Airless Man Caves

Airless Man Caves by Odin Roark We love to beat ourselves up. We venture out from our cavern of dread to once again feel the frustration of looking for that special dance partner in an empty ballroom, our sanity always on the verge of… Yes, that’s what we do. We look for a finite connection, for the single answer to suffering’s multiple questions. How adolescent our bravura as we trust the armor fortifying our exposed heart to always fend off any conspiratorial emotions, buried childhood remembrances, parental battles with each other and you. How real-time naive we remain, conceptualizing happiness without a willingness to pay a personal price, a real experience beyond the concept of love, where we learn full enjoyment of pleasure is bundled expertly with experienced pain. We wonder how our heart can be aflame, but never open because starting fires is the only passion we understand. Or… Upon losing ourselves in the excitement, the euphoric possibility that “this is it,” we continue avoiding the first glimpse of our inherent and delicate vulnerability, the tripping lever that sends us packing. How persistent the obsession, our battling the dread of intimacy while remaining infatuated with possibilities, rejecting reality that commitment requires acceptance of an end game. But, oh how seductive the rear-view mirror, that ever present tool of caution, ever ready to warn us of danger, only to be ignored in the heat of our high-speed commitment to self-rage. Our crash and burn habit is often the only way to chalk up another entry, into our victimization syndrome. For we create the same arrogant bluster over and over, allowing frustration to turn into anger into self-loathing, into sucking all the oxygen out of our man-cave. There is another alternative, however… Step outside our cave of conceit. Avoid the suffocation of false pride. Take a deep breath of what’s beyond just us. Epiphanies await the courageous.