life

March 12, 2023

Redefining Exhaustion

I was never the most energetic young man. It took me into the second inning of a softball game to remember I was playing the game, not watching it.

Call my adrenaline unobservant.

Well, this week, I discovered what genuine exhaustion feels like. Thank you, COVID-19.

Now finishing my fourth full day, I am a bit better. I can keyboard.

Here is an example: xvlW2k9*%=^

See!

This will be short. Oh, I forgot. I sound like a frog, too.

🐸

If you need an under-energized pet frog, I am available. I hope you like green.🤢

Of course, he might give you a disease.

To the good, I think my green phase is ending as of this afternoon; fingers crossed.

The advantage of experiencing illness at my age is that you can identify with the physical troubles of more and more people you know.

Sometimes you can recommend the right MD, medicine, the proper food, and other comments to remind them, “this too shall pass.”

Today I am reminding myself. That, Paxlovid and a wife serving as a benign caretaker are the best I can do.

Life, love, learning, and laughs go on despite feeling craptastic.

COVID-19 is survivable, yes; desirable, no.

———

The cartoon is called The Headache, by George Cruikshank, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.org/

February 12, 2023

Michael Gerson: Fighting Depression with Hope, Faith, and Love

On the day before the Super Bowl, I’m guessing the short supply of serious newspaper readers is smaller than usual.

Still, the mention of Michael Gerson in today’s New York Times demands attention, though he can no longer know that anyone cares. He was a good man and perhaps a great one who died in December. Fifty-eight is too young for the departure of a person whose presence on the earth made it a better place.

Funny, I should say that. I didn’t always agree with his politics and didn’t vote for the President for whom he wrote speeches.

But in my book, I don’t have to agree with you to admire you, as I did him. I envied his gift of language, his principled stance on matters of importance, and a heroic battle that found him outlasted by death: a bigger-than-life opponent with an undefeated record.

Gerson fought a chemically-based depression severe enough for hospitalization, serious heart disease, and cancer that killed him. Outnumbered, you might say, but not out of hope, faith, and love.

I don’t have to believe in your faith to praise the way you go beyond the weekly attendance at a house of worship to live it. Gerson lived his own beliefs in deep consideration and helping the unfortunate. President Biden just hailed the 20th anniversary of the “President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief” created by President George W. Bush and Mr. Gerson. In today’s Times, Peter Baker said their effort saved more than 25 million lives.

Since my words pale to Michael Gerson’s, I hope you watch and listen to him in the video above, an invited Sunday sermon given three years ago. He will tell you enough about his troubles, his concern for the disadvantaged, and his belief in something transcendent to regret his early passing.

The Super Bowl can’t do that, though I hope you enjoy it.

A few seconds at halftime won’t be wasted to remember a humble, wounded, and wise man beyond describing with anyone’s words but his own.

June 5, 2022

Erotic Transference in a World of Online Therapy

 
What happened when therapy became virtual at the pandemic’s beginning? Did erotic transference die quietly because of the physical separation of counselor and client? Did the small screen reduce the scope of sexual feelings?
 
Perhaps not, since I read no obituary in the news. Still, it is worth thinking about what has become of the inevitability of desire in the human interaction of some who seek treatment.
 
Erotic transference refers to the patient’s growing sexualized affections for the clinician in talking about her feelings and the significant players in the drama of her life. Parents, caretakers, past lovers, abusers, or others might metaphorically slip into these one-to-one settings unseen, producing an outsized and complicated response to the therapist.
 
The analyst begins to evoke dormant emotions he didn’t create.
 
In the pre-pandemic period, all sorts of detailed cues existed within the office, qualities that might have contributed to the sexualization of the other. The consulting room made these accessible to the client in a way they are not on a computer screen.

A shortlist included the following:

  • A view of the entire face and clothed body, front and back, bottom to top.
  • More noticeable eye contact.
  • Grooming characteristics and their impact on the sensory organs of the observer. Subtle skin tones, makeup, natural bodily scents or odors, perfumes, shampoo emanations, cologne, and pheromone production could encourage sexual arousal.
  • The way the person walked, moved, sat, reached, and shook hands.
  • His attire.
  • An intimate and unvarying background domain, quiet and the same each week.
  • The healthcare professional’s voice was unaffected by the distortion of a computer speaker or headphones.
  • Small facial expressions.
  • An absence of distractions as opposed to a less controlled setting.

