We Have Met the Enemy, and He is Us

The next has nothing to do with Earth Day, although the above cartoon did. Though, in a sense, we pollute the shit out of our own lives and have a fun time cleaning that swamp up.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

I find it curious how I can have the same conversation with people who never met and was separated by decades.

Tonight, Dave drove by, honked at me, pulled over and we spoke for about an hour. As we compared gossip, the subject of Frank came up. Frank's been steadily married now for over ten years and is perhaps henpecked to the nth degree too.

Dave goes on: “He can't leave his house for more than an hour without her bitching? Oh c'mon now. He can't run to the bar to see us in the old neighborhood? That's no way to live.”

“That's no way to live.” That struck me. That came up in a conversation I had with K1 in the 90's.

K1 and I were discussing her then boyfriend who was depressed, full of anxiety and seemingly not responding to medication nor therapy. He wasn't about to slit his wrists, he just had that constant ennui and “ill at ease” manner about him he just could never shake.

“Ron, how can he put up with it? It's no way to live.” says K1 to me.

I tried to explain to K1 my take on it all.

“He can't live any other way. It's all he knows. That's how he sees the world. All his experiences proved to him this is the way to respond to everything. To him, this is normal. To the people in China, speaking Chinese makes all the sense in the world. They were born amongst it, experienced it and to a large degree...know no other language. Speaking Chinese is the infallible right thing to do.”

“That's why when you, K1, “come at him” with logic, with YOUR perspective on things, he rebuffs you, as it makes NO sense to him at all. Your experience with the world is null and void to him.”

“And to prove this, you're aghast and shocked at how he see things his way. You have heavily invested in YOUR perspective that to you, is the TRUTH AS THE (You) WORLD KNOWS IT. There isn't another way for K1 to see things on a daily basis, is there?”

Frank and K1's boyfriend aren't oddities. In fact, we're all the same as those two.

The older I get, the more I believe people are programmed like computers. They run the same sub-routines over and over again as if there is NO other routine to run. Also, you know how damned hard it is to change an aspect of yourself, never mind some global change within your own personality. I'm not saying it cannot be done, but it's stubbornly hard to do so. Most people aren't aware of themselves that deeply to be aware of those unconscious thoughts that trip you up minute to minute.

I'm no different. I can run 40,000 thoughts in the back of my head a day and some of those..aren't deciding in my true, best interests. They can run like sub-routine number 42.949a/4, doing some low level housekeeping function that I don't have to be aware of.

Try losing weight, cutting down on the butter or change your self esteem and you'll know where I speak of. Hell, you already know this.

I've told people that therapy is about finally owning and adapting what was done to you. As a youth you didn't have great control over what you experienced, but you OWN it lock, stock and barrel, whether it was justified or not. Now, as an adult, the saving grace is that you can look at your own self and start that long, slogging work of getting to where you'd like to be.

No cheap, quickie fixes here huh? Don't worry, I slog through the morass like everyone else does, so will Frank and K1's boyfriend.