The Same Old New Year

In Ukraine, New Year is the biggest and brightest holiday of the year.  To a Westerner, the celebration here can seem like a morphing of traditions associated with Christmas and New Year, with a few unique aspects added for good measure. 

Besides “ringing in” the New Year at midnight like everywhere else in the world, the holiday here includes the gift-giving of Western Christmas, and children look forward to an overnight visit by Ded Moroz (the Russian/Ukrainian equivalent of Santa Claus).  Families and friends gather at home to enjoy festivities, including lots of food, and home celebrations can typically last past 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning.

In Kharkov, thousands of people brave the night cold to congregate in the city’s huge central square or at the recently renovated Gorkiy Park to usher in the New Year with fireworks, champagne and maybe a little hot wine to ward off the chill.  After a few hours they head to the warmth of their own or friends’ homes to continue the celebration (with all that food).  Almost everyone has someplace to go and people to be with.

But in my seven new years in Kharkov, that has rarely been the case.  Being a foreigner, having no family or a “family-like” circle of friends, and living alone usually relegates me to entering the New Year on my own.  I generally go to bed early and hope my neighbors don’t keep me awake with their own celebrations.  Perhaps it is just the normal life of an expatriate.

It has been different only twice.  For 2010, I was determined not to be alone and managed to find a couple of people who similarly had no better options.  We met some others at the square and then returned to my place for a small party.  It was one of the few times that I felt motivated to decorate my place with a small tree and other touches.  It was nice. 

Last year, I had the opportunity to greet the New Year at the home of a friend.  It was her first New Year in her own place, and though it was just the two of us – and we were just friends – it was nice to not be alone.  But a couple of hours past midnight, I returned to my own apartment, which was devoid of New Year cheer.

Too often New Year has been a little depressing because it accentuates the fact that, despite having a lot of friends and acquaintances here, when push comes to shove, I am alone.  And it’s a hard pill to swallow sometimes.  

But this year, I was determined to start the year out in the most positive manner possible, with good company and a cheery environment.  I bought a small, artificial tree; decorated it with lights, ornaments and a bit of garland; put up some strings of lights around my living room windows; hung strands of garland around door frames; and even put up some lights in my front window to be seen from outside.  All of these decorations are still up, and it is festive.

The next thing was to buy gifts.  I put some effort into it and found some nice stuff for my friends, some of the people I work with regularly, and a few others.  It was a nice feeling to organize everything, and I enjoyed distributing gifts to people at several of my client companies and to some of my friends.

A few days before New Year, I got dressed up and attended the corporate party of one of my client companies, and I had a great time.  It was a good way to start getting into the spirit and helped me to start thinking about how I might ring in the real New Year, and perhaps even with whom.

But that was as far as it went.  My attempts to find some company and make a good plan for New Year’s Eve didn’t work out.  I was able to meet a few friends briefly before New Year, but most people were busy, and everyone had their own plans for the big night.  So it was early to bed, as usual.  Fortunately, none of my neighbors were celebrating, so it was mostly a quiet night.  The same old New Year.

My first few days of 2014 were spent quietly at home… reading, writing, watching movies… basically just vegetating.  But it was necessary vegetating and not all bad.  I finally got out on Friday and Saturday, and had good times with some friends.  It made things better.

Almost a week later, many of the gifts are still sitting on a shelf waiting to be given away.  Tomorrow is Orthodox Christmas, and few friends plan to drop by for a while, so a few more gifts will find their homes. 

In another week, I will return to my usual work routine, and the whole holiday thing will be behind me for another year.  I expect that I will still be here when 2015 rolls in, though it might well be my last New Year in Ukraine.  And I will do my best to make it festive, no matter if it’s my last here or not.  The attempt is worth it, no matter how it works out.


The next few blog posts will be about... souls.

A Sick Cat

At first, I was annoyed. It was relatively early on a Sunday morning, and some horny cat was under my bedroom window announcing herself to potential lovers. I had been sick for a few days and just wanted to sleep and get better. But the loud feline “come hithers” made that impossible.

But then I noticed that something sounded different. This wasn’t your usual plaintive plea for the attention of the local tomcats; it was deeper and more mournful. Something was wrong.

So I got up and looked out my window. Next to the bench outside the entrance to my building, and right under my second-floor window, was a yellow cat sitting there and howling. It wasn’t moving much, just sitting low to the ground and crying, but I wasn’t sure why.

I had seen this cat around a few times before, so I knew it was local, perhaps from the building on the other side of the driveway. Its coat was in pretty good condition, and it wasn’t thin, so I knew it wasn’t a homeless wanderer. But, what could have been wrong?

Hunger didn’t seem to be the issue, and I had assumed previously that it was a male, so it didn’t make sense for it to be in heat. But the sound of the cat’s cries made it clear that something was not right. 

Then the cat tried to take a step, and I saw that it was wobbly. It couldn’t keep its balance properly except when it hunkered down on all fours with its belly to the ground. When it tried to stand up fully or walk, it staggered to the side, as though it was drunk… or very ill.

Now the sorrowful meowing made more sense. The cat didn’t seem to have any outward signs of injury, so the problem must have been internal. Perhaps it ate something bad, or maybe it had some kind of illness. Maybe it had been in the nearby dumpster and got hold of something that made it sick. My worst thought was that someone might have put out poison. No matter the reason, this little cat needed help.