Put simply, the office was an environment decorated and modified by the healer, made consistent and safe by him. It included objects little changed in successive sessions. Physical nearness to him was one of those stabled features.

Unintended changes from the old way of doing things should have worked against the emergence of passion in post-COVID treatment relationships. But perhaps there are other considerations:

  • The current unavailability of nearness to a doctor or psychiatric social worker might make them more attractive to some people. Imagine a client whose past experience with parents or lovers included their tendency to push her away or display inconsistency in expressing affection.
  • A new analyst, “out of reach” due to a change in the provision of psychotherapeutic services, could serve unconsciously as another chance to achieve the kind of love she’s searched for, the person “difficult to get.”
  • Unlike the doctor’s office, online contact gives the patient possible control of 50% of the framework for the meeting. Clients set up computers in bedrooms, bathrooms, automobiles, nearby pools, and other locations.
  • Although not all possess the ease of finding privacy, some capacity to arrange the decoration, lighting, and background is more available than prevails in another person’s building.
  • Since travel to and from the psychologist’s location is unnecessary, attire can also be controlled and sexualized.
  • Without the need to leave home, it becomes easier to drink alcohol or use other substances to disinhibit one’s emotions and become more provocative.
  • Many people watch TV and movies on their computers, iPads, and phones. The device thus transforms into a place of “performances.” The sexualization of the session exists in a world of potential unreality, encouraging a client’s inclination to take a performative risk.
  • The power of words, an analyst’s kindness, and a level of attention the patient might never have experienced can still serve as potent aphrodisiacs. Remember, love relationships began and survived in the pre-computer age of letter writing.
  • In 2020 pet ownership rose to 70% of American households. Pandemic-driven starvation for physical contact and touch (skin hunger) may explain a part of this phenomenon. It might motivate an increased want for the caress (and more) from someone who appears devoted to your wellbeing.

To sum up, we don’t know the extent to which virtual (online) therapy increases or diminishes erotic transference. Many of the various effects of the pandemic are little studied, leaving anecdotal evidence at best.

We all recognize that humanity would not exist but for sexual appetite. Sex and love endure through wartime, plagues, environmental destruction, and more.

Think of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, in Homer’s Odyssey. She waited 20 years for her husband’s return when he left to fight in the Trojan War.

The power of another’s gaze, warmth, careful listening, and voice remain available to us, no matter the change in therapeutic format. The enlarged distance from the therapist might even enhance his sense of mystery.

The hope for intimacy and the heartbeat of desire have survived with less assistance.

=================

The first image is called Sculpture in Paradise by Philip Jackson, located at the center of the cloisters of Chichester Cathedral. The photo is by surreyblonde from Pinterest. Next comes Khao Luang Cave Temple, Phetchaburi, Thailand, sourced from Cheezburger.com/ Finally, Factory Butte, Utah, a 2019 work by Laura Hedien with her permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.

June 10, 2021

The First Young Love

The three-year-old beauty flapped her arms to express her urgency. “Put those away; he’s coming, he’s coming!” The mother smiled and followed orders. The tiny sweetie knew a remarkable young man and his family were about to arrive. She didn’t want him to spot the box containing her diapers. Accidents still happened, knowledge to be hidden from her first love.

Who was the object of her concern and admiration? My not quite six-year-old grandson, the heartthrob of her sister’s kindergarten class.

W met his classmate, the older sister, soon after moving to the new family home. This was their first in-person school experience. Herself a cutie, Maddie sent W a note before her at-home competitor knew of his existence. “I Luv yu,” she scrawled, along with a heart and Cupid’s arrow. Writing, reading, and spelling are new to these kids.

The youthful hero, one of two grandchild carriers of my DNA, is the real deal. He is tall, handsome, and charming. Moreover, my boy is an outgoing storyteller and knows his future profession: paleontologist.

