Joy of punishment

I don't remember writing about joy.  I have so much joy in my life but never write about it.  I have so many joyful people in my life but I never write about that.  I have so much that I keep from this blog that it is unbalanced.  I often wonder why I feel so misunderstood.  I don't really understand or demonstrate myself accurately...with balance.  I am a joyful person too and I can't tell from reading this blog.  I talk of love, but it is a sad love.  I have a joyful love.

I think as part of my own punishment for my part in destroying a marriage, I worked really hard to forgive that part of me.  Oddly it just turned into hating that part of me.  A big part me that was joyful died with "Ronnie".  I kept my humor, I regained my romance, but up until now I refused to let myself feel joyful.  It is unfortunate that during my forgiveness synthesis I forgot to include joy.

Maybe I didn't forget the joy, I might have just completed the process now.  I think of all the music I have chosen, I think of all the failures I have had with loved ones, I think of all the pity I have collected, and I think of how many more serious talks I have had than fun ones.  This has helped me realize that I don't write about the joy in my life.  I will start with the joy I get from seeing those near me happy.  That is the greatest joy, and now it won't be forgotten.

Forgiveness isn't really forgiveness until joy fills the void left from the pain.  I am joyful how life has evolved after the end of my marriage.  I am joyful about the father I have worked to become.  I am joyful for the friendships cultivated, created, and released.  I am joyful for the comfort of my family.  I am joyful for the hospitality of society.  More to come about joy.  More to come about what makes me smile

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I have stumbled into greatness, not so much this man, but the example he demonstrates, the healing quality of the expressed word.  I have found myself in my writing and I find myself writing more.  I am a work in progress and like this film there is the final cut still pending.

Please support this film if you feel drawn to a grassroots project.  Its message is a message that I hope will soon be publicized because it inform of the struggle that Chicanos bare.  It is information into the machismo that has corroded the buen hombre.  It informs how the vato loco grows from innocence into being seen as a menace to society.  It shows the effort needed to undue a lifetime of discouragement and inferiority.  It highlights an example of dysfunction that steers true.  It is commonly asked among people in New Mexico, where are the good men, and this is fertilizer for preparing the soul where better men can grow.

I have been fortunate to sit with Jimmy, talk with him, and open up to him.  I see how important it is to be limitless and dream big.  I have had an opportunity to erupt with ideas knowing the chances for success are unimportant because the passion to steer in a grand direction is the consequence of hope.  God is foolishly wise and I see that quality in Jimmy.  I had grown to tell myself all the ways I cannot dream, and Jimmy reminds me in his actions to dream in community, speak with grace, root it in advocacy, and to believe it will happen.  One day I will have my own project, and I feel I will have a carnalito advocating for prosperity in the same way I am right now.

Out of the Darkness

With every shadow there is a source of light. When all you can see is shadow, it likely means the light is at your back.  If you can picture how cold and dark this might feel, then you can share in the lifestyle of cynical dreams, pessimistic truths, and half-hearted passion.  The shadows are not a place that can be avoided.  We all live here for some time.  What might be avoided is a departure into the light.

Hope is the acknowledgment of light. I have spent a majority of this year accepting and listening to how people recognize me by my shadow. I have spent an equal amount of time defending it, explaining it, an pitying it.  I learned to ask permission from my shadow, I asked to be invited to share its borders.  I asked my darkness if we could make an adjustment towards the light. 

I submitted to the tensions that inspire my shadow to darken.  I worked to listen to judgment.  I reflected on circumstances that irritated my ego.  I became fragile.  Much of it was unintentional.  This year, I did what it took to turn myself towards the light.  It was to turn further and further into the darkness, eventually I turned 180 degrees.  Now I can glimpse the light breaking around the obstructions in my life.

Turning is a metaphor for learning to listen, accept, and own.  Turning was a difficult collection of actions, events, and emotions.  It ranged from working to put down defenses to simply identifying defenses.  I became weak, physiologically and emotionally.  I embraced resting.  I was lazy, while being responsible for actions I would normally avoid.  I was sad for a lot more circumstances than I would normally allow myself to grieve. I find myself crying more.  I became needy and notice how much of a whiner I can be.  I can still see my arrogance and behind it how scared I am.  I owned my perverted ways, allowing me to see my shame.  

I did a lot more discomforting activities than normal.  I resisted my addicted nature.  I drank less, rested more, just sat, I watched sitcoms, I stop reading, I let my weeds grow, and I tried to be less selfish.  I used the muscle movements that I had never trusted.  I expressed my jealousy.  I reached out for help more often.  I allowed myself to be spread thin.  I visited places I was judgmental about.  I trusted people more. I listened more often then finding contradictions.  

