as i was sitting at the light on the way to work the other day, my rear-view mirror fell off and into the floorboard. at the time, it was a thing of humor. a brief thought to impermanence and a chuckle and then, to the autopart store to pick up adhesive.
i discovered upon doing so that the sealant/gel used to glue the bracket in place requires 18 hours to set. so, a day without the mirror.
then i found i had accidently glued the bracket on upside down. oh, the joys of dyslexia. so, another 18 hours while the metal inner of the bracket sets in proper orientation on top of it.
which brings me to today… and oddly enough, a bit of a ramble for the thoughts that have occurred as i wait for the gel to set.
the first thought was something of a wry one… you never miss hindsight until you realize you’ve missed it. missing as in lacking its benefit for missing as in not taking the time to look behind you and learn from the things you see there.
of course, i laughed at myself immediately. who has their mirror fall off and starts to think philosophy? but this is a constant here. forever thinking too much, too long, and likely not nearly well enough… for all i forever hope it will end in benefit.
it seemed fitting to me, though. one of the recurring lessons in my life has related to the reality that often, i miss learning not for it not being present, but for refusing to look for it.
and spending two days without a rear view mirror has impressed upon me in many ways the tender gift that hindsight and a willingness to look behind brings to one. and as well, the manner in which looking back is not to turn back… understanding and defining the places and actions that separate one from the other.
once upon a time, when life seemed very dark and i was despairing, i had this ritual i would perform. i called it my ‘reality check tour’ and it was very simply to take myself to the various places and spaces where deeply painful, ugly, or otherwise black memories had been created.
the children’s home. the hospitals. the hidden corners where people enacted horror upon me. a certain city block. the place where i handed my son to his father and watched them both drive out of my life. the place where i once lived and almost died. the place where i first found the idea of what it was to live. the place where a cherished friend died in my arms. the places i slept when i had no home, no bed, nothing.
i would take this tour every few years, just to keep hindsight sharp, and remind myself of many things… that things ‘could always be worse’, that no matter how bad it seemed, it almost always wasn’t, that regardless where that dark place lived in my head, the place where it happened was never so, that the only reason any of it hurts today is because i choose to remember it and grant it space in which to pulse and throb.
reminders, me to myself, that in every moment, i choose. and what suffering i endure is chosen. and that such choices are rarely helpful, almost never beneficial to myself or to others, and that, the act of remembrance for pains sake is, at best, egotistical and at worst, selfish.
slowly, over the years, that reality tour has become, in an odd way, its own “memory”. and i no longer need to get in the car and visit those places. i can see the flickering reel of them in my mind, and the lessons are now ingrained, memorized like i am some bizarre tour guide, leading myself through the many twists and turns of my own, personal labrynth, as if i had never been there…. never known them.
from then until now, from the point at which the tour was no longer necessary to the place of realization that the tour itself, was a tool of learning, things have become very interesting indeed.
not so much for how i treasure the memories as a pry bar against despair… since i very rarely despair for any of those moments here, in this one. rather, for the manner in which the process of transmuting memory to reel and reel to lesson begins to unfold as a path in my mind.
the memories themselves are all but inconsequential in this moment. which is, perhaps, odd sounding.
the means of the reel becoming a pointer to further insight is at once refreshing and strange. but most interesting of all is the manner in which the process becomes its own insight. seeing how the seeing creates seeing.
those moments in which i speak of times past are rare. and other than a few, small spots of lingering pain, they are mostly sealed… smoothed by a patina of time and perspective into freizes that hold nothing but the reference point. otherwise, empty.
“they” say that hindsight is 20/20. i do not find that to be true. rather, it is a fuzzy, unshaped, and completely nebulous thing that becomes sharper only with repeated glances… almost as if the truth of insight and learning in it are not things that may be seen in one look, but can only be absorbed by pixels, passes… mind scanning history to recreate not a high fidelity data store, but a cushion. blurring and deconstructing as it slowly polishes the jagged edges into softer forms, from which learning may then be received.
which brings me back to the mirror. and the thought that perhaps losing my hindsight for a few days was, in fact, yet another gift, a blessing, a tender, gentle touch of the multiverse… which makes me smile.