| I found myself last week. I was lying on my back, precariously arched over a yoga ball, gazing out the office windows at blustery seagull bellies playing in the blue wind. I was a tad startled to realize that I had always been here, and there, gazing at a state of freedom I yearn to try some day (and will in the closest human approximation I can find). Jonathan Livingston Seagull lives on, somehow. I devoured that book as my dad drove home from the bookstore. I was maybe 12 yrs old, and yet even now when I read even snippets of it, I want to jump up and down and cry and shout in excitement and my belly knots up. Possibilities, probabilities, potential! I think I realized, in my upside down state, I was going to be okay. That amidst the flowers and light of spring I am slowly and finally replenishing my energies rather than spending them without regard for my soul. That the potentials I've dreamed about and want to see exercised have a growing chance of being found. I will continue my voyage of layers, but I get to continue it with more chosen development than scared exposed scrambling.
This past year has not been easy. I've sat at a computer 16 hours a day, seven days a week for weeks and months on end, pushing though design work, decisions, deliberations, trying to make sense the of greedy entity known as QFD. I've wondered and hoped my body and mind would recover, that I would be able to understand and exist in a balanced life, in a life outside 3D CAD models and email. A life where I have the energy to give life and love to other people. I've seen a dear friend successfully combat the immediate evils of cancer and its current cure, and yet after a monumental fight to be free, their head, so awakened by the fight, is still chained to a limiting body. I've seen my 90 year old battle ax of a Grandmother get a new hip and struggle through a period of immobility and helplessness that scared all of us. I've seen friends have to make decisions that effectively ended decade-long relationships. I've seen my mother give up her freedom and in many ways threaten her future in order to care for someone that doesn't seem to realize their hurtful |
impact on her soul. My mom also lost her faithful companion Tadpole in a bewildering incident. I yearn to be able to give enough love to these people that they can know they aren't alone in their struggle. Enough love that they can fight through the circumstance and realize the potentials they have. I can't cure a body or mind or mend a heart, but I can love as much as I dare. This last year was so inwardly focused that I couldn't really afford to care, I couldn't afford the distraction of caring. I'm still in a precarious position, my backwards arch with an exposed belly. I still can't care as much as I want to, but I can sense that I'm getting stronger finally, not weaker.
Part of getting stronger is finally coming to grips with the possibilities presented by life. Only in a limited way. When I thoroughly look at all the experiences life has to offer, it is immediately overwhelming. I can't live (this?) life long enough or often enough to truly experience everything I want to. But when I think in general terms about what I would like to do for this world, I can see a path from here to there, and that, for me, is enough. I can finally feel that QFD will have the potential to be a part of that path, be it just for financial support or even the tool of choice. If you asked me a few months ago, I would have wondered if I was sane to pursue the development of QFD. The price I was paying was too high to bear for long, spending my soul. I didn't have the time to live, never mind the financial freedom to take advantage of that time. Now, rather than the vague fogginess of not knowing when I would get to see my breath in the frigid air of a mountain, when I would get to finally push my photography skills further, when I would get to fly, I can see the potential. Probabilities return, possibilities stack up. My Jonathan Livingston Seagull, both the real one sliding sideways towards the building across the street, looking for that perfect vortex of blue air to play in, but also the mentor that takes form as the world around me, is wriggling with glee. Talk about possibilities! Probabilities! Potential! |
