The world runs in floods of cliche anger and blistering bravado.
Everybody is fighting mad about being right about something.
I believe running just underneath it all is a stream of filthy inner whispers.
You’re a fraud. You’re not nearly good enough. You can’t, won’t, never will be!
Consider my dad, and how he dealt with these lies.
George Cogdill came up in wretched poverties of the Great Depression.
Hungry as a boy. Poor of formal education. Starved of value and dignity as a human being.
The stench off those old poverties followed him. No matter his pressed clothes, starched manners and middle-class, well-earned money, he worried! He worried and doubted his present and future away.
Fear of not being enough, or having enough, carries a stench. It’s like a stained old sofa, full of fleas and fumes of an unshakable past.
Some of the seemingly most successful among us sleep on it every night. They hear and heed its nasty voice. My dad dragged it through most of his life.
He tried to drink it away. That made it smell worse.
Getting sober and finally outrunning the old aromas of doubt carried him, finally, into a beautiful future with my mom.
And how often do we see symptoms of his error all around us today?
Shows of bloated ego, rampant narcissism, obsession with tribal belongings — all revelations of people who fear they DON’T belong. They armor to hide old shame.
The past is nothing to hide. It’s a thing to learn from and shed.
It’s gotta go.
It’s aromas mustn’t go with us.
The future makes no room for fetid old sofas, and what they have to say.
Michael Cogdill 