Self

It's about 6:00 in the afternoon on a Monday. My wife is coming in from Boston tonight and my son is staying at his grandparents. I'm alone and weird. A storm softly grumbles in the darkening distance. 

Sometimes I wonder what will come out of me if I ever grant myself a moment of self-expression. Self.. I've changed my 'self' a lot. I'm barely the same person I was in many of these photos scattered about this blog. I scarcely recognize him, but this isn't a post to dwell on the past. I don't really care about the past anymore anyway. I no longer cringe when I think of a younger version of myself, I just can't do that to myself anymore.

This is a new me. There are many new beginnings of 'me'. I like the different characters I've brought about in my 41 years of borrowing this shell. This new one is that of a father, and after wearing that hat I hardly spend anytime imagining any other way of living. Nothing really felt important to me the way it felt to have a son. This is also the dust-stained hat of a traveler who is almost ready to see the world again. (It felt really good to write that.)

The thunder grumbles and my neighbor Steve begins to pick up the pace as he walks a bit faster towards his destination at the end of the street. 

I've been talking to God, that is, praying. I try to pray out of gratitude more so than asking favors, but I've decided to go about this newfound faith in a very honest way. I talk to God about anything I would talk to a close friend about. I'm honest with God. I try to be. The more honest I manage to be in prayer, the better things are for me, and I think there is a deep lesson there to be learned.

I'm not a big guy. I'm like 5'9", and I can't do anything about it. I'll be in a circle of four or five dudes and I'm always the short one. I decided that since I can't do anything about it I might as well like it. I'm this age and I still think about such things. Ego is a disease I can't seem to cure. I'm trying, I mentioned that, right? 

I watched this reel the other day with David Lynch, and he's interviewing someone who seems to be a close friend. He asked his friend to describe himself, and his friend said, 'self does not exist.' That has stuck with me for days now, and I think that might be the lesson that God is trying to show me. Maybe the last few chapters of my life were about releasing the desires of self and now I finally have a chance to grow a bit. It's tempting not to grow, maybe it's scary and kind of like those late summer evenings, covered in grumbly thunder.