The Wedding Day Story

Sept. 5

There comes a moment where things pivot. 

Instead of experiencing a resistance to being what I am, a resistance develops to being what I am not.

This is talked about outwardly in the media when people come out of the closet and so on. We have made a cult, especially in America, of celebrating our individuality and affirming ourselves. Yet that affirmation always seems to swirl around the outer manifestations of what we are, in a little whirlpool that is all about us. In America, the individuals do it; the culture does it. This is the kind of vortex that pulls us into Afghanistans and anti-vaccination pogroms.

Yet the question is always what I am inwardly; and anyone that spends any time in introspection will realize that one doesn’t know who one is. More often than not one discovers, on close examination, that one is just a hairball of outside influences that has formed and is, all too often, choking off the compassion and sensitivity towards others that ought to be present.

I say ought to be, because there is an imperative to compassion and sensitivity that is too often forgotten in the absurdity of rational arguments that everything is relative and has approximately the same value. This kind of thinking excuses the inexcusable; and yet it dominates. Hence, here we are on the planet manifesting everything one can possibly think of that is inexcusable.

I can’t control that; I can’t control the overwhelming negativity of the media — it seems no matter which way it leans, the only thing it has to sell is what is bad —and I can’t control our slide down the luge we're on. I can only attend to the living things inside me and around me; I can only make a better effort to be as I am.

That effort sometimes seems to be strangely unintelligent relative to the machinations of the rational mind; it isn’t filled with the imperatives from the outer world. Yet at the same time it’s even more strangely alive, attentive—a vibrantly intelligent emptiness waiting to be filled with the next moment which does not try to plot everything in Machiavellian terms.

In this sense, the tension arises between the imperative of being here as a creature who senses and lives, and not being “elsewhere": inhabiting an ersatz existence seized by dreams and imagination. The dreams and imagination have to be tolerated, because they can’t be banished; but they need to be seen for what they are. They have no real discipline or intelligence.

Who am I? 

I’d like to get through this day looking at that more closely. I want to see the confusion inside me and understand that I have missed something essential about the nature of this existence. I'd like to live a little more, feel a little more deeply, understand a little more sensitively. I'd like to stop more often and ask myself where I am and whether the thoughts I’m having and the impulses I’m following are honorable ones. This doesn’t seem like so much to ask; yet it seems certain I’ll fail at this more often than I would like to.

By now you may be asking, what does the photograph have to do with all this?

Yesterday, we were trying to get to a friend’s wedding on time; being late, we decided to park at a friend’s house that was right next to the church. I couldn’t reach the friend—who doesn’t live there, the house is currently rented to two tenants, one of whom is another friend—to ask if it was okay, there was not enough time. When we pulled in too the driveway one of his busybody neighbors—quite frankly a bullying type, who he has cautioned me about in the past—began flat-out berating us about parking there even though there were plenty of spaces and the person who owns them is one of my best friends. The woman has appointed herself as the parking police for the block. OMG.

Instead of further confronting the bully, who, it became increasingly apparent, was absolutely determined to have the last word on our perceived transgressions, we decided to back down and leave. This put me in the awkward position of having to go back to our house (which is actually walking distance, the only reason we drove was because of our scheduling issue), park the car, and take the 10 minute walk to the church from the house, compounding the whole late-for-the-wedding thing into a poisonous little black cloud in me. I have established anxieties about adhering to schedules. I have disturbing dreams about being late for things all the time.

Consequently, during that walk to the church I was filled with rage and resentment towards the bully and fantasizing about all the (objectively, non-starter) things I could do about it. Irony aside, all of this was pathologically stupid; it was a foregone conclusion there was nothing to be done, and it was a fact that it was my own inattention that put me in the situation I was. 

I had to find a way to walk that 10 minutes and put all of this out of me — which, quite frankly, is far too brief a schedule to deal with negative emotions, as everyone knows. 

Despite the odds, my inner dialogue — which was firm in regard to the fact that it was my own damn fault I was where I was, and that it would probably work out fine — prevailed, and it did work out fine. I walked into the church just after the bride got up to the altar, so although I only saw that one critical initial moment from behind—a unique point of view, come to think of it—I was there for the whole formal affair. Damp and sweaty, to be sure, but there I was. And carried away in the celebration of this union, 100% of me forgot — at least for the duration of the reception — about the bully woman.

One would think that negative thoughts of these kind, once kicked in the seat of their pants, would slink out the door quietly and not come back. 

But no. 

As I was falling asleep last night the bully reappeared, berating me for parking at my friend’s house. The fantasies of revenge reappeared with them. The whole package had just been waiting in the wings, plotting to waylay me when I was most vulnerable.

I had to remind all of these thoughts all over again that some things just have to be put behind us.

This is the kind of inner mess that seems routine. And it’s the resistance to this kind of thing, the resistance to being a slave to this kind of nonsense, that interests me now. Dealing with reactions of this kind is on the order of living a little more, feeling a little more deeply, understanding a little more sensitively. 

I think the point is that I manufacturer and carry my own curses; and yet the only one I’m cursing in the end is myself. 

There’s far too much of that going on. It needs to be seen more clearly.with warm regards,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola magazine.