{"id":2888,"date":"2007-07-27T03:28:28","date_gmt":"2007-07-27T07:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.soulhuntre.com\/items\/date\/2007\/07\/27\/i-flagg\/"},"modified":"2007-07-27T03:28:28","modified_gmt":"2007-07-27T07:28:28","slug":"i-flagg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/2007\/07\/27\/i-flagg\/","title":{"rendered":"I, Flagg"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I should have been asleep&nbsp;hours ago. I was in bed, it was dark, I am tired. You would think it had all the makings of a coma. <\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Sleep would not come.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I knew then the shape of what part of me wanted to do&#8230; but not in any detail. So I got up, surfed, read some news. And here I am. This is the third time I tried to start this post.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t often spend much time discussing how I feel about individuals. The few times I have done so in any real way they were safely not going to read it. <a href=\"\/items\/date\/2002\/06\/22\/draw-the-curtain\/\">One was dead<\/a>, the other can&#8217;t doesn&#8217;t know what a &#8220;blog&#8221; is. I am sure some of this is simply shyness.<\/p>\n<p>The thing is, that just isn&#8217;t going to cut it tonight.<\/p>\n<p>I spent 3 or 4 hours earlier today with <a href=\"http:\/\/flaggestate.livejournal.com\/\">Flagg<\/a>. Keeping him company, running errands, helping with stuff. I have spent a lot of time with Flagg in recent years but none more so than the last 8 months as he recovered from surgery to remove a good bit of his right leg. He was tired. He was frustrated. Above all I think it was just good for someone else to be there.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>I am happy to do it because I admire Flagg beyond anything I can express here.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is common these days to talk about anyone who is sick and say they are &#8220;brave&#8221; or &#8220;strong&#8221;. The words themselves have become watered down by the same mindless PC fog as everything else.&nbsp;Every mewling, whining, blaming, bitter, self righteous piece of meat who managed to score themselves a real or imagined disease or &#8220;syndrome&#8221; gets called brave these days&#8230; no matter how completely they abdicate their own care. I have not one moments use for those people.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Being sick does not make you brave or strong. Being sick gives you&nbsp;a CHANCE to be brave or strong.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Of all the qualities I admire among the most valuable to me are prefixed by the word &#8220;self&#8221;. Self reliance. Self determination. Self respect. Many related virtues spring from those. In the end it all comes down to this&#8230; will you&nbsp;do what you know is right? Will you&nbsp;move when&nbsp;it is easier to remain still? Will you DECIDE? Will you ACT?<\/p>\n<p>The manifestation of those virtues is simple to spot within yourself. It is there when you use the word &#8220;I&#8221;.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I will.\n<li>I refuse.\n<li>I believe.\n<li>I can.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When all is said and done, we are defined by the things we will put after the&nbsp;word &#8220;I&#8221;. We are only ourselves. <\/p>\n<p>The most basic of the &#8220;I&#8221; statements is the essential precursor. &#8220;I exist.&#8221;&nbsp; Without existence, nothing else is possible. Most of us can take &#8220;I exist&#8221; for granted. Unless we do something stupid or meet with tragedy our continued existence is a given. We will exist tomorrow, just as we have today.<\/p>\n<p>At this point in time, and for years now, Flagg cannot take that for granted(1). Every day he is alive is the manifestation of an affirmative action&#8230; the direct result of an act of will.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Each and every day Flagg has a choice &#8211; act to continue existing or fail to act and cease to exist.<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n<p>In a very real way that most of us will never experience, Flagg is a child of his own continued willpower. He rises every single fucking day like a Phoenix powered purely and simply by the continued conviction that he intends to do so. To <strong>be<\/strong>. To <strong>act<\/strong>. To <strong>exist<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>I would be lying if I didn&#8217;t tell you that in its own weird way it is beautiful.<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong. I wish he did not have to do it. I wish it would go away. No one will be happier than I when the transplants happen and some of the pressure lets off. But none of that diminishes the sheer capacity it has to&nbsp;astonish and inspire&nbsp;me every time I think about it.<\/p>\n<p>For a long, long time I have harbored a desire to get a tattoo that would bear (in some form or another) a single, essential message. &#8220;I am my own creation&#8221;. Someday I may still put those words onto my skin, but in a very real way I am not the person who should bear that concept. He is. While I certainly shape my own life &#8211; he manufactures his anew each and every day. The price of his life is&nbsp; pain, effort, boredom and sometimes humiliation&#8230; but he pays it.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>It humbles me every single time I see him.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I am sleepy now so I guess that&#8217;s what I needed to say. I also know that 10 seconds after I hit the button to post this I will worry about it. Wonder if I revealed too much. Wonder if he will be glad I wrote it or if it will add a burden to his life to know it. Wonder if any of the other people I admire will feel just a bit slighted that they don&#8217;t have posts of their own. I could make myself crazy about this stuff \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>I also <em>could<\/em> simply delete it. Now that I see this all written here the urge to get it out of my head is over. I could cheat and erase it. I won&#8217;t&#8230; but I could never have to worry about any of the&nbsp;things I wonder about. I could&#8230; but this deserves better than that.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Goodnight.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>(1)&nbsp;I know at least one other person who faces these challenges in their lives. I have not spoken of them by name because I don&#8217;t think they want me to do so and my thoughts arose from my visit with Flagg and thus center on him. If and when they read this, I hope they will know that my admiration extends to them as well.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"wlWriterSmartContent\" style=\"padding-right: 0px;padding-left: 0px;padding-bottom: 0px;margin: 0px;padding-top: 0px\"> [tags]flagg, health, admiration, willpower[\/tags]<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I should have been asleep&nbsp;hours ago. I was in bed, it was dark, I am tired. You would think it had all the makings of a coma. Sleep would not come. I knew then the shape of what part of me wanted to do&#8230; but not in any detail. So I got up, surfed, read [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":53134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[278],"tags":[286],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2888"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}