...Interesting...

Copping to changes is... interesting... Odd that it should be so "interesting," given that the universe is rife  with "change," certainly life is rife with change, but somehow, we (I) find it all ... interesting... Or easy. Or impossible. But always... interesting...

And always with those three dots: "... Interesting..." The "interesting" bit always begins, and ends, in silence. Which should be a lesson unto itself, but that's for another day.

Some changes, we accept immediately. The cat was eaten by a raccoon. (Happened to my cat, a few years ago.) There was an earthquake and the plaster got cracked, or the chimney collapsed. There was a storm and the river overflowed its levees, and the water filled up pretty much everything we called a "city." The easy-to-accept changes don't have anything to do with us; even in our wildest dreams, there was nothing we could have done about it. (Recriminations are a different problem. But "accepting?" That's the easy part.)

Some changes we don't want to accept, but even in not-wanting-to-accept them, we know that we have no choice; what happened, happened, and there's no going back. You tanked in that course because of the choices you made, and your transcript will always bear that scar. The person you were on the edge of asking to marry you, dumps you. The person you were hoping to ask to marry you winds up marrying someone else. A dearly-loved one dies. Nothing that anyone could do about it, certainly not you... at least, after it had happened, there was nothing you could do about it (see especially "tanked because of your own choices" or "you got dumped").

Areas of shared responsibility are cloudier, but one must eventually cop to one's own part in it. Lover-dumpage, for one (foremost to the front of the line is lover-dumpage, there are always things that actually are your fault). Separation from one's beloved school... well, if you graduated, that's definitely partially your "fault," but people rarely use that word; still, the separation itself can be hard. Separation from one's beloved employment is another, especially hard when one's employment was much loved (by you, at least). Even if you (I) are only partially to blame, still you (I) are/am partially to blame, and you (I) gotta cop to that. We have to cop to that, or else we're choosing to live with the pain. (Telling the truth even just to ourselves is somehow more painful than carrying the pain of non-acknowledgement/acceptance around with us... interesting...)

The M.S. world is especially cloudy. Are the scleroses gonna form? Who knows? When they form, where are they gonna form? Who knows? When they form where they're gonna form, what's that going to mean to your nervous system? Who knows? Are they gonna go away? It has been known to happen, not often, but it has happened, after all the nervous system is inherently (to some extent) self-correcting. Who knows?

But we (I) have to come up against the truth of the moment. Somewhere on the web (I wish I could cite it more precisely, but I just plain don't remember) I read someone speaking about releasing the past, and they said something to the effect of "Those people in your past? They're all dead. Those people you're imagining in your future? They don't exist. All you have, all you ever have, is now."

And the cloudiness of the M.S. world is very, very... interesting...

Oh heck, I'm gonna stop glossing this over by saying "we" all the time, speaking of "copping to it;" from here on, I'm just gonna talk about "I."

There are many things I can't do right now, things that I used to do without thinking, things that I loved doing. The first of those left me because the places changed (people who used to hire me retired, their replacements had no interest in me, or new management had a Better Idea and I wasn't needed). Many beloved activities left me because I simply lost the ability to do them (playing the organ, for the most painful example). I pretend to maintain a "positive attitude" with "Well, today I can't, but who knows, maybe tomorrow it'll get better, I don't want to shut the door permanently because we really don't know, blah blah blah, M.S. has after all been known to just up and get better, blah blah blah..."

And we M.S.ers are always encouraged (bullied) into "not giving up." And we--screw that, I-- love saying "I'm not really 'giving up,' it could come back, I don't want to shut the door permanently, blah blah blah blah..." Well, Jesus could come tomorrow. The world could end tomorrow in global thermonuclear war. Magnetic poles could shift (a favorite childhood terror of mine). A gamma-ray burst could lash out of the stars and obliterate us tomorrow. The graveyards are full of people who prophesied things like that happening "tomorrow." Clearly... they didn't.

But only a fool fights ab initio un-winnable battles. Some things are just-plain bigger than you are, and you're gonna lose, so don't bother. Has nothing to do with "right" or "wrong" or, God knows, "deserves." I know all about "I can't win now, but I can win if I work hard enough, and it's definitely worth the fight." Well, some fights cannot be won. They just can't. No matter how hard you try or how hard you believe in yourself or ... anything. They cannot be won. They just can't. As the computer said in the movie War Games, "The only winning move is not to play.")

So, for me, it's time to face "The past? It's dead." The things I used to do, activities with which I used to define my life... they're dead. Time to cop to the truth of ... death.

Now, does that mean that "They aren't going to come back"? Actually, yes.

What comes "back" won't be something coming "back." It will be whatever is arriving for the first time, when it arrives. It won't, and never will be, and never would have been, what I used to have/do, no matter how much I loved it. It'll be something completely new. Similar, maybe, but... brand new.

This is cutting the umbilical cord... to what used to be. The child can't truly live their own life until that cord is cut.

Ending creates beginning.

Time to cop to the truth of endings. Until the ending has truly, and meaningfully ended, part of which being that ending having been processed, acknowledged, accepted even, and released... beginning can't even begin to begin.

"It's over" is the first step of "it begins."

...Interesting... isn't it?