There is Young Nes and OLDNes ;-) Meaning me and my father...
We talk everyday... and everyday we have the same conversation. If you can call it a conversation. It's more him talking and me listening.
I spent a lifetime fighting against the way he saw the world. His words hurt me, back when I didn't know better. When I took them personally. He never wanted to hurt me. He was wired for disharmony and has never understood the difference.
I love him and he loves me. We just show it differently.
It took me about 45 years to be able to hear him without absorbing his disharmony.
It's SAD... so sad... but it just IS what it IS!
I talk to him almost every day. We have the exact same conversation every day. He shares his anxieties, his frustrations, his hurt, his loneliness... It has slowly become his purpose in life....
Picasso says "The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away."
But, what happens if instead of finding your "gift" in life, you find "your deficiencies and you blame them on someone else." Instead of finding his gift, my dear father finds everything that is missing in his life everyday... and he shares that with me.
Disharmony is DEBT... and when you have a DEBT in life.. you try to give that away.
Is it callous of me not to share in his disharmony? NOPE!
It's not that I don't care. I do.
It's that I just don't choose to see life the way he sees it.
I refuse to drink from every half empty glass that he serves me ;-)
He is a daily reminder to me of what happens when you allow your deficiencies to define you.
He picks out every little wish... He wishes people treated him differently. He wishes people called him more often. He wishes he had more say in my mother's life. He wishes he was invited to others homes more often. He wishes he wasnt so old. He wishes he had more money. He wishes I lived closer.
And, along the way, he fails to be grateful for having lived a very long and full life. He fails to be grateful for having lived a comfortable life for nearly 90 years. He fails to be grateful for the fact that he has never truly suffered physically. He fails to be grateful that he still has his wits and his independence.
He is a bundle of disharmony... he is lonely and he is sad.
And, yet... at his advanced age... I see shifts in him... small shifts...
It's kind of like the emotional evolution of a glacier that moves inches per year in a world that is thousands of miles around...
When I used to call him, he always started with the line, "So, you forgot you had a father..." He would make it a point to tell me that he felt like he had no son and no children, because he is all alone. (Well, he still does that...)
But now, he says thank you, when I call him. He sounds grateful in his tone at the end of our calls... I hear gratitude at the end. "Thank you for calling me". He says.
"You are all I have left in this world..." And there it is... a small inch of gratitude... lightly breaded with a little deficiency and guilt...
The harmony is STRONG within me now...
I love him... and I hear his little ray of gratitude... and it makes me smile.
I am loving him the best way I know how... by never leaving his emotional side.
And, I watch him... grateful for the lessons that he has taught me... thankful for the example that he has set for me... I wouldn't know what I know without his pain...
I will call him tomorrow... and we will have the same conversation all over again...
And I will bathe in whatever sliver of light he shines on me...
So then, as I am going to be... putting my phone gently to sleep next to me ;-) I read this final quote for the day from Brendon Burchard, author...
"People on a path of purpose
Don't have time for drama!"
AMEN!
Yours in harmony,
Nestor