I embraced a lot more emotions than I let myself in the past.  I was able to really feel perplexed, confused, and worried.  I revisited what it feels like to fear losing a lover.  Then again I really embraced trying to love and be loved.  I did more things for others that were because I wanted to versus out of reciprocity.  I realized what it feels like to be let down.  I learned how difficult it is to love like a friend while being in love.  I learned the difference between being seen as a lover and seen as a friend.  I had the heart wrenching struggle of once again being rejected.  I am different, and see the shadows with curiosity more than fear.

 I behaved in ways I would have normally avoided.  I found myself feeling taken advantage of.  I felt myself being valued less.  I found myself walking on egg shells more often.  I found myself spending more money on extras.  I found myself drinking more when obligated.  I found myself reminding myself of past trespasses.  I was beginning to lose hope entirely.  I began to question my heroes, mistrust my lover, become jealous of my friends, and shut myself off from the activities I cherished most.  I lost myself in my victimization...gently and with care.  

I had the courage to be defenseless enough to feel the pain when the coping tactics of the shadow kicked in.  I tried my best to keep myself in the places that brought on fear and my shadows.  I resisted the urge to protect myself with so much tolerance refusing to allow my ingrained warrior's protective nature to argue for my internal cause.  I fought hard to hold the words that are usually release with anger, sending my blood from my torso up toward my head.  I may be more patient but also defeated.  It didn't give the gifts I thought it would give but it gave me gifts.  

I did not regain sight of my hope, my light, until I could have a full 360 degree scan of who I am capable of being. The term "come full circle" fits the analogy.  Who I am is who I have been, complicated by who I am seen as and who I think I can be.  None are completely accurate or an expression of how undefinable I am.  I feel my hope growing and my future brightening.  I am excited about the last year.  I am excited that I can be flawed, weak, and misunderstood and still thrive.

I know more about the lesser me than ever.  I like to be liked and have a difficult time seeing how unlikable I can be.  I believe now that I hold on tighter to trespasses more often than I do successes.  It feels like towers of stacked successes can easily be wiped out by a visit from tragedy.  And now I can see that tragedy is not random or spontaneous.  Tragedy is a build up of the sewage.  The subtle collection of toxins from unregulated evil or suffering that eventually erupts, boils over, and reacts.

So when tragedy rears it's head, my shadow tries to convince me that I should be surprised, but having gotten to know my shadow, I can testify that my pollution has created or contributed to tragedy's growth.  I am an equal reason for the tragedies in my life or how I allow them to impact me.  I am liable for the reasons that those that don't like me have.  Where before, I might have believed it was all their problem.  I can be open to listening to the noise coming from my messages.  I can be present to fear... in doses.

With this journey into my shadow, I have a new respect for pessimism.  It is a currency that I don't really need when I can use hope.  Because hope was so absent, the only resource I can conjure in my shadows is pessimism.  I now have an analogy that pessimism is like a two way street.  If I turn down that street I realize that the paved path, with a street sign displaying Pessimistic Avenue, will always put me in traffic and dangerously into on coming traffic.  The pessimism I have about others, will and has eventually cultivate pessimism about me.  I am glad the intersection between life and pessimistic avenue is a four way stop.  I no longer see the value in pessimism, but I am still learning how to bank on hope.

This encounter with my shadows is not my last, but it feels like a time has come to look for more light.  I see the shadow as a coping strategy for extreme stress.  I realize how intense introspection can be required in order to notice shadow qualities.  I became disheartened and discouraged by seeing and being asked to see myself in undesirable ways.  I have grown to readopt and respect the influence of my victim role.  I have sat with my loser concept.  I have revisited my abusive tendency.  While trying to accept these qualities I found myself immersed in discouraging moments of identity struggle.  I was believing and becoming absolutely my shadow. 

I was starting to identify as my shadow.  I was convincing myself that there too much to overcome to go beyond my shadows.  I was working overtime to reconcile events, ideas, and values that I no longer needed to synthesize.  I was putting myself into environments that were holding me and binding me to my shadow versus aiding me back to my light.  I found mercy again.

I was a prisoner to my shadow.  I may still be a prisoner to my shadow.  What I can tell is that there is a forgiveness that I am trying to recognize.  I am trying to tell the story of my shadows from their wounded perspective.  I am trying to see my shadows as crying infants that have yet to be held and soothed.  I am trying to tell its story from the circumstances that evoke my coping strategies.  I came up with a few shadow qualities that I can forgive.  

I am fallible.  

I am guilty.  

I am dangerous.  

I am careless.  

I am rude.  

I am vulgar.  

I am prejudice.