It was pretty early, and not a lot of people were up and about. At one point, a young guy walked down the driveway, and the cat noticed him. Immediately the cat’s meowing picked up both in volume and frequency. It was as though the cat was pleading for help. The guy shot a glance at the cat but kept moving.

The cat took a couple of staggering steps away from the bench, then settled down on its belly again and continued its low moaning. My annoyance was completely gone, replaced with concern. I wondered what I could do. Anything?

My Conflict

I was sick too. I hadn’t left the apartment since I got home late Thursday afternoon. I was getting better, but I still felt pretty lousy and was just doing my best to stay warm. Plus, I had my usual expatriate dilemma of knowing that there are many things here that I just can’t deal with as I would in my own environment.

If this cat were outside my home in Colorado, I would know exactly what to do. If I knew the cat’s owners, I would alert them. If I didn’t know the cat’s home, I could rescue it in a towel or something, and take it to a vet in my truck. I usually knew where the vet offices were located and could check the phone directory if I didn’t know. 

But here, I don’t know where the nearest vets are located or whether they even work on Sunday mornings (doubtful). I don’t have my own transportation, and even if I did find a working vet and managed to take the cat there, I would still have language issues.

I was conflicted. I love animals and have a particular fondness for cats. It always affects me when I see or hear about cats in trouble, and I can’t escape the urge to want to take in just about every homeless kitten I see advertised on VKontakte. I resist because, logically, I know that I just can’t do it. But my inner feelings are never comfortable with that logical resistance.

So because of how I feel about cats, I naturally felt a strong urge to do something, but as I mentioned, I felt severely limited in my ability to help. Really, this seemed to be for someone else to take action on, and I felt confident that someone would. After all, I know there are other kind, cat-loving people in my building.

And why should I assume that it’s my responsibility to intervene? I can’t save every cat, and nature has to work its way. I couldn’t save my own cats – Koshka and Nekko – 10 years ago. But maybe that was part of the issue. Maybe I’ve felt guilty about that for all this time.

Remembering the Twins

Nekko was a yellow cat, quite similar in appearance to the one under my window; his name means cat in Japanese. Koshka, whose name means cat in Russian, was his sister. I took them both from a left-behind litter, and they lived with me for 12 years. During that time, they were never separated from each other. 

Then, while I was away for a couple of weeks working on a project near Chicago, Koshka disappeared. When I returned home, she was nowhere to be found. Nekko was still in the house, but it was clear that he was upset. My neighbor had been coming over to feed them every day while I was gone, but she rarely saw them, so she did not know that Koshka was gone, and we had no idea how long she had been missing. 

I had made the mistake of letting them have access to the back yard through an unlocked cat door. Being older, they rarely left the yard, and I did not think that either of them would wander off. I thought they would enjoy being able to go out safely into our fully fenced back yard. I was very wrong.

When I returned from Chicago and found Koshka missing, I searched everywhere for her. I drove the streets looking for any sign of her, even if it was evidence of the worst sort. But I never found her. She was gone, and my own stupidity was to blame.

Nekko, meanwhile, was now alone – except for me – and his heart was broken. I still had to make trips to Chicago, and this made it even harder. For a while, my daughter came with her cat, which as a kitten had spent time with Nekko and Koshka. But it wasn’t the same. After a few months, Nekko became sick and very weak.

We took him to a vet, and he got a little better for a while, but then his condition worsened, and the vet said there was nothing that could be done. He was sick, weak and thin. He either cried or just wanted to be held and cuddled. But there was no hope. All that was left was to have the vet put him down painlessly. I loved that cat, and I couldn’t do it; I should have been the one, but I couldn’t. My daughter took him for his last trip to the vet. I was pretty shaken up about it all.

Getting Weaker

I looked out the window again and saw that the yellow cat had somehow made its way across the driveway and was out in the open on the other side, surrounded by fallen yellow leaves. It was still crying, but not as much. And it wasn’t moving much either. I needed to rest, so I took a nap for a couple of hours. Then I got up and check on it. It was still there, but had moved closer to the other building and rested on its belly in a small opening in the bushes.

I continued looking out the window from time to time and saw that it hardly moved at all. It seemed a lot weaker, and I feared that it might have died or been near death. I thought that maybe I should get dressed and at least take some water out to it, but I was worried about what I might find.

Then I saw it move its head a bit, so I knew it was still alive, at least. I could not hear it, so I was not sure if it continued crying or had run out of energy. I just hoped that its owners would come and take it home, or that someone would intervene and help. Again, I took a short nap.

And Then the Rain Came

After a bit, I awoke to the sound of rain. It started coming down hard, and I immediately looked out the window to see if the cat was still there. I could not see it at all. It was very cold, and the rain was mixed with small hail stones. I hoped that the cat had been taken to safety and was being cared for, but my worst fear was that it had crawled under some bushes to take refuge from the rain, a place that would make it even harder for anyone to see.

And the bushes would not provide much refuge anyway. If the cat was still out there, it would be soaking wet and terribly cold, along with whatever was ailing it. The thought crossed my mind again to go out there and check, but I reminded myself – again – that I was not feeling well, and there just was not much that I could really do. I hated that feeling.

It rained several more times that day. I had no idea what happened to the cat. Monday morning I scoured the area from my window and saw nothing. Before I went to my client company, I walked into the area where I last saw the cat, but I saw no sign of it. 

