Imperfect Symmetry

       

       I was jolted by my first experience of feeling separate from my peers, when my fourth grade class began studying current events. Still firmly entrenched in and entranced by realms of magic, fairytale and creative play, I couldn’t begin to make sense of — or care about — the newspaper articles we were assigned to read and discuss. My early sense of implicit connection to my classmates eroded as those classmates began to grow into their serious, adult minds. 

       I never really did grow into mine, although I at some point I learned to hold myself and speak as if I had. The masquerade was excruciating. Boring. Depressing. To the best of my ability, I wore the title of “dr” and learned to act “professional”... enough to pass state board exams, anyway. In the grand and magnificent irony of life, I joined the ranks of respectable adults, learning to see myself as deeply flawed, and adopting in the process a self-absorbed preoccupation with my own human failures — disappointing, to say the least, and not a whole lot of fun for one to whom the innate joy of life is a deeply realized and palpable truth. 

       Eventually, I’d been round and round the same psycho-emotional issues and spiritual exertions enough times that they, and the process itself, became rote and uninteresting, even to me.  Compounding the scenario, my profession ensured that when I wasn't focused on my own shortcomings, I was often focused on the apparent problems of others…all in the name of “health” care.

       The upside to this process was that I finally came to recognize that personal issues are rarely ever personal. I found myself enjoying a more expanded perspective of life, where the view is infinitely more amusing...and began to laugh a lot more. One day, I considered the question: what would life be like if I accepted that there is nothing wrong with any of it? And if I were to once and for all drop the attempt to cure myself of being human, whatever would I do with all the resulting extra time and energy? 
       It comes full circle. What emerges whenever I am able to drop the need to look grown-up or more-than-human are innocent acts of creation, devoid of constipating attempts to measure up to consensus-held standards. Just as I am, my creations are far from flawless. Like the nature of nature itself, they are seeded in joy, and promote expansion of consciousness for those who seek it. And like a circle of yin and yang, the expansion of consciousness eventually leads back to simple, innocent acts of creation.

       Enjoy!

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                                                                                                                          LJ Swanson