The number of those smitten is growing, sending similar love notes taxing to the postal service. Now you know why the mail is late.

Unfortunately for his admirers, the young man’s mind is on dinosaurs, the extinct creatures of his intended full-time occupation. Live beings hold interest for this prospective scientist for playing, friendship, and nothing more. They are playmates, but not the Hugh Hefner kind.

W has no idea he is the talk of his youthful cohorts and their parents, but he doesn’t appear fazed by the frequent tender offerings from the captured hearts. I’m sure the unawareness of his charm makes him more appealing. Asked by his mom about his matrimonial future, he said he doesn’t ever intend to marry.

Yesterday I watched a video of Mr. Gorgeous making repeated climbs to the top of a pool slide, then giggling all the way down. The young man’s joy should be bottled. The only difficulty was that each of the slides caused his swim trunks to edge south. W’s dad reminded him to pull them up. Insubstantial hips didn’t block the downward drift. God help his fan club if they should discover him this way.

During summer days in safe residential neighborhoods, you might see colored chalk drawings on the sidewalk. Some of these could be the handiwork of female children like those who dream of my oldest grandson. They display many hearts, rainbows, and good wishes.

Lucky adults like me remember those days. The world is simple and benign for such fortunate kids. It is a vision more precious because it isn’t permanent. Still, some will keep the sense of wonder, goodness, and innocence embedded within them — and be better for it.

We should all be so lucky. In the meantime, W and his lady friends — and I do mean friends — warm my heart, bring a smile, and even an occasional tear to my eyes. Such moments make life wonderful.

Note to myself: cherish them.

———-

The image is called Love Since Childhood by Katyatula. It was sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

April 26, 2020

Best Man: Remembering Joe Pribyl

In a world rife with helplessness, an old friend comes to mind. His memory provides one answer to the question of life’s meaning in a moment suggestive of a heartless and strange cosmic order.

You would not think Joe Pribyl a remarkable man upon first acquaintance.

Some people possess an arresting presence. Joe did not. A stocky man, a bit under average height, he had graying hair and lacked whatever grace or style makes some people appear to be wearing a custom-made suit instead of a borrowed wardrobe.

My friend’s facial features didn’t betray high distinction either, except perhaps for deep vertical creases and old acne scars, of which Joe possessed more than a few. Yet it did convey warmth and approachability, more appreciable than any sculptural handsomeness.

At the start, I thought his everyman quality diminished him. Before the end of his life, however, I realized the inseparability of his nature and goodness from the human community.

He placed himself with and for every one of us.

Joe was a man of faith, admired by a faithless soul like me. Roman Catholic from start to finish, living his Sunday-service-beliefs every day. His grace came not from appearance, but kindness toward others, from waitresses to total strangers. The essence of his being was on display, fully himself, the rare unselfconscious human with nothing hidden.

He volunteered. He served. He raised his hand.

For years this therapist and his wife, Mary, also a psychologist in the practice they shared, organized a mission to Central America. The well-matched couple brought books to educate the sea of dispossessed, illiterate, and impoverished brown youngsters most of us don’t consider.

Doctor Pribyl did not consign a remedy for the world’s ills to someone else.

Brave enough to display tears, my friend never wept for himself, but others. Yet Joe was one of the few people I ever met who was content.

The healer displayed remarkable equanimity and courage in dealing with the near-death experience of a heart attack in a foreign and ill-equipped land. Later cancer stalked him, hanging around, as it sometimes does, never quite vanishing. Joe integrated the latter disease into the fabric of his existence as a natural event, not a matter of personal unfairness or rage.

On display was all the towering distinction my friend’s physicality lacked, but only if you focused hard, long, and understood him well.

Death came, a bigger than life opponent with an undefeated record, but not before Joe tricked the grim reaper into allowing additional time for attention to his patients, the woman he loved, the family dearest to him, and his lucky friends. I’ve never witnessed a better magic act.

In the overtime, extra-time of Joe’s life, I talked with him about my new grandson, almost two-years-old when the therapist passed. Grandparents wonder what the future holds for the little ones, who they will become.