I have been worrying about that cat since Sunday, and have checked the yard each day. The cat made me think about Nekko and Koshka, but on Sunday I also related with it a bit myself. It was sick, alone and wanting help. I too was sick and alone, but at least I was able to care for myself well enough.

I am trying to remain positive and believe that someone – the cat’s owner or some other kind person – found the little guy (or girl) and rescued it. But I don’t think I will feel completely right about it until I see that cat walking around the yard again in a healthy state. Until then, I just have to keep good thoughts… and stop second-guessing my own actions years ago with Koshka and Nekko.

ps - The cat in the photo at the top of the post is not the actual cat I have written about; it's just a representative picture.

FOLLOW-UP - 20 October: Today I saw the yellow cat, apparently in good health, outside my building.  All is well. :-)

Decision Points Along Life's Path

When I was 17, I had a decision to make: whether to attend the state university, located in the western part of the state and about a three-or four-hour drive from home, or to go to a lesser-known, but supposedly prestigious school in the heart of Boston.  If I chose the former, I would live in a campus dormitory, be more immersed in college life, and have a chance to play hockey.  If I selected the latter, college would feel more like a part-time activity, there would be no hockey, and I’d have to commute from home, which meant spending two to three hours on a bus every day.

My parents wanted me to go to the school in the city and live at home for a variety of reasons.  I wanted to go to the state university for my own, opposite, reasons.  Despite their pressure, they said that the ultimate decision would be mine.  I bowed to the pressure and chose the urban school.

The commuting was a drag, and the city had too many distractions.  I never really felt like I was a college student, I fell into bad habits, and I did poorly.  I dropped out in my second semester and didn't know what to do with myself.  I decided to join the navy, and before I entered the service, I also decided to marry the girl I had been dating since the summer after high school. 

The wedding was to be after I finished my training and before my first posting.  I was a month past my 20th birthday – and she was 18 – when we tied the knot.  I was about a year and a half older when I found out she had been cheating on me while I was stationed half a world away.  We called it quits, and I went wild.

The next year was filled with hard-core partying.  My gang drank a lot, and there was a lot of sex; I was almost out of control.  I tried marijuana one time, but it didn't really do much for me, and I didn't want to risk my security clearance, so I never got into drugs. 

When my time was over, I left the navy.  I was still trying to figure out what to do with myself.  I tried several crutches, but was still pretty lost.

Then I went back into the navy, got married to a girl I had only known for a few months, went to Japan, lost my New England accent, had two beautiful children, got out of the navy and moved to Colorado, got divorced again, completed my university studies, fell deeply in love and got just as deeply hurt, decided to work at a PR agency, left after two years, worked for a state lottery, got into weight lifting, lived in a “sex, booze and rock n’ roll” apartment community, fell in love and got hurt again, moved back east for a while then returned to Colorado and got into dancing, had a great job in a project management firm, worked in South America, lived in the Colorado mountains, then moved to Ukraine, and…

Wait a minute!  Let’s go back and try that again.

Alternative 1

My parents wanted me to go to the university in the city for a variety of reasons.  I wanted to go to the state university for my own, opposite, reasons.  Despite their pressure, they said that the ultimate decision would be mine.  I did what I felt was right for me, and I went to the state university.

My four years at the university were great.  I played hockey and did pretty well but wasn’t quite good enough to play in the pros.  I studied journalism and got into law as well.  I broke up with the girlfriend I had been dating during the summer after high school, and I had several different girlfriends while I was in school.  But I never got serious with any of them – I was too busy with hockey, studying and parties.

I partied a lot, but never really lost control.  I tried some marijuana, but it didn’t really do much for me, and I didn’t want to risk the hockey career I thought I might have, so I never got into drugs. 

After receiving my degree in journalism, I had to decide between two job offers.  One was at a daily paper in central Maine, and the other was way out west in Wyoming.  I decided that the adventure of living in the Wild West was too good to pass up, so I moved to Casper and joined the staff of the city paper. 

Soon I got an offer to get involved in some radio and television work, and I made a strong effort to lose my New England accent.  After several years of doing both print and broadcast work in Casper, I got a great job offer down south in Denver.  That’s where I met the girl I would marry. 

We had two beautiful children, I moved up and became a managing editor, we got divorced, I started drinking and partying, I decided to change everything and take a job in Alaska, I fell deeply in love and got just as deeply hurt, I moved to tiny hamlet deep in the Alaskan forest where I lived alone and grew hemp, and…

No, wait a minute.  Let’s back up again.

Alternative 1-b

After receiving my degree in journalism, I had to decide between two job offers.  One was at a daily paper in central Maine, and the other was way out west in Wyoming.  I decided that I should stay in New England, which was the only region I really knew and I could be closer to my family. 

I worked on the paper for a couple of years then got a better job in Portland.  That’s where I met the girl I would marry.  We had three beautiful children, I earned an advanced law degree, became editor-in-chief of the paper, got into politics and became governor of Maine, and we all lived happily ever after.

OK.  That sounds nice… boring, but nice.

So Many Possible Paths

These examples illustrate just a tiny fraction of the many possible paths a person’s life might take.  It’s an interesting exercise to imagine how many different paths your life might have taken, based on different choices at those decision points, and what would have been the result of each.  Of course, we shouldn't obsess on it, but sometimes it can be an amazing thing to consider.

