Mountain Top Screaming

          I’m having trouble writing this morning. The problem is not a lack of ideas or words to capture those ideas. I have ideas and words hurling themselves at the interior walls of my skull desperate to get the hell out. If I could stand on a mountain peak right now, certain only the gods would hear me, know the Sherpa who led me there wouldn’t understand a syllable, I would scream until I release every stinging thought in my brain. The words would be an assault on the wind, whipping back the air as it blew in my face.

See? Words, just falling onto the page, freely. The ease with which these words escape frustrates the words that remain locked in my head. They are angry words, and their anger is intensifying because they want out. I’ve tried placating them with a promise that their time will come and they will be set free like the others, but it’s just not the right time.

Time is a taunt. At least, for me it is. I never seem to be at the right place, at the right time, with the right circumstance. What I conclude about this confluence of nevers is that I abdicated control of my life. To what I abdicated that control, I’m not quite certain, but I have this feeling that I handed over the reins in exchange for an idea of what life should be. Or multiple ideas.

I have a sense that I’m not alone. Nor would I be alone on that mountain top, shouting, and yelling, calling out my frustrations to the four winds. I see you out there, looking around, wondering how you got to this point.

   

Now however, a second problem occurs to me when I think of mountain shouting therapy as a cure, as a way to release all those chained words from my head. The shouting doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t address the cause of the frustration, and it doesn’t fix any of the brokenness. The shouting is just the cathartic release that fools me into thinking I’ve done something productive with those words. It’s a pressure valve fix. I’ve released the steam, but the furnace is still boiling water. More steam is being generated, and over time, the pressure will rise and the valve will have to release again.

Reflective pause – I’ve never addressed the root cause, only released the pressure. Once or twice, I’ve turned down the gas so the boiler didn’t work quite so effectively. At some point, I should address the root cause; I would like to fix the brokenness. I have subscribed to the theory that sublimating the brokenness to action and moving beyond it to productivity is the wiser course of action, because, we are all broken, and if we all went around probing our brokenness, we’d just be self-indulgent losers with dirty houses and unpaid bills. We don’t live that way in Tidy Town, because, what would the neighbors think?

What would the neighbors think? Do the neighbors think on me at all? Isn't it more self-indulgent to think that the neighbors are thinking of me and aren’t busy dealing with their own brokenness? Honestly, when I think about how rarely I think about the neighbors, and right now, the neighbors live less than twenty feet from my kitchen, I question why I would matter to them. Moreover, if they are spending their time judging me instead of dealing with their own brokenness, why is that my problem? It’s not, or at least, it should not be.

My problem, if it’s not the neighbors, is fear. Fear that I don’t know who I will be when I fix the brokenness. What will I lose in exchange for being “fixed”? There’s always the possibility, that I am fine just as I am. That I’m not, in actuality, broken. That the real problem is a simple one: I’ve judged myself by others – be it their expectations, their lives, their achievements, or their words. Instead of being accepting of myself I’ve interpreted who I am as broken.

There is every possibility that I am not broken, just trying to bend too much. There is every possibility that the frustration I feel is a result of twisting right into wrong. There is every possibility that the words banging around in my head just want to be free because they are the right words in which I haven’t had enough faith. There is every possibility that if I just let go of the idea that I am broken I will be fixed. All I have to do is let go; let go of the ideas, let go of the self-judgment, let go of the words. Maybe the solution is not to fix me because I’m just fine. Maybe instead of screaming the words, I just need to listen to them.

Somebody wake the Sherpa, because we are getting the hell off this mountain.