Unstuck

“It’s different for everyone. A flash — forward, backward. All of us, the entire station.  We’ve become unstuck in time, Commander. That’s why we have to get out of here quickly!”

— Major Krantz, Earthforce Commander, Babylon 4

And here is the problem. Not with the show or the episode, not even with @straczynski's writing and plotting. It is with each and every one of us. We are so stuck that we cannot adjust. We are rooted in the thought that things should be fixed in a certain linear order instead of being in the moment.

We are often depressed or anxious because we are not in our collective moments. We are looking to the future and becoming anxious. We are looking to the past and feeling regret.

I say, ‘we’ but I mean ‘me.’

Things are not as I have planned. It’s not all bad, mind you, but not as I planned. I was supposed to be in a different place and situation. I was supposed to be someone else.

Yet, here I am. I am the one who has remained to fight and survive. I am the one who has endured and been scarred.

The stories, the ones that you know, will speak for themselves. I have no desire to go over them or to rehash what has been. I cannot change the past. The best thing I can do is live in the now and build the future from the present.

Stability depends upon what is done now. Each piece placed on top of the next. The scaffold of the future depends upon it.

So, here I am, building again.

Slowly.

Surely.

With precise deliberation. With deliberate precision.

I’ve seen the results in my life when I do not apply myself and make the best choices I can in the moment. It is not pretty and rots the structure of my life.

Tea Time

I think Lewis Carrol said it best.

“You’re not the same as you were before,” he said. You were much more… muchier… You’ve lost your muchness.”

This has been where I’ve been for the long months that I’ve been silent. I am wracked by the fact that I am changing on the inside and cannot determine who or what I am.

I want to believe in myself and my abilities once more. I want to feel the muchness that was once so prevalent in my life. I want to belong again, not to others, as most will say that I belong, but to myself. I feel alien to myself these days.

It’s hard to determine whether or not this is evolution or still some part of the stagnation I feel that is festering within me. I know that I’m somewhat stuck and, like Absolem, must find my way through the chrysalis that I’ve been in.

In fact, I’ve been in this cocoon for far too long. I’m rotting — suffocating — within it. I don’t have the faith or instincts of a caterpillar. I don’t have the ease of picking up a pipe and contemplating the world as I see it through cascading clouds of smoke.

But, why not though?

I have moments of silence, like this one, where my home is my own and others are in slumber. I do have some private moments where I don’t have to be on stage. This is where my growth will come from. This is where I learn to gather my strength to break through the barriers I’ve built over the years.

Beyond the surrounding emotional walls are my tribe urging me on. They wait for my emergence, my metamorphosis. Others out there think they want me to become this much more muchier me, but I get the feeling that they want me to remain inside of this unchanging space.

I feel that they rely upon the status quo.

They exist in a moment of space and time that is an anomaly. The world changes around them, and they fight for control of it. They fight against the flow of energy that fills us with light, laughter, loss, lamentation, and love. They stand against it. They do not better themselves in thought or action. They sit and pine for the days where they were in some sort of control.

Time, and the world, has gone on without them. Their Spring and Summer have been pushed. There they stand, hoping beyond hope, that the Autumn and inevitable Winter do not come.

Life, like so many other things, is cyclic though. Nothing is permanent. Darkness will give way to light. Light will give way to darkness.

I struggle with this knowledge myself. I rely to much on stasis. I forget that I too am impermanent and should realize that as long as I remain in contest with that which is around me, I have already lost. I am not an Oak. I can move with the wind and rain. I can bypass the oncoming storm should I wish.

So, the question remains: Why don’t I move?

Loyalty, laziness, safety, security?

Perhaps I’ve drank too much poison throughout my lifetime. Perhaps this is all a sickness that is surging through my veins and neurons. Perhaps I am living proof that a raven is like a writing desk.

The answers are always mine. I am responsible for them. The questions come and I let them queue up until I am wrought with so much anxiety and fear that I cannot deal with them anymore. It’s then I seek to run away into oblivion instead of sensing the wind and rain. It is there I find a deep hole to hide within instead of flying and feeling.

In these moments, like now, I can see clearly. I can smell what’s coming. I can feel the presence of that kernel of myself that still lies within. It grows as I am calm and not maligned.

Clearly, as I drill down, there are more questions. There is more to see and too much more to understand about what’s going on. Sometimes I feel that there is not enough time and tea to contemplate it all.

But, I remember, everything is impermanent.