Who Dad?!

Autobiographical Thinking

When still in high school, I wrote an essay "What God Learned From Jesus". The premise was that God had never been tested with pain and suffering and so learned more of faith, trust, and devotion from the love and purity of Jesus than from all of the Godhead's cosmic awareness and infinite nature.

There are so many ways to spin a tale, but I agree with Kafka's assessment: "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us." What I'm discovering late in life is how the ice can be broken with writing as well as from reading.

What follows is my feeble attempt at breaking the ice of what not knowing one's birth father means. I know I am not alone in this. Yet, my purpose is not to pile on more criticism of missing men. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I celebrate maleness. Sure, for good reason, their stock has been diminishing for a while, but I am still glad to be one of them.

Here's the gist of it: The birth mother who carried, birthed, and rejected me left the deepest wound. I was a part of her and she of me. There was something unfathomable in such a break.

One microscopic particle was all the man contributed. He could have been asleep. There is no pain from his absence, just a space to fill with whatever story was born from his genetic material. Isn't that how in mythology and religion we came to imagine a God as an invisible and unknowable father?

Before genetic testing, any man could have been the one who delivered the seed. The real father was always a mystery. In my life, the father who adopted and raised me gave me everything. He lived a long life and I never had the need to know anything about the one who provided his sperm to the deal. Until now that is, and the thought of the zombie that might be inside me.

However, I am neither a mathematician nor a physicist, so my search for any unified field theory has always involved a less precise approach. Filled with stops and starts, alternating between search and solitude, propelled by psychoactive substance or abstention, I made my clumsy but buoyant way towards a self serving spiritual athleticism mostly aimed at romance and avoiding entanglement.

In youth, I was always pushing, having to be the most outrageous, the most fun to be with, the one who drove the fastest, played the hardest, got the highest, but never lost control. I always had to be in control.

How to be me

First, laugh.

Then, breathe.

Then feel.

Don't forget to think about everything.

Write it down so you won't forget.

Then forget.

Then laugh again.

Fall in love every day.

Try to get organized.

Give up.

Worry for a moment, then breathe.

Talk to someone.

Laugh.

Eat out a lot.

Think about making a plan to exercise.

Feel responsible for everything.

Then run away from the stress

preferably alone in the mountains.

Then feel lonely,

or move like a cat

laugh

spy on people

stretch, stretch, breathe, stretch and breathe

feel sunlight

and remember.

Remember everything.

Laugh again,

feel powerful, agile, balanced.

Go home with joy

then forget everything

and start over.