where were you?

Pain, you just have to ride it out, hope it goes away on its own, hope the wound that caused it heals. There are no solutions, no easy answers, you just breathe deep and wait for it to subside. Most of the time, pain can be managed, but sometimes the pain gets you where you least expect it. Hits way below the belt and doesn't let up. Pain, you just have to fight through, because the truth is, you can't outrun it, and life always makes more. Maybe we like the pain. Maybe we're wired that way. Because without it; I don't know...maybe we just wouldn't feel real. What's that saying? Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop. At some point you have to make a decision. Boundaries don't keep other people out. They fence you in. Life is messy. That's how we're made. So, you can waste your life drawing lines, or you can live your life crossing them. A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. Never leave that til tomorrow, he said, which you can do today. This is the man who discovered electricity. You think more people would listen to what he had to say. I don't know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I'd have to say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you're wrong? What if you're making a mistake you can't undo? The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can't pretend we hadn't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore. Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin really meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying. I have an aunt who, whenever she poured anything for you, she would say, "Say when." My aunt would say "Say when," and of course we never did. We don't say when because there's something about the possibility of more. More tequila, more love, more anything. More is better. Sometimes reality has a way of sneaking up and biting us on the ass. And when the dam bursts, all you can do is swim. The world of pretend is a cage, not a cocoon. We can only lie to ourselves for so long. We are tired. We are scared. Denying it doesn't change the truth. Sooner or later, we have to put aside our denial and face the world, head on, guns blazing. Denial. It's not just a river in Egypt. It's a fucking ocean. So how do you keep from drowning in it? In general, lines are there for a reason: for security, for clarity. If you choose to cross the line, you pretty much do so at your own risk. So why is it, that the bigger the line, the greater the temptation to cross it? We can't help ourselves. We see a line; we want to cross it. Maybe it's the thrill of trading the familiar for the unfamiliar, a sort of personal dare. Only problem is once you've crossed, it's almost impossible to go back. But, if you do manage to make it back across that line, you find safety in numbers. Too often going after what feels good means letting go of what you know is right. And letting someone in means abandoning the walls you took so long to build up. Of course, the toughest sacrifices are the ones we don't see coming; when we don't have time to come up with a strategy, pick a a side, or measure the potential loss. When that happens, when the battle chooses us and not the other way around, that's when the sacrifice becomes more than we can bear. Human beings need a lot to feel alive. Family....love....sex. But we only need one thing...to actually be alive. We need a beating heart. When our heart is threatened, we respond in one of two ways: we either run, or we attack. There's a scientific term for this: fight or flight. It's instinct...we can't control it.


or can we?