In 1976, I \u00c2\u00a0fled my old life in Montreal like a man escaping a house on fire.\u00c2\u00a0 I abandoned job, apartment, friends, and ran for dear life.\u00c2\u00a0 That summer in the farm country of Alberta, it was wonderful to discover that I was able to live and work in a different world than I had known, driving tractors, pitching hay bales, riding horses.\u00c2\u00a0 Then the autumn approached and these harvesting jobs dried up.\u00c2\u00a0 The old panic that had expelled me from Montreal resurfaced with a vengeance.<\/p>\n
In TSK terms, I think that the past followed me from Montreal to Alberta, along with my lifelong habit of projecting onto the future familiar images of a past that had become hateful to me.\u00c2\u00a0 After a few months of feeling rejuvenated by new activities and vistas, the version of myself that felt stuck, hopeless, and unable to change took over and my panic returned twofold because I now saw myself as having failed in my recent abortive flight to freedom.<\/p>\n
Then something shifted.\u00c2\u00a0 A door to the future swung open.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a door I had been unable to see until I\u00c2\u00a0walked through it and turned around to see a world that was suddenly\u00c2\u00a0more open and friendly, and in which I could see that everyone else was just like me–having a hard time staying happy.\u00c2\u00a0 So how did this happen?\u00c2\u00a0 Sitting in my YMCA room in Calgary, Alberta, trembling like a rabbit who hears the coyote breathing on the other side of a sage brush,\u00c2\u00a0the future was an alien trying to devour me.\u00c2\u00a0 Then an insight came in through the window:<\/p>\n
“Here I am, exactly where I dreamed of being as I paced the claustrophobic cubicles of those programming jobs in Montreal.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m living, working, exploring in a new world.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m just like all those people who I saw this afternoon lining up for temp\u00c2\u00a0 jobs that can be hard to find.\u00c2\u00a0 Why would I allow myself to collapse in fear at the first sign that the future may be not exactly what I thought it would be.\u00c2\u00a0 That was precisely what got me into such a dark place in Montreal.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 I stood up, left the room, and had found three part-time jobs in the next 24 hours.\u00c2\u00a0 And the sun was shining again.<\/p>\n
My published memoir, “The Flying Caterpillar”,\u00c2\u00a0describes this turning point more fully.\u00c2\u00a0 Its first chapter is available online at:<\/p>\n
\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 http:\/\/www.michaelfgray.com\/p\/flying-caterpillar-chapter-one-not.html<\/a><\/p>\n Ten years later,\u00c2\u00a0I picked up a copy of “Time, Space, Knowledge”, in an Albuquerque bookstore, and finally\u00c2\u00a0 began to understand that it was the future that wafted into my life that day in a Calgary YMCA room,\u00c2\u00a0dissolving the tale of doom (drawn from the past) that I believed was my only world.\u00c2\u00a0 — Michael<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 1976, I \u00c2\u00a0fled my old life in Montreal like a man escaping a house on fire.\u00c2\u00a0 I abandoned job, apartment, friends, and ran for dear life.\u00c2\u00a0 That summer in the farm country of Alberta, it was wonderful to discover … Continue reading