Whale Fat

I was talking with a friend recently about how much I really do not like the area where I live.  Here in the mid south it is difficult in the extreme to be a vegetarian and want to eat only organic and responsibly produced food.  Difficult is not actually an appropriate word.  It would be more appropriate to say impossible.  Forget eating in restaurants here.  These people know only meat and potatoes.  I hate it. And hate that I feel like the petunia in an onion patch most of the time.  I was wishing out loud to my friend that I could move to another country or another part of this country but I don’t think that a country exists that doesn’t hate Americans.  It isn’t difficult to understand why this is, but I wish that it was not so. I had heard somewhere that maybe Denmark or Sweden was more American-friendly and my friend said that he knew someone in Norway and that he didn’t think that they hate Americans there, but he said that they eat strange food like whale fat.  I have no idea if this is true but his statement made me stop and think about my situation.  If I lived in Norway and was used to eating whale fat, as it is a custom because of availability (if it is true) I am sure that I would be perfectly fine with it, like the people where I am now are fine with eating meat and prepackaged, processed food.   Do people in Norway sit around and lament about having to eat whale fat and wish for something that they just can’t have? I have never been happy in this area and I have been even less happy about the availability of the kind of life that I would like to live, but after years of thinking on my misery and what I would like to have, isn’t it a bit ridiculous to think that someday I will have everything exactly the way that I want it and never again have to eat symbolic American whale fat? 

I have learned through much soul searching and life experience that we are here for a reason and there is a reason for everything.  If I find myself at the hind-end of the universe and have never found a way to escape it I should be able to reason that I landed at the hind-end of the universe because there is a mission for me here.  If it were not so, then (when I am thinking logically) I should be able to accept that I am right in being here and let go of a fruitless desire to live in Salem, Massachusetts, or Nantucket or even Norway.  This excessive desire for a life somewhere else is something that has done little for my happiness.  It has only kept me reaching for a carrot on a string and made me miserable and made it hard to make peace with where I am in the moment.  Truly, the moment has lasted a very long time but is that because there really isn’t something better out there for me or is it because I am angry that I seem to be the “odd person out” everywhere I go?

I had a job once at a social service organization where the people had so many problems and life challenges that I sometimes felt like I was going to take off running and screaming if I had to hear one more terrible story about poverty and misery.  On a particularly bad day once, I related my unhappiness to my mentor.  I said “I do not need these people!”  He said, “I know you don’t.  But they need you.”  At that particular moment I did not give one big damn if they needed me, but later on I was able to realize the truth of it.  There are many things in my life that I would like to change, but to dwell constantly upon what you do not have is pointless.  I am usually able to get past these feelings of “if I could just get away from here, I would be happy” but it is very difficult sometimes. 

It is good to have ambition and it is good to want to keep moving and evolving but sometimes it is just not going to happen.  I try to think on the film “Ethan Frome” starring Liam Neeson when my desires get to me too much.  In the film, Ethan wants desperately to move to Florida, away from the cold and snow of New England and live where it is always warm.  He is sure that he will get there someday.  He has a map of Florida on the wall in his home and he looks at it every day and makes plans for his wonderful life there.  It never happens for him.  Ethan’s life was about 100 times more tragic that mine has ever been and watching the film you just know that it is never going to happen for him.  It is easy to sit here and think that I really will get everything that I want out of life because I am in a much better situation to begin with than Ethan was, but truly, sometimes you just have to make peace with where you are, who you are and what you are.  This is one of the biggest reasons for seeking out your true self and the strengths and abilities that you came here with.  Without being sure of yourself and your real possibilities, there is little chance of ever finding true acceptance of what life has given you thus far.  I know that there are some people who have reached for a star and grasped it, but if that happened, you can bet that this was already in their birth chart and they managed to make it manifest as a result of hitting on the right combination of universal elements that they were entitled to.  I do not want to put the mockers on anyone’s wishes and dreams.  Go for them, and I hope that you find them on your journey through this existence called human life, but do not let them keep you from seeing and believing in what you already have.  There is a reason for the place that you find yourself in.  The reasons may feel like crap sometimes and you may be suffering from the insanity of other people in your life at this particular moment, but do try to find what you really are before you set out on a path that is not going to be what you really need.  Television, movies and the blabbing of others may make you falsely believe that your destiny lies in other realms.  It might.  I hope that you can find that glorious existence that you feel is right for you.  But if you can’t, try to take stock in what you have already been given. Keep your dreams, but remember that you may just be where whale fat it the most reasonable item on the menu for right now.