I’m sorry Joe isn’t around to represent what one man can be, can do. If my grandsons were older and Joe still alive, I might point to him and say, “Look, look at this fine person. Look beyond appearances. This is a man. My friend is what a man should try to be.”

This gentile soul, dead almost two years and a confidant for half my life, was a quiet fellow with an easy laugh. He didn’t come to impress you. While some people converse to be heard, he came to know you. There was little judgment in him.

His self-effacing way, at first, made me think nothing of his offer of friendship. Before the end, I recognized him as one of the great gifts of my life.

Thinking about Joe this morning, I reflected on the question with which I began this essay.

How do we persuade ourselves of a just deity in the face of all the world’s casualties? I imagined myself, a non-believer, asked to defend God in a criminal proceeding.

The reel of my imagination unspooled as a trial would.

First, the prosecutor made his case, piling up the innumerable instances of tragedy, natural and human. Of disease and murder, duplicity, betrayal, racism, slavery, and wartime. Of geological catastrophes sweeping the multitudes away, Jehovah’s Old Testament, self-created flood included.

The lawyer went on for hours and even cut short the presentation, convinced his case irrefutable. I doubted my argument in God’s defense: Joe’s life as an example of God’s best work, best man.

My turn came, the Lord’s defender. I told stories about my friend, including much of what you now know. I didn’t go on for long.

The verdict came from the bench, not a jury. The female presiding wore a blindfold, as Justice is supposed to. She gripped the scales in her right hand, on one side piled high with the prosecutor’s evidence.

On the other sat Joe, since no graven images or likenesses of the Almighty are allowed us. My friend’s figure lay in the shadow of the towering count of accusations against the God of his belief. The adjudicator would soon release the balance she maintained, allowing the evidence to determine the outcome.

A courtroom full of eyes were on the apparatus, waiting for its pivot, though I couldn’t watch. I’m told for a moment nothing happened, then the scales of justice shuddered and a grinding, terrifying sound came out of nowhere.

I looked up. One side plunged.

I cannot tell you how I knew, but beneath her blindfold, I’m certain Lady Justice was winking at me.

September 4, 2019

The Question of Trust in Therapists, Parents, and Others

I shall not be surprised if my eldest grandson wants to explore outer space. Unlike fake superheroes, he doesn’t need tricks of the camera. His paternal grandmother, Claire, captured the moment. Not yet four when this solo flight occurred, he is a joyous, energetic, strong-willed, and sweet little boy. He was confident enough to make the leap because he knew Claire would keep him safe.

Of course, no undersized man understands the range of dangers in the world. He counts on his parents and grandparents to protect him. Thus his uninhibited abandon and joy are purchased at the cost of delayed knowledge. The guardians are his trusted custodians, those who must recognize the perils for him.

Adults count on lots of others in a similar way. A man who soon will keep some of us alive is forty-three year old Daniel Harding, a symphony conductor of worldwide reputation. His temporary departure from baton-wielding was reported by Slipped Disc:

Daniel Harding, on a farewell tour with the Orchestre de Paris, has told El Pais that he has qualified as a commercial aviator and will be taking a sabbatical to fly for Air France. ‘Since I was a child I dreamed of flying planes, but my dedication to music prevented me,’ he said.

‘In the spring I will join Air France as a co-pilot and in 2020/21 I will take a sabbatical as an orchestra conductor to apply myself to flying.’

Should we trust the Maestro to ensure a trouble-free journey above the birds?

Risky flights and endangered children have long been the subject of storytellers. A Greek myth described here by Wikipedia raises the question of proper oversight by our parents:

Phaethon … sought assurance from his mother that his father was the sun god Helios. She … told him to turn to his father for confirmation. He asked his father for some proof that would demonstrate his relationship with the sun. When the god promised to grant him whatever he wanted, he insisted on being allowed to drive the sun chariot for a day.

According to some accounts Helios tried to dissuade Phaethon, telling him that even Zeus was not strong enough to steer these horses, but reluctantly kept his promise. Placed in charge of the chariot, Phaethon was unable to control the horses.

