Making Your Mind Up

Making Your Mind Up

By Charles E.J. Moulton

***

1: Overwhelmed

"Study your Gaelic, son."
Patrick O'Flannagan's demanding drawl had in itself the worried whimper of a bloodhound hoping to push his beloved puppy in the right direction. The Tullamore Dew did the rest, creating the baggy-eyed look of old drunken Irish wolfhound. He gestured toward Keenan's table. "My son should be fluent enough to sing the old Gaelic sea shanties. I never had the chance to sing them. You should. Paint later, huh, son?"

Inside Keenan's soul, there was a worried bird in a cage not being let out. Years later, that bird would become an imprisoned eagle, screaming at the owner why he did not defend himself.

"Patrick," his mother Siobhan snapped, throwing down her stirring spoons inches away from the oven, the Irish stew throwing fumes onto her glasses not even seeming to bother her. What did, though, was her husband's wishes. "The boy should learn about Irish history, laddie boy, so he can go out and speak about his true heritage. Let him do that. You want that, don't you now, son? People will say, aren't ye great to be able to do that? Keenan is a genius. He can do anything, can't you now, son?"

"I wanna paint," Keenan mumbled from his crayons.

His sister Rhea came rushing in from her room at this point, waving her hands about, wrinkling her freckled nose." Mum, Dad, can't you see you're overpowering the poor kid. He just wants to sit and read, don't ya now, Keenan? Ya have all these books o' mine left over. Joyce. Dickens. Tolstoy. Carroll. Alice in Wonderland. Just imagine. Ya just have to like that stuff."

"I wanna paint," Keenan repeated.

"Hey, Keenan. Games on. Ireland is playing against England." At this point, Liam and Lennon, the twins and oldest of the O'Flannagans, came running in, claiming in unison that Keenan simply wanted to watch soccer with them.

"I... want... to... paint."

So, they let him paint. But not for long.

Soon enough, someone was back with a suggestion, a wish, a demand, a nodge in the supposedly right direction. Which made Keenan wonder. Why was he so important? What made what he did so vital to everyone in the house? Was he God or something? Why could they not just leave him alone?

No. He was the youngest and prettiest.
Okay, the word was handsome.
But Rhea kept using that phrase whenever Keenan had a question why he was chosen to perform a task.
"You're the youngest and prettiest, boy."

As if ordered on demand by the universe, Keenan's favorite song came on blasting through speakers of the Irish radio. The Eurovision Song Contest winner of 1981. Bucks Fizz with "Making Your Mind Up". The only problem was that he had been so overpowered by his family's suggestions that he forgot his own.

Keenan left the party, leaping into his room, slamming the door shut, reaching into his secret drawer. On his bed, he sat reading Donald Duck, eating Cadbury's. Comics and chocolate bars never demanded anything of him. They both simply supplied jolts o' fun.

And the youngest sibling kept being that snack in the Irish Pac Man game: everyone wanted to have a bite.

In short, Keenan got used to feeling like a rope in a tug-of-war. A ping-pong ball.  A steel ball in a flipper game. Everyone wanted the best for him, but no one asked him what he wanted. Even if he had wanted the things they had suggested, he had never discovered it himself.

He learned to cope.

Keenan became an avid reader, a singer of Irish songs, a soccer Player, a professor of Irish history at Trinity College and a huge Tullamore Dew-fan. He enjoyed being all of that. No question. And he was endlessly thankful to his family for the inspiration. But the memories of five people fighting over what was good for him created a deep distrust in his own decision making. People he adored and admired had meant so well that they slowed his development.

"What if I make the wrong decision?"

In his mid life, Keenan learned to go deep into this, thinking hours on end why he had been his dear family's prize jewel. His kindness. Someone so kind had to be won and used.

His 52nd year would be the pivotal one.
He had realized the importance of personal truth, humility, emotional energy, quantum physics, peace and love. Now he would realize how making your own true mind up could be the most vital of decisions.

Spiritual transformation can be hard work.
In Keenan's case, though, that hard work paid off.
Keenan had known it would.
But the road that he knew would be a long one culminated in real success first at age 52.
Not that he never had experienced success before.
No, this success was emotional.
Blockades of fear, constant guilt, living in the past, a deep difficulty deciding what to do because everyone seemed to know what was best for him.
That last fact was due to unfortunate circumstances in his childhood. Back then, love and confusion resided in the same pot. Proverbially speaking, of course.

Have you ever heard of the boy who was surrounded by well-meaning advisors, all with different ideas what was good for him?
Well, that was Keenan.

Growing up in Ireland as the youngest of four siblings had indeed been hard work. All of them knowing exactly what they wanted and never letting him live his truth. He knew what he wanted, as well. At times, though, his two brothers, one sister and parents all wanted five opposing things for him.

Keenan never admitted his frustration, not even to himself.

