Someone Has to Die

If there were any one thing I could be famous for at this point in my life my knack for having identity crises like clockwork could very well be that thing. Has it been more than twelve to twenty-four months since I’ve upset my entire schedule; turned my structure, my very being upside down? Chances are I’m overdue and you can expect to find me doing just that soon; very, very soon.

Except maybe this last time when the crisis seemed more productive than crises past. Except perhaps this last one; one that just felt different. It accomplished something, I think. And not just the dying of my hair to a shade it’d never seen before or the purchasing of a killer red lipstick by a woman who rarely wears lip gloss — even in a naked, barely-there shade — either. Something important, substantial. Something that I can’t quite put my finger on.

It also, unlike its predecessors, isn’t a time I look back on and cringe. It has been the topic of conversation a lot lately and I find myself not dreading the reliving of that time, though a dark time it was, but smiling and reveling in it instead.

In New York earlier this month Jenny asked Shannon and I if we’d help her with a video she was producing; if we’d talk about something that had helped us be successful, even in small ways, recently. And I found myself just blurting it out. “Someone has to die!” Because if I’m honest that’s what happened. Right in the middle of an already crisis-laden time in my regularly crisis-laden life someone died. Someone important. And suddenly that crisis, unlike any other before it, became wholly productive.

And you know, ‘Someone has to die’ may not have been the best way to articulate exactly what I meant, but at the time I’m not sure even I knew what I meant so, articulation be damned, it was a start. And then I thought about and talked about it some more.

Last week as I rode home with my best friend — eating and chatting and drinking and winding down from our last belly dancing class until fall — it came up again. And she asked the question that wouldn’t lead to an immediate answer but that would lead me to it eventually; to exactly why this last one was productive; to why someone doesn’t have to die literally, but figuratively that’s exactly the case.

“What was different about this time?” She probed. She herself going through a trying, self-clarifying time right now.

And at the time I didn’t know. “I just feel more…” I paused, searching for a word, any word “… settled.” I wasn’t happy with that choice but it would have to work. “Zen?” I added. “Something.”

And it’s true. I feel more settled, zen, something. And she agreed, “You do seem more… calm.” She nodded. But that’s the effect not the cause; the equal and opposite reaction to the writhing, convulsing action that set it all in motion last fall. And that is what I wanted to understand, the action. What was different about the crisis itself. And as it turns out the answer was the very first one I blurted out, half because my mouth doesn’t have a filter and half because I didn’t understand it enough myself to articulate it in any better way. Someone has to die!

Lucky for you, someone doesn’t have to be a person. Or an animal. It can be something. What I realized is, in crises past I had wanted so badly to resolve whatever it was that plagued me, to come to a conclusion, to settle into something more meaningful, but I also did not want to let go of anything I’d already held dear. I wanted change, but only change that could come in addition to what already was. I had a death grip on everything that which I knew. When someone died I was forced to let go of something, many things — perhaps even everything — that I knew for sure. I was forced to let full, revolutionary change take place in every aspect of my life, my being. I was strong-armed into questioning the very reality I lived in. Nothing I knew was true any longer, every thing, every space in my mind was free for the taking, the reshaping, the accepting of new truths.

Mourn the reality you know. Bury the notions you’ve preconceived. Symbolically bring to a close the life span of those things to which you cling. Voluntarily allow something to die, do not wait to be forced into it as I was. The productivity will follow, the revelations can then take shape. These are the lessons I learned, these are the reasons for my smallest successes in the past year. These things are powerful and productive. These things I wish others could learn without the pain, the death, the force. But I’m just not sure.

Tagged as: Advice, blogher, BlogHer '10, Death, Identity Crisis, life, Productivity, Reflection, The Self