In our lives there are hundreds – perhaps thousands – of decision points that determine what will happen next.  These are like forks in the road, each offering a different path with different people, different experiences and different outcomes.  Sometimes the decision points are big and obvious.  Other times they are not so clear but can still change us in profound ways.

Alternative realities?

Of course, the only path we know is the one we have actually followed.  Nothing else is real for us.  But what if each potential path is just as real as the one you actually follow?  What if every decision point creates a new path in some alternative reality?  And what if you could actually see all of those paths?  It might look like a huge tree with tens of main branches, hundreds of smaller branches, and thousands of even smaller branches, each representing a different path.  It boggles the mind.

In my story, let’s start with the two choices for college.  This immediately creates two possible paths, but then each of those is divided by subsequent decision points into other possible paths, and all of those are further divided… and so on, and so on.  In all, there can be thousands and thousands of different paths for us. 

When we have problems in life, when we become disappointed about choices we've made, it is quite natural to imagine how some alternative path would have been better.  But we can’t know for sure.  Perhaps the alternative would actually have been worse.  In some cases we clearly make poor choices, and what happens is just the natural result of having made a bad decision.

But sometimes the decision itself might not be so bad; it’s the attitude we adopt as we travel this new path that might cause it to be less than we had hoped.  Often we sabotage even our most enlightened choices.  In such a case, perhaps no choice would yield a positive result; our thoughts, and thus are behaviors, are already set to make it go bad.

So this begs a question: are there truly no bad choices, no mistakes?  Or is it only about what we do with the choices we make, and the paths we follow?  I think it is mostly this way; however, there clearly are some choices that are far worse than others.  The reasons we make these choices probably also reflect our attitudes, especially toward ourselves.

Different paths toward the same goal?

When we make a choice at some decision point, do we just randomly point ourselves toward some outcome, and if we make a different decision, do we aim ourselves in some other, equally random direction and toward and entirely different outcome?  Is it all just chance?  Or do we live our lives trying in some way to find our way toward some particular goal or goals conceived, perhaps, even before birth. 

Are there certain things we are meant to do, certain places we are meant to be, certain experiences we are meant to have, no matter what decisions we make along the way?  And are the most important people who appear in our lives somehow destined to be part of our lives no matter the choices we make?  Do we make certain choices, subconsciously, in order to bring us to these places, experiences and people?

For example, in the little story I used to illustrate this at the beginning, was I somehow “destined” to be in Colorado, or Japan?  Would I have found some way to experience Peru, no matter which choice I made when I was 17?  Was it inevitable that I would meet and perhaps fall in love with particular people, no matter what else happened?  Was it cosmically necessary that I should have exactly the children that I had?  And was it preordained that I would wind up in Ukraine one day?

People and places - profound connections

Often we feel such a profound connection with certain people and places that we can’t imagine how we could have NOT been destined to come to them at some point.  Colorado has always drawn me in such a way that I can’t conceive how I could have lived my life without ever being there.  But is this because I was inexorably drawn to that place?  Or do I feel that way only because I spent most of my adult life there?

The only other places that “spoke to me” in such a way were Ireland and, now that I think about it, Ukraine.  As I write this, I realize that I really need to return to Ireland to test this, to see if I might still feel that strong pull that I felt when I visited so long ago.  It would be interesting.

The connection with people is even more interesting.  There have been many people who have come and gone in my life, a handful who have been “significant,” and just a few who have touched me at the deepest level.  It seems that if my path had not been so unusual, these “deeper” people would not have had the opportunity to enter.  If had made some other choice in the past, I would never have put myself in the right position to cross paths with them. 

But if we were somehow destined to meet, no matter what, then even if I had made some other choice early in life, my subsequent choices would still, somehow, have brought me around to these people and them to me.  I do believe this is the case.  It might also be the case that a different path might have brought these people into my life at a different point in time, and perhaps under different circumstances.  But the fact that these people have had such importance in my life as I know it suggests that they simply had to be a part of my existence in some way.

How different might each of us be?

The people, places and experiences along our path help mold our personalities and create the persons we ultimately become.  In our childhood, we are taught much about who we should be and how we should live by parents, other family members, teachers, neighbors and friends.  Our view of the world is colored by the people we meet and the things that happen.  And all through our lives, these people and events add additional color and shading.  The person you are now is the "essence" you started with, molded and modified by all these external forces.

So if you follow a completely alternative path, wouldn't this mean that you would be a very different person?  Would one path encourage you to be a nice, caring person, while another would turn you into an asshole?  Are we more a product of our environment than of the soul that dwells within us? Most people seem to believe this is the case... that if Hitler, for example, had followed a different path, he would not have been the monster he became.  

But how can we know this?  Perhaps the goal your spirit sets out for, the lessons and experiences it desires, are what determine what kind of person you become, and the paths it takes are chosen in order to provide what it needs to develop that personality.

Sometimes I like to think I would have been a little wiser and nicer on a different path.  I look at my own shortcomings and think they could have been averted.  But overall, I would rather be the man I am than most of the alternatives I could think of, and I prefer to believe that on any path, I would still have formed the basic beliefs and values that I have now.

