King Kong

There is a new King Kong movie.  A giant ape sits alone in the forest and is angry at invading visitors.  The storyline isn’t earth-shatteringly new and at some point the pretty blonde lady is going to fall for the misunderstood beast.  There’s another movie being rereleased in March with almost exactly the same storyline except that one has singing tea pots.  

When I watch those movies I struggle to align myself with either of the main characters.  I end up identifying with misshapen hunter that stumbles on drama and disaster rather than any damsel that needs rescuing or any beast that needs to be loved and understood.  I am Maurice.  The weird little round character that finds a way to the centre of the drama and finishes the story with no real resolution.  

That sounds drastic and even a little bit self pitying but honestly, that wasn’t what I intended.  Once upon a time I was the girl that thought she could calm the beast.  That thought that every human on the planet had something worth knowing and worth looking for.  As I’ve gotten older and sometimes I think less wise, I forget to see the good.  I often feel like I’m so busy stumbling through life, grappling at the saplings and tripping over roots (all metaphorical ones – can’t seem to find a real one) with all of the grace of a bumbling Maurice, that I forget to pay attention to the tribes around me.

The one thing that Maurice, the hunter and I have in common is that we seem to embark on our adventures alone.  At the heart of myself, at the centre of who I am, ‘alone’ was not something I’ve ever been comfortable with.  I’ve become more comfortable in my own skin and with my lack of ability to walk through the world with grace and glamour but I’ve always attempted life with gusto, good humour and a set of fingernails that cling to passing rails for dear life.

While I do rely on the  people and things that act as my bouncy castle and life vest, in the end, we all make our life on our own.  Whether you are King Kong, aching for the love of a hot human, or a hot human searching for a beast that needs calming and rescuing, the search is something you do by yourself.  Once you get to the end of that search sometimes we find what we’re looking for doesn’t need rescuing at all and what we had set out to find isn’t at all what you needed.

Relationships come and go.  People come and go.  Yet, like King Kong, I find it hard to let go.  Hard to let  go of the things you thought you wanted, of the people who you thought mattered, of a world where not all those you counted on are still there.  It’s not just romantic relationships we search for, it’s a family, a tribe, it’s a community.  Someone wise once told me that ‘we aren’t meant to be alone.’ That we are meant to find a tribe who accept and love us as a whole.

I am lucky.  I have tribe.  A few of them even.  They are the people that pick me up at the bottom of the mountain when all of the saplings I’ve clung too have snapped and left me bruised, battered and my favourite shoes soulless and holey.  But I am greedy.  I want a tribe wherever I go.  I want a home tribe, a work tribe and my tribe.  

I am still on that part of my journey where I walk the path alone.  I look to the trees often to find my beast that needs calming but there is every chance that he’s already been saved.  There’s every chance that he never needed me and I never needed him. What I do need are the tribes waiting for me back at camp.  The ones willing to ask me what I found out there today and hand me a beer, a bandaid and a new pair of shoes ready for the next day.  

Sometimes I think I take my tribes for granted.  At the end of every day I assume they’ll be there and every now and then I scare myself that they’ve left.  That when I get back to camp they’ll have packed up and left my shoes in a pile by the fire. 

But they haven’t.  I get there and sometimes the faces are different, and the tribes have a new member, or lost an old one, but they are always there.  Ready and waiting to hear the latest disaster story or rare sighting of a flamingo amongst the pigeons.  I do love my tribes and I really should tell them that more often.