“Beautiful in Every Moment” by Shujaa WA Upendo
Below is a preview of the book “Beautiful in Every Moment”
PREFACE
There are times in our lives when everything seems to level out. You reach a point where you’re essentially cruising through existence while all systems are switched on auto pilot. You even convince yourself that you’re coasting right into the sunset.
Don’t get me wrong that life is easy. You’ve just worked hard to pay your dues and then some. You know the ropes to the point where you’re starting to experience inner peace. You have a lot on your plate from jobs to relationships. You’re setting the rules.
At this precise moment is when change charges into your life, unplanned and seemingly unconcerned about you. I’m talking about forceful change where you absolutely have no choice. It’s like a devastating tornado ripping the roof off life as you know it, which leaves you furious, disheveled and bewildered.
Truth comes to us in an infinite array of disguises, parables and mixed signals and sometimes such “gimmes” or gifts can only be unwrapped with experiences with meanings that are cloaked in a shroud. It is then that the storm clouds seem to cast our skies in a never-ending blanket of grey, and it is then that you’ve got to fight to remember a sense of determined courage (despite the odds). You must keep all your darting, numbing senses sharp on the lookout for the barely perceptible signals and voices that bombard us like white noise, yet which once those blocks of buzzing harsh noise are broken down into their correct frequencies revelations will occur. An almost divine clarity offering dialogues and messages that could possibly lead us to some sort of higher truth, if not the greater “truth” that we were unaware existed.
That last little bit is what the following story speaks to. Imagine diving headfirst into un chartered ontological waters and coming out on the shores of the other side a few steps closer to that person that you always thought you were before those growling challenges presented themselves. Blessed is not too strong of a description either: endowed with divine favor and protection, as the dictionary puts it. Blessed! And all the more enriched on a cosmic level, for all that your travails have taught you about yourself. Then again, while each of us thinks he or she lives on a totally separate trajectory than everyone around us, there are some experiences that we will all face in some form, at some point, no matter who we are or what we do.
Truth be said while each of us lives a totally separate course in his or her life, there are some things that we will each face in some form without a doubt. I can’t think of many things that can be as difficult or profoundly saddening as standing watch, day after awful day on end, watching someone you love with all of your being die slowly and painfully. An indescribable, suffocating helplessness haunts the whole experience, even dominating every thought. I can certainly testify to this as I witnessed what happened first hand watching my mother live out the last three months of her life, while she slowly slipped away and eventually succumbed to Breast cancer. It was the single, most agonizing time of my life!
In the time since then, when I look back on what I went through, I’ve come to realize that it was during the cruel chain of events that my ailing mother’s ordeal brought about was a spiritual cleansing of sorts. I felt suddenly rejuvenated, reborn and anointed with the peculiar salve of understanding ushering out, ironically, out of the acceptance of one of my greatest fears, her passing away. What was burned on my brain, as if by laser was this: don’t be afraid of the inevitable or the unknowable whenever you find yourself facing either. When these moments arise, and surely they will, you’ll find yourself surrounded by looming shadows of doubt, but don’t stubbornly question what you instinctually know. Look around the umbrage and face the cold facts that foreboding episodes await, yet never let your heart be deceived by the heavy darkness. Moments of ecstatic light and sheer joy will certainly unfold. Embrace the whole of it. Cry those salty tears and keep swimming across those darkened waves. Feel yourself growing within.
This lesson doesn’t come easily if you’re a young man. Our culture doesn’t really prepare men to do the emotional heavy lifting of this sort, instead we are inculcated with the hubris of machismo or images of chest-beating Brando tough guys; strong-willed Shaft-like cool game masters who are always in control. I’m talking about those BADASSES in every sphere of being, whether in the bedroom, boardroom or the excitement of the sports field where the ultimate sin is vulnerability. As always, as ever you have to suck up the splinters and the spontaneous whirlpools of pain leaving you emotionally stunted, distanced from the hurt, if you like. Just take it like a man — but, as the writer Michael Baisden once put it, men too cry…in the dark.
As to when these conflicting lessons in manhood ensure this awful behavior is simultaneously obvious yet difficult to pinpoint. The most awful question is why. For some it begins with a bark in the ear from a coach, with others its a drill instructor in military boot camp or maybe a tough-as-nails teacher, possibly its a draconian professor who puts you on notice that “you’re acting like a sissy” and should “stop your whining”– that showing emotion is “soft” and “not what a real man” would do, etc. So, when the time comes for a young man to really face his feelings in a trying situation, like the one I found myself in while sitting with my mother on her deathbed, he’s clueless and he stumbles through it all while fighting to negotiate the gauntlet that is the tidal flood of thoughts and the sensory overload he could have never anticipated– at least based on what he’d been taught what “really being a man” meant in this ADD/ADHD culture called America that will never seemingly make sense.
It’s a lonely, hellish place to find yourself but that particular valley of decision doesn’t have to be a place that you stumble into…at least without a map. My hope is that my story will make the path for those who might have to go through similar circumstances a little less tricky and steep. To be certain, we all have our own unique crosses to bear while making our way through this life. But having said all of that, the fact that we must get through them is a bond that we all share because there is no cure-all or panacea. The only way to get to that proverbial “other side” is in a straight line and there’s not alternate route. They all come to each of us, each and every one…
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