The travels, experiences, random thoughts, fiery passages, or subtle conversations of Brandon Box-Higdem. Anyway you write it....they are truly just Musings of a Wayward Traveler on this earth...living each moment of my life to fullest...
Has a year flown by so quickly?
Was it really a year ago that we stood in front of our friends and family and agreed to take this journey ahead together...
It flew by to be honest...and that is a beautiful ride. I feel stronger with you by my side.
I feel whole and complete when I am with you and am so grateful for your strength and hugs and support through the last year. It has not been an easy journey but I am so grateful that you are here and with me on this journey.
Thank you for loving me.
Thank you for putting up with my idiosyncrasies and my antics.
Thank you for pushing me to be a better man.
Thank you for taking my hand when you know I needed it.
Thank you for always making me smile and for being my source of joy and love and certainty.
I love you with all my heart and soul.
I consistently come back to this show for many reasons...
It speaks to my very core...
Stop worrying if your vision is new...
Let others make that decision, they usually do...
You keep moving on...
Extremely poetic, touches my heart and speaks to my soul.
I chose and my world was shaken,
SO WHAT.
The choice may have been mistaken
The choosing was not.
You keep moving on...
A wonderful mentor in my life shared such sweet advice with a group of us. In the face of difficult decisions, you make the best possible decision you can at that very moment and then you move forward and don't look back. I have lived by this advice for most of my adult life. I think it is important and truthful.
Sure we all have doubts!! Sure we look back on past decisions and think ,"What if" or "WHY did I do that?" But if you live your life in the shoulda, coulda, woulda and what ifs...you would get NOTHING DONE. You might as well curl up in the fetal position and let others pass you by while you dwell in your past. You cannot change the past. You can learn from it but you cannot change it. It defines who you are but you can and should move on.
You cannot look back and think, "If only I had made this decision." The choices have been made and you cannot erase that, but you can look forward and say, "If faced with that decision again, I will do better. I will take it all in and make a more enhanced choice, and then MOVE ON..."
June is always a wonderful month to look inwardly and be thankful for all of the fighters who came before us to get our community to where we are today...and we have made HUGE LEAPS AND BOUNDS!!
One of the biggest challenges I faced moving to Arkansas and taking on a new job opportunity 7 years ago was moving from the city of Omaha, where I was VERY visible, very comfortable, very involved in the gay community, both in charitable fundraising and support. Oh the stories I could share!!!
Then to make a life change by moving to a city heavily immersed in the Bible Belt was EXTREMELY JARRING. It felt like I was heading back into the proverbial closet and it was a huge amount of denial...basically be forced to deny who I am and was in Omaha, denying the accomplishments I had achieved on many levels. I even had a mentor tell me that a harmless Tie-dyed Peace Frog on the back of my car could be misconstrued as a equality flag and that this community was of the good ole boy mentality. I took this in and held it close. And felt the struggle to close that door a little bit.
However, over the next 7 years, I sensed the shift in the mentality of the community(and our country) and the opportunity to come back out and live in my truth, to bring my students and my community around to who I am and who I was as a person on many levels. This last year was the most "OUT" i have ever been...my students embraced me, encouraged me to share my life with them, and applauded and begged for pictures of Justin's and my wedding from the summer...I felt great pride and joy that we were finally here...
Over those years, many students have bravely stepped forward and have asked for my help, my opinion, my thoughts on coming out. They have shared their struggles and their fears and their sadness at the struggle with their parents, with their community, with their church and I am just grateful that I can be there to assist them in any way I could...Because it was all too familiar. It was all too clear that this was the reason I was brought to this profession...to serve as a role model, a sounding board, a confidante on many levels...to help others find their true selves and to encourage them to know that they are okay...not trash, not less than, not unloved and disrespected.
And the struggles they are voicing were familiar...mostly about their concern about their parents and about God and the Bible and the feelings and the emotional baggage they had already endured and it just was like light bulb flashes going off... I have been here...I have struggled with this...I have endured and pushed forward and found my own light to stand in.
I have voiced this before in many blog posts but what I always encourage them to do is brave the waters...perhaps wait until they have their own stronger sense of self...stronger sense of comfortability before bringing others into their light. I always say, "You have to be good here (pointing to head) and be good HERE (pointing to heart) before you can bring others into your own light."
