Life unfolding-Low battery-Plug in before you die. This is where I both begin and end in the same breath. This is where/when nothing else matters.
I preach and more often then not don’t practice my own advice. I would consider it good advice due to my many attempts to follow it demonstrating success on most occasions. Consistency is my ongoing challenge.
My life has not been an extraordinary story yet it has given me the opportunity to learn how to live fully with no regrets. This is where I gift myself the greatest pearl to date. If I want to give back all that I have learned I need to live the life I want everyone to reflect upon. With this simple practice I will begin fulfilling my purpose to serve and teach. I have learned it has nothing to do with school, nothing to do with understanding. It is all about experience, sacrifice, commitment and discipline. Here I stand, exposed and raw, unfiltered and forward with just a touch of intelligent restait. I hope you enjoy all that I have come to learn but then again I no longer care what anyone else thinks. My purpose is to live. Your choices are not my responsibility.
I wish I remembered my youth. I have seen pictures. I have seen videos and yet all I recall are brief sensations. It is as though I saw a movie once upon a time and recall how it resolved. It would be nice to recall stories and events and how they impacted my life and altered my trajectory. I have very few stories and those that I do have have be retold to me by a bother, a mother, a sister and a father. These historical experiences seem to leave me wanting more understanding. There are sensations of events but almost no retrievable memories. Feels like I have always been running in front of my own life, never comfortably sitting in the pocket, missing the moments of appreciation. I can write about the past 9 years but they too have been shadows of a life that I have not had the chance to fully cherish and love.
I was little, maybe 3 years old, when I began having night terrors. I think they were night terrors because that is what my mother has said they were. Were they just recurring nightmares? The truth is I do not know anything other than what my mom has told me. From the age of 3 to 12 years old I would wake up screaming. My mother told me that for an entire year , I think she said when I was 3 or 4 years old, that I would wake up every night 90 minutes after I fell asleep and would begin screaming and running around the upstair of our Long Island colonial. In 1969 and the 7 or more years following the first traumatic experience I do not recall any doctors visits, therapy, medication or dietary changes. Based on everything I know, after a lifetime of experience with my own 2 children, if something is happening out of the typical expectation we go see experts and get help to figure things out. I guess I grew up in the dark ages. The underlying reality was the love and hope with hugs and kisses would get us all through. This was my reality. Well I guess it was based on what I have been told.
Fast forward to 1984. I graduated high school, Northport High on Long Island in New York, tried marijuana for the first time, flew to Europe with My high school choir to sing and tour and had sex for the first time, with a stranger, while on tour. I can clearly remember jumping out of my ground floor hotel window with my roommate and finding the local pub. I wasn’t a big drinker so one beer and I was floating on a cloud. Walking back to the hotel, a happy drunk, singing Old McDonald in German with some locals I quickly sobered up as I learned that the director and his staff had been looking for us for over 2 hours. Needless to say I was in big trouble. They wanted to send me home but after some review and a grand apology from me to the entire choir and staff I was allowed to stay. They put me on probation for a couple days and didn’t allow me to travel with the choir to Czechoslovakia. Instead I ended up baby siting for the choir directors 2 children. The kids and I had a great time and I evolved once again as I had always done after I stretched the boundaries.
Why do I begin with this pivotal time in my life? The truth is it is one of the earliest teaching experiences I can remember without anyone else’s recollection. It wasn’t until many years later that I learned one of the major patterns in my life had been me stretching things to the extreme, the point of fracture or break. I grew and learned the most when everything was on the line, lessons learned due to urgency. Sink or swim became my modus operandi. This repeating pattern applied itself to my first year of college which was a disaster, when I bought a motor cycle at 21 and crashed it after 3 months (almost killing myself) and as I continued to re-injure myself due to lack of preparation and discipline. Stretching the limits was my thing and in looking back it never produced any beneficial results. Yes I learned some things along the way and yes I am here still married with 2 children and a business that I adore. The main thing still missing is a core happiness. I believe, for me, the feeling that I am living my true purpose benefiting the world around me is now make all the difference. I seem not to be there yet. WHY NOT?
How is it with everything I have lived through, all that I have experienced, all the pain, frustration, challenges, failures I still haven’t learned my greatest lesson. Give in to the moments and allow myself to just be. Whatever happens or shows up will be ok. I know the words. I have practiced the actions and still I feel lost. Lost with my lack of stories, lost with my personal disappointments and lost knowing my direction (ignorance would be less torturous). My truth is all about knowing and still afraid of the unknown. It would be nice to trust the process and go with the flow. My life, my flow, my choice and I still block the doors. I am holding the keys and yet I struggle to continually open each chance to learn and evolve. Feels as though I was lied too and not prepared for this life. Not as special as my mom told me or maybe I am just haven’t left enough room for it all to show up.
Now at 52 years old I take full responsibility for my life and everything I choose to do. With new experiences and knowledge I find myself asking more questions than I can answer with fewer and fewer days ahead to use the answers for contentment. I must write here how important the woman have been in my life along with a few key men. I will not go any further without acknowledging my father Gerald Rosenberg, my brother Larry Ross and my father in law Harry Abbe. I pride myself on being trainable and I thank my mother Joan Rosenberg, wife Alissa Rosenberg, sister Rochele Seskin, client and friend Eileen Weisbaum and most recently my daughter Megan Rosenberg. I have had moments when I have broken my training but I am still one that will challenge the establishment and its rules. Right here right now I am breathing deeply and grateful for this life.