Keenan had a fire inside him that literally had him exploding. His head was so full of thoughts, thoughts, thoughts that he felt like exploding. So many questions, so many changes, so many habits to break. If he continued like this, he might even be heading for a clear burn-out. Trying to please everyone but himself.
Burn-out. That was a fashionable word.
The stressed history professor, rushing from historical matrix to bureaucratical matrix, popping pills, chuggling them down with Tullamore Dew. The nervous expert with his shaking hands, trying to cope with too much information.
Or him, Keenan, overwhelmed by Corona, puberty, menopause, diabetes, neurosis, quarrels, hurricanes, insensitive people, lack of sleep, too much work, too many questions, past life memories, current recollections, future illusions.

Was he in a burn-out?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Some partners marry people that are the opposite of themselves just to work on their tolerance issues. Keenan had a deep problem with solving conflicts. He had married his lack of standing his own ground.

Sometimes he felt fabulous after daring to try something he never had tried before. Something that he had feared doing before. Something love had made him try, that had turned into beauty. Something that made him know in his heart that fear was an illusion.

He, the constant worrier, battled that with positive talk, pretending to speak with someone on the phone or recording messages on his machine. Boosting his confidence. The real problem was that his head constantly worked. The voices in his head a huge cacophony of chatter. Threats and promises, candy and whip. There was no way to stop this.

Every night after a lecture, late nights, he would eat heavy foods and drink whiskey and wine. The result would be high blood sugar. In fact, the blood sugar had been so high lately that he worried that his blood literally would crystalize. How many times had he told his wife and daughter that he would stop drinking alcohol every night? His head was throbbing so hard, thoughts, good and bad ones, inside his skull, that he endeavored to calm them down with one late night glass of wine, two, three maybe and then a whiskey. This was not just psychological. It was emotional. Yes, his thoughts tormented his soul, the calm part of his existence.

Keenan was on fire, feeling guilty for everything, even for stuff he had not done. It was horrendous. His wife and daughter having a fight? Holy crap, had he done something to start it? His wife feeling bad? Holy crap, would something awful happen to her? His daughter going through puberty problems? Holy crap, would she ever find herself again? Had he been a bad dad? But this over-thinking had been a problem for at least thirty years. He had that from his mom, who had been an over-thinker, too. A constant "Oh, my God!" on her lips, constantly listening to everyone but herself. The real challenge was silencing the blah-blah's in his head.

Maybe it was all the criss-crossing to and fro from college to Dalkey. Most days, he worked double shifts and taught Gaelic sea shanties in between shifts. He wrote and published and painted and what-not, literally making up his entire life for having been a lazy day, drifting youngster. But that wasn't true, either. Even during those years, journalists had commented how much he was doing. Maybe it had been the chaos. Getting into the hands of a very psychologically manipulative friend, who had turned him into a nervous wreck. Starting educations and breaking them off. Going to his father's parties, performing tin whistle jiga for his mother's sewing club. His mother had also been so different than the other teachers, hadn't she? His iconically brilliant parents so different that it had turned really difficult to live up to. His loving mother so over-protective when his father raged, his Irish face red, knocking back shots of booze. The trouble was they were both his best friends, good night stories and father-son-clubs galore, glorious vacations and christmas parties and monopoly evenings. But then there had been the traumatic drama. His mother yelling at his father in the full stairway of the doctor's office, why he was eating chicken with his bare hands. His father biting his mother's cheek during a fight. His mother banging her head during fights. The problem were the extreme ups and downs. Now Keenan understood why he had diabetes. His sugar levels were only a reflection of the enormous curve between paradise laughter and explosive fights, his mother exclaiming: "No, no, no, don't ruin this beautiful evening! It was going so well!"

As fantastic as his parents had been, life had been like an opera performance with them, never knowing when heaven could crash into hell. Heaven did not need to crash into hell. Keenan did not need to choose between family members anymore.

One reason: he had never allowed himself to ventilate his feelings.

It would change.

Keenan desperately craved harmony. Finding his centre, getting away from that extreme drama, away from riding the road between the mountain-top and the low valley. The trouble was his head was used to the drama. He had to re-educate his throbbing system, telling his crazy brain to take it easy and trust and not go nuts at every occasion and bust every chance. Neutral people, calm and cold people had taken mean advantage of this, sending wounded Keenan into the arms of alcohol and sex and serious over-spending.

No more hang-overs. No more blaming. He wanted to wake up clear headed.

So Keenan wandered up to his wife that night, sitting on the couch with her arms crossed, refusing to kiss or hug him. Instead of blaming her for it, he asked her what her perspective was. The woman he loved had been hurt that he had not been there when she cried and that on many occasions.

Too much work, too much worry, too little peace and quiet. Yin becoming Yang, love becoming light, she read his aura like a woman looking onto an open canvas of unending promise, sweet honesty the tasty kiss of succulent chocolate Rioja.