In regards to the Bible, I had struggled for years and years to get to today and where I am in my own head space in regards to this book...I always come back to the fact that the Old Testament is called OLD for a reason. That in fact, the New Testament brings us to the ideas of Jesus and nowhere does Jesus tell us to hate each other...in fact it is quite the opposite,,,he encourages us to love one another as he loved each of us...no where does he say ANYTHING about homosexuality...he speaks only of love and this is how I choose to live my life...with LOVE in my heart.
We are all created in God's likeness and God does not create TRASH, which is a common theme that comes from some students' mouths. Many even hear their parents tell them that they are going to hell. Many have said that they fought to try and get them out of my classroom, hearing that I was gay and had recently been married. I am of course, saddened by this but not shocked. This always strikes a chord in my heart as this is a common feeling sometimes that comes through in our discussions...we are forced to believe that we are less, that we are inferior and not human, that we are abnormal, that we are animals or trash. God does not create something in his own image and turn his back on it. We are brought onto this Earth to be lights, to love, to live this life to its absolute fullest and to take care of one another. We are brougt here to live our authentic lives and to support each other on thier journeys as well.
And then this song comes along and the light bulb goes off once again and and it is like saying YES!!!! Beautiful message and powerful and artistic. I am so thankful for its words as they struck many chords in my heart strings.
This is how I would tell my students to hold on and to live their lives...
Fight for their own truth.
Fight hard for LOVE.
Hang on until they have their own home, their own life, their own community and then live it FULLY and BEAUTIFULLY and FAITHFULLY.
Brave the storms as the surface is coming and you can and will break through to the other side.
The last few weeks have been such a roller-coaster...so much life has happened and it all seems such a blur.
I turned a year older, wiser and also crazier, and had a wonderful birthday... I was able to spend it with my family and to have my mom sing "Happy Birthday" to me was just a plain ole miracle. We have been on quite the whirlwind emotional ride and when I think back over the last few months from where we were the beginning of April to where we are today...it is very different windows of experience...We were thinking this was going to be the last few moments...making very adult decisions and making sure last plans were what she wanted...and now to have her back home, being her travel partner from Florida to Minnesota to get her home, and to have her sing the birthday song to me...a true miracle. She is truly an inspiration and an example and model of drive and passion... to just breathe and live and persevere forward...life lessons for us all.
I was able to spend much needed time in Omaha with friends and family and to reconnect with why I love that place so much. To be able to see theater as it should be, to spend quality time with family and friends, to reconnect and share life stories, and to go back to a place I dearly loved and share fond memories with my brothers...it was an awesome weekend.
I was able to finally share a life decision that I have been struggling with for quite some time. It is no secret that I have been experiencing a few hurdles when it came to my job and the struggle inwardly and outwardly over the past few years...I won't go into this any deeper but let's just say that life took a turn for the better we hope...Justin and I finally decided that a job offer was too good to pass up and we will be moving to NW Arkansas in August. I accepted a job with the Bentonville School District and will get to be a part of one of the top competitive speech programs in the state of Arkansas this fall. I am excited about the possibilities. I am sad to leave behind so many sweet students but know that I will see them on the competition circuit. I am sad to leave behind such dear friends...but it is never goodbye and truthfully, Bentonville is only 3 hours away from them and Dad and Pam and the sistahs still live in Little Rock...so there will be plenty of visits back. This knowledge certainly buffers the sadness.
I am getting the opportunity to teach professional development for teachers across the central part of Arkansas this summer for the Department of Education. I am super excited about this opportunity and to get to meet super cool teachers from across the state and share new ideas and concepts with them. Has been a fun experience and one hopefully I will be able to do more of in the future.
I had the opportunity to begin another bucket list experience...I will be playing the role of Albin/ZAZA in the musical La Cage Aux Folles at the theater I played Emcee in Cabaret at FOUR years ago. The publicity process has begun for it and I cannot say too much more about the latest publicity turn...but suffice it to say I got to work with an astoundingly talented team of folks...one cool photographer...an awesome make-up artist...a crazy cool photo concept...and know that it will be on the cover of one of the high society mags this coming July....
SUPER COOL Experience!!! More to come...
So life has become packing, getting the house ready to sell, rummage sale and donations to Goodwill, memorizing lines and learning songs and dance steps, teaching, reflecting and trying to take time to relax and recoup from a busy year, and begin to look forward. I am grateful for these life experience's I am grateful to be on this life journey.
I am grateful for the friends and family I have in my life.
