Over the past two weeks I've thought more about ending MPWR than expanding it. A damn shame. Well, as The Secret suggests, "Energy goes where attention flows." In this case, right down the drain-- or maybe not.
I had the idea for MPWR in the mid-nineties. I actually began working on it in the spring of 2003. It has been a long, tiring, invigorating, stressful, uplifting, mud-sloshing, God-praying, ego-smashing, love-hate, insert anything you want here, experience. I made a lot of mistakes. And I can't say that if I had known better that I wouldn't have made them. Some mistakes you have to make in order to truly learn the lesson you need to learn.
I've been on a quest. I have this dream of empowerment for all, because I personally have a need to be empowered. It started immediately after high school, when I didn't go straight to college but to poor working class status. At some point it dawned on me that the cheering crowds were gone. The teachers, the counselors, the learning programs, the inspiring ad campaigns, etc,. Gone. Even the parental involvement. Gone. I was alone in making life happen. If anything was going to happen, I had to make it happen. Hey, no problem. But without the cheering crowds, more ambitious goals would prove much harder to manifest. They suddenly seemed silly, when just a year earlier, people were saying I could do or be anything. It was an eye-opening life lesson. The fact that one is ultimately responsible for oneself. This wasn't innately a problem for me. What was a problem was not having a safety net. My Achilles Heel: the realization that failure could result in an extinction level event. My demise.
Moving right along. With MPWR, I had simply jumped out of a plane with no parachute. I would be lying if I told you I regret it. I don't. But I told you when I started this blog that I was going to be honest with you. And here is honesty--DOUBT happens. For the last two weeks, on an almost daily basis, I have been toying with the idea of just throwing in the towel. I've been eye-balling jobs with salaries that can help pay down these bills, but don't leave any time for personal interests beyond work. The debt is strangling me. I am embarrassed by it and this time my embarrassment has nothing to do with what other people think. The truth is, somewhere deep down inside, I am attempting to give up on myself. On the surface, I am trying not to panic. I am waiting for my faith to sort things out in my subconscious. I admit that am lost. I recognize that most of this doubt is related to my age and what other people my age are doing.
Here's the thing. It always comes back to why I started MPWR in the first place. Are there More Possibilities Within Reach? Of course there are. Always. So I keep going. Hoping that along the way, I once again muster enough faith in myself to do what I have to do to realize my dreams. That I replace my pessimism with optimism. That 15,000 feet down becomes 15,000 feet up. Right now, right this minute, I am in my right mind. I can do this. But the DOUBT is still there on the kitchen table. "Energy goes where attention flows." This is just where I am right now. I acknowledge this because repressing it is like having an elephant in the room. It simply is what it is and it doesn't become something else by denying it. But it also doesn't become something else by dwelling on it.
I came across the paintings of Thomas Cole. A series of four painting called The Voyage of Life and couldn't stop staring at them. And one of the paintings in particular. The painting representing youth. The castle in the sky haunts me. Not because I fear never getting there, but because I've been there a few times already. Perhaps the lesson on my current journey is to prepare for a more permanent ascension. Between the castle of youthful idealism and the rebirth of Universal awareness, there is indeed, the world and its many manifestations; its many realizations--adulthood. Staring at the paintings, I reluctantly acknowledged that I am now in the third painting of my life. And as the horse from Ren and Stimpy used to say, "Nope, I didn't like it."
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