ghost chores

My favorite movie of all time is The Shining. It is many things, but at its heart it is a multi layered multi generational ghost story.

There are two opposite spectrums of behavior for ghosts in tv/film: the evil spirit that cannot find (or does not) desire rest, and on the other end, the harmless ghost who for all eternity is carrying out or attempting to carry out a task it did when it was a live.

In the lore of ghost stories, ghosts attach to places, they attach to people, they attach to things that shouldn’t have been, they attach to things that once were, they attach to loss, they attach to the vulnerable, etc..

A ghost is a note that hangs in the air and doesn’t resolve.

A ghost is something that won’t let go.

A ghost is a pattern.

The reasons are varied, but the connection is the one unifying principle.

I think a lot about patterns and self deception lately. I have friends who have constructed a track that they spend days years and god forbid lives driving around in. I don’t know why they do it. I am sure others can see mine too.

One of my good friends has for as long as I have known him, had a room he is “making progress” on cleaning. When I was first getting to know him, I just assumed it was some boring chore that he didn’t want to tackle.

But this room has followed him through four moves, and two relationships. Almost a decade later, he is still “making progress”.

It hurts me to see stuff like that. And I would bet my house that this mysterious room will never clean.

And the reason is simple: if the room were to ever be finished, he would stare at the empty floor and be forced to confront what he has run from this whole time, himself. Self knowledge. Letting go. The complexity of the world.

The track he has built is a closed circuit, there is no helping someone out of one.

I wish I was strong or clever enough to pull people out of their dead loops of behavior. I hate help, but I recognize the need for it and therefore I love giving it to others. I know what its like to be helplessly tangled.

But in order to do so, you have to let go. You have to move towards the light. Maybe that light is a death, but mostly its an awareness. Its a recognition that things didn’t go like you wanted them to and its time to stop. Its input. Its laying down of arms.

Until you come out of these ghost chores, you can never be yourself. You will forever be using your best energy and years on rocky soil. The track never gets longer, it gets deeper.

My hope for you and me is that all the dead things find rest, so the living things can be at peace too.