"See me," she told him, "for who I am and not for who you want me to be like you should see yourself for what you are and not what other people want you to be."

That comment changed it all. Keenan would spend years wondering if it had been her tone of voice, her energy, her wounded pride or just the tears running down her freckled cheeks that changed his outlook. That had been the problem all along. Nobody had seen him for what he truly was. After making sweet love to his divine wife that night, he decided to buy a canvas, an easel, brushes and paint. He was going to do what he wanted all along.

Become a painter.

"I want to paint."

Better late than never.


***

2: Filled Up with Light

That morning of all mornings, the sunlight came streaming in subtle fragrances. Through the blinds of his house, they looked like rays of light shining from heaven, each beam an angel. They must be a whole conglomerate of angels, he thought to himself, smiling that delicate smile of a million dreams.

The decision to trust came naturally. It wasn't really that he had to do anything. Spiritually, he had simply arrived at the place they called trust. No matter how late his daughter was to eat her breakfast, no matter if she criss-crossed the house in the last minute before the bus arrived, looking for something, it worked. Because he trusted.

"If you trust, you trust," his guardian angel told him, "then it works, because light is always stronger than darkness. It has to shine it's light into the depths. Even the smallest beam will find it's way to the blackest hole."

He remembered love. He remembered kisses. He remembered embraces. He remembered caresses. And then, he remembered movie nights with his family, laughter on the beach, cooking in the kitchen, sheep on the grass, Guiness in the pub, good night stories and dreams come true, mutual performances and lovemaking, sun bathing and smiles, donut shops and holding hands, deep talk and silly jokes, beautiful skies and trust. Yes, trust.

The family man gazed at the beams again. Beams shining in through the curtains, creating little patterns on the walls. Sitting with his feet up on the living room couch that morning, he understood what it was all about. Life. The light penetrating the darkness. The shades of the blinds were equally important, for through them the light could shine and prove its own importance.

"Under the light of the moon thou shalt sit," God had told him in a dream, "and kiss your loved one. And then thou shalt journey home and express your love, creating new life."

The Spanish love song had been playing on a loop all morning, a Hans Zimmer song from "Mission Impossible 2", a film with the warm colors of red and brown and yellow, like the sunlight that had been streaming in through his blinds that morning. Nyah, played by Thandie Newton, finally teaming up with Ethan Hunt, played by Tom Cruise, cast a memorable light into his soul, realizing that any couple could overcome any problem by the help of light. The light of love. The light of hope. The light of joy. The light of trust.

And so, the artist wandered out into the morning, his feet shuffling to get his bus. On the way, a mother stood at a pedestrian crossing with her son. The kindergarten was not far away, so it was not hard to realize where they were heading. The little boy looked up at him with big eyes and he saw the light in that boy's eyes. The spiritual light of love, hope, joy and trust. And he realized someone's affection had created that child, making the mother a creator like the divinity in heaven. A couple had decided to trust one another to mutually respect each other's dignity and need for tenderness. The light of a small being that would become an elegant tall soul one day was the result of a hungry kiss.

And so, he stepped into the bus that morning with beautiful trust in eternity in his heart. This trust had him ending up on a train platform with a wondersome beauty in his heart. The autumn sun still cast it's sweet beams on the ground, but the air was chilly and cold. As the Hans Zimmer tune still reverberated in his ears, though, his cold hands were warmed up by holy feelings of faith.

He had known this transformation would come. Pain turning into love. All these years of researching his worries had led him to discover past life traumas. Now, the angels had claimed on a free evening, it was time to delve into this life, untying the knots of existence like he untied the knots of his earphones right here on the train platform. He knew that energies connected, changing realities forever. That evening, Facebook received a cyber attack and, somehow, he knew that there was a connection, divine reality slowing down technology for the favor of spirit. Funny, how he had been contemplating doing a Facebook live stream that evening. One idea abandoned for the benefit of spiritual awakening.

The angels actually had produced the changes in his soul, but he had to walk through the portals himself. He had unravelled his own fears of choking, finding his mother's asthma attacks and the fact that he had been the only one to stop them through his embraces. It stayed with him, unsolved. That, in turn, had been a re-manifestation of losing loved ones in earlier lives. Energy brought with him, energy he was here to work out. He had done a lot of thinking yesterday, realizing that he had been influenced by a thousand people in his teens to be a certain way, think a certain way, plan even his own feelings, continue an agenda, forcing him into escape routes that went wrong.

But here he was, walking through portals the angels had provided.

And his dream that night, Keenan made love to an angel.

Keenan never stopped singing or teaching or drinking whiskey. He did drink more wine now, though. And he knew where his creative heart lived. One that brought him his long awaited peace, at last.

And he put all of the inspiration from that love onto the canvas of his very first painting.

It was a sunrise.