In Between

IN BETWEEN is the question I am confronted with today. What happened in-between my last post and this one?

Did I go through one of those interesting experiences that writers, especially the writer’s block experience?

Not at all. I was busy editing my memoir for possible publication. I then realized that I have been writing from a very biased perspective, especially one with so much pain, expectations, and angst. I was feeling a lot of pain for a broken childhood and life of poverty and violence in my growing up years. 

It took me 55 years to come to terms with the reality. 

Flipping those years back on their head showed me another dimension of my life. One that has so much compassion, forgiveness, and deep appreciation of the family and the life we lived.

A lot were glossed and buried deep within the lived memory. I looked again more consciously with an eye for the unturned stone, the unturned leaf. I asked myself what I may have missed as a result of looking through the eye-holes of a child, a son, and a youth coming out of the forest world and journeying out into the open seas, and flying into distant skies without a road map.

In the journeys and the worlds encountered I may have lost some of the memories, or perhaps had them replaced with new emotions, jubilations, and happiness. Perhaps the new experiences beyond my familiar environment replaced the sad experiences of childhood and youth.

Perhaps I consciously chose to ignore the experiences that held me back.

Whatever they were I have to correct it pronto. I have to rewrite the personal narratives from a liberating and compassionate angle, giving credit to my parents, family and tribe where it is due. Without their personal sacrifices and personal struggles, I would not have made it this far.

It is their beliefs, their faith, their conscious commitment, their untold struggles, and their vision that I became what I am today. They dreamt it. I lived it.

I have embarked on 'unwriting' and rewriting some of the personal narratives to accommodate the new awakening in me. I am conscious of the effort to make sense of my life.

I want to leave behind a narrative that my children and their children will claim as theirs too. I want to leave behind a narrative that speaks the truth about my existence. It must be a narrative that lays bare the “real story” of a life lived.

My children and grandchildren will read what I have written long after I am gone. I am reminded that I must leave behind a narrative that is honest, respectful, and just.

It is important that I write a memoir that goes beyond a personal story. It must also be the story of my parents, my sibling, my family, my tribe, and my village. It must be a story that has reason, clarity, and reveals deep sense of who we are.

The space in between gave me a deep sense of who I am. I also thought about my future and what I need to do. I spent too much of my life in the academia and in one institution. I spent more than 28 years of teaching and working at UPNG. I spent nearly less than 35 years of my life studying and working at UPNG. In a way I never left UPNG at all. I feel more like a fossil in this pioneer institution of higher education in PNG. Was it a life well lived? What is worth for spending my entire life of service to others, except myself? Is there a logic that describes this type of living that shuts out other living?

The space in between has left me a lot of questions without answers. Some of the questions that need answers are difficult to answer right away. I am left in a conundrum, a space that is empty and cannot contain me. If not; it is a space that is confusing and difficult to make sense of. The space in between is not empty.

For what it’s worth, in between the life I lived and the life I have yet to live, there are multitudes of riddles to unravel, opportunities to seize, and new stories to tell. The mysteries concealed in the future of our lives comes at the right moment, time, space, and often if we make the right decisions now, or take the right actions now these will lead us to that mystery.

As a big fan of motivational gurus like Jack Canfield, Anthony Robbins, Napolean Hill, Brian Tracy, Bob Proctor, Robert Kiyosaki or Jesus Christ, I know that if I want a happy and successful life, it is the things that I do now, the actions I take now, or the sacrifices I make now that will lead me to the goal I have in mind. 

The space in between is for me to fill.

I am the master of my own destiny.