A Vehicle on the Road

People, places, experiences – for me it seems absolute that certain of these just had to be part of my life, not matter what choices I might have made through the years.  I can’t imagine it any other way, and I DO believe that there is a divine hand in it all.  I don’t believe that life is random – no way!

I believe we have a purpose, an aim, even before we are born.  And I believe our spirits work to take us along paths to realize our particular purposes.  But because the spirits is traveling along in a fallible human vehicle, and because the vehicle does much of its own driving (even if badly), the path can be quite circuitous.  But when the vehicle careens too far off course, spirit grabs the wheel and coaxes it back toward the goal.

Perhaps we don’t make it to every person, place or experience we set out for.  Maybe certain paths take us closer to some and further from others.  But I am confident that spirit ensures that we make it to the most important ones, no matter what our human mind selects along the way. 

Perhaps the difference between whether the human vehicle takes the best path to the spirit’s goal lies in the level of awareness the mind achieves about that goal – the extent to which it allows spirit to come in and guide the vehicle.  Meditation and quiet contemplation, time in nature, time away from limiting distractions (like the Internet), all allow the mind to open and expand, and for spirit to enter. 

Why think about this at all?

As I look back and read this, it makes sense to me, but I can understand how someone else might wonder what the heck I’ve been smoking.  Don’t worry, I don’t smoke anything.  Perhaps one might wonder why I’ve spent any time thinking about this at all, unless it’s all I have to do.

Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about choices lately because as we start to draw closer to the end of the year, I find myself facing the prospect of making another big decision: whether to go through the permit process and stay another year in Ukraine or to decide that I’ve had enough and need to do something else.  It is starting to weigh heavily on my mind.

Last year, it was a foregone conclusion that I would stay; I really didn’t have any other good plans, and my teaching work here was quite satisfying.  But this time I really don’t know.  I am feeling a stronger urge to leave than ever before, and I feel less attraction to stay.  And as I start to ponder the possible consequences of my decision, I have been finding myself thinking more about the actual results and consequences of past choices and about how different choices might have yielded different results.

I suppose it’s just an exercise I need to go through because I want very much to make the “right” choice, as if there was such a thing.  If nothing else, all this thought about different choices, different paths and different outcomes is just sort of fun and interesting.  But ultimately, I know I have to make it possible for spirit – my spirit, the essence of who I really am – to make the best choice clear. 

For some time, I have to stop trying to drive the vehicle myself and give the wheel to my Self, the real me on the inside.  If I do that, we’ll take a great ride together to a perfect destination.

Just a Fond Memory

It is evening.  This afternoon I finished my classes at one of my client companies, ending my normal nine to 10 hours of classes and traveling.  I was tired and, as it has been every day, my back and hip were hurting.

With my stupid, embarrassing cane in my right hand and my overloaded backpack over my left shoulder, I hobbled like a penguin for 10 minutes to the bus stop and waited for my usual marshrutka.  It arrived but was so full that people were practically busting out the doors.  There was no chance to get on that one, so I had to stand and wait.  After a few minutes, another bus came by, and it was almost as full as the first one.  This one did not stop as close to my home as the first, but it was better than nothing, so I got on board.

There was no place to sit, even for a guy with a cane.  And I probably would have refused a seat anyway as long as there were women standing, but it was still maddening to see young guys sitting and pretending not to notice anyone else.  It was cramped and hot, and my back hurt trying to keep myself steady throughout the jolting stops and starts of the bus.  After about five minutes I reached my stop and – thankfully – got off the bus.

I walked across a small square dominated by a massive statue of a Soviet soldier from the Great Patriotic War (World War II), then I made my way along the local main street to my home.  Across the street from the statue is a complex of shops and behind that an open market.  It’s a busy place.  

As I walked, I took note of all around me: lots of people going this way and that, noisy buses, car alarms going off at the slightest sound, jerk drivers honking at any other car or pedestrian who dared to make them drive close to the speed limit, someone throwing an empty bottle on the sidewalk, some children screaming, some parents screaming, several plops of dog crap left by irresponsible dog owners, masses of city pigeons (flying rats), and of course, the ever-present chain smokers.

Then another image flashed in my mind.  It was a memory of coming home to my forest house in Bailey, Colorado – a tiny settlement in the foothills southwest of Denver.  On a similar summer day I would escape the hustle and bustle of the city, the heavy traffic and the unruly drivers – not go home to them.  Driving home, I would sit in the comfortable privacy of my truck, enjoying nice music.  

As I got further from the city, the traffic would get better, and the scenery would be as strikingly beautiful as the scenery I now face is strikingly dull.  The last few miles before the turnoff to my county road always made me feel the palpable transition from a guy who works in the city to a simple country boy.  And the five miles of country road, through Deer Creek Valley, were always a special treat.

Then another mile of dirt road and I reached my house, which was at the end of the development, the most private place.  I would pull into my driveway, back my truck down to the house, turn off the engine, open the door and step out into – quiet. 

Peaceful, solemn quiet.  There might be a bit of breeze making the soft, green aspen leaves quiver and offer an enchanting “welcome home” to me.  A few birds might be singing, or off in the distance there could be the “caw” of a raven.  There might even be a few mule deer or elk around the house.  But otherwise, it was just quiet… beautiful, beautiful quiet.

