The beauty of hindsight is clarity.

   I really don’t know where to begin on this one. I guess I’m just at that point of life where a man looks back at a past longer than his future and tries to make sense of those pieces of his life that never made a clear picture, or a good one for that matter. We all have those things we really wanted to do, the things we had to do and for some of us, the things we were really good at that we wished we weren’t.

  From as young as I can remember, I wanted to be an artist and a musician. I was born in 1958 and in that time those were things that beatniks (they were before hippies) did. My mother was in the Army, my dad in the Air Force. I spent the first four years of my life in Japan under military rule. In the military family, everyone is military, kids included. I grew up with those catchy phrases like, “There’s no “I” in team”, “Second place is just another name for loser.” The commies, pinkos, fags and reds were all the enemy and we all had to be stronger and more disciplined than our enemy. After all, who knew when the Russians or Chinese were going to over run us and destroy our way of life. The military kid didn’t question, didn’t doubt, didn’t think of themselves and never, never showed weakness or emotions.

  When I was four years old we had a stronger than normal earthquake and I watched the street open up and swallow cars and people before it closed up. All was quiet and a lot was gone. I was horrified. I was shaking and I didn’t know how to process the fact that no one was going to try to look for or save the people who went into the Earth. I must have been the perfect example of weakness so the lashes of the belt were well deserved. I remember the stings becoming tingles and I became calm. Physical pain became my drug and I quickly became an addict. Emotions were truly a flaw design in the human machine. By the time I joined the Marines at 17 years old I was a severe pain and fear junkie and it served me very well. For the following years I got more into my habit and I was the one in natural disasters and warzones that people would look to for the calm and rational fix to their horror. My emotions were under tight control so I could keep cool and my thoughts were clear. I lived for it. To this day it serves me well in those settings but when it comes to situations that involve my emotional being, I am the natural disaster.

  At 22 years old I was pierced through the chest and strung up for the night as a test of worthiness of Shamanism. Men do die in this ceremony and I was almost hoping I would out of curiosity of what was on the other side. I didn’t cry out or make so much as a grunt and as I swung in the breeze over the waterfall. I felt a sense of victory, just before I passed out from the pain. I was a Warrior and I promised myself to become the most disciplined and unemotional my people had ever known. My life was ruled by logic and order and no emotional bullshit was going to hold me back.  Yeah, all sounds good to those who don’t understand how one can stunt the growth of the personal life skills needed in the everyday world. When compassion is looked at as catering to the weak, there is no room for understanding or sympathy. Then comes that part of life when a man sees a woman that holds him in timeless awe.

  A man’s world is power and beauty is a powerful thing. Beauty can be in the look, the sound or the smell and it will disarm the strongest of men. A man can fall in love and want to be around that woman for no other reason than just to be there. He will watch other men do this and call them weak yet when he does it “it’s different, you don’t understand”. A man will try to understand his woman and do whatever he can to make her happy and feel secure but if he is deficient in his own emotional body he will fail, and in a very bad way. I did, and in many ways. I would get confused, feel weak, lash out and try to control what was undermining my strength. The problem was, and still is, my lack of healthy emotional development was what was undermining everything that would let me have the one thing I wanted most. That love of a lifetime in a relationship with the woman of my dreams.

  I do so many things very well. The joke about me was in order to get me to take a project, you had to tell me that everyone thinks it’s impossible, it’s extremely dangerous and I’ll probably get killed trying to do it. I’ve left fine women to go to those projects and I’ve had everything happen to me from being “detained for questioning” (I still have a problem with dentist chairs, electricity and people touching my balls), giardia, assorted battles and what comes with them to just plain bad luck.  As time went on and the projects were just projects I remembered that longing I had to be in that loving bond. I promised my self I would have that in my life. I had many possibilities but the old training kept coming through. On one side it served us well in that I was always focused and disciplined to accomplish our goals and I would push myself in harsh conditions to do so. Yet in the more gentle matters of the heart I was out of control. I overthought something that follows no logic. I was a third grader trying to overthink engineering and I acted like one. Ah, hindsight. To look back and see when you should have turned right when you turned left.  So here I am finishing a house that was part of a couple’s goal, alone. A picture without a frame. I should have realized from past proof that I was not equipped for this and should stick with what I’m good at, solving problems, not being one.

  My project has made it to the top of the UN this week. I will be overseeing most of the construction of processing plants for a green product in four countries, two of which will greatly benefit in relief efforts from earthquakes as we will provide work and economic growth to the third world. We will cut the use of petroleum products in the industry of corrosion control and prevention and be a great contribution in cleaning up international waters. I will be the guy that gets sent to the hostile areas where no one else is emotionally equiped (or not) to go. I’ll be the guy that goes from the worst dirt to the upper eschelons of the corporate world. That’s my world and I should have stayed there. I’m going to go back to being me and stop trying to have something I’m not prepared for. All I did was hurt the women I allegedly loved.

  To the wiser mind, hindsight is an honest road to self acceptance. By the time you see your past is longer than your future you should realize the things that you are good at and the things you should leave alone so you can spend time doing something good with your strong points. I’m perfectly suited for where I’m going and I’ll be real good at it.