Alcohol is a sort of reset button for me, but I think something better than normal happened. I allowed some antique feelings out. I am lonely, this is certainly true. And I realized that feeling lonely is actually progress. I normally just suppress that. I write angry blog posts. And I realized that I don’t like people very much, in actuality. I like them in theory. We’re supposed to do that. But I don’t trust like people. The ones I have trusted have hurt me much too deeply.
Hurt: that’s another feeling I have not allowed.
I got so drunk I apparently tried to eat a raw eggplant, and, realizing that was a bad idea, ate bundles of basil, cilantro and dill. I don’t ever want to go there again.
Here is the thing: I am a demographic. I am the middle aged white man who shoots himself in his mid-50’s. You enter adulthood with a host of emotional pains, you try to make them go away, fail, and realize at some point your health will start heading south. I was seriously depressed for a moment.
But I’m in a transition zone. This is always a challenge. I feel great this morning. I continue dreaming, dreaming, dreaming about creating my “church”, about engineering through persuasion the mass creation of what would amount to second families for most people, families based on the shared pursuit of mental health, happiness, and generalized flourishing. I have all the ideas. I just need to get myself to an emotional place I have never been.
I have never truly FELT loved. I’ve heard the words “I love you”. They are easy enough to say. But I have never felt that. This is an odd thing, but I feel it is very common. Very common. Perhaps something approaching ubiquitous. I don’t know. I can’t feel inside other people’s hearts, but based on the suicide and addiction numbers, it’s a reasonable supposition.
Which brings me to this post. We have, I think, a crisis of belonging. Families are not as tight as they perhaps once were. Certainly, maybe Italian and Mexican and–dare I say it?–Catholic families, but we Protestants, we move around. We are ambitious. You have to make your mark on the world, and you can’t do that sitting around in your home town.
Ambition: what does it REALLY get us? If you gain a world of respect for your work, but lose track of the people in your life, lose your sane relationship with yourself?
When I look at, say, CNN, they are peddling belonging. You watch them, you belong to a group. You know what the other people in that group will be saying and thinking. It makes life more predictable, because everyone is synchronizing on the same signal.
And in this world its easy to see the psychological and social value of victims. If you can claim you are a victim, you are special. You get ATTENTION, and we all crave attention. Very few of us feel listened to on a deep level, so a superficial, scripted, programmed level is perhaps the next best thing.
And for the people worshipping the victims, you get a feeling of importance. You get to feel good. You get to feel righteous. And you get to channel the low grade depression you feel because life makes no sense to you and you have no place into self righteous anger. You need this anger to deal with your sadness, with your feeling all alone and belonging nowhere to no one. It is a simple, easy morality. But not, ultimately, a sustainable or truly nourishing one.
Looked at this way, the Daily Cause mentality makes a whole lot of sense emotionally.
These are complex problems, and I get confused myself often, but I think there is a core of truth here.
And I do think we are on this Earth to learn how to love one another. It’s a cheap and easy word I rarely use, but this is I think the truth, the most important truth.
As I thaw, I expect volatility, but I am slowly putting into place things for me, which say to me, “you are valuable, and worth loving.” You cannot accept the love of another until you feel like you are loveable, that the other person is not simply making a mistake, because if they knew how you REALLY are. . .
I think I was put on this Earth to do difficult work. I think I’ve done it before. I have the capacity to suffer inordinately, and make something good out of it. I have a tremendous well of love and compassionate energy I am slowly learning to tap into.
Pray for me, if you are so inclined. I will make my way to you when I can.