I would open the door to be greeted by a sleepy little black cat, Tia, who was ready to go outside and check her queendom.  After putting my things down, I might grab a bottle of water, or maybe a beer, and join her.  I’d sit on the porch and just look out at the beauty of the trees all around me and listen to the, well… the quiet.  Sometimes Tia would encourage me to go for a walk with her into the woods.

It was always so peaceful to come home to that place.  It was my escape from the rest of the world, my way of restoring sanity.  It was the most wonderful place I have ever lived, and I often think of it when the stress of my life in this foreign city gets to be a little too much.

And as I remembered how much I loved coming home to my mountain paradise, I asked myself why I gave it up to come and live in Kharkov.  Why on Earth did I throw that away?  Why did I sacrifice that, as well as a pretty good job, good health benefits (which I could certainly use now), and everything else to live this existence that I have here. 

They say that everything in your life is the result of the choices you make.  And I believe this is true.  This is why I often look back and question decisions like leaving my home in Bailey.  What could have possessed me to make such a choice?

And honestly, I don’t have an answer.  It seems like madness.  Sometimes I think I must be paying some kind of monstrous karmic debt.

In the past two months, I have suffered a deep emotional disappointment, had almost all my savings and my sense of security stolen from me, and seen my ability to walk normally and without pain spirited away yet again.  I am deeply discouraged and sad, and more and more I find myself thinking back to my mountain home and wondering why I ever left it.

If I am, in fact, paying a karmic debt, I wonder what I did that was so bad that I should have to pay such a heavy penalty for such a long time.  I have not been perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but have my sins been so deep as to deserve this?

There are lots of other nice, positive sayings that I am quite good at telling others when they are down.  “Everything happens for a reason.”  “There are no mistakes.”  “It is darkest before the dawn.”  But at times like this, when I try to tell them to myself or when I hear them from others, they just sound like empty platitudes.  I can’t take them in and make them work for me. 

In a few hours, I’ll go to bed.  I’ll put in my earplugs, turn on a fan to create a few hours of white noise, and then I will sleep.  And in my dreams, I’ll look forward to returning to a place where I have peaceful solitude, where the beauty of nature is everywhere… a place I never should have left. 

It seems like this is all I have left.

Blissfully Ignorant?

"Is a man better off not knowing that his wife or girlfriend is seeing another man behind his back?  If the government is doing something to us secretly, like placing some sterilization agent in our drinking water, aren't we better off not knowing about it and just blissfully going about our daily business?"

There is a famous saying that ignorance is bliss – if you are not aware of something bad, it can’t make you unhappy.  I guess this is basically true, unless you are the sort to obsess about the negative possibilities in the absence of evidence to the positive contrary.

But still, most of us find it more comfortable to not think about possible bad outcomes and prefer to either hear good news or nothing at all.

I got to thinking about this as I have been contemplating the MRI scan I have scheduled for this morning.  I am going to get a complete and detailed scan of my spine and hip joints.  It is long overdue, and I really do need to know what is wrong so that I can get the proper treatment. 

But I am worried.  What if the news is bad?

I’ve had occasional pain in my lower back for about 15 years, and it has gotten worse in the last three years or so.  But the pain in my hips has been happening since last October and became almost crippling on the left side back in January.  A general consultation with a chiropractor in Colorado, along with my own research, suggested that it was sciatica: a pinching or inflammation of the sciatic nerve.  Even after a chiropractor here in Kharkiv got the pain mostly under control, the underlying discomfort continued – on both sides.  I have not been really pain-free for close to a year.

Recently, the right hip decided to flare up.  It’s not been as painful as the January surprise that ruined my trip to the USSA, but it’s bad enough and my walking mechanics are messed up.  This has been the motivation to get the MRI.  Absent good imagery, it has not been possible to know for certain whether the problem is actually in the hip or somewhere in the lower spine.

But while I want to know the underlying problem, I am also afraid to find out.  I have a fear that there might be an untreatable degeneration of bone or other tissue in my hip joints, perhaps related to arthritis or something.  What I want from the MRI is good news, something treatable.  What I don’t want to know is any bad news.  So I have trepidation about the scan.

Similarly, I have been going along for quite a while preferring not to know too many details about what is going on around my heart.  I had a couple of stents inserted back in 2005, and I’ve occasionally worried about more problems cropping up… perhaps even more than just “problems.”

Last week I went in for a cardiac checkup, and I got good reports.  My EKG was perfect, and an ultrasound scan detected nothing to be concerned about.  But I am not fully convinced.  Maybe this is a case of obsessing on the unknown potential negative – something I think I have been doing ever since I got the stents.

It occurred to me that, if the MRI goes well on my back, I might want to go back and get a detailed heart scan.  But, then again, I might become aware of something that would shatter my blissful ignorance.

And, really, I could really use some good, old-fashioned “bliss” these days.

Isn’t it Better to Not Know?

There are so many situations in life in which people are unaware of something bad happening around them, and they go on with their lives unconcerned.  These can be individual, personal things that would wreck the happiness of a particular person if he or she found out, or they can be big secrets that could affect the lives of hundreds, thousands or even millions of people.

Very often we say that we are better off not knowing.  But I’m not sure.

Is a man better off not knowing that his wife or girlfriend is seeing another man behind his back?  If she is slick enough to cheat without getting caught, and he is none the wiser, maybe it’s better for him to not know.  Sure, others might know, and they might laugh at him secretly for his ignorance.  But his “bliss” has not been disturbed. 

