Those ‘Damn Ghosts’ Are At It Again
Is There Anything We Can Do About It?
In the novel, “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen, Jacob, a circus veterinarian during the Great Depression (who watered the elephants) is telling his story at the age of 93 years while a resident of a nursing home.
He bemoans that you age so quickly and that nothing can be done about it. He further complains about the ghosts that have accompanied him on his life’s journey. He says,
“All I can do is put in time waiting for the inevitable, observing as the ghosts of my past rattle around my vacuous present. They crash and bang and make themselves at home, mostly because there’s no competition. I’ve stopped fighting them.
“They’re crashing and banging around in there now. Make yourselves at home, boys. Stay awhile. Oh, sorry — I see you already have.
“Damn ghosts.”
One of the great ironies of slipping from decade to decade is that you can lose track of how old you really are because inside, you still think that you are the person you were in your heyday.
You have more time to see the ghosts in your life and not enough mental activity to crowd them out. Jacob stopped fighting them and says, “make yourselves at home, boys. Stay awhile. Oh sorry — I see you already have.”
I was doing an inventory of the ghosts in my life recently and here is what I discovered.
First, there are two kinds of ghosts. The first kind of ghost represents a real person. Usually, it is someone who left you with a negative or wanting experience, like an overbearing mother, a distant father, the neighborhood bully, an oppressive ex-spouse, or a domineering sibling or offspring.
Not all ghosts are bad. There are people you have loved or lost; people you enjoyed in the best moments of your life. They can hang around. But, the ones that crash the party tend not to be the good ones.
The second kind of ghost is one that is a facsimile or a composite of some experience in the past. Not a real person, but an imaginary being that is a stand-in for a feeling that visits you at odd moments.
For example, have you ever had an outburst of anger for no justifiable reason and wondered, where did that come from; or have you watched a movie and suddenly you are overwhelmed with this emotion that goes way beyond the normal feeling you might have because of the plot. It could be excessive fear or the welling up of tears that connects with something in your past that left you wounded inside and you just don’t want to see that pain replicated again.
You say to yourself, “it’s just a movie.” Or, it could be a ghost?
So, what can we do about ghosts that appear in our lives?
First, not all ghosts are created equal. Once you have looked around and seen who or what they are, you can whittle down the crowd by just pointing to them and saying, “you, you, and you. OUT!” You are taking up undeserved space.” To identify them, to understand them, to evaluate them is to get rid of some of them. Just clean out the closet.
Second, sometimes we just outgrow our past. Maya Angelou once said, “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” So you identify those ghosts who have become imposters and likewise tell them, “you, you, and you. OUT!” They won’t fight you.
Third, there are some ghosts that just need the light shined on them. (Ghosts hate that.) You go back to the past and study the ghosts more closely and may see that there is a need for reinterpretation of events; it never really happened that way. There is nothing more unfair and taxing as a misunderstood history.
My dad passed away in an accident when I was a boy; my mom when I was 21. Growing up, friends of the family, mostly church people, would tell me what my dad was like. It was a nice story, a pleasant man who sang in the church choir. Many years later I visited my great aunt in a nursing home. She was a character who pulled no punches. I asked her to tell me about my dad. She said, “Well, he was a nice man, but he never tried to make much of himself.”
That comment sent me on a journey to better understand my parents. Turns out the resiliency and the drive in my life was rooted in my mom, not my dad. (Although I did sing tenor in the church choir.) My mom’s ghost received a little more space, my dad’s ghost a little less.
Fourth, see your life as a journey where you are shaking off ways of thinking that rob you of the joy that awaits you each day. Push yourself to let go of the past, to live in the present, and make room for the future. Maybe it takes some long walks in the woods; maybe it takes a little therapy. But, staying stuck in life is not a strategy to employ. As Liz, in the movie “Eat Pray Love” says, there has to be “space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.”
Fifth. Well, so far we have my ghosts on the run. But, they are all not going to go away. When I completed my inventory I felt like I had a handle on all of my ghosts, except one. And that is the hardest ghost to confront because it requires understanding and forgiveness on my part (a topic for another time).
We have no control over the behaviors of other people. It is so difficult when a person injures you and/or someone you care deeply about, fills the precious time you have on this planet with pain and sorrow, and lacks zero self awareness or remorse. What do you do with this ghost?
All I can bring myself to do for now is to limit the space available and seek peace within myself. That’s how we survive. We move on by recognizing that we all have some pain that we bear. That is called life.
