Being that I spend most of my lunch breaks at Borders, over the past year I have been acquiring a small library of discounted books. One of my purchases off the “five dollar clearance rack” was a huge colorful book on Feng Shui. While I have yet to spend much time really learning these ancient Chinese secrets, I did scan through a few chapters. One of the concepts of Feng Shui that I did pick up on warned against long uninterrupted straights, whether the layout of the house is based on one basic hallway or the driveway to the house has no turns. Without turns and interruptions along a straight path, one might “fall out of the house and out of their own yard”. That’s considered “bad Feng Shui”.
If you are able to grasp that concept for the most part (which I think for some strange reason I can), then maybe you can understand my recent perspective on how having Baby Jack relates back to Feng Shui, if nothing else, in my own sleep-deprived head. Recently, some of my cosmic insecurities have been heavily resolved as I realize that by being a parent, I am forever in the middle of a generation, no longer the tail end. I am no longer the tree itself, but instead one of the branches on someone else’s family tree. No longer am I a coastal state like Rhode Island or South Carolina, exposed the possibility of breaking off in the Atlantic Ocean, only separated by a few thousand miles from giant Africa; instead, I am now landlocked Kansas. Like sitting in the middle of the third row seat in a 15 passenger van on a church mission trip to Mexico; like no longer being on the outer edge in a herd of zebras escaping from a hungry lion, so am I.
As a parent, I now feel more Feng Shui. I will not “fall out” out the universe into outer space without it being immediately noticed. Because I am no longer simply a husband; I am a father. And being a father doesn’t simply hold importance in the direct care of my son, but also in an undeniable eternal sense. Baby Jack is not just simply a cute little Bambino. He is a spiritual being who I am responsible for.
I am no longer an island of any kind. More than ever before, I am needed and necessary in this world. What I do from this point has potentially everlasting outcomes. I won’t look back on my life when I’m an old man and think, “I lived such an empty life.” Because I will always be linked back to my son. So cosmic, man.
“These moments, they can never last; like a sad old man with his photographs keeps wishing for the things he can not change.”
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