The fact is, unfortunately, that very few cheaters are so clever, or their husbands or wives so blind, that they don’t at least get a sense of what is happening eventually.  And the anguish of suspecting is exceeded only by the bitterness of discovering the betrayal.  Bliss gone!

And if the government is doing something to us secretly, like placing some sterilization agent in our drinking water (as a member of the Obamshevik administration famously suggested), are we better off not knowing about it and just blissfully going about our business? 

Wouldn’t we have been happier if we had NOT known that the USSA government was secretly checking our phone records, reading our emails, and checking what Web sites we visited?  Edward Snowden may have felt that we should know about these things, but the guy really messed up a lot of people’s bliss.

So in many ways a good case can be made for just being blissfully unaware of the truth.

Protecting Others

This seems to be especially true when we try to protect those we care about from the emotional impact of knowing the “unhappy truth.”  We often go to great lengths to protect our children from knowing too much about the dark side of life so that they can enjoy the naivete of childhood and just “being kids.”

We know that eventually we have to warn our kids about the dangers that lurk for them in the world, but we try to put it off for as long as we can.  We hope they never have to learn about death, but we know that eventually a grandparent or someone else will pass to the other side, and the subject will have to be broached.  Still, we feel that the longer they can go on just playing happily and not knowing about bad things, the better off they will be.

Similarly, we often try to keep bad news from the adults we love.  A man who is worried about losing his job might try to keep the troubles and his fears to himself and not share them with his wife, less they make her worry too.  He hopes that the problem can be solved without her ever having to know.  These days, a working woman might do the same with her husband.

And so often we try to hide serious illnesses or other problems from those we love because we don’t want their bliss to be diminished through worry about us.  When an aged parent is very ill and a doctor tells us that the end is around the corner, we often try to shield the parent from that knowledge, encourage him or her to hold on and get better, and believe that he or she will close out life a little happier if there is still some hope.

Not for Me

With the exception of trying to preserve the aura of a beautiful world for our youngest children, I don’t believe that ignorance is bliss.  I certainly prefer to know the truth, even if it is an unhappy truth.  And I am especially sensitive to finding out after the fact that I have been lied to – even if the other person thought it was for my benefit.

It is better, in my opinion, to know as much as possible, even if it is not pleasant.  Certainly, I want to be happy, even “blissful.”  But I don’t want that at the expense of being uninformed or, even worse, ignorant.  Ultimately, my happiness is my own choice, and I prefer to make informed choices.

So, in a few hours I will be off to my MRI session.  It’s time to become informed.

Writer's Shock... er, I mean Block

Back in December, I wrote a post called “Odds and Ends.”  Basically, it was a collection of a few short pieces that had no relation to each other.  There wasn’t much sense in the post, and I did it only because I could not come up with anything good or insightful to write.  The “Odds and Ends” piece was an attempt to get something out – anything – and break my stagnation, my writer’s block.

And here I am again with the same malady: writer’s block – except that this time if feels more like a shock than a block.  I just can’t seem to get myself going, to get the wheels greased, to get the juices flowing, to… well, you get the idea.  I have been creatively stifled since early June.  It’s like I’ve been in a kind of deep shock.  Sure, I wrote a piece about the heart attacks of Andrew Breitbart and James Gandolfini, as well as a rambling piece of garbage about denying reality.  But they were, in my opinion, substandard – just an attempt to get something into the blog, even if it wasn’t what I really wanted to say.

But that's the problem; since at least early June, I haven't known what I want to say.  I have at least five or six posts that I started and have not been able to finish.  And don't EVEN ask me about my book!  I am not sure why, but it most likely has to do with my mental state for the past six weeks.  It's not been good, and it's hard to be at your creative best when your mind seems to be in survival mode.

Almost two weeks ago, I suffered the ignominy of a burglary in my apartment.  A few days later, I tried to write about it, to get my emotions into words.  But I couldn’t finish it.  And I’ve had a few other things that I’ve started since early June, but either I haven’t been able to finish them, or I’ve looked at what I wrote and recoiled with disgust I had written.  There is often value in writing what you feel, in order to purge your emotions, but just as often the result is not for sharing and perhaps better suited for burning.

The past six weeks have been one of the worst periods, personally, in memory.  The burglary, and the fallout from it, has been the most obvious “bad event,” but not the worst.  The hardest thing about the burglary, after the initial shock, has been the process of analyzing who could have been responsible, considering the logical suspicions of the police against my own emotional resistance to believing it, trying to find the right course to get the necessary information to either validate the police notion or support my own belief, and trying to find clues that reinforce the scenario I DO believe is true.  In some of this I have failed, miserably, but in the latter I think there is hope.

And on top of it all, the sciatic nerve problem has returned.  This just hasn’t been my summer, it seems.

I find myself alternating between self-pity and being on the verge of just throwing in the towel on the one hand, and seeing this as a test of will and a challenge to keep myself positive and moving forward in the face of calamity on the other.  Often I really ask myself why I am here in Ukraine and what I am doing with my life – always with no good answer.  But then I recover from that morass and see it all as a situation I must have created in order to grow and realize something important about myself and about life – perhaps something to be shared… when I figure it out.

