For a long time, I have felt as if I'm peering in through
windows which I can't open. I look in on friendships where there's enough trust
to show tears and enough closeness to hug away pain. When I went to dinner with
my coworker at Buffalo Wild Wings recently, I felt as if I was at another of
these windows. My coworkers were laughing and sharing their inside jokes
about movies I've never seen and suspect I would never understand. On the train
to work, there are strangers who strike up conversations with other strangers,
pocketing their ear-buds and making conversational music instead. All of these
are windows and though I am used to peering, to wishing, something has changed.
Now I am asking myself whether its' actually a case of my not being able to open the
window, but rather my not wanting to? After all, how often do I reach for the
latch?
Underneath all of my debilitating intimidation, my
overwhelming sense of awkwardness, my constant and incessant striving for
control of my environment, lives a desperate desire to conform, to be like
others, to be comfortable in my own skin and stop striving to perfect its daily
performance. Yet, despite my looking in on these many windows starring people I
cannot be or be with, I continue to find myself unchanged. How can it be that I
wish so intensely to be different, but I make no efforts to achieve it? Why,
instead of reaching for the windows latch, do I eternally choose to remain out in the cold?
Through much contemplation, I believe I have discovered the
explanation. I shall use the Lord of the Rings as the means to clarify it.
Imagine, if you will, the Hobbits walking into that tavern
where they first meet Aragorn. The four short hairy footed men sit down at a
table and start slurping down their grog. They're laughing, telling Shire
tales, kicking each other under the table at inappropriate jokes, toasting old
victories and squeezing a shoulder to temper age-old pains. They're on the
verge of an epic quest, but if you were to look at them, they'd seem nothing
more than a group of friends out for a second breakfast.
Now look in the corner and see the man in the cloak. He
isn't speaking, isn't moving, keeps his face, and therefore his story, in the
shadows. Aragorn looks in on the laughter of the room, the toasting of drinks
and the jokes with alcoholic undertows. In the days to come, he'll be part of
the Hobbits quest, part of their circle, but he'll still keep his distance.
Sure, sometimes he'll stand at the head and lead the way through pain and loss,
sometimes theirs and sometimes his, but he'll still keep himself apart. As it
was on that first day in that crowded and noisy tavern, Aragorn will always
keep part of himself separate. It could even be argued, in fact, that he keeps
most of himself buried.
If comparing Aragon to the Hobbits, one must ask; who is
happier? Who leads the happier life? It must be the Hobbits of course. Look at
their friendship, their willingness to befriend and to trust. They wear their
flaws on their sleeves, strip off their shirts to reveal their scars, admit
their failures to each other because they know there's no possibility of
rejection. Their lives are easier, better, happier than Aragorn's….and here's
my point.
Between the Hobbits and Aragorn, who do you find more
interesting? Who do you want to know more about? Hell, whose cooler?
I hate to admit it, but there's a part of me that thinks I'm
cooler this way. Its' a part that lives down deep, hiding behind my logic where
it thinks I'll forget about it and therefore let it live, let it thrive, but I
know its' there. It, my Aragorn, thinks its' cooler for being distant, for
staying the watcher and not the speaker, for keeping the cloak drawn low over
my eyes. I'm more of an interesting character when my story is kept in the
shadow. If the price of playing the mysterious, elegant and secretly scarred
role is missing out on some laughter, some toasting of mugs, that's got to be
reasonable right?
No. It's not and I know that. Its' an unfair trade, but the Aragorn
part of me thinks it is and that keeps me from making changes. I keep thinking
about Spock and the peacefulness there must be in a Vulcan's logic. I want to
be THAT just as much as I know that THAT is wrong. I can't be a whole person
and keep my distance at the same time. I can't be happy if I'm always vying to
control that happiness, to justify and measure it and then cancel it out if I
judge it unfitting. How can I expect to find friends, some of my own Hobbits,
when I can't approach a table without a planned excuse of departure already
prepped? How can I expect to fall in love when the front I put up is never me,
but a fabricated, "head before my heart" me? All my constant
distancing, all my facades and my Aragorn cloaks, it has to stop. It has to
stop.
I have to find a way to leave my shadowy corner and join
those Hobbits at the table. More than just finding a way to burn my Aragorn
cloaks, I must find a way to WANT to.
It isn't a case of opening the window.
It is a case of shattering it, climbing through, planting my feet and demanding to be there.