In some versions, the Earth first froze when the horses climbed too high, but when the chariot then scorched the Earth by swinging too near, Zeus decided to prevent disaster by striking it down with a thunderbolt. Phaethon fell to earth and was killed in the process.

We might say the mom and dad lacked adequate judgment. Wisdom and self-awareness are essential qualities in the trusted one. Any therapist or physician should be dedicated to your well-being and experienced and knowledgeable, as well.

All of them must keep up with research, obtain the training to evaluate it, and adapt as new learning indicates. No less, our health demands them to embrace the humility needed to reconsider a failing plan of treatment.

Our providers need to look after themselves, too: sleep enough and not work so hard they burn out. Avoidance of unethical time on the greasy, narrow ledge of self-interest cannot be assumed. Vacations, despite the dismay of a counselor’s patients, are required.

Add the necessity of making time for family and friends, leading a balanced and loving life, and ministering to their own personal issues. These specialists must walk a tightrope between empathizing with your pain and succumbing to it.

Without such guardrails, a therapist with the best character and motivation in the world is otherwise untrustworthy. Well-founded confidence in those who care for us requires more of them than their willingness to hold a hand or respond in an emergency.

The rest of humanity tries to achieve as much in their own professions. No matter our best effort, some will ignore whatever wisdom we impart, the young in particular.

A few of the latter opt to “live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse” as a portion of every new generation always does. Therapists and physicians contend with these daredevils more than most, including those who do not live fast, don’t die young, and leave the planet on a bad hair day.

Blind faith in an unknown authority is a hazardous undertaking. Even though I won membership in such a respected and privileged group, I question the gray-haired, expensively dressed, mostly male class at the helm of the world.

I’m referring to those who act as though they are immortal, omniscient, and beyond reproach. The same officials who, in government, would use bleach (if they could) to whiten the nation; and an ironing board to “straighten” its sexual disposition.

Age alone doesn’t guarantee anything. To quote a popular ’60s suggestion, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.”

Of course, the many who said so are now more than double the age in question.

That can only mean one thing for those of us who repeated the advice:

—–

The painting reproduced above is Phaethon by Gustave Moreau. It was sourced from Wikiart.org/

August 18, 2018

A Simple Explanation of Everything

We are prone to four mistakes in trying to make sense of ourselves and the world:

  1. Oversimple explanations.
  2. Answers of mind-bending complexity incapable of being grasped  — except when smoking marijuana.
  3. The following twin assumptions: a) reason explains more than emotion and b) others would reason as we do if they were reasonable.
  4. The belief we can fathom life in all its fullness.

Why #4 you ask? If I try to understand my inner workings, I only know myself on a conscious level. I do not have quick access to my unconscious even if I enter psychoanalysis with an expert. Nor can I see myself from outside.

Brain scientists don’t agree whether I have “free will.” My decisions — all the ones I think I’m in charge of — might be determined by the intersection of biology, history, and the fixed pathways of the brain pudding. The researchers cannot tell me if my actions are pre-baked into the cake of my being. My choices would only seem voluntary.

I search for comprehension, even so, but the morning’s newspapers cause mourning.

I’m distressed by the factual reports I find in these venerable, award-winning periodicals. I’m disturbed by elected and appointed officials — the kind who offer self-serving opinions without evidence and often without truth — who lack either conscience or courage. I’m troubled by the sightless idolators who follow these Pied Pipers toward the cliff. I’m unsettled by the thoughtlessness of some in opposition to them; and those citizens who complain or worry, but do nothing to defend the democratic republic.

What then is the explanation of the Bizzaro World at the tippy-top of the federal government’s executive branch?

In one sentence, here is the best I can do. This 17th-century wisdom fits into the first and last categories above. Over simplistic, for sure. Perhaps tongue-in-cheek or maybe dead serious.

Sometimes an idea waits nearly 400-years for a person who embodies it:

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

― Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensées

—–

The image at the top is Paul Klee’s 1921 Portrait of a Yellow Man. The 1978 painting that follows is called Loneliness, by George Stefanescu. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

June 3, 2018

When Boys Swam Nude in Public High Schools: UPDATE

The experience still haunts men. Older men. They had to swim in the nude in Chicago Public Schools and elsewhere around the country.