Recently, I wrote the following short piece on VKontakte:

Life is not always "peachy." Bad things sometimes happen to good people. We don't always get what we want, we have disappointments, we get hurt. But life goes on, and you have a choice whether to go on with it, or let yourself wallow in misery and die slowly inside.

No matter how deep the hurt or disappointment, you HAVE to put it aside, regain your positive attitude, and move on to bigger and better things. Some time later, when we look back at the time of that particular bad thing, we often find that something better came of it - there was a GOOD REASON why that disappointment had to happen - but we can only realize this if we orient our thinking this way!

As Clint Eastwood said in his movie, "The Outlaw Josey Wales," "Dying is no way to make a living." Whatever the bad thing is, it's better to put it aside, find your smile, and get on with the business of living!

So, it’s a conscious effort to get on with the business of living.  I find myself being more careful about my self-talk.  That is a big deal.  And I am finally taking some steps to spend less time sitting at the computer, endlessly digesting news from the Internet.  That is also a big deal.  My bike is cleaned up and ready to be ridden – as soon as I get the hip fixed – and I have taken the first positive steps to start lifting again, slowly.

Recently I FINALLY started doing morning pages as suggested in Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way.  As I expected, getting started is terrible, but I think it’s an important thing for me to do if I ever want to realize my potential as a writer in the short time I have left.  So I am forcing myself to do it.

These are some good beginnings, but only time will tell if I am able to keep momentum and turn them into changed behaviors that stick.  And only time will tell if I can add some of the other changes I need to make.  But I choose to believe that I can and I will. 

Still, however, I am creatively and emotionally blocked right now.  I can see it and I can feel it.  I have become colder than I have ever been.  It seems necessary for now, and to be honest, I think this change is serving me well.  I just hope I don’t become too accustomed to it, because I don’t think it’s for the best in the long term.  But as with other things, I guess time will tell.

So... this is, really, another crap post.  When you are creatively blocked, I guess you write stuff like this.  It’s all that can squeeze past the stone that is wedged into the creativity conduit.  But maybe it’s enough to start the process of breaking the stone and washing away the pieces… in time.

A Final Thought

I mean, seriously… how in the world is Eric Holder still the Attorney General of the USSA?  Oh, yeah… it’s the USSA.

Developing a Tolerance to Reality

It’s an axiom of the human condition: the more you do or experience something, the more you become used to it.  We speak of being able to tolerate things better, even become resistant to them, as they become more and more a regular part of our lives.

Medical science has taught us that our bodies become tolerant to various germs and bugs after they’ve made us sick.  Often, once we’ve had a particular malady, we become fully resistant to it for the rest of our lives.  We may breath in or ingest the pathogen, but our bodies just sort of say, “Oh, you again?  You can’t hurt me anymore.  Go infect someone else.”  And the bug just slinks harmlessly away. 

Similarly, we speak of how people who drink a lot develops a high tolerance to alcohol.  At first, one beer or a little wine will give them a good buzz, and it doesn’t take much to get them wasted.  But over time, they have to drink more and more just to get the desired effect.  The same is true with most illegal drugs.

And tolerance to physical pain is legendary in history.  Many warrior cultures put their recruits through hellish ordeals in order to develop their tolerance to pain.  At first, they probably cry like babies, but the more pain they are forced to endure, the more resistant they become to its debilitating effects. 

In time, they become perfect warriors who can carry the fight despite broken bones, serious wounds or even the loss of a limb.  Their pain is still there – they’ve just become so used to it that they don’t react to it anymore.  These are the scariest – and the most effective – fighting machines.

We can still see this today in the “play with pain” cultures of many of our sports, like hockey and football.  Guys who sit out with anything less than a broken leg or gaping holes in their chests are derided as wusses.

But it’s not just physical pain that we can learn to tolerate.  We can become increasingly resistant to the effects of emotional pain as well.  When we experience heartache early in life, it feels like the whole world is coming to an end.  But it doesn’t end.  And we begin to realize this. 

As the years go by and we accumulate a succession of heartaches, we find that they affect us less and less until, finally, we hardly flinch.  We expect it, we’re ready for it, and after a brief bout of disappointment, we get over it and move on.

I can’t say that this is a good thing, really.  I mean, the fact that we can take heartache so much more easily just means that we lose our ability to really invest ourselves deeply in our relationships.  I guess it’s just the price we pay to have that kind of emotional self-protection, to grow that thick skin of pain resistance.

It occurred to me recently that perhaps we can also develop a tolerance for, or resistance to, reality.  That is, the more we look at a reality we don’t really like, the more we begin to ignore it in favor or an idea that is more pleasing.  Eventually, the “real” reality has less and less effect on us as our “preferred” reality takes center stage.  We can dispatch that unwanted reality with any of a hundred arrows from our quiver of rationalizations.

Perhaps this is the basis of self-deception.  When reality is unpleasant enough, or even hurts enough, we build up a callous to it.  Or, like the antibodies our systems produce to fight off viruses and other pathogens, our minds develop something like “antirealities” to protect us from the ravages of those attacking realities.

Our “antirealities” are the ideas and beliefs our minds create to give us a nicer alternative to what we don’t like.  In time, we buy in to the nicer alternatives and become almost fully resistant to those nasty reality bugs.  We feel safe and secure in the protection of our pleasant mental alternatives – our “antirealities.”

Maybe this is all the garbage of a rambling mind.  Or maybe there is something to it.