I JUST CUT MY OWN THROAT: my thoughts on self-worth

I do the grocery shopping at our house. This morning I was pushing the cart down the personal hygiene products aisle. I remembered I needed shaving stuff. I looked at the shavers that you buy and add blades to, but they were too expensive. I checked the disposable shavers. I looked at Schick, BIC, and Gillette. Some came in packages of three for around $5.00, there were some that came in packages of 5 and 10 for around that same $5.00ish price. The bulk disposable razors had thin handles, but a razor is a razor, right? Then I spotted the store brand. Those were made with an ugly mustard colored plastic for the handle, but there they were in a clear bag, 10 for $1.99.

Now after putting up the groceries I got in a hot tub. I shave in the tub. I have to sit in the tub and let it fill. If I fill first, at my size, I get in, and the water gets out.

I know most guys buy shaving cream in an aerosol can, or some shaving gel that comes out like tooth paste but as you rub it on your face it foams up. Those products seem too expensive for me. I use hand soap, soap up my face and use the Braille method of shaving. I run the blade across my face, and then feel for escapee whiskers, soap them up again, and scrape at the whiskery spots until I no longer feel the hair stumps.

The under chin area is always a problem, especially as I age and have the beginnings of a turkey neck. That’s when it happened. I cut my throat. It wasn’t a nick, it was a slice and a long slice as for as shaving wounds go. When I applied my generic store brand aftershave (sold by the quart) I made a face that the Home Alone kid would have admired.

Now I contemplated these events and asked myself a critical question: Why was I shaving without shaving cream, using the cheapest razor money can buy? When I buy razors for my wife I buy one of those Venus vibrating razors.

As I press a wad of toilet tissue against my bleeding throat I realize that I think my wife deserves the best, and I deserve nothing, and since I need to shave to look semi normal, I reluctantly buy the cheapest crap possible. These bulk bag cheap-o razors had the words Safety Razor on the packaging, but there was not much safety present with these things.

The cheap disposable razors I buy are a outward and visible sign of an inner and utter conviction that I am not worth it, not worth a good razor, not worth the big piece of chicken, not worth name brand shoes or pants or anything else. Perhaps I bled so much I came too and realized that I don’t value myself.

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your
permission."
Eleanor Roosevelt

How can we know if we undervalue ourselves?

Ask these questions and then answer them honestly, ruthlessly. Don’t answer YES or NO because that doesn’t show degree. Use answers like Never, Occasionally, Often or Always.

1. How often do I feel a dislike of myself ?
2. How often do I think I am inadequate when compared with other people?
3. How often do I feel shy?
4. How often do I feel a lack of confidence?
5. How often do I feel as if my opinions don’t matter to other people?
6. How often do I feel as if I don’t deserve to be happy?
7. How often do I feel like other people dislike me?
8. If I do well at something how often do I call it “dumb luck” rather that feeling pleased with myself?
9. When I make a mistake how often do I believe that it is all my own fault?
10. How often do I find it difficult to say, “NO!”
11. Is it hard for me to accept criticism?
12. Is it hard for me to give honest criticism to other people right to their face?

If your answers indicate that you undervalue yourself, or hate yourself, well, you are a member of the LOW SELF ESTEEM CLUB.

Maybe the first step toward building up your esteem is to go out and buy yourself the most expensive gold plated shaver, and an expensive brand of shaving cream with aloe, because your face deserves the very best.

Dare To Accept Me Radically

I’ve been seeing Psychiatrists, and therapists since 1982, I didn’t become depressed in 1982, however, that happened when I was much younger. I wrote a nonce sonnet about depression that I hoped would capture my earliest encounters with depression. The word nonce comes from the medieval expression for the nonce, meaning for the one time. Thus, a nonce word is a word used for a special circumstance only. So IF you are a sonnet zealot you will notice this sonnet does not follow any traditional form. A nonce sonnet would be a changed sonnet form created for one unique occasion.

