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HOW TO BECOME A HUMAN BEING
I’m way Back There right now. Having re-calibrated a memory bank, I can be Back There anytime I wish. This is one of those times.
What is going on?
Back There I am fifteen years old. It is summertime. I am lolling about, jobless, confused about the present and clueless about the future.
Longtime neighborhood playmates have disappeared into adolescence, making tracks through puberty, no longer eager to run amok in the backyards and vacant lots of childhood.
Junior high and high school attendance distracts me from just plain having fun. Activities of daily living slam me with social structure and class division and the proprieties of being a properly acceptable teenager. Peers pressure me to be one of them. Outsiders still engage me.
I don’t know where I fit, so I am somewhere between the Ins and the Outs.
School will begin anew in a few days. Sixteenth birthday will interfere with my need to remain just plain Me.
I retreat into my books, I hide within my writings, I find occasional joy in participating in local theatre productions. I am a born actor and am most at ease with life when on stage, being someone else for ninety minutes.
Outside my books and journals, offstage, I am uncomfortable and clumsy and directionless.
I feel like a Martian. A goulash of hormones and growth spurts, always seeming on the edge, on the ledge.
As a Martian, I find a way to dialogue with myself.
“Self,” I say, “I don’t really care for being one of these humans. How did I become ensnared within this particular body in this particular family in this particular village on this particular planet? Why can’t I go back to Mars and feel real again?”
Self replies, “Well, you just have to adjust to what’s what. I do not know how you are going to escape this fine mess.”
I ruminate and retort, “As a human, I am so subject to having primal irrational hair-trigger responses to every thing, every primal feeling. This seems to be built into me.”
Self says, “Welcome to Earth. What’s the problem?”
“I just don’t care for this…this bumper car existence that shuffles me about and taxes me and challenges me and makes me feel as if I have no control over anything…”
Self grimaces, “That’s just the way it is going to be from now on. All you have to do is decide which it is going to be—the ledge or the leap?”
I know Self is right, but I need someone to talk to, so I continue, “The leap would solve my problems.”
Something within me—maybe a shard of intelligence attempting to get my attention—immediately identifies this sentiment as irrational and not quite accurate. I’ve studied Hamlet and I know that the leap in no way guarantees the end of my troubles. Things might be much worse Over There.
“OK, Self. I see where you are leading me.” I pause to find the right words. “You can take a break now. I know what I have to do. I basically have to dig myself out of this quagmire, stop whining, and just get on with doing what I can do.”
“Attaboy,” self mutters as he fades into the cobwebbed niches of memory.
I get up, wash my face, comb my hair, and grab a pencil to write a poem that just popped into view.
Someday I’ll share it with you. Maybe a few decades from now.
Meanwhile, allow me to be your Self for a moment, just in case you are not in touch with this imaginary but very real friend.
Follow instructions carefully:
Take the good from my stories. Look for the good. Use it to your advantage. Remain on the ledge.
Be a better person or at least a better purveyor of good than you were ten minutes ago. People are watching. The Ins and the Outs are looking for guidance and inspiration.
Whether or not I am always conscious of it, others do look to others, only more secretively than they did in the vacant lots of childhood.
They still want to know whether it is acceptable to have the same desire as you…to yearn to run guileless through good memories
© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast