I Stepped Into The Echoes Of The Future was the headline I intended to use for this post and then I saw someone had been camping out on a post I wrote in October 2012 called The Ancient Art Of Blogging.
That post was written a few months before I would start walking down my own version of The Yellow Brick road not knowing my life would change in some dramatic ways.
A decade and a few years later with the gift of hindsight, some luck and multiple hard lessons I can see how profoundly different things are now, some good, some bad.
I can see ample reason for why my perspective on some things is different and why I am a bigger believer in a future that relies upon the contradiction meant to be and taking control of your destiny.
It’s a good reminder because if you look at what I wrote last October in The Hero’s Journey Part 2 and dig into where things are today you might be confused.
Might wonder if I really stepped into the echoes of the future or if I have tried to stop time. Maybe you’ll react that way because I have said blogging isn’t dead or maybe because of how you respond to other things.
I know things and I am open to predicting many but on this I’ll hold my tongue as to responses. Other than I’ll reiterate that blogging isn’t dead and it will never die.
Storytelling is too powerful, too primal and too important. It is a part of who we are as people.
Israel 1994
I am the guy with the beard and the fanny pack standing at a kiosk in Afula next to one of the paratroopers who liberated Jerusalem in 1967.
Ziggy is telling us his story of that time and the man standing next to him in the white shirt is translating the tale into English for those who can’t follow the Hebrew.
I am all of 25, never been married and won’t become a father for another six years. I am making plans to make aliyah and move to Israel.
Within a decade of this shot two of the people in the picture will have died and I’ll have taken a different path than I had planned then.
In the years to come I’ll think often about the choices I made then and how they led to where I am now. I’ll think about how naive I was about some of it and how silly my thoughts were in other areas.
That 25 year-old can’t conceive of what life will look like in 31 years and he for damn sure could not have predicted the things written about in The Unreliable Fools Of Elonia.
He knows about the first Gulf War and remembers saying goodbye to some of the Marines that went to college with him. But he knows that war as one in which the US and allies tore through Iraq with ease, a time in which we were the Superpower because the wall had fallen and the USSR was no more.
The Cold War was over and it seemed like there were endless opportunities available to he and his friends. None of them had died from terminal illnesses like brain cancer, the Oklahoma City Bombing hadn’t happened and Columbine was a name no one knew but those who went there or lived near by.
The first attack on the World Trade Center had come and gone but it wasn’t something a 25 year-old thought about. O.J. was still a sports hero and Bruce Jenner was a former Olympic athlete who we never could have imagined would one day be called Caitlin.
You Don’t Like Being Told What To Do
Back in the present in the midst of the hero’s journey I am sitting on a chair in an office providing an overview of the diet I am on while describing some other challenges.
“You really don’t like being told what to do by anyone.”
I nod and smile, “no authority and I do best when I am offered suggestions. But I know how to be a team player and how to work with others.”
The man smiles at me and asks me again if I know how to walk away from a fight. I nod and smile and say I know how and have done it many times.
“How do you determine when it is time to give up and let go?”
I tell him it depends on the circumstances, the people and what the situation warrants.
“Communication impacts everything. When you have had a real discussion and you understand what is going on it is much easier to take steps even if you are unhappy with what you need to do. But if there is no communication and you are forced to guess, well that creates a different response.”
*****
There are moments in time that jump out at me in which promises were made. Sometimes I responded to such promises with fire and said I didn’t want any such thing said unless they were willing to go the distance.
“Some things are sacred. Some things touch my heart and soul and I can never forget. That is how I end up walking through flames. But others, well I can let go of the rope or use a scissors to cut the string between the two tomato cans.
It all depends, it is a gut thing.”
Epilogue
People ask if I have thought about who might hide me and I tell them I have thought about who might turn me in.
Some say I shouldn’t antagonize Trump supporters by calling them ignorant, stupid, foolish or easily manipulated.
“When you tell someone they are in a cult you just might find that is enough to make them call someone about you.”
I shake my head and say for the moment I am not going to worry about that. I was born in the U.S. I am a citizen, but I am a Jewish American who understands generational trauma.
I know stories, some of them are horrific but some are also magical. I still believe in magic. I still believe in meant to be and I still believe in taking steps to control my destiny.
That is what I am doing now, same as I would have in 1939.
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