Depression by tex norman

I first encountered you in ‘53.
I remember it was extremely hot,
and mama made me rest out summer’s heat.
I turned like a slab of sizzling meat
as I lay sweltering on my cot.
I’m wondering now why you selected me.
Where were you hiding in the room,
crouched in a closet, or under the bed?
Your attack was savagely complete,
and my resistance, easy to defeat.
You left me wishing that I were dead.
That’s when it happened, or so I now assume.
I turned into this melancholy baby,
a diaper full of crap, and I can’t change me.


Obviously this is a sonnet written by someone still depressed. After 56 years of depression and 27 years of therapy I have to wonder why I keep seeing mental health professionals. Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results?

What is the goal of therapy for me. My hope would be that if I were to understand the goal of therapy that it might be a goal shared by others making my search of value to me and to others on a similar quest.

The depression I feel can be traced to defective parenting, perhaps some faulty DNA, and a weak will. My questions are as follows:

1. Is there a way out of this life long depression?
2. Is understanding the cause of depression in any way a healing discovery?
3. If there is a way out of my melancholy then is there a map that I can follow, and share with others?


Most of the therapists I have seen are hell bent on helping me understand the inevitability of human flaws. I tend to hate myself for being flawed, and I think other people are not flawed (or at least they are not as flawed as I am) I think, yeah, some people have problems and imperfections, but I am so flawed, so damaged that I am un-salvageable.

I am starting to think that maybe there is some value in my focusing on my flawedness, embracing my brokenness and living proudly and openly with my wounds. I know that this sounds odd, but real awareness comes only from truly accepting reality of me.

I had a shrink in Lakeland Florida named Frank Schultz.

[ http://www.aloth.com/about.htm ]

He use to tell me that I was perfect. Saying something like that to someone as imperfect as me was an affront. Them’s fightin’ words. I have to argue with such reckless talk.

I think, however, that maybe it is our imperfections that make us perfect. This is an odd thought, I know, but maybe you can’t have perfection without imperfection. There are things about me that I literally hate. I don’t dislike these traits within me, I hate them with a murderous loathing that has, at times placed my life in jeopardy. What I’m starting to realize is that maybe these flaws in me serve a useful purpose. Yeah flaws are flaws, and flaws by definition are bad, but maybe I hate my flaws because I am looking at them in isolation. By itself, a flaw is just total imperfections, absolute badness. But if I were to view my flaws in contexts I might find out that my imperfections have some value.

This is really odd thinking, I know, but then, when you think about a subject for almost 60 years you’re bound to come up with some odd thinking from time to time.

I have been talking about resignation for awhile now. I’ve been focused on the implications that come from resigning myself to the life I have at this moment in time. The word resignation implies something negative. If you resign yourself to something, you have surrendered, given up, thrown in the towel, and this all seems negative, and hopeless. Negative and hopeless stuff seems like dangerous thinkin’ and feelin’ to a chronically depressed dude.

Perhaps a better word would be ACCEPTANCE. The goal of therapy is not to turn me into something perfect, nor is it to just throw my hands up and be a loser for the rest of my life. Maybe the goal of therapy is for me to accept me.

If I can accept me, all of me, warts and all, then I can be OK. If I can look at me and see the flaws and accept them, I can also use my acceptance to seek changes in my life.

Jung talked about our shadow selves, that all of us have a dark side. There is good in us, but for every good, there is a corresponding bad. If we ignore our dark side, it has a tendency to sneak up behind us and bite us right in the ass. But if you accept that you have a dark side, that you have these imperfections, you can also keep your eye on them, and nip negative stuff in the bud.

It is important to find a way to embrace me as I am, and to also embrace my need for change. This might be good for you as well. This seems like a contradiction. If I accept me as I am, then why would I embrace a need to change? If dishonest is one of my flaws, then why accept that? Who would want to be dishonest? But what I’m thinking now is that maybe you can’t accept yourself unless you also accept your need for change. I use to think a paradox was two doctors, but actually a paradox is something that seems false, but is actually true. You can’t accept yourself without accepting your need for change. On the other hand, you can’t change unless you accept yourself because without accepting yourself, all of your SELF you won’t be aware of what changes are needed.

