Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. – Benjamin Franklin
I was married 18 years, two kids, unfulfilling work; alienated from society, heritage, creativity and former spiritual interests; never cried as an adult, rarely felt either joy or anger; had a cynical, judgmental, self-deprecating sense of humor; was more like my father than I knew, needier for maternal for affection than I knew.
Then my wife had an affair with a musician and the marriage fell apart. I was thrown into an intense midlife crisis. Suddenly, I was crying every day for her, for the family’s breakup, for all the wasted years, for my lost sense of purpose, for an inner child I’d neglected.
Has anyone seen the boy who used to come here?
Round-faced troublemaker,
quick to find a joke, slow to be serious.
Red shirt, perfect coordination, sly, strong muscles,
with things always in his back pocket.
Reed flute, ivory pick, polished and ready for his talent.
You know that one. Have you heard stories about him?
Pharoah and the whole Egyptian world
collapsed for such a Joseph.
I would gladly spend years getting word of him,
even third- or fourth-hand.
– Rumi
I began to realize how much of life I’d missed by hiding in an emotional shell; heard that the only heart worth having is a broken one; heard that in some cases, each partner in a toxic relationship secretly desires for the outbreak of something new, but that only one has the courage to initiate it; started therapy, got Rolfed, did breath work; got more comfortable in my body; went to men’s conferences; got interested in ritual, joined a men’s group; heard Robert Bly talk about Iron John and the hand that reaches out from the pool of the underworld and drags down those who refuse the call to do it themselves; heard him recite Antonio Machado’s poem:
The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.
‘In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I’d like all the odor of your roses.’
‘I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead.’
‘Well then, I’ll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.’
the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
‘What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?’
My men’s group included a guy named Fred, who (even I could see) controlled everything with droning, unexpressive talk whenever anyone got close to real emotion. He showed absolutely no emotion, often causing the rest of us to almost leave our own bodies. You know the type.
One night, just before Thanksgiving, the leader suggested we speak about our childhood memories of the holiday. We went around the circle, sharing all kinds of sad, funny and angry memories. We laughed; some men cried.
Then it was Fred’s turn. He droned on in his boring style for perhaps ten minutes, mentioning some memories that were “pleasant” and others that were “unpleasant” – and then he repeated himself, on and on, it seemed forever. I noticed that none of his memories (and, I realized, nothing he ever told us about himself) were more positive than pleasant, and none were more negative than unpleasant. He’d ensconced himself in that safe cave and banished intensity in any form.
Epiphany: from the Greek epiphaneia, “manifestation, striking appearance, festival held in commemoration of the appearance of a god at some particular place”.
Suddenly, I found myself visualizing that chart you may remember from high school physics class of the spectrum of electromagnetic energy, where the tiny range of visible light is bounded on one side by an infinite space of infrared light and on the other by an equally infinite range of ultraviolet light. All the light we cannot see.
I realized — with a shock that brought tears — that I, like Fred, had lived my forty years never ranging outside that same, thin emotional range of “pleasant to unpleasant.” And for the first time, a year after she’d left me, I silently exclaimed, “Thank God for this divorce!”
Coda: Three years later, I was able to thank my ex directly for having divorced me, that I had not been aware enough to realize how I’d needed profound change, how I’d needed to break out (be broken out) of my masculine conditioning. We started talking. One thing led to another. We cried together, did ritual together, made a funeral for the death of the old marriage. Years later, we got re-married. Many years later, I met the man she’d left me for. He apologized to me for breaking up my marriage, but I thanked him for having done so, for having embodied that God of the epiphany.
