Sunday Story…I shot a man in Reno

I killed a man in Reno, just to watch him die. I brought him there and killed him dead. I am that man. Killer and Killed.

I didn’t come to Nevada to die. Not on the face of it anyway. The lure of a quieter, less stressful lifestyle may have been the reason the man I killed came to Nevada but the real reason was I brought him here was to die. I was stuck in a rut of mediocrity and terminal normality that I was going to make into a grave in 30 or so years. At 33 years of age I was preparing to live a life of quiet desperation, dropping into a dissolute neighborhood populated by drunks, addicts, and broken spirits. Afraid to actually end my life I was choosing the coward’s route, letting a precious human existence slowly ooze down a drain in to a swampy mess marked by adultery, alcohol, cigarettes, and an absolute ache in my soul.

Nevada is a place of contradiction. Churches sidle next to casinos, you can drink 24 hours a day, yet family values are on the lips of every politician, prostitution is legal but only when hidden away like your cousin who goes in and out of prison like most of us go to Wal-mart. People come to Nevada to do the things they would be ashamed to do in their hometowns. What happens here stays here…but what about when you live here? What about when the land of contradiction and incongruity is your home. How do you understand the split and reconcile it?

Somewhere along the way I found a life. And began to dig a ramp out of the rut I had been buried in. I began to inspect my life and found it devoid of integrity and congruity. My actions were so far removed from my word that they were not even using the same alphabet. Slowly, since I can be a little dense, it dawned on me that I could keep on keeping on and I would keep on getting what I had been getting…no integrity, no congruity, no life. Or I could look at the alternative…one which might look like something approximating a life as opposed to a death. Something that would carry congruity between words and actions. A life that might have purpose and meaning. So…the journey began. And what a long strange trip it has been. First cleaning up and admitting what I had done and who I had been to please the people in my life. I had to own my bad behaviors and all the deeds that ranged from ugly to nasty and vicious. I had to strip myself naked and clothe myself in a shroud of confession and confusion. The corpse was living and breathing yet dying before my very ministrations.

I had to kill myself, kill the person I was, the person I had been to become the person I was meant to be. The man I killed was no man at all. He lied, cheated, and stole. He wore a mask of good humor and clothed himself in the finery of self righteousness and intelligence. The people who loved him did not know him. That man allowed them to see only the surface, the façade. And loved him they did. Until he stripped off the clothes, and like the emperor who wore no clothes paraded around in his nakedness for all to see. And in the self revealing people came to hate him for the lies he had told them. Hated myself knowing that I had engaged in a most willing and engaging deception. That I had purposefully mislaid their trust and waylaid their hearts. And I killed that man.

I killed that man in Reno. I killed him to watch him die. I needed him dead so I could bear the new man into the world. A new man living a life of purpose and meaning. The man I killed was a dead man walking. It may have taken a few years but a dead man nonetheless. That walking corpse walked a talk but was as dissonant and discordant as to be unhearable.

The man who took his place, the man who was reborn in his stead lives in the light of integrity. He lives in the doorway of purpose and creates a lasting legacy for the world to inspect, not a life that hides under the rocks of lies and deceit. Not a life full of posturing and posing created to impress and fool the watcher. This man leads a life authentically transparent, created to teach focus and inspire transformation.

So yes, I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. And just like I planned I came to Nevada to die. And started living….

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”

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