Sometimes we read something that suddenly puts things into perspective, it gives a name to something you have been feeling for a while, and suddenly you are filled with knowledge.

Today I finished reading the second book in the Last of the Jedi series.

Briefly, the story revolves around Obi-Wan Kenobi while he was living on Tatooine and had to leave the planet to help out another Jedi, all the while he is hearing the voice of his former master Qui Gon Jin.

At the end of the story Obi-Wan is reflecting on things and he realized that he was feeling guilty for the fall of Anakin Skywalker and the rise of the Empire, it was through his adventures that he was reminded of the living force, the energy that surrounds us, flows through us, binds us together, He had remembered how to live a lifetime in every breath.

For many years I felt it was my fault for having to leave the EMS agency I worked at in Saint Paul, the following years were met with finding an awesome job and then getting laid off, getting a new job and learning it wasn’t at all what it was supposed to be when I was hired, then moving to another amazing job, and again getting laid off, and on and on. I felt that the way I lived my life was the reason I got cancer, I tried to change my stars and got cancer again. I honestly felt that all of the bad in my life had been brought about because I had somehow not done enough good, I stopped taking care of myself beyond subsistence level, and I just let the grief and anger roll over me, and oh lord did I make mistakes, but part of those mistakes were not my fault, I know that now, some of those mistakes were spurred on by a questionable understanding of multiple situations, and the unfortunate behavior of others in my friend circle.

When I was young I would hike and walk all over the place, the fields and rivers were as much my home as the house I lived in, I could find peace in the gentle wind, and the rain, I knew who I was, I was as Master Kenobi said “feeling the Living Force” and that was sustainig me through all of my scary times when I was young and as i grew into adulthood and beyond.

When I started therapy in October of last year, we identified triggers for me, we talked a lot about the “why” in regard to what was bothering me, I was told it was ok for me to not be nice to everyone I meet, because sometimes they aren’t nice people to begin with. Someone finally told me I was going to be ok, just that, “you are going to be ok, you are alive today, because you are too prickly and hard to eradicate, and you will get passed this” For a while that was all I needed, but like ,many things in this world that thought can only carry you so far, skill sets and the ability to use your tools are the things that you build bridges with to cross the bad parts of life.

All of that is very nice and happy, but the reality is that the advice I got was only partially what I needed, the civilised and conservative part of me needed that, but there is another part that I wasn’t carring for my heart of chaos, the adventure spirit that robbed me of the good sense to get out of the rain, the one that learned to move as quiet as a shadow through the woods, trying to sneak up to a deer to touch it, I neve rmanaged that but not for a lack of trying, the forrest spirit that would pet procupines and toss pieces of apples to skunks, and could draw the rejuvinating energy from the wylde places.

What Obi Wan and I have learned is that sometimes we need to let the living energy of the world suround us, nurture us, and heal what was broken, and accept that we can find forgivness, that we didnt miss something that could have made it all work out in the end, that I didn’t cause my cancer anymore than I caused my companies to have to cut budgets and see me laid off.

now to figure out how to get out of testifying at a trial for someone I wouldnt piss on if he was onfire