I am excited for the future.
I am overwhelmed by the next few months but am grateful for the roller-coaster ride.
44 years and counting...
Carry on my fellow sojourners...
I think these three words encompass much of what is lacking in today's society. Our country has torn itself apart and is in the middle of the messiest months of political and personal turmoil that has ever occurred in our nations' history. We are seeing record amounts of violence and anger at political rallies...we have just been through one of the bloodiest weekends in our nation's history...these and many other events are leaving us all with that "punched in the gut" sort of feeling and just in utter shock...at least that is the best way I can describe my own personal feelings.
I think it is time to get back to our roots and reconnect with what makes each of us whole and human and interconnected.
Many folks have reached out to Justin and I over the last week or even just made a point to say something sweet and thoughtful to us concerning the tragedy in Orlando. Listen, this horrific event has nothing to do with either of us, or anyone outside of the Orlando area and yet it has EVERYTHING to do with each one of us in the gay community. It could have happened in Bismarck, North Dakota...it could have happened in Little Rock, Arkansas...it could have happened in small town USA...and the reaction following the event would probably be exactly the same...
The conversations have and should be moved now towards what we can do as an entire community to ensure that this atrocity does NOT happen again. SO many of these shootings have these lapsed moments of "HOW HORRIBLE", "WHEN WILL WE HAVE GUN CONTROL?", "SO SAD" attached to every one of these horrific events in the days following...yet NOTHING is done about it and it seems like it just gets pushed under the rug and swept aside and forgotten after a certain amount of time. When will it be the RIGHT time to have these important discussions? It has become an US versus THEM society and no one is willing to listen...and blood continues to be shed...
At the very core of our society, each of us is struggling to find our voice, find our heart, find what makes each of us tick. It is not about Black or White, Muslim or Christian, Gay or Straight...it is about humans trying to live together in some sort of unity and harmony, and not be inundated with FEAR tactics in order to get what the other wants. If only each of us had the courage to stand up for what we truly believe in, live our lives to the maximum, and find the strength and courage to stand in our own light and voice our concerns, I think the world we live in would be a different place.
As each of these voices is heard, I think it is also important that we learn to be compassionate and understanding. Not everyone is going to agree with you, but that does not mean that these views should not be heard and taken into consideration. Everyone's thoughts and views should be just as important and heard and valued and considered as any other views expressed. That is what the American quilt was made up of so long ago...patches of opinion and passion and diversity and thought and servitude to make it work for a better tomorrow. However, in today's society, compassion is something I think we lack. The religions of today are so different and have so many different views. How can one pastor, who says he is Christian, say that it was okay for these 49 people to be slaughtered...how is that exemplifying Christian values and what Christ taught...and WHAT are these comments saying to America's gay youth...this saddens me greatly as this is a HUGE struggle for gay youth of today. Churches of today are experiencing a decline in membership and they wonder why... perhaps put the pieces together about what you are saying to America's youth...the voice of tomorrow...the ones who actually seem to be more understanding than those of the older generation?
Coming out is a VERY personal experience. Every person does it differently and experiences it very differently. We need to find compassion and heart to know that each person's life path is VERY different and we just do not know what they are struggling with. We need to be focused on exemplifying a CHRIST-like compassion and love each of our neighbors as HE taught us to love.
Also, I think if the world had a little more connection with each other, rather than this good ole boy, "US" versus "THEM" mentality, and truly focused on connecting and hearing and listening to each other's story, can you imagine the change that would occur? We rush through our lives. We rush through our days and get so caught up in the rat race...we need to STOP...We should appreciate each other's differences, speak from Love and not FEAR and HATRED, and embrace each other for who we truly are...for what each of us brings to the table...not build walls to force everyone different out...not make flippant comments that are not fully thought out... but truly connecting on a deeper level and finding common ground that we can stand on and move forward together with...
I don't think we are going to see this any time soon as I believe the elections in our country have already been extremely debilitating....but it is my hope that whoever takes the prize come November has the where-with-all to understand that our country is immensely fragmented and needs to be put back together.
This is a difficult road ahead. It is my hope that each of you finds your own voice, finds the courage to take a stand and truly, compassionately connect to someone next to you and really listen to what they have to say. Appreciate each other's differences and not be afraid to experience something, or someone new. We are so quick to judgement in times like these...relax, breathe, and try look at it from another perspective...
I feel stronger with you by my side.
