A time comes in life when the amalgamation of all that came before coalesces into place: as if misaligned gears, grinding hideously against one another for preeminence, finally wear their stubborn edges down, allowing those gears to finally align, ending the struggle.
At fifty-eight years, I take a look back and find myself questioning, “What was that all about?”
Knowing full well, as time and God have revealed, that it was all about me—about my perceived purpose, felt obligation to having an impact, respectable ambition; and using all of it to garner love and affirmation and also to not be a slacker—to proudly “use” and flaunt whatever it is I think I am made of for the “betterment” of not only myself, but “the world”.
So much of my past, as is true for many of us, was lived in the motivation to achieve notice for my righteousness and person.
Silly, when I think about it now, that proverbial identity crisis of saying that I wanted to help others and make a difference, when in reality, deep down, I only wanted a more highly regarded self to be the end result.
I mean, it was great if something nice came of it in the physical world, but let’s face it: I was using the “good act” as a hook for the ultimate reward: the admiring acknowledgement of others, being sought after and needed, and the standing (in false humility of course!) that inched me another notch higher than others.
Integrity, obviously, could never be added to that list of rewards, because the motivation rightly precluded it.
In career, volunteerism, Christian life, family connections—we can find ourselves ferociously focused on besting another (even those we genuinely like and especially those we do not).
Without our even noticing, over time our mental attitude warps: a disappointment foments sour grapes which leads to attempts at one-upping; someone’s good news tempts our own coveting of time in the spotlight; an experience of perceived dismissal or mocking ignites an obsession over ways to appear relevant and "with-it," or even to fall to the depths of freudenschade.
And so the emotional and mental gears steadily grind, straining one against the other. Year. After. Year. On and on and on, becoming the very engine of life.
I was the forewoman of my own making—the producer, all these years, of nothing more than a Me-widget, whose only intended function or service was the continual re-invention of me for the procurement of other’s esteem and acceptance (if not also to elicit their occasional jealousy).
This, incredulously, is what the gears had been in motion for all those years.
When I see this, clear as day now, in my fifty-eighth year, that engine sputters to a stop, freezing the gears in their rather precarious position of misalignment.
This halt, born in the epiphany that I was only a concoction, a figment, an old behemoth rusting away in a rain of insane and not especially fun, premise, engineered and invented by me, allows the perspective that, while not all of life circumstances were invented by me—how I chose to respond and be in those circumstances—what I chose to do with them internally and externally, was.
In this precise moment of realized understanding, those aging gears can no longer hold their position and suddenly give way. With a loud groan, they relent, their teeth at last sliding into alignment, never to move again.
Past, present and future cease to exist; all hold their breath. The second hand stills. I stand alone and silent in this simple entity called sane and objective clarity for the first time.
In the “you can hear a pin drop” hush, I comprehend which course I will now take, and declare Me-widget, Inc. bankrupt.
With that, breath returns and the second-hand resumes its circling. I, the protagonist of all that came before, walk off the production stage, tossing the last of the Me-widgets in the grimy dust of the factory floor.
I head for the door and punch out for the first, and very last, time, exit the factory, and abandon the Me-widget enterprise.
Copyright Barb Harwood
