Moon Syndrome (article) by Lori S. Maynard on AuthorsDen

Have you ever found yourself suffering from what I like to call the "Moon Syndrome"? The Moon Syndrome ŠTuesday, April 26, 2005 Everyone is on a mission in life...a search for the holy grail, you could say. We all spend time looking for it, perhaps time that we couldnt really spare. We pour through volumes of literature and listen to countless speakers whove found their grail. We hang on each word that they offer as though a precious and rare gift...maybe it is. Then we catch it - its an infectious infliction that starts at the speaker and spreads across the audience. Were moved by their words. We can feel their pain, appreciate their struggles as though they were our own and swell with laughter when the jokes are shared. A room full of strangers brought together through various circumstances to end up sharing this one, singular afternoon in a lifetime of afternoons. We all came to this seminar to find an inner peace, to learn that happiness does exist out there and to expand our business senses. As the speakers wove their tales, I began to contemplate their meaning. So many times I had thought the same phrases being revealed now, but did not live them 100%. True, I always believed that you need to have a sense of humor in life to survive. Once, when I was still with the carnival, a young guy asked me how I could live the life that I had...to live through the struggles of life and deal with society who viewed me as nothing more than a filthy carnie girl on a counter. I replied to him: "I laugh. You have to laugh at life, or it will drive you insane. You cant take it seriously, it will kill you." I said this when I was 20 years old after surviving a collision with a hit and run semi (which I chased several miles....my cars wheels still rolled and carried the car) and another, more severe accident when a woman ran a stop sign. Yeah...I laugh at those wrecks and other misfortunes that have befallen myself in this lifetime. Heck, I was even telling jokes in the emergency room after I was forced into a tree head-on in my vehicle. Its a part of who you are and finding yourself. Much like you meet a stranger and learn about who they are and become their friend, enemy, lover, etc., you must learn about yourself. When I was still in high school, I believed in something that I called the "moon syndrome." For some reason, I was proud of this and was so shut off from the world that this became my gospel for explaining who I was. I remember that I even wrote an essay about this when I was in my Sophomore year. The "moon syndrome," as I explained, was having no identity or emotions of your own. Much like the moon possesses no light of its own and relies on the sun, I would rely on my outside environment for my emotions. I would reflect the emotions that were cast around me. I was proud of the fact that I could absorb the environment around me; and sometimes, I would use this skill to disappear into the background completely. There just was never a true sense of "self." Because of my attitude toward life and toward a school that admired its "pet students" over any other student, I absorbed their prejudice and ignorance - sabotaging my future. I became reluctant and didnt want to further my education past high school. At this young age, I didnt believe in happiness. I also believed in setting goals low. I believed in that so that I would never become disappointed in life and if I achieved more...so be it. I had thought that it was a good plan ten years ago. I suffered depression that would go undiagnosed for another three years after high school graduation. To me, it was best just to reflect the emotions around me. Too often, we all do this. We try to fit ourselves into a group for the first time, or try to create a false representation of "self." This is when we convince ourselves that the world is either with or against us, depending on what we have seen or heard. I wrote an essay called "artificial town" that described this "moon syndrome" and the local kids conforming in their "non-conformist" ways and how the town always rallied around particular groups and ignoring the rest. It was as though God himself would feel a certain way about particular things and the rest of His creations followed suit. Almost as if our hearts reflected His. I often wondered who it was that started most of it in my little town...amazing how people would follow suit. Much like the moon reflects the sun, it also goes through phases....waxing and waning in size and intensity. Sometimes, it disappears from the sky completely. It is not the moon that decides to wane from vision, it is a shadow cast upon it by the Earth as it moves between it and the sun. Sometimes, we need something to step in to allow us the chance to be ourselves and not to reflect what someone else has instilled. My shadow came in the form of a carnival. I flung myself head-on into a world that I knew nothing at all about. It was a different world and I wouldnt have the knowledge to further suffer from the "moon syndrome." I had much to learn. If you step back from yourself and truly look at your life and the world around you from another prospective, you realize things. Its almost as though a great meditation delivers you an insight you had thought impossible to obtain. Towns people looked down on me and since I was new, the carnival folk made my life tough for the first three weeks. I was truly on my own and had no school for support, parents for comfort or friends to lend a shoulder. By starting at the bottom of societys ladder (so to speak) no one gave me much thought and I observed people in their natural forms. They walked past me not caring what I thought or if theyd be judged. It was a great freedom. This experience, as unconventional as it seems, allowed me to find an independence within myself. I had to rely on myself...it became a matter of survival on the road. If I held pride in my heart or carried hatred in my veins, I would not survive. I learned humility and accepted it. An old carnie once told me, "Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see." He was such a happy old man and he greeted everyone as though they were a long, lost friend regardless of who they were. I did not travel with this old man. I met him on another show near my hometown and interviewed him for a magazine. He was little man and you could tell that age was not kind to him. I believed that this man found the secret of life. "Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see." You had to believe in yourself and rely on yourself. He was born into the carnival in the 1930's on the merry-go-round. He laughed and stated that he had been going round in circles his whole life...he has ran the carousel his whole life and balanced against its safety fence as he spoke to me. He slept in possum bellies of semi trailers and on the platform of the carousel when he was little. When he was of age, he served in the Korean war. He became a POW and was eventually freed. Upon being freed, he returned to America to go right back to the carnival life. This same man had fallen off of the tower of a Ferris Wheel while changing light bulbs and had woken up in the hospital after having surgery on his legs from the fall. When he woke up, he immediately went into joke mode and asked about the light bulbs. He pointed out his injuries and laughed that he was the "bionic man" He never held a frown nor a doubt about his life, how it was spent and where it was going. This man was the sun. I could feel the "moon syndrome" kick in when I was around him, his positivity was infecting me and I was glad to have met him. Sometimes, the "moon syndrome" can become a positive thing. I once told someone "Lifes a joke and Im the punch line...and I dont get it!" We never may get the joke in the grand scheme of things, but that doesnt mean that were lesser of a person. Sometimes, it just takes us a while longer to "get it" and when we do, well kick our head back and go "ahhh! OK!"
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