I wrote about the psychological effects here: When Boys Swam Nude in Chicago Public High Schools. If you don’t think such trials should have made such a difference to those teens, then why have about 20,000 thousand people read my post, not to mention other posts on other sites?

Boys searched for reasons to get excused from swimming. They suffered distress over psoriasis or sundry obvious “defects.” Shame, bullying, and potential arousal at the wrong moment were inevitable; especially anything that might betray a homosexual inclination (long before the word gay meant men who favored other men).

Today, however, I want to answer a question I could not in 2014, when I wrote the post linked above: how did such a practice begin?

According to WBEZ Radio’s Monica Eng:

The country was … obsessed with fighting disease and promoting personal hygiene, which in the 1920s, was also associated with “good morals.”  Health officials worried that allowing potentially dirty fabrics into public pools could introduce germs, and bacteria-killing pool chlorination had still not been perfected.

Plus, at the time, swimming pools had fairly primitive filters that could easily be clogged by fabric fibers from swimsuits, which were made of cotton and wool – yes wool.

So, in an effort to minimize bacteria, keep pool filters from clogging and ensure male swimmers were clean, the American Public Health Association (APHA) recommended the following in their 1926 standards handbook:

Those recommendations, nothing more, turned the tide (pun intended) as one school system imitated another and made the practice compulsory. Thus, we have another example of the often observed human tendency to cause unintended side-effects growing out of an effort to make the world a bit better.

Read or listen to the whole story as reported by Monica Eng here: Why Boys Swam Naked.

January 13, 2018

Therapy’s Ultimate Goal: Embracing Life

Are there endangered emotions in the world, much like endangered species? The ones that disappear? Most of us had sentiments and enthusiasms as small children we now rarely experience. What might they be? Can we get them back?

The greatest events of life, I’d argue, are fleeting. The birth of your first child is one. An early, electric kiss. The clichéd “thrill of victory” as it is felt, not reported. A musical performance of sadness or exultation so powerful you float and reverberate for days. Immediacy, intensity, and loss of self-awareness are found in these moments. Routine breaks. One is swept away.

What do we try to do with such things? Extend them, for sure. Go back to the source and regain them. Produce more children, maybe; more kisses, for certain. Play in additional ball games, too. Perhaps attend the repeat-performance of the concert the next day. But, the repeat almost never captures the wallop, the poignancy of “the first time.”

Does the picture of a speeding bullet seize the essence, help us remember and relive it? The most precious things and people are priceless, in part, because of their short supply and elusiveness. Here and gone. No matter the effort, we can’t catch an emotional deluge in a bucket and keep it in the fridge, just so.

Yet still we try. We want the honeymoon to be endless. We want our child’s spontaneity to continue forever. We think the earth-moving moment should be mounted in a frame or frozen under glass, but its soul is in the movement, not the stillness. The carefully preserved butterfly does not fly.

Some of us, as we age, lose even the ability to be astonished by life, bowled over by happiness or love, sensation or tenderness. Most want a bit of protection, so we add, without thinking, one layer at a time, beginning in youth. Seems safer, more necessary, less risky. The arrows of fate then won’t pierce as far, hurt as much, or so we believe. We want to escape fatal bullets, but unintentionally kill ourselves – the life in us – by trying to avoid them.

The bravest therapy patients attempt to change no one but themselves in their effort to recapture the innocent wonder they had at the point of creation, or grab the life-enkindling thing for the first time. They have the courage to recognize the mirror’s image, to overcome the pain of treatment, to outlast and out-will the unendurable: a kind of therapeutic integrity not to be denied. They grip tragedy and wrestle him to ground. They rip the emotional scabs off their being and bleed until purified and joyous. I still cannot believe how open they are.

As an observer of myself, I can characterize personal life from my 20s to the present as an opening more than a closing. My work required this openness, but so did full immersion in the best private moments as they happened. To my continuing surprise I become more open, not less, even now. Saying what others might not say, but only think; expressing the deepest part of myself to those who care to listen. Looking into your eyes if I am touched by your being. Life hurts more this way, but feels right and perhaps I have no choice: I became and am becoming such a person with little intention. Who knows what version of myself might appear tomorrow?

