Saturday, August 24, 2024
8:20 a.m. All right, Jon. It is as if I needed a couple of days off before I could face resuming. True?
It can take some time to absorb new information or new ways of seeing things. I wouldn’t worry about it – and I would ask myself, why do I feel I have to be doing more, sooner, all the time.
That has always been my life – together with not doing it.
That’s not true. You alternate, and you know you alternate. So why pretend you don’t remember?
Hmm. It is always hard for me to come up with a credible judgment on what I do or why or how. It never seems very obvious.
Let’s look at the reasons why. That is what we’re always doing here, by the way, looking at the reasons why. It is true that sometimes you may not know what happened, usually because you aren’t taking enough things into context, but usually it isn’t what you did, or didn’t do, but why. That’s where the insights are.
But isn’t there a danger of – and I hear your answer. To put it down: The danger is in falling for false reasons, and the answer is, that’s what your therapist is there for, to stop you from getting away with it.
Correct. To some extent. We lie to ourselves, but even more, we are lied to, you could say. Our take on our own history seems to tell us one story, and it is plausible enough that maybe we don’t go looking deeper.
So the therapist says, “Don’t you believe it. It isn’t that simple.”
Perhaps a little more gently than that. So why do you feel you should be doing more, better, sooner, longer?
I feel like I’m the guy who buried his one talent rather than putting it to use. [From the parable Jesus told.]
That feeling is more like a symptom than a cause. Why do you feel that way?
I’m saying, the evidence is there. I had so much I could have done, and I did so little, and that so poorly.
You have a high opinion of your talents.
I do. And so did you.
But you aren’t looking at the whole picture, or rather, you aren’t looking at it all at once. Yes, many talents, but at the same time, severe inhibitions and a strongly negative self-image. You can’t get a fair picture by looking at only one side of the scales.
That’s very true. So when I look at one side I say, “What wasted opportunities.” And when I look at the other, I say, “What I could have been, could have done, if not for the severe crippling I received.”
Only, you don’t believe in accidents, or chance.
No. So the inhibitions were part of the package. Well, I guess I have known that, from time to time. I have conceived of myself as a Mustang. Potential Mustang, anyway.
Just for clarity when others see this, if they do, you might explain that.
Officer-potential recruits were sometimes retained in the ranks so that when they were finally made officers, they would know first-hand life in the other ranks.
Remember your political experience.
I’m beginning to sense the deeper currents that have flowed within me, often stymying me.
Externally. Not internally. Politics:
I had just enough of it to see what a powerful drug it can be. You put yourself above the mass, and the mass takes you at your evaluation. Arrogance, ignorance, then self-interest, and a short move to corruption of one kind or another. I had only a taste, but I’m pretty good at deducing from limited experience.
And you think that’s an accident?
No, of course not. Everything I ever did was a peephole into another kind of life that some others lived.
Could there be a connection between the fact that you got fast glimpses that were all you needed and the fact that you repeatedly quit and went on to something else?
For the first time, I associate that with my father’s career, though there is a difference. Dad kept having entrée into different worlds and either passing them by or staying for a while and then quitting. So, in a way he could be said to have bene tasting, too. Only, he knew who he was.
And you didn’t?
Let me say it more carefully. Dad fit into an image: farm boy, small town, Italian, all that, plus of course public school education, radio, TV culture, magazines, books. What I mean is, he had many sides (I suppose most people do), but he fit. He could fit his differences into a model he knew.
I on the other hand didn’t fit. Never did, anywhere. Even in businesses I helped create, even doing things I do very well, even among people with similar preoccupations. My role seems to be to not fit, to be an outlier.
And in some moods, you’re proud of it and in other moods you are wistful, or lonely.
True enough.
So if you come into 3D to be an outlier in 20th– and 21st-century America, how have you failed to do that?
I don’t know that I’ve ever said I failed to do it. I have mostly failed to record it.
In print.
Well, in print, yes, but any way you want to cut it. Because a life of being an outsider doesn’t amount to much externally. And the difference hurts.
That’s the most honest thing you’ve said so far.
Yes. I felt that.
Now – did you in fact bury your one talent while the others were investing theirs and multiplying them? Or did you pour your life into experiencing and learning and sometimes teaching by example rather than any more direct method? Most people leave little or no trace on the world around them. You have already left more than most. But who ever fails to live the life their talents provided? It can’t be judged externally. You know that. The guys told you that, years ago and you accepted it. What you aren’t taking into account is that your own assessment of your own life is still judging by externals. Even though you are taking motivation and internal constraints into account, it is still external in that it says, “What external signs that I have lived have I left strewn around?” The proper answer, in a way, is, “Who cares?” Even your influence over others, good or bad, is still mostly external. It does not deal with the only thing you came to do, which is to create yourself further.
But there is a circularity to this argument. If I strongly feel that I should have done more, should still do more, isn’t that feeling a part of who I am? Isn’t it as legitimate a part of me as anything else?
This leads to a longer story, and we can go into it when you are fresh, if you want to. The long and the short of it is that, yes, the unfulfilled things in your life are a legitimate part of the total, but that shouldn’t be taken to mean, “Everything ought to work out even. You should die with no regrets and nothing left on your To-Do list.” A longer subject, and we ought to go into it, whenever you feel like it.
Well, all I can say is, even if I have to keep giving this a breathing spell, it is very stimulating, and helpful. Till next time.