My therapeutic goal is to accept myself, radically, and with gusto. My intention is to recognize that as imperfect as I am, I can hold my imperfections in check, while embracing my opportunities to change. Change is impossible without accepting all of me. In a sense I am not whole, not perfect, without accepting both my positives and my negatives.

I am guessing that when I accept myself, warts and all, flaws and all, I can also believe that these traits are not fixed and immutable. If I recognize my flaws, and really see my positive traits, and observe myself in the whole, in the gestalt, then I can also believe that change is possible. If I acknowledge the possibility that I can change then maybe I can actually change.

I also think I need to accept that all this is radical acceptance is a process of life, that it is a journey with no arrival point. My destination is always within me. If I can accept my imperfections while seeking perfection, if I can knowledge that no one actually gets there, but that anyone can get closer, then maybe this therapy stuff is valuable, and precious and something I am not yet ready to discard.

Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha ~ Tara Brach

http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Acceptance-Embracing-Heart-Buddha/dp/0553801678

A Conservative Pararable Revisited

I recently read A Parable about Socialism

The way the story goes, this young girl is about to finish her first year of college. This young lady considers herself a liberal Democrat, and she is in favor of higher taxes to support more government programs. [Republicans would call her view Redistribution of wealth.]

This young liberal woman gets into a discussion with her staunch Republican father and she challenges her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the need for more government programs. Instead of talking about taxes the father asks his liberal little girl how she was doing in school.

Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened and then asked, 'How is your friend Audrey doing?' His daughter replied, 'Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus; college for her is a blast. She's always invited to all the parties and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over.'

Her wise father asked his daughter, 'Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA.'

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, 'That's a crazy idea, how would that be fair! I've worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!'

The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, 'Welcome to the conservative's philosophy.'
At the end of this little parable the writer adds:
If anyone has a better explanation of the difference between a Republican and Democrat I'm all ears.
It is a good parable, and, in my opinion, it does reflect the conservative philosophy. The parable is saying that what is mine is mine and I don’t have to share what is mine with anyone. The parable takes a complicated issue, oversimplifies it, and then feels that this simple story is so clear and straightforward that there is no longer any room for debate. What idiot is going to defend taking a point away from a 4.0 hard working student and to giving it to some drunken party girl with a 2.0? The unfairness of that suggestion is positive, irrefutable proof that the conservative philosophy is the only correct position to take. And yet, I have misgivings. While that parable claims to advocate for FAIRNESS the story itself is UNFAIR. Here are my problems with the simplistic conservative philosophy as depicted in the parable.

This conservative parable implies that the liberal agenda is to make everyone financially equal. In the parable the republican father suggests that the liberal philosophy would want both girls to have the same grade point average. The parable is talking about GPA but it is really talking about income. If conservatives think liberals want everyone to have the same amount of income they are just plain wrong. We liberals do not advocate for the government to take all the income of this country and divide it equally so that every person is just as rich AND as poor as everyone else. The very term REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH sounds like a word has been left out. Conservatives would have you think we were advocating the EQUAL REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH, and that is a an implied lie.

The father in the parable is using grades as a representation for dollars, but there is a lot of difference between grades and dollars. One could make the argument that what is unfair with nickels is equally unfair with five billion nickels, but for most people there is a difference. What if the grade point difference was like this: Audrey has a 2.O and the liberal girl has a 9,000,000.0. If we are proposing to take 1.0 from the liberal girl and giving it to Audrey so that now Audrey has a 3.0 and the liberal girl has a 8,999,999.0. GPA It may still be unfair, but it just doesn’t seem like it’s as big a deal to most folk.

The parable is actually a TEA-BAGGER I HATE TAXES parable. The issue of taxes being fair or unfair is not a simple issue. If each one of us lived on an island by ourselves then we would be obligated to no one, we would be responsible for ourselves, and we would thrive from our good choices and suffer from our bad choices. But we do not live in isolation, we live in communities. When humans live in close proximity we have a society (or a civilization.) In order to live in close proximity we must have laws so that our lives and property can be protected. To give laws meaning they have to be enforced and enforcement requires a government, and government workers have to be paid. Cities, and states, and nations are expensive, and taxation is the way the bills are paid. Taxation is the cost of civilization.