Death sets the border on everything. The cliché tells us the cemetery is full of irreplaceable people, the last stop on a human world in transit. The trains of life’s are always in motion, much as we want them to wait a minute. The best of them are swift. That’s what makes a train. No picture of a locomotive moves at 60 mph unless you throw it across the room.

So my advice to all of us is this: eyes open, heart open, stay alert, let down your guard as much as your dare; but don’t lose the best of yourself. Make love to life as if she were your first and last, both. She just might be.

Of course, I’m uncatchable, but catch me while you can.

As the advertisements tells us, we are all on sale for a limited time only.

—

The top image is called Berliner gör’n by Till Krech and is sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

October 15, 2017

Tell Me What You “Want” and I’ll Tell You Who You Are

When I ask what you desire, I’m not talking about which menu item you prefer at the restaurant. This essay, instead, considers your most passionate, uninhibited, and selfish side and offers a chance to learn more. I come to praise “wanting,” not to bury it. Last stop before I take you on a roller coaster ride of a part of your nature you might hide from yourself.

What is “wanting?” At the extreme, it is taking, but playful; possessive, rapacious, covetous, but pure. Wanting doesn’t respect every rule. Desire is a thing unleashed: single-minded, obsessed, hungry, spontaneous, irrational. The undiscovered country is its goal.

Adventurers to this land seek new ground. The kind of wanting I’m speaking of lives with abandon and without self-consciousness. It inhabits a place outside the domain of evil or good, so try not to stand in judgement. This creature is feeling-dominated, not word or thought-restrained. Pre-verbal. Desire’s triumph is found in moments of joy and exploration, enough to burst the heart.

Small children possess this jubilant abandon, witness my two-year-old grandson. But I sometimes think we stake their little hearts and then call the corpses civilized.

Desire, at its zenith, is about discovery, about making something new: being alive to the world. Risk is attractive and the downside almost irrelevant. Where others slow down, desire speeds up. More constrained souls, in contrast, seek a fulfillment of duty, a chance to prove themselves by taking on challenges, and acceptance of social rules. Perhaps they are merely afraid.

Desire wants only joy. Sharing of joy to multiply it, too. Yet, in its pursuit of fulfillment (and the evolutionarily-packaged seed it carries), injuries to others can happen. The unknown spouse of a “wanted” married woman (not the kind you find on an FBI poster) can be someone invisible to the desirous one; carved out of the equation, a faceless person who won’t find out and won’t be hurt. Remember, though, no desire, no human race.

I’m not talking about people who intend to injure others, or who see the potential victim and still don’t care. They inhabit a different class.

Some souls submit to risk and adventure only in selected portions of their lives. No one can live there always – too many train wrecks come if you don’t look both ways before crossing the tracks. But, such a life is possible when compartmentalized; though rare is the highly intuitive, curious free-spirit who can keep the boxes separate. Even when they can, existence might become too intense, too high and too low, too painful too often. But the high wire is a place of dizzying delight, addictive perhaps, so don’t think you wouldn’t like it there.

Others, those of a different, more careful nature, only visit their deepest want on rare occasions. The adventurer/angel entity is then unleashed as if by a strange invading army.

You can live a happy life, as much as we are allowed, without uncaged desire. Such a life, however, will have some restraints, a lower ceiling on pleasure. No ecstatic frenzy for you. Almost all of us are conditioned by 5000 years of civilization and nearly as much religious history; by our parents, our teachers, and oceans of indoctrination; by reading, thinking, and all the “thou shalt nots.” The wise ones told us life was about giving up certain parts of ourselves, fair-play, and the pursuit of lofty places and principles: about relinquishment and acceptance and gratitude for a half-cup of coffee. Fifty-percent would be enough, they said. Our sensuality was indicted and shamed.

Most of us call cruising at a lower altitude the triumph of practical wisdom over foolishness. Desire thinks the last statement is a cheat. And if wanting is a large part of one’s nature, surely societal rules pose a greater restriction on them than for tamer souls. The former cannot comfortably be different than they are without denying themselves.

