Eye of the Storm
It is the funniest damn thing. Despite all the shit going on in my life right now, I have never felt this comfortable with myself. Don’t get me wrong. I am obviously scared to death with my health situation. And, I am mad as hell at work for what they are putting my family and me through after I have given them 15 good years. But, I also am feeling this strange inner calm that I never felt before.
All my life I was driven to excel. A lot of that drive was based on fear. If I did not excel, then something bad would happen. As long as I worked hard, I thought I could control the situation. If I stopped working hard, I would lose control and bad stuff would start because of me. Also, I always prided myself on being the answer man. If I could not make sense of some aspect of my life then I would either fake it or find a way to distance myself from it. But, I would never admit I was wrong, or out of control. That is why I became an engineer. There is false sense of control that comes from solving math problems. They are rigged so that you can always solve for X. There is only one right answer. And, if you work hard enough, you can find it. There is always a happy ending (in a weird way).
I guess all the stuff going on in my life is forcing me to deal with things in a whole different way. Things are completely out of control. There is nothing I can do to stop it. Will I lose my job? Will I die of this cancer? Only time will tell. There is no way to determine these things no matter how hard I try. I cannot turn these questions into neat math problems. I also can’t ignore them. No amount of surfing on the internet will determine the outcome of my kidney cancer. (That is another lesson that I learned from a classmate at my reunion.)
The result is that the prison I had built for myself is disappearing. The paranoia that drove me is gone. It is OK to be wrong. I have never felt so comfortable in my own skin. It is like I am in the eye of the storm. I just hope the cancer will let me live to enjoy my new outlook on life.
All my life I was driven to excel. A lot of that drive was based on fear. If I did not excel, then something bad would happen. As long as I worked hard, I thought I could control the situation. If I stopped working hard, I would lose control and bad stuff would start because of me. Also, I always prided myself on being the answer man. If I could not make sense of some aspect of my life then I would either fake it or find a way to distance myself from it. But, I would never admit I was wrong, or out of control. That is why I became an engineer. There is false sense of control that comes from solving math problems. They are rigged so that you can always solve for X. There is only one right answer. And, if you work hard enough, you can find it. There is always a happy ending (in a weird way).
I guess all the stuff going on in my life is forcing me to deal with things in a whole different way. Things are completely out of control. There is nothing I can do to stop it. Will I lose my job? Will I die of this cancer? Only time will tell. There is no way to determine these things no matter how hard I try. I cannot turn these questions into neat math problems. I also can’t ignore them. No amount of surfing on the internet will determine the outcome of my kidney cancer. (That is another lesson that I learned from a classmate at my reunion.)
The result is that the prison I had built for myself is disappearing. The paranoia that drove me is gone. It is OK to be wrong. I have never felt so comfortable in my own skin. It is like I am in the eye of the storm. I just hope the cancer will let me live to enjoy my new outlook on life.
posted by cheesie_67 at 5:30 PM
1 Comments:
Nice idea with this site its better than most of the rubbish I come across.
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