But living in a civilization involves more than just having laws and law enforcers. If we are civil, if we are civilized, it means that we accept a certain degree of responsibility for one another. I know an 11 year old child suffering from mental retardation and cerebral palsy. This child was abandoned by his mother. Had he been born in Nazi Germany he would have been eliminated because he is defective. Perhaps there are those among us today that would support terminating broken, economically expensive beings. This kid is always going to be dependent on others for survival for the rest of his life. It was not his fault that his mother abandoned him. It wasn’t his choice to be mentally retarded or to have cerebral palsy. A tea-bag conservative would probably say the mother has no right to abandon that child and should be forced to take care of the child, or forced to pay the cost of that child’s care. If no parent can be located, then teabag republicans would say that churches an charitable organizations should step in and take care of that child. It is estimated that there are 764,000 children and adults in the United States suffering from cerebral palsy. Realistically, how many of you think that we can get the churches to take care of every victim of cerebral palsy? And this is only one condition that often requires life time care. Consider quadriplegics? There are 250,000 Americans with spinal cord injured. Each year there are approximately 11,000 new injuries. The average lifetime costs for quadriplegics, is $1.35 million.

When good stuff needs to happen, and when that good stuff is expensive, then it just makes sense that all of us would agree to pay for the good stuff, and the burden will be easier to carry when it is carried by everyone.

UNEMPLOYMENT: What Goes Down Must Go UP First

There is a quote that adds some insight into the unemployment issue:

Statistics are like a drunk with a lampost: used more for support than illumination. Sir Winston Churchill British politician (1874 - 1965)

Give the masses a statistic and you turn the simmering masses, turning the masses into boiling, over reactive churning asses. We have this knee jerk tendency to hear the statistic and to believe whatever the statistic citer wants us to believe. Often we feel that believing the statistic must be believed, must be accepted because statistics are facts -- aren’t they? After all, to have a statistic means something was counted with actual numbers, and some mathematical magic was applied to the numbers and that is all factually stuff – right?

I have a love/hate relationship to statistics, and, being a part of the masses I am not alone in my love and distain for statistics. We are surrounded by polls, submerged by surveys, engulfed by research, and buried under avalanches of the latest focus group results. A statistic seems like a conclusion. If you count stuff and calculate an average that is an irrefutable fact – isn’t it?
We have this inclination to believe statistics without question. I believe Prim Minister Churchhill got it right. Statics can be illuminating and helpful, but we should maintain a healthy dose of doubt, and seek to understand the way a statistic was gathered and how the results have been interpreted. There are stupid statistics out there.

47.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot...
quoted from www.gullible.info/

I once read in Parade Magazine that 100,000 dogs die each year from falling out of the beds of pickup trucks. If you love dogs as much as I do, this statistic is shocking. But if you start to examine the numbers the persuasive point quickly dulls. If each and every year 100,000 dogs die this way that would mean that 247 dogs would have to die this way every day, 11 dogs would have to fall out of pickup trucks every hour. If this statistic is correct then 2,000 dogs a year per state would have to fall out of pickup trucks and senselessly die. But I am 59 years old and I have never once heard about someone who’s dog died from falling out of the back of their F-150. I’m fairly certain that dogs do fall out of pickup trucks, and dogs do die from this stupid way of hauling the one life form that loves them unconditionally, but the statistic is shocking, convincing, and ridiculous. Looking a little closer to the Parade Magazine article and you’ll see a source citation. The statistic came from the Humane Society.

Those that hate progressives, and those people that hate having a black President are eager to find any statistic that shows that Obama’s efforts to stimulate the economy are failing. When some statistic factory produces the latest employment figures and those figures are low, the naysayers joyfully point to the numbers and say, “He is failing!”

