The Desperate Ones
By Jacques Brel

They hold each other’s hand
They walk without a sound
Down forgotten streets
Their shadows kiss the ground
Their footsteps sing a song
That’s ended before it’s begun
They walk without a sound
The desperate ones

Just like the tiptoe moth
They dance before the flame
They’ve burned their hearts so much
That death is just a game
And if love calls again
So foolishly they run
They run without a sound
The desperate ones

I know the road they’re on
I’ve walked their crooked mile
A hundred times or more
I drank their cup of bile
They watch their dreams go down
Behind the setting sun
They walk without a sound
The desperate ones

And underneath the bridge
The waters sweet and deep
There is the journey’s end
The land of endless sleep
They cry to us for help
We think it’s all in fun
They cry without a sound
The desperate ones

Let he who threw the stone at them
Stand up and take a bow
He knows the verb to love
But he’ll never know how
On the bridge of nevermore
They disappear one by one
Disappear without a sound
The desperate ones

I have a deep affinity for the lone wolf, probably because I’ve always been one.

The one thing I can say as my 50th birthday draws near is that it gets easier with age. I saw this because I see so many young people who are alone, or belive they’re alone and misunderstood and can’t imagine their lives ever getting better.

The truth is, things do get better. I can’t imagine my life ever being more unbearable than it was when I was 15. I’m actualy suprised anyone survives junior high school without taking poison or gunning down their home room. It’s a miserable age and it feels like it will last forever. But it does end. Your life gets better.

Even knowing this, I still have the overwhelming urge to walk up to random lone wolf pups, squeeze their shoulder and say, “Seriously. Just hang in there. You’ll be amazed at how much better the world will look in a couple of years.” I also have the urge to grab whoever is making them feel that way by the throat and bounce them off the nearest wall a few times because … well, because I can and nobody did it for me when I was a kid.

But that would be ignoring the fact that most of the evil sheep who make life miserable for lone wolf pups don’t even realize their evil sheep. They just think they’re normal. And they’re probably pretty miserable themselves.

I wish I had something profound to say here that made sense of school shootings, suicides and bullying but I don’t. The world sucks. It sucks more when you’re young and just learning how to survive in it. But if you survive, it gets better.

I can’t help thinking Jacques Brel said this much better than I have.

Lately, I’ve been having a lot of discussions about metaphysics and enlightenment.

Part of this is simply the result of having a highly educated, intelligent girlfriend who enjoys rolling her eyes and arguing with me. The other part is reading a lot of Ayn Rand and Haruki Murakami. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention introducing the new girlfriend to the thrilling adventures of Jack Flanders and the philosophical content of that series.

So, intellectually, there’s been a lot going on and it’s segued into the holiday season and all my normal end-of-the-year drama. The dead were walking among us last week, and that included the figuratively dead … those people I’ve written off as being non-viable for any meaningful role in my life. That, in turn, leads to the omni-present question that seems to pop up every time I discuss metaphysics.

How can someone like me talk about the path?

First of all, I’ve never called to be a full actualized or enlightened spirit. Far from it, I find myself standing in the shadow of my own light many times a day. I haven’t met a lot of enlightened beings and I don’t expect to in this life time. The best anyone can hope for is to become light-giving and move a little further down the past.

I’ve got my demons. I accept them and work with them because I know they exist to help me become a more enlightened person. The interesting thing to me about this is that the demons that concern me most aren’t the ones people seem to think rule my life.

The demon I wrestle most violently with is my inability to forgive. If you injure me, insult me or even attack me without managing to cause any damage at all, I will remember that and I will hold it against you forever. I know that’s wrong. I know that it causes me more karmic harm that it does my enemies, but resentment is the one attachment I just can not seem to let go.

The simplest example of this I can think of is my work environment. I’ve been at my current  job long enough know to build up a small store of resentment.

One co-worker (and I use the term loosely) betrayed me badly, with the full range of lies and hostility that comes with that. It was a deliberate act of betrayal which was thought out, planned ahead of time and executed … albeit badly and without measurable effect. I know this person’s karmic debt will be settled, that all her efforts in the end brought me no harm and that, truly, the only ill benefit I’ve suffered due to her actions is the karmic damage my own resentment causes me. I should forgive her and move on.

