Mirrors, models.

Perhaps I'm the only person who has felt/thought this way, but I knew from a pretty early age that I needed role models and instructors for my behavior. I sensed the immaturity of my soul, my lacking in abilities to correctly navigate the physical and social worlds of my time in a boy's body. I wasn't lacking for older males as my guides. In a traditional society, each brother might successfully model the older brother's behavior, and he in turn models his conduct and shapes his character off of seeing how his father behaves, who is also aligned with the patriarch of his clan, the elders of his tribe, the confederation, kingdom, etc.

I imagine when these kinds of descriptions were written down, families were no less messed up than they are now. But, somehow, I thought if I could find a magic way of being that pleased everyone above me in the pecking order, I would find great success in life. Pleasing an ultra-Conservative Christian mother, an atheist father with mysterious politics that seemed somewhat conservative but then again not, and two adopted brothers who were often at odds with each other and almost always at odds with my parents.

Then, after seeing there was no real way to formulate a clear and true Way of Being out of this, I sought the Zeitgeist of what seemed Popular-but-authentic-and-cool/hip. This seemed just as difficult to follow. One year Star Trek was ridiculous and for nerds, the next it was cool and so were nerds. Many other less superficial examples sort of come to the surface, mostly around expectations of any group of people in any time and place.

I encountered Buddhism and the Dao in college, but sadly, was too convinced that I needed to now carry out some kind of mission of finding a mate and starting a family in the wake of my little brother's death, and so I pursued material things and living to that end, forgetting such basic, good things I'd once briefly encountered and touched in college.

So, with my mother gone, and after reading a lot of Thomas Merton, I became convinced that there was some type of Christianity for me that could be more inclusive and perhaps more forgiving than the hard knocks Pentecostal God I remember growing up. But, after a year of Seminary and so much Bible interrogation, I had an extremely hard time finding a clear compass in even this. It seemed God could get away with extreme amounts of killing on one hand, and then declare nothing but love for one's neighbor and vague threats of hell via the parable of the talent miser who is really just a person who does nothing with their gift of their life because they think God isn't such a hot Master after all.

Yet, when you revisit Buddhism and see an eternal kind of compassion that forgives...everyone...all the time... and just think for a few minutes about what has really gone down in history for and by Christians, Jews--it all gets hard to make a cogent ethical way of being that is 100% straight and true out of all of it. You could go on about unanswered prayer and endless hypocrites who preach the 10 commandments but don't practice them, but for me, the hard part became finding consistent Scripture I could turn to that felt like true guidance and wisdom to keep me on a straight path.

So, I fell apart. All of the egos I'd constructed while trying to learn how to be a man were simply suppressed by so much booze and when the booze drinking ended, they all came out. Assholes who had never developed a moral compass beyond pleasing whomever they thought was the coolest/baddest/hippest (usually male) in his life at a given time. Somehow, I think all of the jazz musicians helped begin to bring me back around. People like Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ahmad Jamal, who lived for decades and lived well and in mostly good health.

I became more tuned with the I Ching, The Dao, and some Buddhist and related Daoist texts. The amazing moments this year that actually helped me, aside from all the terrible ones (that may yet be set to have helped me as well), were the ones where I began to see just how much of my own arrested development ego was hanging around out there, comparing me to others, and causing my family misery. The journey had reached a turning point that day in March, with a year of me holding a job down and a month of Tai Chi under my belt. I was feeling more confident and ready than ever to begin connecting more with my wife and being available for whatever was needed with the kids. In short, I was feeling like a whole person again for the first time in almost two years.

Now, with so many days/nights just being nothing but loneliness, darkness and my dog (and music), I find it so easy to get lost in a never land of just doing the minimum to stay afloat (and this is barely). More than ever, I feel like I need a clear Path or Way to act as a Steady and True Guide in the face of what also feels like reality falling apart.

It is so easy to lapse back into being a "mirror of men"--just showing back to everyone whatever it is that you think they are showing you...if someone is being unnecessarily rude or just condescending, then mirror this behavior back to them in a way they are sure to get it. You might do this out of a perceived since of righteous anger, but what I realized about myself is that I simply have some kind of unwanted preset turned on in my brain that is more likely than not to see the Other as hostile and am already sizing up the Other from the point of view of their weaknesses.