The problem with unemployment statistics is not just numbers counted – it is the numbers of unemployed and underemployed people who are NOT counted. The definition of unemployment excludes a huge number of unemployed and underemployed people. The counters ONLY count people actually, actively looking for work. The counters do not count the unemployed people who have given up. The data gatherers do not count the unemployed people who have grown so discouraged that they have given up and stopped looking for work. There are huge numbers of unemployed people who would like to work but have stopped looking because they are just so tired of rejection. Unemployment figures do not include the people who have hunkered down and are waiting for the economy to turn around. There are a lot of people who lost good jobs, couldn’t find jobs that paid what they had been making. Unemployment figures don’t count big equipment salesmen who lost their jobs and now work at Burger King. These underemployed people have jobs, so they are NOT counted, but these people can’t live forever on minimum wage. When the economy turns around, when the stimulus starts working again, these people will start looking for jobs like the once they had before the great recession.

When the economy starts to improve, when the stimulus begins to stimulate the economy the discouraged unemployed people turn into hopeful unemployed people and they start looking for work again. Guess what happens next? The number of unemployed people goes UP. The truth not included in unemployment figures is that when the economy starts to improve, the first sign of improvement is not unemployment going down – it is unemployment going UP. For the economy to improve the numbers MUST go UP before they can come DOWN. Having MORE unemployed people makes it look like the economy is still circling the drain, but “it ain’t necessarily so.”

Why We Don't Have Universal Health Care in the USA

Universal Health Care for the USA

I like President Obama, and for me he is a huge improvement over George W. That does not mean I agree with Mr. Obama on everything. Actually, I am surprised to find that I agree with Mr. Obama on almost nothing. I am a committed liberal, an obsessed progressive, and, (I know this is going to shock the Tea-Bag Birther Death Panel Republicans) Mr. Obama is a moderate. Barack Obama is a centrist.

I find myself in an odd situation. I am a fierce advocate for health reform, and I want Mr. Obama to win on health reform. At the same time, I don’t want the health reform that seems to be coming our way. It appears that the health reform that might pass will be a mandate for citizens to buy health insurance. That is government forcing almost everyone to buy health insurance, and that is not government providing health care for everyone.

What seems to be coming our way is a boondoggle benefiting the health insurance industry. There is a claim that there will be government assistance for people who can’t afford to buy health insurance, but who trusts that the assistance will be adequate? Bureaucrats develop regulations, they have a chart, and they look at income, calculate what you can afford, look over the rim of their glasses and say, “According to this chart you can afford $200 a month. On paper it may look like you can afford to pay $200 a month but you also know that another $200 a month bill is going to pull you under financially.

I would worry about this, but I’m told it will take up to 10 years for the full effect of the health reform legislation to kick in. I fear that as soon as Tea Baggers take over the Congress and/or the White House there will a frantic mêlée to dismantle Obama’s Health Reform.

I voted for Obama, and I like Obama. I never expected I would agree with Obama on everything. This may shock the Tea-bagger, Death Squad, Birthers, but in my eyes Obama is a centrist, a middle of the road moderate Democrat.

I’m so progressive (so Liberal) that the President I could agree with wholeheartedly is and may always be, unelectable. I find myself in the odd position of wanting Obama to succeed with health reform, and not wanting Obama to succeed. I have grave reservations about what is heading for passage. I want to translate my reservations into words, but I am not in the least expecting real, meaningful health care has a snowballs chance of surviving a July day in Presidio, Texas.

When American’s say, “Our nation can’t afford Universal (single payer) health care,” they are either ignorant, or lying. We can afford to pay for what we are motivated to pay for. There is plenty of money coming in to pay for National Health Care IF our citizens wanted it.
The United Stated could afford National Health Care by: cutting spending in other areas, or raising taxes, or borrowing money. Those opposed to universal health care object to raising taxes, and increasing the national debt. They may agree to cut spending, but not to use the money elsewhere, but to give it back to the richest of our citizens. See the point? The ability to pay for single payer national health care exists, but the objectors are unwilling to do what would have to be done to fund it.

Let us just be honest. When people say, “We can’t afford National Health Care for all,” what they mean is that we can afford it, but we are choosing not to pay that cost.

Why not? Why don’t the majority of us support health care for all? Here are some of the reasons.

Many Americans feel that health care is not a basic human right, it is a privilege that goes to those who are lucky enough to afford it. This is the one and only reason that we do not have access to health care available to all our people.

