The Glass of Me

I used to think that I listened to myself. 

If I was hungry, I considered what would sound good. Then I ate. The same went for feeling tired, restless, or in need of fresh air. 

The listening hasn’t changed. Who I am listening to did.

I am many different people. I am the social media attention seeker. I am the stubborn isolator. I am the passionate lover of life and my wife. More profoundly, I am the different ages and experiences I have been through. Most deeply and completely, I am the deeper witness of all of those versions of me.

When I am clearest, I have direct access to my deepest self. At times like that, I feel like my whole being is a glass of water. The essential me is the bottom of that glass. My essential physical body is the rest of the glass. The versions of me are like the water. When I am clearest, the versions of me are like spinning contents–a whirlpool, if you will–which allows the versions to push against the walls of the glass, and I have clean access to the bottom.

The liquid inside the glass has been protesting for a long, long time–and rightfully so. There were versions of myself that were hurt. Hurt by former versions of myself, and hurt by other people throughout my upbringing, adolescence, and into my adulthood. I have built walls and wrapped myself in protective armor as a result of those injuries. I have developed stronger shoulders, but the weight hardened me until I couldn’t hear the warmth of my own voice.

Then, without warning, death cracked me open. Until I was 44, I had managed to elude one injury: the death of a close family member. I have seven siblings, three with children of their own. I have nine aunts, three uncles, and more than thirty cousins—most with children themselves. My parents are still alive and up until nine months ago, all four of my grandparents were too. 

At the end of 2024, my 91-year-old grandma died suddenly. A few months later, my bonus mom’s father was gone. In July, my vigorous 82-year-old grandpa was taken in an instant—on his motorcycle near Glacier National Park. Just a month earlier, he was helping move my aunt from her home in Millcreek. Today, we said goodbye to my 99-year-old grandpa. Only weeks ago, he was still driving himself around like a newly retired man—without glasses, without a cane, without a hearing aid.

The waves of sorrow have been coupled with a brush with a different kind of death: I was unexpectedly fired from my job and spent half a year searching for a job while my family came too close to poverty.

I am still listening, but now I know who I’m listening to. The self-reflection of my grandparents’ deaths led me to examine the gifts they left me and the ways they shaped my life. After all, I had lived with one set of grandparents during my childhood, and the other set had kept my mom and us out of extreme poverty. These people were like second parents to me. All of them were amazing influences on my values, my character, and my life’s outlook. It put things in a completely new light for me.

On his deathbed, my 99-year old grandpa said, “You had a rough start, but I see great things ahead of you.”

That rough start shaded so much of the water in my glass. And yet, through my spiritual journey, I came to know the bottom of the glass—the essence of me—well. Now, as I consider how my grandparents’ love strengthened me, I can finally see the sides of the glass too: the structure that held me, the true gifts I was born with, or inspired to develop—hard work, compassion, consideration for others, deep love, integrity.

The deaths have cracked me open. The versions of myself that cried out for decades are finally heard.

Now, I can truly listen—with compassion—to them all.