230614 Searching

I feel like I have been searching for something all of my life, maybe you too are searching for something in your life.

I’ve spent most of my life looking for something. That thing changed as time passed, but there was always something I desired to find and possess. Early on it was finding a job. Later it was finding a girlfriend. I went from one to another searching for the right one. That was followed by looking to get away from home. I really wanted to get away from my father. He was always bearating me for anything and everything, from my earliest memories at 5 years old, until I was 18 and left home for good. I never understood his reason for doing so.

When I enlisted in the navy he proclaimed it was because I watched a TV show called “McHales Navy.” That was not the reason I joined the navy, but in his mind it was. My reason for enlisting in the navy was to learn about and repair radios. That was my dream from the time I was 16 years old and the navy gave me the opportunity to do that. I eventually found the right girl, Joyce, just months before going into the navy. She was going away to college in the fall of that year. I did not want to be home without her, so that was the clincher for me to enlist and leave a few days before she went away.

Once I made it through boot camp and all of the training schools that followed, I was finally sent to an operational squadron. That’s when I began hearing about the real navy and apparently I was not in it. This went on for years, searching for the illusive, real navy. I spent 11 years in the navy and never really found the mythical, real navy. What that was, was never really defined. All I knew was I was not a member of that navy. A few days ago I realized that those old chiefs weren’t in the elusive real navy either because they were in the navy I was in, the aviation arm of the U.S. Navy.

Decades later, when Joyce passed away, I was living alone for the first time in my life. I began searching for a purpose in my life. What was my purpose and why am I still here? Living alone, I have a lot of time to think about things. Before, I was living a purposeful life, one I had chosen to follow. After Joyce passed, I was a ship without a rudder and no compass to find direction. I was adrift in a changing sea. I’m no longer sad about anything. I keep busy, rearranging my surroundings, working toward minimalism, getting rid of things I no longer need or use, taking my daily walks, practicing my yoga and drifting with the tides wherever they take me. I figure wherever I am, I am right where I am meant to be. I live every moment wherever it takes me. I am still a work in progress.