Being a wild-eyed Liberal, I disagree with this position, of course. Most of the world, including (officially at least) the United States, agree that access to health care IS a basic Human Right. In 1948 the United Nations adopted something called The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of oneself and one’s family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care.”

The United States has veto power in the United Nations and did not veto this Declaration.
Having a fancy car is not a universal right, it is a privilege you can have if you can afford to buy a fancy car. Having soda pop is not a universal right, but access to drinking water is (or should be).

Now obviously there are human rights that exist and millions of humans living without those rights. We might agree that if a human exists they have a basic human right to inhale. Maybe you would agree that a human has a right NOT to be raped, NOT to be a slave, Not to be murdered. Most would agree that a human (just because they exist) has the right to think what they want to think, and worship the way they want to worship. These may be rights, but there are still many humans that are raped, enslaved, and murdered. There are humans who are punished, imprisoned, and executed because of how they think. There are humans who are punished, imprisoned, and executed because of how they worship.

I believe that access to real health care is a human right. There are poor countries that can’t afford to ensure that their citizens have that right, but the United States isn’t one of them. The top 10% percent of our tax payers control 71% of the entire wealth of the world. This is still a rich nation, and this nation could afford single payer universal health care if they wanted to – they just do not want to.

WOULD I BE WRONG ON PURPOSE?

For years, when anyone would point out my ineptitude I would try to turn their criticism into a joke. One of my standard replies to having my flaws pointed out was to say, “WOULD I BE WRONG ON PURPOSE?”

It is a good question and worthy of my consideration. What I’m wondering is this: do I do stuff to sabotage myself? I’m not thinking about anyone other than to assume that since I am human, that I may share some characteristic with other humans. At first it seems obvious that I would not be wrong on purpose, because most of us don’t like being wrong, and I torture myself for my wrongs all the time, so why would I invite the wrong and waller (that’s southern for wallow) in self-recrimination, inner condemnation, remorse, guilt, and shame? Being wrong has consequences, and they aren’t the good kind.

Nevertheless, I do think there are times, (never more than 90 percent of the time) when I am wrong on purpose. I sabotage myself because each failure, screw-up, fumble becomes confirmation that I am a flawed damaged being unworthy of a happy life.

I guess I need to read the Book of Job again because when bad stuff happens my first thought is: “There must be a reason this happened. I must have been bad, or sinful, or stupid, or careless, inept and so this bad is my entire fault.”

When I look back over my life I see that I have done things I knew would hurt me, because it would also corroborate the belief I grew up in -- that I was dumb, and idiot, not good enough, and it substantiates my conversion to the almost religious faith in my own unworthiness.

So, seeing this, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or even a rock’n’roller to figure out that if I don’t enjoy feeling horrible about myself then I should STOP, I should begin reclaiming my right to life by at least not joining in with the rest of the world in castigating myself for having the audacity to exist. Not sabotaging myself can be my starting place. Not being WRONG ON PURPOSE can be the commitment for this final phase of my life.

Hope, Hopeless, and the Sisyphus Solution

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.
Joseph Campbell

What do you do when you don’t like the life you have? What action would you take if you felt your lot in life sucked like a vacuum cleaner? Obviously if you don’t like where you are, or what you are pressed to do, you can change. You can quit a job and get another. You can break-up, get a divorce, go AWOL, or take your ball and go home. Can’t you?

If I’ve heard this once I’ve heard it 27 times, maybe a thousand times:

IF LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS MAKE LEMON AIDE!

This is good advice. You should take what you have and figure out how to make it better, but this advice is too simplistic. If life gives you lemons, but life also makes every form of sweetener unavailable to you, then lemon aide is not an option. Maybe you can do something else with lemons, other than aide them, but figuring out that other less obvious option can be so difficult that the lemon owners may never come up with answers.

I think, for a lot of us, we are condemned to a life similar to the one with which Sisyphus was left. Maybe you don’t know the story of Sisyphus.

