Present

Its so easy to numb. And so difficult to be present.
I'd like to think that even though we have a multitude of things to distract us, its not more difficult to focus than it was 200 hundred or even 2000 years ago. Drugs, sex and alcohol has been around since basically the beginning of time, and so, it seems, has this human problem of being where you are, and feeling the things that come with that. I find this an inconvenient truth. I found myself running away from all that this week. Singling myself out, probably, as the one individual who just should not have to deal with the negative, oppressive, or overwhelming struggles of everyday life.
Something I've been learning lately is that the only way to get past the feeling that we feel, is to feel it down to its roots. Not only that, but feeling it, and experiencing it, is a deep and significant part of our humanity.

Anyone who knows me will know how I've always learned so much more from fiction than anything else, and when I look at the basic structure of a story, there is always conflict. Actually, its really what a story is. The main character may start happy, but she is not that way for long. The conflict is what makes us curl up in our favorite chair and follow along until it is resolved. Why then, do we have the opposite reaction to our own stories? I'm still looking around for the fast-forward button for the uncomfortable parts of my existence. I numb. I run away. I am not present for a vast majority of my own struggle. What if I put the same faith in my own story, as all these books I read? What if I really believed it would turn out alright?

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