People who come across me via email or various online places know that a few years ago I began to use the moniker pilgriimpoet (or, in its more formal appearance here and there, Pilgrim Poet). These are two identities I have embraced in and for myself.
Life is a journey; its purpose, I believe, is to instruct and grow our spirits. This involves all of our earthly beings: our minds, our souls, our bodies and our hearts. I use the word "heart" to mean my emotional life, although of course it is also the most vital of vital organs in any living human being. The brain and the heart are our most vital organs; in defining emotional being by using the word "heart," it seems that we are combining and sometimes setting in opposition to each other two distinct organs as well as two distinct parts of ourselves. I believe that part of my journey, my pilgrimage, involves lessening conflict between these two areas.
At the beginning of my life, a sense of safety and security ... I have named it home ... was ripped out from under my rather scrawny self. By the time I was five years old, I felt jaded and sullied and in constant danger of being rejected as defective goods. Add to that rampant alcoholism and drug abuse throughout my early 20s, and what you find is a human being who, while graced with recovery at an early age, nonetheless has developed at a startlingly slow rate in some areas related to those organs, those parts of being human mentioned above.
Hence, I have had to eschew any normal relation to chronology. My journey is my own, and cannot really bear comparison to those of others. Of course, I think interpersonal comparison is a treacherous and dishonest measure anyway. One of the fine tools I have been given is full membership and use of a recovery program; this journal (yes, it does make me smile to see journey and journal together as they should be) is not about that but, as I have been a member there for over 23 years, references will of course arise from it. After all, that membership keeps me evolving and going further on the journey of which I will write here; without it, I would be wasting space here and on this planet, if ... of course ... I weren't long gone from it already. Early on, a friend of mine within that fine setting said "There is no valid comparison we can make apart from who we are now to who we were when we walked through those doors." I am grateful for that, as well as for the volunteer at the rehab I attended who used to say (over and over and over again, the man really believed in sharing his mantra) "God don't make junk!"
Anyway: In some ways I am far younger than many people who are chronologically the same age as I am. As with nearly everything in life as far as I can see, this is both a blessing and a curse. I want to build on the blessing and minimize the curse.
I find that each day brings with it less of a need for the approval of others and more of a need to find my own individual path in this world. It's about who I am; my likes and dislikes; my values ... mind you, my values, specifically not those of anyone else. With a nod to Abraham Lincoln, I'd say my values coincide with those of others just as fooling people works: all of the people some of the times, and some of the people all of the time, and everything in between those extremes. Of course, people being people, "all" is probably out of the question; and the "some" is often enough rather a tiny group.
I once explained to a woman I was dating and a couple of her friends that I am not interested much in my external presentation; in truth, I have never developed a facade, tough or otherwise. I believe that a person's externals mean nothing unless they are connected with and caused by that person's internal reality. A brief discussion ensued about taking care of oneself etc. etc. My point was relatively simple though. I have encountered people whose external appearances belie some deep seated and rather dangerous internal damage; they are glittering and beautiful to behold, but what goes on in their minds and souls is very dark and not in tune with reality. At least one such person caused me to doubt my own perceptions in such a way as to totally shake up my own hard earned sense of reality! It felt as though I was left small and without a concept of home again.
I can't afford to let that happen. So: I know that I seek a home for myself, a place of safety and security, love and acceptance. Here is where I will write and link and illustrate various things that mean home to me, as I move away from one sort of home into my own home. This might take one or a few years, I don't know really yet. But this is the place where I will record this aspect of my journey.
"There is no hearth like one's own." ~ Irish seanfhocal (proverb, saying)