The Sisyphus Story

Sisyphus was the son of a king and went into the family business. Sisyphus
founded a city (known in the Bible as Corinth) and Sisyphus crowned himself the
first city KING. But like all Kings, Sisyphus was worried about people pulling
some sort of coup d'etat. To ensure his grip on power was permanent, Sisyphus
broke the hospitality laws of his day and would kill stranger travelers that
came into his city. Sisyphus also blabbed one of the secrets of Zeus (the head
god). When you piss off the head guy you have gone too far, and Sisyphus done
just that.

Zeus ordered the Death god (Thanatos) to put handcuffs on the
dude and haul Sisyphus to the Underworld (the place where all the dead go).
Sisyphus was a devious dude. When Thanatos showed up, Sisyphus said how much he
admired those cuffs, and how curious he was about how they work, and Thanatos
was feeling all proud and all because he’d designed these handcuffs himself. So
when Sisyphus asked Tanatos to put the cuffs on so he could see exactly how they
worked, Thanatos did, and suddenly Sisyphus had Death in shackles and put him in prison and OUT of commission.

The big problem with putting Death in chains is that no one died. A guy could have all his arms and legs cut off, and his guts ripped out, and he would not die. The Generals were all frustrated because no matter how well the battle went the enemy just would not die. So one of the Generals went and rescued Death allowing Thanatos to go on doing his business, and Sisyphus was delivered to the Underworld. Before Sisyphus was taken, however, he asked his wife to do something he knew she would never do. He asked her to through his naked body into the town square.

When Sisyphus’s last request was not carried out, he started complaining to
Persephone, the Goddess of Innocence and Queen of the Underworld, and eventually he got Persephone on his side. Persephone agreed to allow Sisyphus to leave the Underworld so he could go back to the land of the living and scold his wife for not following his last wish.

Obviously, this was just another trick. Once back in the land of the living Sisyphus refused to return to the Underworld. Now Zeus was really steamed and got a real hit man to capture Sisyphus and this time his punishment was not just being condemned to the Underworld, this time a really unique punishment was devised.

Sisyphus was condemned to push a boulder up a steep incline, so steep that no one could succeed in pushing that boulder over the top. So the boulder would, at some point, roll back down the incline. Sisyphus would then have to go back and try again. Over and over Sisyphus would try to push that boulder over the top and all the time he knew he could never succeed. Sisyphus was condemned to perform a task that he could never hope to complete, and he could never stop trying.

In a way, Sisyphus had a lemon life, but there was no way he could ever turn it into lemon aide. Now I identify with Sisyphus, and I imagine there are a few million other folk that feel the same way I do about the Sisyphus trap.

There is one other choice available to a guy who has lots of lemons and no sweetener. If you can’t make something sweet out of your stash of lemons, you can learn to like lemons just the way they are. If you feel stuck in your sour life, and there is no way you can find to sweeten up that life, and no other way out that you can think of, you can chose to accept the life you have, you can just resign yourself to the life you’ve got.

There is an advantage to giving up your search for fairness, and striving for a more enjoyable life. If you stop struggling for something forever out of reach, at least now you have a life in which you are struggling. Before you may have been trying this and trying that, and complaining, and hating your circumstances, but once you give up, once you resign yourself to the life you have you suddenly do have a life that is slightly less miserable: you can stop looking, stop struggling, and just live. Your circumstances have not changed, but that constantly reaching for something forever out of reach, is no longer a part of that stuck life.

I can hear my therapist, my wife, and my two friends object.

“But if you give up, if you are resigned to your unhappy life, you are also choosing to live in a hopeless life. You are living WITHOUT HOPE!”

I’m not opposed to hope. I am opposed to false hope. I think real hope is a motivator but I also think that false home is the trigger that fires off bullets. These kinds of bullets:

• depression
• anger
• anxiety
• obsessive compulsive disorder
• bipolar disorder

I know that you can search your back copies of Reader’s Digest, and Guide Post Magazine and you will find stories about people who thought their miserable life was hopeless, and then, God, or some motivated doctor, or Karma, or fate, or dumb luck shows up with a solution to their problem they had no idea existed.

You can use such stories to be a cheering section in your brain that goes, “Keep trying! Never give up!” “There’s always hope!”

