Jack R. Hughes

Jack R. Hughes on the Fifth Anniversary of Your Leaving
 
Clarity: clear or lucid regarding understanding/perception.  Transparent.    
 
Five years ago, my talented husband, Jack, left this dimension for another adventure.  One of the things I admired most about him was his ability to cast aside self-doubt and try something new.  I don’t recall Jack ever being thwarted by anyone’s opinion, words, or efforts in attempting to dissuade him. 
 
Everyone is multi-dimensional, and I shiver when I think of what every one of us COULD be, if we stopped listening to everyone else’s opinions of what we SHOULD be. 
  
The longer I live, the more likely it seems if we “go with the flow” wherever we land is where we are supposed to be. 
 
It’s important to try and integrate this thought into our daily mantra: change is good. 
 
Now, right now, in the twenty-first century, most us understand we are not bound or chained to one profession or career.  We do not live in a time when our birth, our social or financial status, the level of school we achieved (or didn’t), where ANY factor defines who we are and what we can achieve.  In this present time, nothing ~ no rule, no person, no outward definition of who others may THINK we are, genuinely defines us.  This is an AMAZING time to be alive.
 
If this pandemic has taught us anything, it should be this:  nothing is guaranteed.  Pursue dreams.
 
Impossible is just a word.  It means nothing, unless we GIVE it meaning.  Jack taught me that.  
 
Clarity ~ do we ever find it? Are we wasting our time, looking? Will we always, only, see in an obscured mirror and never really unmask who we are and what intentions we originally held, when we were born?
 
Everything we experience is part of the process of guiding us Home.  It’s not about what we can ‘accomplish’ in this life, not about how we ‘present’ to others, what we’re remembered for or how much we can earn, get, control etc.  It’s about what we learn, you know, those really hard lessons about setting aside ego, hate, unkindness, intolerance, power.  All the societal bytes we’ve allowed others to tell us, “yeah, those things are what defines you”, in truth they are meaningless. 
 
Some of us might not get too far, this time, because maybe we’re all wound up, caught up, trapped inside those information bits Facebook, Amazon and Google keep track of and which they believe will tell them exactly what our individual paradigms are/WHO WE ARE/our DEFINITION when in fact, those “profiles” can be as manipulated as everything else in this Brave New World of obsessive technology. 
 
Jack seldom got on a computer ~ he was too busy creating a sculpture, a painting, a garden, a studio.  He simply didn’t NEED or WANT anyone’s approval. He was a GENIUS and geniuses need space, they crave imaginative ideas, they anchor themselves in a kind of dreamlike state and often find it hard to re-enter the ‘real’ world.  They need muses and victims, they need silence and solitude, they do not need approval.  They do not care what you, me, or anyone else thinks, because they are DRIVEN by some undefinable force.  That’s the difference: most of us SLOG through life, many of us with no direction and bound by convention, worried what “others will think”.  They SPRINT, from one idea/concept to the next. 
 
CLARITY will, surely, be obscured for many of us, but those who really don’t worry about limitations might just achieve it sooner, because they were able to rise and secure a farther view.  Maybe they’re the ones who “see the forest AND the trees”.
 
So, Dear Jack, on this your five year anniversary of leaving us, I thank you ~ there are so many lessons and levels of thinking you dragged me into, so much chaos and calm, so many different ideas to consider that I just hope I have the time to chip away at them, examine them and learn from them in this all too brief life. 
 
I hope you have finally found some semblance of peace.   Some serenity.   I know when you return, anything goes, so Rest Well, Dear Jack.  Rest Well.
 
8-25-2020 Jack’s Fifth Anniversary by Barbara Helvey-Hughes