To paraphrase Mark Twain, "There are two types of people: Those that know they have fears to face and those that are liars." But that also means we all have treasures to claim...
I keep everything I have left from you in a drawer by my bed.
Don't seem to clean it out, probably be there when I'm dead.
I have one of these drawers. And it's by my bed. It has pictures that require knowing some backstory to know what they're all about. And they're not all stories about good things. Some of the stories are ugly. To somebody else they would just look like a bunch of unrelated pictures. But to me…they're my life.
Somebody else will come along and they will clean it out.
They'll ask themselves, what was this all about?
A young woman found a box of pics under her mother's bed. She discovered that some other man was her father by a previous marriage that her mother had never told her about. Her mother hadn't thrown the pictures away. She didn't tell her daughter about them. The mother just kept them to herself and held onto them. Out of fear I suppose.
Someone else, re-married for 50 years. still keeps pictures of her ex-spouses supposed lovers and shows them to people. She says she wants people to understand how bad she was hurt...
I hold on to the pain. Just won't let it go
Even thou it's no good for my soul
I hold on to the pain. Just won't let it be.
Seems it's become. Too big a part of me.
Not facing our fears causes trouble. "Frequently we bring about what we fear." says Judith Viorst in Necessary Losses. She says "I do unhesitatingly embrace Freud’s conviction that our past, with all of its clamorous wishes and terrors and passions, inhabits our present, and his belief in the enormous power of our unconscious—of that region outside our awareness—to shape the events of our life. I also embrace his belief that consciousness helps, that recognizing what we’re doing helps, and that our self-understanding can expand the realm of our choices and possibilities."
Some do not want fears faced. They do not want you to talk about the elephant in the living room. Like questioning our own actions or questioning the ramifications of Africans that were enslaved or exterminating Jews or eradicating Native Americans. They don't want you to face their fears.
There's lying eyes and souls that cry down throughout the years.
They chant "Give it up. You can't face down these fears."
I was put thru the adoption process due to divorces gone very bad. Learning to face the fears and losses of that is difficult for me.
Facing our fears is scary but worth it. Our fears are like dragons guarding our most precious treasures." said Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926), author of Letters to a Young Poet. Ray Wylie Hubbard told me about Rilke and Ray Wylie confronts these dragons & treasures beautifully in his song, The Messenger.
Some drawers are under our beds. Some are in our minds. But they're all real.
Here's to cleaning them out, facing our fears, and claiming our treasures.
Lyrics:
I keep everything I have left from you in a drawer by my bed.
Don't seem to clean it out, probably be there when I'm dead.
Somebody else will come along and they will clean it out.
They'll ask themselves, what was this all about?
I hold on to the pain. Just won't let it go
Even thou it's no good for my soul
I hold on to the pain. Just won't let it be.
Seems it's become. Too big a part of me.
There's a faded picture in an old frame behind a broken piece of glass
Smiling faces dreaming dreams that did not come to pass
There's lying eyes and souls that cry down throughout the years.
They chant "Give it up. You can't face down these fears."
I hold on to the pain. Just won't let it go
Even though it's no good for my soul
I hold on to the pain. Just won't let it be.
Seems it's become. Too big a part of me.