Sidetracked

I lost last week to a head cold. I ignored it as well as I could. Tried writing entries, but my words made no sense to me. I couldn't tell whether my writing was off or my reading of it, but it didn't matter. I believed I couldn't post what I myself couldn't follow.

My mind wasn't working right. My higher mind, I should say. I couldn't follow myself in the ways that I've trained and practiced. By which I mean a sort of witnessing, somewhat objective, but leaning towards encouragement and positive critiques--like a good coach. When my developed consciousness is functioning on that level, I'm discerning, yet kind. I get out of my own way.

But I was sick. My spaciness stressed me. When I am stressed I retreat. When I retreat I regress. (Note the eternal present. It's a pattern it's taken me a mere 64 years to recognize, sometimes.)

When I regress, I don't want to be too visible to the outside world. It isn't safe when I don't have my wits about me. I fall back into my parents' beliefs that the world is never safe, not for an instant, that one must live defensively. This means in private and invisibly.

My parents were first-generation Americans. They shared a perspective developed by hearing their parents remember the violence of pogroms and conscriptions back in the Ukraine at the turn of the twentieth century. My parents' beliefs were reinforced by their experience of the Depression, their understanding of the Holocaust, and decades of overt prejudice against Jews right here in the United States. I shudder as I write the word. Jews. I hear my mother's loud whisper, "Sh-h! Don't tell!" As if our origins weren't apparent through our name--Letofsky. It always was apparent, and what she and my father wished for wasn't really invisibility. Their highest hope was to be ignored, left alone to live in peace.

This is not an optimum background for a writer, for this writer, anyway. For some writers, this very same family friction enhances their creativity and productivity. But my temperament made me fiercely loyal to my family's world view, at my own expense. "Be quiet! Don't say a word!" Refocusing my loyalty towards my work has been a major challenge in my life. It's almost second nature now. Maybe second and a half nature.

But when I'm "not myself" because of sickness or other stressful situations (like what's happening right now in Kiev, near where my grandparents lived), I fall back into the old ways. Don't look at me. Don't read my words. Leave me alone. Let me live in peace.

The thing is, living in peace could mean keeping out of everybody else's way, like my parents thought. Or it could mean living how I need to live--visibly and verbally--in trust, even when I'm not sure that I'm making sense.