This Too Shall Pass

My brother seems to know a lot of people who are doing this, writing blogs I mean, so I thought I might give it a whirl. Of course, like any overly self-conscious person, I’m afraid I have nothing interesting or intelligent to say and that no one will take the time to read this anyway. Fear of rejection I guess - just like the fear of having a party and no one showing up, so you don’t have the party, and you will never find out whether anyone would have come. I’ve actually never tested this out. I’ve never thrown a party at my own house. Besides the unnecessary stress over what to title this blog, I seem to have a lot of anxiety about what to write about. I don’t live in a foreign country or have a new family to write about, my job is not particularly interesting to anyone else and I have no real hobbies to speak of at the moment – something I am trying to remedy. I’m basically a corporate lawyer at a really large firm in a big Midwestern city – which is not really inspiring me here.

Unfortunately, the biggest things in my life – the two most life changing things that have ever happened to me, both in one year – are the two things that I’ve tried the hardest to keep secret. I am nine months into the best and the worst year of my entire life and unsure whether to write about it or where to begin, although I am quite sure that these are the things that now define me, and these are the things that will shape me going forward. I live every day in fear of people finding these two secrets out, and I am beginning to feel like my life is not authentic because I can’t seem to just be honest about who I am.

The title of this blog and this initial post is one of my favorite slogans from twelve-step programs although I hear these slogans elsewhere from time to time. If I had to capture everything about my life right at this moment in a single phrase, it is summed up in this slogan. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, reminding myself that the good and the bad and everything in between is momentary. I was sick a couple of weeks ago and I spent most of the time lying in bed and wondering if I would ever feel better, if I would ever feel the way I used to and dwelling on the thought that the moment I was caught up in was permanent – a permanent state of feeling bad, a permanent circumstance that I could not live with.

I’ve learned a lot in the past nine months that I am not even sure how to put into words - like I said – I don’t even know where to begin – in fact, I’m starting to wonder if this blog won’t be nothing but an account of life lessons I probably should have learned (like everyone else did) but somehow missed. Anyway, the temporary nature of things is what has been plaguing my mind lately. People say, if you don’t like something, just wait a few minutes and it will change. Even those circumstances in life that have turned out to be permanent – and there really aren’t many of them – the way I feel about them always changes. What seems to trouble me right now about knowing that everything is temporary, is accepting that the good stuff is temporary also, and that I’ve been so caught up in everything except the good stuff, that I have missed out on moments that are irreplaceable. Why is it that the things we most want to be over seem to last forever and the things we want to savor pass us by in a second?

So, I guess I am just going to be honest. I am going to write about myself here, the secrets I’ve been keeping, my experiences as of late and my struggle to live through them and learn from them, while I try to savor them, appreciate them, and also let go of them.