Identity. Jeff MDiv Sieniewicz
had been busy with her career as a teacher, building a life for herself in one of the best suburbs of San Francisco. After teaching for five years at a fine school, she received an even better job offer at one of the finest private elementary schools in all of California, and she gladly accepted it. She soon moved to that suburb near her new school.
Quickly she made many new friends with fellow teachers and neighbors in the upscale area where she now lived. As the years passed she became ensconced in that community and felt as if she would live there forever and would cherish doing so.
In her current house at the time she could have been happy for years to come, yet was made quite giddy when her boyfriend Tom, who lived in the same suburb, suggested that they move in together. She accepted his offer and was just about to follow through with it, when the incident changed everything.
And after that most horrific day three years ago, she moved away and bravely continued her career at the local elementary school in the rural community of Truth, Oregon. Not long after moving to Truth, she met Frank again at a support group for mourners.
Laura almost didn’t recognize him at first. He was unshaven, with eyes set deep, dimly lit, and glassy, as he sat barely moving. His body language was almost non-existent. He appeared more robot than human, and not a very happy robot at that.
Laura had been so focused on why she was there that the thought the man in the corner could be her once fun loving good friend from Berkeley never made an impression. Not until they passed each other on the way out did she barely recognize that it was him, and only after she insisted did they share a table for coffee at a local diner where she barely recognized her old friend further. They parted with assurances they would meet again after the next support meeting.
According to Frank’s original plan though, his first group meeting was also going to be his last. Laura, however, had not been part of the plan and would keep him to his word to get together again. In the end they would travel to several more group meetings together, meeting after each for something to eat as well as to talk about their individual progress since the previous time they had met. In the process they renewed their friendship, one that they both needed then more than ever, even if Frank didn't fully realize it at the time.
As Laura quickly found out, however, this truly was a different Frank than the one she knew at Berkeley. This change in him made her infinitely more aware of how she had been changed by that one day in San Francisco. By the incident that even years later still made her wonder if she would ever truly be herself again.
Laura especially worried about her past and its repercussions when recalling, as she did now, something that Frank had once said to her. It had been on a return trip to the same diner after a second group meeting. Frank had been no more cheery or responsive this time than the first, yet Laura had continued in an honest attempt to help both of them through their tough times. She tried to help him understand the concept of letting go of past trauma and the best techniques to use for moving on with his life. Explaining the need for both of them to accept and even change their outlook on what had happened to each of them. That things depend on how you look at them, and how they would choose to view their pasts would affect the rest of their lives. She had temporarily been convinced that through the power of positive thinking they could stop their pasts from ruining their futures. She was sure that the coping mechanisms they had just been shown at the meeting were useful tools in doing that.
Frank had not said much in response to her misguided enthusiasm, but by the look on his face he had clearly disagreed. She then asked him why he thought they couldn’t change the course of their futures and prevent the full repercussions of their misfortunes from occurring in the process. She had asked optimistically, because she knew he would not be able to discount what was to her the fact they could.
Frank, sitting slumped in his seat, eyes down, drinking his hot coffee slowly, had more than anything just mumbled in opposition to hearing what Laura now considered in retrospect to be vain platitudes of hers. Yet what he said had resonated with Laura ever since about why their situations would be out of their control.
“The finality of reality.”
They were just four mumbled words yet they sliced through the film of a seal that was covering everything else for her. Doing so even if Laura was not sure exactly what he meant by it, nor why those words shook her like they did.
Still remembering that day now years in the past, Laura currently moved from her office to the kitchen, pouring out her coffee in exchange for some water, before going into the living room to settle down into her sofa, attempting to relax. As she did she remembered how she had responded to Frank so abruptly responding to her that day nearly three years ago.
Not only had she not gotten the type of response she wanted from Frank, she got what she perceived at the time to be a completely full of bull one. In fact right then and there she had wanted to do nothing more than to throw her piping hot coffee at Frank for being so dreadfully pessimistic, especially at a time when they needed anything besides pessimism.
After seeing her scowl, Frank had explained what he meant. Doing so, however, hardly made Laura feel better.
Frank explained that he did not believe everything that happened in the world was black and white, definite and final. Much to the contrary, he considered there to be a lot of grey area in the world. Especially in the area of morality, right and wrong, in one’s point of view, and in perception, which after all is only one person’s personal reality. All of that can vary and blur the lines of reality, or at least have the appearance of doing so.
In the reality that exists outside of perception, however, he had learned that there is a much more definite one. Whether one wants to see it or not, it’s there. A reality where events and actions are as black and white as it can get, with no blurring of the lines between the two. That no matter what the spin, no matter how much or how little one thinks about them, talks about them, even tries to change what has happened, there is no going back. That no matter how you look at it, there was no changing what had happened to either of them, nor changing the real consequences from those events that will follow. That is what consequences do, they happen. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be called consequences, and believing otherwise is just another form of denial, because those types of consequences are final. That is actual reality, the one real and only reality, and not the often-confused sense of one: perception.
In reality, one is unable to change their fate or determine it through will power. Wishing simply doesn’t make it so, and if anything, their two experiences should have at least taught them that.
In actual reality there is an actual realness, not just in tragedy but in joyous occurrences as well. An essence that is truly real that touches upon the fabric of reality. Yet that realness carries with it the double-edged truth of reality: the finality of reality. That finality holds an infinitely greater weight than the notion of reality that is perception, which is merely one’s own truth that can be altered with a whim at will. Accomplished merely by thinking differently, as if simply wishing something to be true, makes it so. Frank thought it clear that their situations could not be, because they both touched upon that finality of reality.
The gist of it all being that if it was bad then, it will in fact continue to be bad at that same level forever, because there is no changing what had happened nor the negativity associated with it.
Seeing him engaged like this, for the first time since they reunited, was certainly a positive. Even if at the time, it certainly did not feel like one.
In fact, at the time she wished he had gotten engaged about something else, anything else, or at least had done so in a different way. The fact that she recognized that there was a lot of truth in what he had said, even more so than in what she had, also had only made her feel worse.
Yet he was engaged, which would certainly make him easier to talk with, and although she could not initially disprove his theory about their shared fate, she certainly disapproved of it. Maybe in time they could find a way out, to change the “finality of reality” as he called it, and to make it not so final after all. Certainly no one can know what the future holds. In the meantime she would do her best to combat that pessimism of Frank’s with relentless optimism,