The New Normal, Built on the Middle-Mix ...

Screech, crack, crunch, creeeeeeeeeeeeeak!  I’ve reopened my blog, and in doing so I’m sharing a post from another blog I frequent … The Splintered Mind by Eric Schwitzgebel.

Schwitzgebel’s is an excellent write for today, a day when so many of us are “remembering not to forget.” 

Today, is just one instance in which we are “remembering not to forget” as a country, as individuals, and also newcomers to the “remembering not to forget.” 

Due to the incredible amount of written commentary on September 11th, verbal, visual and audio content that is replayed over the years, redone, regrouped, etc., even those not alive on that day feel its constant life’s breath saying, “remember not to forget.”

I love the concept of Schwitzgebel’s blog, how the things we choose to remember/the things we might forget (or wish to), on the whole (or as individuals), really lend to the fact that the “forgetfulness is an unwitting confession of our values.” 

In something that I’m working on today, through my ears and out and on to the page, I’m listening to multiple women, who have similar thoughts on this particular matter, this “remembering to forget” stuff.

These women were not talking about September 11th, or any other specific event, for that matter.  They are merely tossing around thoughts, and in their discussions had touched on how life’s events can shape or unshape us, depending on what we remember and what we forget.

I’ve been struggling A LOT today with this “remembering never to forget” stuff and such.  This does include the September 11th anniversary, but also the 18-month anniversary of my brother’s suicide. 

It has me thinking … okay, not thinking … it has me FEELING, too, along the same lines of Schwitzgebel’s blog today.  The work that is filtering in my ears and out to the page all afternoon has my mind (okay, MY HEART!!!) thumping in multiple directions.

There were the three voices in my ear, Schwitzgebel’s blog, and then my own thoughts and feelings.  I've been WORKING VERY HARD, to make sense of all of these things, on this day of all days.

THAT’S A LOT OF VOICES, I know … but shared voices, become one voice, if you let them in.  Opening that door, (see the creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaking above) helps one to get out of their “circle thinking.” 

It’s like being in a traffic roundabout, circling, hurting, feeling, thinking, trying to make sense and you are just too afraid, finally, to make that break from the circle; you don’t quite understand, or it’s your first time experiencing a “roundabout,” and you’re kind of freaked that you’re going to get an accident if you’re not careful.

However, if you let the “shared voices in,” it doesn’t stop hurting (or whatever otherwise feeling/s you are having), but it does become more manageable. 

It’s as if the shared voices are saying, about the circle thinking, and in a “roundabout” driver’s-education-coaching-kind of manner, “Yield to the left and KEEP GOING …” wherein you will find yourself, not stuck in that circle, but spitting out onto the freeway … the free way, a bit less circle-jerk’d, I have to say.

The world, and your heart of hearts, will reopen.

We have to continue to believe, of ourselves (and of the whole) that we/us, in totality, are not the things that “happened to us.” 

There’s this middle-mix, and it is hard to find, but there’s this middle ground, arising from this middle-mix, that gradually turns into cement, a new avenue to explore, a way off the roundabout.

Here, the scars are still there, no denying that, but they’re ready now for new growth to take place.  It’s where places like “The New Normal” crop up, these giant subdivided housing tracts where people heal, live, prosper …

You become less your “own worst day,” or the “worst day ever for the world,” and more concerned about taking care of the “self” and the “whole” that are left behind. 

You keep moving forward, or up.  Or, if called for, you dig down deep, a new basement with waterproof walls.  You attach a sunroom to the side of the house and a outdoor porch, beyond that.  You might get your freak right back on and build a treehouse in the year ... whatever it is that you "need," you have to rebuild!!!

This is where resilience becomes a factor, that ability to bounce back (like a Bumble), remembering to never forget, but also remembering never to forget to move forward … [hard, the fuck as it is some days …]

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"It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards."
— Søren Kierkegaard

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... In addition, I have to say, I can’t BELIEVE I creaked, cracked, CREEEEEEEEEEEEEAKED/reopened my blog with a heart-felt post, but one that also contained the terminology “circle jerk’d.”

What things may come, from this … not gonna shut the door, gonna find out ...