But I can’t. I will hate her until … well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Until when? Until I learn to let go of my anger and resentment? Until I find a way to forgive her despite the fact she doesn’t want to be forgiven?

The other betrayal, by another co-worker, is far simpler and far more complex because of it. I know he didn’t mean anything by it. He told a joke to an enemy. He didn’t know the person he was joking with was my enemy. He didn’t know I could hear him. He didn’t know the joke would offend me. In fact, more than one of my friends has pointed out, it’s the kind of joke I might have made about myself.

I won’t get into the semantics of why it bothered me. The more important issue for me is that it’s not an isolated incident. I’ve overheard a couple of other similar comments about me since then. Honestly, I know there’s no malice on his part and it’s not an intentional insult. It’s just his personality, the way he talks.

So I should be able to forgive that easily, right?

Apparently not.

Instead of forgiving these people and moving on, my solution was to withdraw completely from the work environment and simply avoid any unnecessary contact with them. From a practical point of view, it is a practical solution. It produces the necessary effect. Rather than recognizing them as beings who deserve forgiveness or resentment, I simply do do not recognize them at all. I recognize the illusory nature of their reality and simply take away their power to annoy me.

But this is not at all the same as forgiving them.

And this is my point. I can write essays. I can give lectures. I can discuss and debate the theory and method of enlightenment for days on end. But there is a huge gulf between knowing the path to enlightenment and following it. There are moments when I can gleam like a beacon, giving off so much light … and then I manage to stand in front of my own light, living in the shadow that I’ve cast myself.

Perhaps in the next life, I will be able to truly forgive and let go of my resentment. In this life, I think the best I can hope for is to forgive those who ask and contain my resentment so that it doesn’t effect the manner in which I interact with them.

As to the question of how someone like me can discuss the path … I can discuss it because I am walking it every day. Sometimes there are detours. Sometimes I may become distracted by attachments, pleasant or otherwise.

I like to think that spending a long time making the trip is giving me a perspective people miss from the windows of the bullet train.

Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest. – Emerson

There is truth in that. The former friends who have the ill grace to remain living serve as constant reminders of our own poor judgement. Each time we see them, we remember the way they failed or betrayed us. This, of course, is nothing. You can forgive people for being imperfect even as you consign them to the dustbin of failed humanity.

The real pain, for me, at least, is that I have to re-evaluate the way I look at myself simply because such people exist.

How could I have possibly been so stupid as to misread their signals? Their body language, their expressions? Why did it take me so long to see through them?

Or, conversely, did I expect too much from them?

And what about redemption? Did I give them enough chances to redeem themselves before deciding they had failed me?

In the end, I always fall into the rule of three. Failing me once is easy. Everyone does it. Twice is a more egregious offense. It shows a certain carelessness about our relationship. The third time is proof of a serious character flaw.

At this point, I no longer care if you want to change or feel badly about whatever offense you committed. I have to acknowledge the pattern of behavior is probably not your fault at all but merely the way God made you. Your mental software is incompatible with mine and it’s best to stop trying to patch it.

The end result is always the same. Once a person reaches this point, they become ghosts. If I try hard enough I can see them, hear their faint voices at the edge of my consciousness, but, like ghosts, they are powerless to affect me. They are only real if I choose to acknowledge them. Occasionally, they rattle their chains and moan loudly enough to get my attention and I have to decide if they should be allowed to live again.

Redemption. Do I let the ghosts of friends past rise from the grave to …. what? Fail me again? Betray me again?

The issue arises today because I heard from an ex-friend I had assumed was dead. He dropped off my radar a dozen years ago. Frankly, it was a relief. Although we worked brilliantly together, it was never a good experience and no matter how great the rewards, I always felt dealing with him hadn’t been worth it.

It turns out he wasn’t dead, just in prison. He wants to get together and make things right with me.

Frankly, I preferred him dead.