When I was in single-digits I envied my next door neighbor’s toy soldiers. Howie always got better toys than I did. So, I took one, discovering that having the thing was a less satisfying experience than I anticipated. I also felt guilty and, the next time I played at his house, returned the unmissed plastic man-of-war to Howie’s towering pile of tiny inanimate playmates.

My desire wasn’t rational, but mindless. I’d met Freud’s Id inside myself. From that moment, I understood I had this quality in me. Later, I discovered that if you haven’t satisfied your wanting in bed, you haven’t had sex.

Desire still exists post-youth, though buried deep under the weight of responsibility and family; conventional virtue and reputation. No wonder men and women have mid-life crises, do crazy things, dress like they are still young. Everyone wants to be desired. Everyone wants the view from the mountain top occasionally. Some don’t want to descend.

Do you know their names? Count Columbus and Marco Polo among them. Explorers like Scott of the Antarctic. The Homeric heroes, horse-taming Hector and Odysseus, sacker-of-cities. We need such brave dreamers, the ones who want to look behind the door, the ones who will become astronauts.

How much can one live with wanting? How much can one live without? For those high in desire, in risk-taking, free by nature, Icarus is a model to be emulated, a spontaneous young man using his wax wings to reach the sun, not a damned fool crashing to earth when the sun’s heat melts them.

Religion and society try to inoculate us to our baseness, if that’s what it is, but the untamed creature is still present, and may agree to adopting a different form: athletic competition in hope of fulfilling the want of the chase, the win, the trophy, the sensuality and exultation of the vanquished opposition; or, the rat race (because we are part-time rats, climbing over others) and wielding raw power. Perhaps even simple things like buying something you say you “can’t live without.” Here, in this last tame example of desire, is the ultimate domestication of the beast within.

You can’t be a man and a wild animal all the time, but you can’t be a man without greeting the animal you are. The ladies have him inside too, though their historic cultural prohibitions are even greater than for men. They are, therefore, less well-accepted when they exhibit their creaturely side.

If you think of yourself as a virtuous person and actually are pretty good (two different things), you are ripe for someone else’s taking and the awakening of your own wanting. Then it is like an explosion, an irresistible force that can only be resisted by a team of stallions pulling you away.

I’d say most people don’t even know they are missing anything, so accustomed are they to the socialized forms of desire. The creature is drugged to sleep. Why don’t we admit to this? Perhaps because it associates us with the animal world. We want to think we are better, deserving of a heaven that doesn’t even admit pets. We fear losing respect, hesitate to hurt others about whom we care. We fear losing our self, the person we “think” we are, the best self we can be.

Beware. Too much denial is dangerous, too. The precincts of quiet desperation house those who have never lived.

Few can sustain high-wire wanting happily. Craving is never but momentarily satisfying: they go on craving after a period of rest. The constant seekers must find other adventures. The soul is restless, also a part of their nature.

You say you don’t recognize yourself in this? Don’t knock yourself out to search for the unimaginable part. I’m not here to upset your steady, unruffled life. But it is there.

Some of you might call it crazy. If it is, there is a sublime craziness to it, not made for planet earth but some purer, loftier realm, free of judgment. A place where you can eat all the candy you want without losing your taste for more or getting sick; and give away handfuls to your friends, who will love you for sharing your bounty: the bounty in yourself.

Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote:

My candle burns at both ends;

   It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends –

   It gives a lovely light!

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The poster up top is from the famous movie, A Streetcar Named Desire. Next, is Joanbanjo’s photo of a Roman Legion from the Museum of Lead Soldiers in Valencia. Finally, Bruegel’s depiction of The Fall of Icarus. If you can’t find him, Icarus is in the water just below the boat on the right side of the painting. Surely, this placement of the title character is a comment on the indifference of the world to his calamity. The soldiers photo comes from Wikimedia Commons, the Breugal from Wikiart.org/ For those of you curious about exploring an analogous, but not identical person to the one I’ve described, investigate Meyers-Briggs personality configurations on the net, especially the one identified by the initials ENFP.