David McElroy

I stretched out my arms, as though I was welcoming the raindrops which were pounding on my body like tiny notes of a powerful symphony.

If anybody was watching, he might have thought I was crazy, but I didn’t care. I felt an exhilarating connection with Nature in that moment. I welcomed the rain. I welcomed the energy in the storm. And in that brief moment of touching God, I felt love and warmth and goodness.

I had eaten at a restaurant inside a store Wednesday evening. When it was time for me to leave, a driving rainstorm had started outside. There was hardly anybody left in the store. Everyone else seemed to have headed home in anticipation of the storm. As I walked slowly into the rain, I felt as though I was alone on Nature’s stage.

My heart swelled with warmth and love. Suddenly, without any intention or forethought, I was joyfully speaking words of love to someone who was not there to hear my words.

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Everybody has some delusional expectations about life when he or she is young, but most people outgrow such things pretty quickly. I started out with bigger delusions — bigger expectations and plans — and they only got bigger by the time I was an adult.

I didn’t realize it, but being raised by a father with narcissistic personality disorder had left me with delusions of grandeur. It was only when I finally woke up from my lifelong nightmare that I started seeing myself clearly.

Preview of new week’s show: Since Valentine’s Day is next week, it’s a great time to look at the ways in which romantic attraction is a trickster who can tease us with a spark of connection that will never turn into real love.

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What happens when everything in you says you need to jump off a metaphorical cliff and believe with all your heart that a net will be there to catch you? My inner child is about to find out.

After I left political consulting about 10 years ago, I never really got my life back on track. I knew what I needed to do. I knew what I wanted to do. But I found plenty of reasons not to pursue the work I was called to. I was afraid — and it was easy to explain to others why I wasn’t doing it.

“I’d really like to be making films and creating other media,” I would tell people, “but that’s expensive and hard to get into, so I can’t really do it.”

And almost everybody would nod his or her head in understanding, especially if I explained the huge amounts of investment required to make feature films.

Other people were often eager to tell me what I ought to do with my life. It was always something practical and reasonable, often closely related to something that person had done. I was slowly sucked into being practical — which has made me miserable with my life today.

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