After visiting the dentist a few weeks ago, I started thinking about death.

Usually, I think about death before I go to the dentist. An old part of my Catholicism resurfaces, the part that believes in hell. I think my personal hell would be sitting in a dentist chair listening to other peoples’ miseries, root canals and cavities drilled with a Phillips screwdriver, knowing mine would be worse and would begin shortly, as soon as my demon dentist quelled his shaking hands with a few more Long Island Ice Teas.

I don’t love going to the dentist.

But I left the dentist requiring a root canal and a crown and realized that my broken and dysfunctional teeth are the only ones I will know until death. Of course we’ll all die:  life is uncertain, every day is a gift, nobody escapes death, focus on living, yadda, yadda, yadda. But somehow it hit home that these teeth are with me to the end. I might have problems in my 70s due to a lack of vigorous gum brushing in my late 30s. Maybe I’ll have to have many of my teeth removed. A thousand years later when someone digs up my skull, they’ll say, “clearly he lived before toothbrushes were invented, because look at those fuckin’ chompers. Yikes.”

I don’t think I’m going to die next week. Maybe, but, you know, not if I can help it. But my teeth are middle-aged, my feet are middle-aged, and my face has these wrinkles that aren’t laugh lines. They’re just wrinkles.

I guess this hit me harder than I thought because I recently turned 42, and also, Michael Jackson died. I didn’t really think much about Jackson’s death other than to marvel at the weird media circus, but one of my favorite webcomics did a piece on his death and I read a certain line that hit me strong:

“He was your Elvis and when your Elvis dies, so does the private lie that someday you will be young once again, and feel at capricious intervals of a joy that is unchecked by the injuries of experience and failure.”

Ow.

The part of my life where I am young…is over.

I guess it’s useful to think about death when it leads to reflections on living:  how to live, whom to grow into, to ask am I the man who I always dreamed of becoming and will I be him before I die? I like those questions. I’m closer to that man than I have been in the past, but still not as big-hearted as I want. I’m still not quite that man. I’m still selfish and have stuck behavior patterns. I’m working on myself, but I guess I’m going to greet death with a root canal and an invisible crown, possibly a bridge if I don’t brush my gums better and take care of the neighbor teeth.

To help me grow into my manhood, I’ve invoked specific male archetypes to guide my journey. Right after my NWTA, I invited Warrior energy to help me create better boundaries, to help me learn a new kind of strength, to help me center my life around integrity. I got a tattoo to represent the warrior and remind me who I want to be.

A few years later, I invited magician energy into my life, asked that archetype to dance. (Which meant another tattoo!) The magician represents extremes: big emotional earthquakes and quiet miracles, loud and quiet, rescripting your life into something wild and unrecognizable at times or turning a familiar overlooked part of life into something new. New perspectives, new vision. While focusing on the magician archetype I lived in California, created an enormous career shift, and I uncovered my life’s true mission, just as I had always hoped. And I discovered I had a creepy monkey collection. Weird.

Visiting the magician sometimes comes with a price. I don’t write about everything that happens to me in this blog, despite how I over-share about my dental hygiene, raspberry obsessions, and assorted quirky habits. The last few years have been hard in ways I do not care to share publicly. Some of the downs have been pretty fantastically shitty, quite frankly.

Thank you, Magician energy. You delivered.

I think I would like to get off the wild rides of highs and lows.

With my middle-aged teeth, my emotional battle scars, and my new fervor to be published, I’m reading to invoke another archetype, another passage on this masculine journey.

I’m inviting the archetype who recognizes “days of capricious intervals of joy unchecked by experience and failure” might be over. This archetype appreciates the gifts of the wild magician, the strong gifts from the warrior, and yet strives for balance in these energies, directing them into a power greater than himself. I think it’s time for a greater letting go of ego, as I strive to find a way to serve the world, a world that will go on long after my personal death. It’s time to tend to the kingdom.

Welcome, king energy.

I am ready to serve.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 11:31 am and is filed under Warrior. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.