We are continually faced in life with the question of whether to “fix” something, or accept it. Most of what we call “creative problem solving” is oriented around fixing things. You don’t like your job, find another one. Your problem is how. Don’t like your wife? Find another one. The problem is how. Don’t like who you are? Change. Figure out how.
But it occurs to me that there is ample room for creative responses WITHIN acceptance. Let us say that you will always have the job you have, always have the wife you have, and always, in large measure, be who you “are” today. Some things just won’t change, for reasons which are unclear. All of us, to be sure, have certain genetic (and, if you believe in something like Fate, karmic) tendencies. This is not a curse: this is what you were given.
You can raise your game in how you relate to your job, your wife, and the stupid shit you sometimes still do. You can accept, yes, but you can also find responses which make you happier than the responses which are happening now.
We tend to view acceptance as passive, as a stoic acceptance that what must be, must be. Acceptance of necessity is clearly a good thing, when contrasted with non-acceptance, whining, pretending, and resentment. But why stop there? Why stop with simply saying “what must be, must be”?
Why not ALWAYS be scoping out what control you do have, realistically? Creativity is nothing more or less than seeing what is possible, but not yet manifest. Every art work ever created was possible, in potentio, until actually created. And there are an infinite number of things which remain possible.
I may have told this story, but I was talking with someone who had gone to SERE school once. In the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda’s allies were fond of locking captured prisoners in small cages for very long periods of time. Many Americans wound up in such cages, and it seems quite possible some of the POW’s we abandoned died in them while the hippies were celebrating their “victory” by snorting coke and dancing in discos.
Be that as it may, being locked in what amounts to a dog cage is a part of the training. You have to spend 24 hours in there without having a nervous breakdown, which some people do. Usually that sort of thing is weeded out before they get there, but not always. I remember talking with a woman in a bar whose brother had a panic attack in there, and failed the training. I forget what service he was with. Basically all combat pilots and all commandos have to go through it.
Anyway, I was talking with him about that specific thing (after talking about the feeling of forgetting to kill bugs before eating them, and feeling them squirm all the way down his throat), and he said it wasn’t so bad. He stuck his butt out and tensed his body, so that when they put down the back slat, which was designed to make his fit as tight as possible, he wound up with an extra 4-5″. He sounded both proud and matter of fact.
And it recently occurred to me that the training must include the importance of winning small battles, of taking back small–infinitesimal, but real–amounts of control. It might be as simple as saying “fuck you” every time you see your guards, but you need something, anything, which keeps you from fully identifying with your situation, your victimhood, and your objective helplessness physically.
And to the point here, creativity may be needed. It may take some experimenting to find something which really helps. Even in abject, true helplessness, small amounts of power can be found.
From a sociopsychological perspective, I think most of the pathologies one finds in the ghetto relate to this need. People feel the need to feel important. Their homes, their society, their schools: they don’t give this to them, except as victims. Nobody who is psychologically healthy wants to be a victim. This is where the guns come in. A gun is power, especially if you aren’t allowed to own one. A gun is power, especially when those around you are unarmed.
It is likely not overstating the case that much violence is avoided by allowing people to own sources of power. We have all met people with what I would view as odd and obsessive interests in guns and knives, and all the other stuff that goes around inflicting and protecting oneself from violence. If you own 50 guns, that is obsessive.
But for such people, this is an actually, objectively, non-violent source of the feelings of power and safety. For whatever reason, they feel unusual and unhealthy amounts of fear. Trauma–likely Developmental Trauma–is a likely source, but regardless, they calm themselves down through hobbies which, in the overwhelming, 99.999 percent of cases, never result in harm to anyone else.
Most murders are committed, I suspect, by people who own 1 or 2 guns. As a tool, you only need one.
That’s enough for now. Thought I’d spout off a bit. I am trying to make my peace with some emotions going on in me this morning. Writing often helps. It is, perhaps, a way I find my way back to some of my own power. I am intelligent: I have this going for me. I am also often attacked by powerful emotions which make it hard to stay any course I might set. I have developed strong willpower over the years, of necessity, but it is fully occupied most days performing what could and should be habitual actions, in behaviors I have to reinvent over and over again. It is tiring, but I am making progress. I am sleeping most nights without alcohol, even if I still get shaken awake 2-3 times.
Have a happy Tuesday!!! I have set as a goal accumulating statues of the various gods and goddesses represented by our days. Tuesday is for Tyr, the Norse God of War. Iconographically, he is best known for helping bind the giant wolf Fenrir. The wolf would not let anyone close enough to tie him up, until Tyr offered to place his hand in the wolves mouth as a promise of safety. The wolf was then bound, and Tyr lost his hand. This is sacrifice and courage. Today is the day remembering Tyr and Fenrir. May you be brave, and may you be blessed with sight!!
Now I really need another cup of coffee and a shower.