It’s an issue, when you’ve been in therapy over two decades and in behavioral health as a career for more than a decade, you know all the buzz words for self help and trying to change for the better. There are benefits to that, of course, I’m trying to learn to do this, when I identify a flaw, also admit any strength in a thing, try to see the totality and not let negativity or positivity dominate. So I’m also an A+ rationalizer, all the tools to rationalize are right there, and all I have to do is be a little less critical, sounds easy.
Anyway, that actually is the point, I wasn’t tangenting for once. I’m trying to make it simple and easy.
This is all in the freefall of me going back to work for the state, which somehow I always suspected I’d do, and dreaded, it’s a weird contradiction of things. When I left last time, it didn’t feel like goodbye, I’ll say that. Package that, leave it there for now.
I’m being excessively kind to myself, in my estimation. I could be pushing myself way harder. Maybe I should be? I’ve been a bastard to myself in the past, and bits of that didn’t work, but it’s hard to let go. I have this chronic fear I’ll go too easy on myself. Or to reference back to title that I’ll somehow become cliche or toxicly positive.
Which is the balance I’m trying to strike. Active versus Passive is a big one for me in the Yin and Yang. I go too far in either direction. It’s about control, and active is the desire for it….. depression is what happens when that doesn’t work out, or anxiety. Zen is accepting there is no controlling some things, the perfection of passivity, but over passivity has problems too.
I keep playing at wisdom, I know just enough to put on a good show of it. I’m still blind enough to play the fool often enough though. That’s what scares me.
So I’m trying to do things on purpose. That’s what mindfulness is, god sometimes I just want to punch some of these so called “gurus”…… of course you want to do things on purpose. But the real trick is to catch the wind and make it work for you as well, trick people into thinking that was part of your plan also. As Pee Wee Herman said “I meant to do that”
It’s not easy, thinking about this stuff. I’m trying to make it easy. I’m trying to simplify, so maybe someday it will be easy.
Also, my dad goes in for surgery on Monday, big day all the way around.
2 comments
man oh man. everyday i understand more and more why the saying “ignorance is bliss.” is true.
if only you could shut off parts of your brain, you’d be happy. your logical mind contradicts yourself because your truths are contradictory. but they they are indeed truths??
it is maddening. sigj. that’s why we write on here though.
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to say so, but of course you can shut out bits of your own brain. It isn’t traditionally considered “healthy”, though my therapist tells me it is, funny eh? Good ol’ dissociation, still the best bullet in the human arsenal, well that and the poisons we refine into therapeutic regimens of medications.
First day down. All day they’re telling me first day is the worst, man what a cake walk. Good chemicals can do a lot, or maybe they’re terrible chemicals, who’s to say? I think about it some, not lots, just some. Alcoholics get a bad rap, just for using the oldest discovered chemical solution for pain. Granted, I’m not endorsing. I get a free pass, my pain reduction techniques are only decades old, too short a time to be morally repulsive to anyone.
But what is good and bad, morally forbidden or allowable, isn’t it a matter of time and perspective? Aren’t I only a good person in the lense of today? They might make me a saint today, but I’m as black a sinner as any. I did what I had to do, with the materials available, given the values of the time I live in.
Fricken intelligence, you’re right. People of less awareness don’t think about what history will think of them, lucky bastards