sad. It just was. And as I sat there I understood the answers to the questions above and that was enough.

Train whistling below
Sound filling the air
Disrupts morning thoughts.