Another Message From Tom Robbins

“How can one person be more real than any other? Well some people do hide, and others seek. Maybe those who are in hiding - escaping encounters, avoiding surprises, protecting their property, ignoring their fantasies, restricting their feelings, sitting out the Pan Pipe hootchy-kootch of experience - maybe those people, people who won’t talk to rednecks, or if they are rednecks won’t talk to intellectuals, people who’re afraid to get their shoes muddy or their noses wet, afraid to eat what they crave, afraid to drink Mexican water, afraid to bet a long shot to win, afraid to hitchhike, jaywalk, honky tonk, cogitate, osculate, levitate, rock it, bop it, sock it, or bark at the moon, maybe such people are simply inauthentic, and maybe the jackleg humanist who says differently is due to have his tongue fried on the hot slabs of Liar’s Hell. Some folks hide, and some folks seek, and seeking when it’s mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous can be a form of hiding. But there are folks who want to know and aren’t afraid to look, and won’t turn tail should they find it-and if they never do, they’ll have a good time anyway because nothing, neither the terrible truth nor the absence of it, is going to cheat them out of one honest breath of earths sweet gas.”

Tom Robbins - Still Life With Woodpecker

When I read that last night, it resonated in my soul. I had to share it with you, because I truly believe it. I believe that some people are seekers, and some people are hiders. Some people need to think for themselves, and some want others to do their thinking for them.

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I know, I know yet another forward. This one struck me differently though. There is this need to give every story a warm fuzzy moral. When I read this one, I saw the ending coming to some extent, but it was still a nice story. Then came the obligatory moral to the story.

So go ahead and read this story and see if you agree with the moral at the end.

Pretty Sad But Somehow Enlightening

Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs.

His bed was next to the room's only window. The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back. The men talked for hours on end. They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation.

And every afternoon when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could
see outside the window.

The man in the other bed began to live for those one-hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and color of the world outside. The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake. Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every color of the rainbow. Grand old trees graced the landscape, and a fine view of the city
skyline could be seen in the distance.

As the man by the window described all this in exquisite detail, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine the picturesque scene. One warm afternoon the man by the window described a parade passing by. Although the other man couldn't hear the band he could see it in his mind's eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words.

Then unexpectedly, a sinister thought entered his mind. Why should the other man alone experience all the pleasures of seeing everything while he himself never got to see anything? It didn't seem fair. At first thought the man felt ashamed.

But as the days passed and he missed seeing more sights, his envy eroded into resentment and soon turned him sour. He began to brood and he found himself unable to sleep. He should be by that window -- that thought, and only that thought now controlled his life.

Late one night as he lay staring at the ceiling, the man by the window began to cough. He was choking on the fluid in his lungs. The other man watched in the dimly lit room as the struggling man by the window groped for the button to call for help. Listening from across the room he never moved, never pushed his own button which would have brought the nurse running in. In less than five minutes the coughing and choking stopped, along with that the sound of breathing.

Now there was only silence-deathly silence. The following morning the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths. When she found the lifeless body of the man by the window, she was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take it away.

As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch, and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.

Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the world outside. Finally, he would have the joy of seeing it all himself. He strained to slowly turn to look out the window beside the bed. It faced a blank wall.

The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate since he had described such wonderful things outside this window. The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall. She said, "Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you."

Epilogue. . . .

You can interpret the story in any way you like. But one moral stands out:
There is tremendous happiness in making others happy, despite our own
situations. Shared grief is half the sorrow, but happiness when shared, is doubled.

If you want to feel rich, just count all of the things you have that money can't buy.

I'm going to disagree with this one. While the given moral was sweet, I feel it missed the mark here.

A man shared his happiness with another man, and his repayment was the other man allowing him to die so he could steal that happiness for himself. Once it was stolen, he discovered that you can't take another persons happiness no matter how hard you try. In the end it always just makes your misery even more
miserable.

Some people naturally see the beauty in life, and other people never will. No matter how much beauty there is in the world, all they seem to see is that brick wall. There is a simple difference between the miserable and the happy. The miserable see the obstacles, and the happy people see the possibilities.