I honored my shadows. In a symbolic way I gave them the necessary attention they cried for. To everyone who wants to blame, punish, criticize, compete, prove, license, regulate, corral, judge, and hate, I join you. I bow to the pain and frigid shadows that have hoarded our attention.

I'm with those

I'm with those that are softly gazing at something hard to see.  I am with those who realize being lost is where I am supposed to be.  I am with those who share themselves just enough to help others identify the things that they hate about people who share too much.  I am with those who fight against judgment by judging those who are guilty and wrong.  I am with those who have a home that keeps moving.  I'm with those who can't login to peace because my username is encrypted and so is the password I was told to confirm.

I'm with those who hold a culture tightly while it is disintegrating.  I am with those who angrily reject the status quo by following the footsteps of dead rebels down identical paths of no change. I am with those who meditate with paradoxes only to be disarmed and dismembered during spiritual warfare.   I am with those who can't chose a culture that completely captures my complexity.

I'm with those who take pictures of meaningless things because so many people won't pay attention to meaningful things.  I live among those who watch television about reality only to find themselves ignoring the truth. I am with those who find alternative economies for hoarding the same currency.  I walk with those who carry a lifeline to everyone they love but only text "xo".  I left behind a book of faces who liked me and I linked out and found communities to reach out, but they are few and far between.

I'm with those who have left home, went to school, but only to learn enough not to fit in anymore after coming back.  I am with those who "made it out" but not far enough to make it in.  I climbed the ladder only to realize it was against the wrong wall.  I am with those who found the clothes to wear but not the attitude to go in them.  I'm with those who were told to leave this place and never come back, with puzzlement and surprise, I was in my own home.  I am with those who visit places because of a chance invitation, only to realize I signed a lease with intent.

I'm with those who made a good run only to find myself off the beaten path.  I tied the knot only to later find it was on a shoe I wasn't wearing.  I'm with those who were asked to do it yourself but with instructions in a foreign language.  I'm with those who long for what they have always wanted until I finally get it.  I find myself alone in a city full of people I know.

I'm from a community that has a landmark for people who no longer can afford it.  I walk my dogs, a far evolution from running from strays.  I am with those who aren't Mexicano, but don't know how they came up with Hispano, more likely trying to be Chicano...all in all not trying to be defined at all though.  I live in a country built by immigrants, maintained by illegals, and now exporting most work to cheaper races.  I live in a country that has a war on drugs but a secret love affair with the enemy.  I eat home cooking from a restaurant owned by a guy from New York.

But these same people remind me that my cynicism isn't shameful at all.  I am with those who polish broken hearts knowing broken is perception.  I'm those who feel everything belongs because if it didn't then why would it happen.  I am with those who take hate and hold it until it calms down and says thanks for understanding.  I am with those who can use discomfort and gratitude in the same sentence.  I am with those who drink until they are drunk hoping the courage to say intoxicating things won't be misunderstood.  I am with those who forgive because it isn't deserved but inconveniently necessary for keeping the spirit free.  I am grateful for my failures, surprised by how I am valued, and beginning to be told how special I have become.  I am finally turning my love inward, after all these attempts to display it.

- Ron Estrada

Happy Thank You Day!

A day for Day!

There are heros like Pat Tillman, and then there are unbelievables like Dorthy Day.

Calamity can be a gift

Pat, 

I'll never measure up to the impact you made.  I will never set the records you've set.  I will never have my principles tested the way yours were.  I have yet to love as genuinely as your wife describes.  I am so far away from being the man you are perceived to be.  That is why you are a remembered and cherished example of mine.

I will look ahead at the impact I can make, ignoring how little distance I've covered, and keeping in peripheral the distance I have to close.  I will ignore the records I cross, keeping my passion before glory.  I will forgive myself for the principles I cannot fulfill, knowing if I am breathing I have another chance.  I will continue to learn to love, despite discouraging circumstances.  I will not compare myself to you, but will attend to the gaps between you and me.  I will do my best to be cherished and remembered by most, hoping to leave many more regarded memories than bitter ones.

It baffles me where the fight took you, reminding me that mindful is not control.  It hurts to have to believe in wellness without you.  I never met you and cannot fully believe in you for it, but what people say about you is your legacy.  It reminds me to always measure myself by the continuum between how I see myself and how those who never met me might.  

RIP 

I am not important

And neither are my struggles.  An uncle used to always say we aren't here for a long time, but here for a good time.  Puro good times.  Suffering was a perception, lately it feels more like a choice.  Here is a little voyage you can take to see the vastness and maybe a declarative on evolution, divinity, spirit, and cosmos.  Click the link below...you must have flash.

I am not as important as I wish I was