A Greater Freedom

I've made a lot about confronting the past in my academic writing and elsewhere.  It makes sense that if we are to move past being stuck it needs getting unstuck.

But it is harder than just the intent.  The promise may beckon but old habits and untruths are nurtured and held onto like an old comfy sweater.

There is a closeness to the dysfunction of wallowing in the abyss of personal unhappiness.

It is much the same for states because states are no more than groups of people who are tied to stories and myths.

Capitalism and racism are constructed stories.  Myths.  And where stuck in dysfunction it needs to be confronted.

A broken spirit and being that won't heal and embrace another view is much the same.

The process toward becoming unstuck is not known.  Or rather not definite or defined.  There is no one plan.

But to live and thrive inside the limitations of the human condition it is necessary to confront.

I like to think that life is incomplete without a confrontation toward a greater and more complete truth.  I also sometimes think that truth is not a place, not an arrival, or something to be uncovered.

Truth is a lived principle.  It is flexible but it is also an uncompromised acceptance that there is a greater system that ties us.

And so truth in many instances is the manner in which we embrace a confrontation toward becoming unstuck.  It is the honesty to show your limitations and to accept your frailty and to know you are not alone.

I know someone who does not embrace the word confrontation.  And I know someone else who worries that confrontation means shouting and violence.

It is more.  A larger complexity than just its colloquial meaning seems to suggest.

There can be no moving forward without confronting the past.  Its ugliness.  And its beauty.

Confrontation is the eagerness to know more and to accept more, and even less if necessary.

But there never is just one confrontation or a final confrontation.  There is also never a certainty to what will emerge when you ask hard questions about what was, what is, and what will be - and even less when you try to connect these layers.

Last night my confrontation failed to gather my sense.  That part of me that sees beyond being stuck did not convince.  The part that is practiced in the art of living beyond being defined from outside and inside fell flat.

Around 3am my eyes stared deep.  It was time to leave but stay truthful.

But I would do it again.  Because it is noble this truth telling.  This laying out of self toward a greater understanding.

Where the outcome is unfinished it merely beckons another time.  Another try.  And sometimes not.  Knowing that contour is the substance of being practiced and living instead of merely existing.

And even where the other side remains unmoved it is still a way forward.  A way beyond just being stuck in being stuck.

And as one truth is confirmed it is necessary to find more ... truths.  Through confrontation.

It is the human condition.  This need to grapple with knowing the unknown.  And it is just as human to be settled with not knowing it all.

That precarious balance is not the stuff of being stuck.

Being stuck is simply not moving.  It is a defeat grounded by the fear of remaining stuck.  And sadly, that fear is a prescription to stay stuck.

And so fear of the unknown is not a viable option toward becoming unstuck.  Confronting the unknown offers opportunities to become unstuck.

And if you so desire, it also offers a decisive move toward a greater freedom.

Onward!