They want to see the cold red brick, the ungiving, unmoving force that is blocking them from experiencing the world beyond. They will spend the rest of their life hating the wall even when the wall is no longer there they will still see it, for them it will always be there.

Sometimes people like me think we can make someone see the beauty behind the wall. I've fallen into this trap too many times to count. Then reality finally sank in to my optimistic little brain.When someone only sees the wall, that's because it is all they want to see.

I don't want to spend my life staring at a brick wall.

Recently I came to a major crossroad in my life.

I thought I would feel sad, disappointed, maybe even a little bit guilty when I finally confirmed my suspicions, but for some strange reason I don’t. I feel free. I feel like I have a gigantic secret, part of me wants to shout it to the world and another part wants to keep it all to myself forever.

The thing is, I came to it on my own. I didn’t let others negativity, or opinions get in my way. I made my own decision, and it feels really good.

It doesn’t matter what you are uncertain about in your own life. A decision you must make perhaps. How long have you sat on the fence frozen by indecision? How long have you held on to things you no longer believe in just because someone else thinks you should? What are you really afraid of?

These are all questions I had to ask myself on this particular journey.

I will tell you that it was one of the most difficult journeys I have faced in my life. It meant risking the disapproval of many people that I look up to, people I would much rather please than disappoint.

It meant thinking for myself and not allowing the opinions of others, no matter how passionate sway my path. It meant making up my own mind, and standing firm on it. The old me, the door mat of the universe didn’t like it one bit, but this time I had to tell her I knew what I was doing.

I was asking questions and seeking answers even if I might not like the answers I found. There were so many negative possibilities, so many doubts and fears, so many what if’s along the way. Yet it was important enough to me to continue on this path.

So as silly as it sounds to some when I say, “I made a decision on my own,” it wasn’t easy by any means. To decide that this was one thing I wanted to figure out all by myself was a huge step for me. At times it was agony. It meant wrestling with more inner demons that I even knew I had.

My self-esteem is far from rock solid, my positive thinking is as wavering as the tide. I do not hold myself above the thoughts or opinions of others, in fact most of my life I’ve allowed those things to keep me from being able to trust my own thoughts, my own abilities, to listen to my own intuition.

Building self esteem isn’t like building a house, build it and there it is for all the world to see, able to stand against the daily ups and downs of life. It’s more like building a sand castle on the oceans edge. Some waves miss it entirely, some take a little piece of it, and sometimes you have to start again from the ground up.

I was always afraid of having self-esteem, unsure of the difference between self-esteem and narcissism. I’ve known a few narcissists in my life, and they have a way of making life miserable for everyone else around them. Each time I took a step towards liking myself, I was terrified of the prospect of loving myself too much.

I had to accept that they are not the same thing by any means.

Narcissism is an exceptional interest in and admiration for yourself. You’ll hurt other people if needed, just to maintain it.

Self-esteem is simply a feeling of pride in yourself. Feeling like you have done something good, not everything, but something.

You don’t get this from anyone but yourself. You can’t get it from taking advantage of others, from whining about how the deck was stacked against you, from believing that the world owes you something. That is the difference.

That negative self-love comes when you take from those around you.

Self-esteem only comes from giving yourself chance to shine.

That is the feeling I share with you today. The happiness a person feels when they accomplish a difficult task. When they don’t do what is easy but what is right. When you stop waiting for the world to finally deal you some decent cards, and you find a way to make it happen.

Whatever it is, it feels good. Self-esteem is a journey in and of itself. It’s not accomplishing one thing, but a succession of things that make you feel good about being you. It’s not letting every mistake hang you up, it’s learning from those mistakes, finally being in charge of your own destiny that feels good.

Whatever it is you are putting off, take another look at it. Whatever part of your life you are afraid to remodel, start thinking about how good it will feel when you have accomplished it. It’s not one huge step that changes your life, but many, many small steps in the right direction.

Take that first step right now.