I am not saying that there are hopeful situations, and hopeless situations and that I know which is which. When Christopher Reeves (Superman) broke his neck and became a quadriplegic he still had hope that medical research scientists would come up with a way to grow spinal cords. If repairing the spine was impossible then maybe there would be some advanced mechanical prosthesis developed that would allow Superman to walk again. Maybe Mr. Reeves and people in similar circumstances need to believe there is hope. Without hope they would lose their will to live. AND there are times when people give up, surrender their will to live, and stop living.

Maybe there is always hope, but I still believe there is realistic hope and pipe-dream hope. No one can know for sure which is which, but sometimes you can be pretty dawl-gone confident in one or the other.

Oh, yeah, there are times when there is hope, there is a way out of your situation, but it is not a way you are willing to follow. You could live if doctors cut out your child’s liver and transplanted it to you, but doing so would cause the child to die. There is hope. There is a solution. But it is not a solution you are willing to take.

You could have financial problems and there is no way you will ever earn enough money fast enough to pay off the debt, but you could rob a bank, or kill your spouse for the insurance money, but those choices are choices most of us are just not willing to take.

Sisyphus is an example of a guy who got himself into one jam after another, and was diligent, committed and cleaver about finding solutions to situations that appeared to be hopeless. Sisyphus was successful several times, but eventually he got that boulder pushing sentence, and finally he was in a place he couldn’t get out of, forced to do a job that made no sense. That seems like my life. I am not wild about the life I have now. For more than 40 years I tried to get out of bad situations and into good situations. It was more like one of those “out of the frying pan, into the fire” deals. Like Sisyphus I tried to escape the aspects of my life that make me miserable, and now, just like Sisyphus, I find I am condemned to the life I have. There hundreds of things about my life I wish were better, but the solution requires me to do something I am not willing to do, or the solution just isn’t there (or probably isn’t there.)

I am not sure how Sisyphus did it. Thank about it. Sisyphus is still, this very day, pushing that dang boulder up that same incline. I like to think that Sisyphus did what I am doing. I am resigning myself to the life I have, and resignation is actually a peephole through the confining walls of my life. But, by resigning myself to the life I have now, does actually change my life, in a positive way. This may not be true for everyone, but it is true for me, Sisyphus, maybe a whole bunch of others. A less than ideal life dominated by hope-inspired struggles is worse than a less than ideal life free of hope-inspired struggles.

I'm About As Wrong As Wrong Can Get!

There is an old joke based on a common saying: If a man is talking in the forest and there are no woman around, is he still wrong. In this joke the sense of wrongness is being blamed on women. The implication is that women are critical of men, especially the man in their life, and woman are the blame for men feeling wrong all the time.

There is an Ogden Nash poem that sends out the same message:

To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.
Ogden Nash


I feel wrong. I can say with confidence that I do not feel wrong because of my wife. I am absolutely, without reservation, sure that Kathie is not the reason for my wrong feelings, because I felt like the distillate of wrong most of my life. Probably, if there is ever a time when I feel right, that right feeling can be blamed on my wife. I do not feel wrong all the time, but if you were to measure the rightness in my life, to the wrongness in my life, it would look like a teaspoon of right compared to an ocean full of wrong. My wife has put up with me for almost 39 years, and that makes her a saint. I am not a fun person to be around, because my pores ooze wrongness. If you feel like you are mostly wrong most of the time then you will lack self-confidence. How can you be confident of anything if you are pretty damn sure that you will be wrong more often than not?

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde

I was drug up by black belt fundamentalists in THE TRUE CHURCH, and the dogma pounded into us there was so inflexible that it is like trying to fit your hand into latex gloves three sizes too small. You can try, but you’ll never fit in, and the more you try the more your faith will tear away from you.

One of the things that is wrong with religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with answers which are not really answers at all.
Richard Dawkins

Now, in my memory, not only was that the dogma of my childhood, but my parents made it very clear to me that I was about the least perfect life form to ever inhabit the earth. I was called stupid so often that it felt like my middle name. I was stupid, a stupid idiot, a knot-head, a dummy. I was constantly corrected. Don’t eat like that, don’t talk when I’m talking, why can’t you do anything right?

Some blame wrong acts on the intrinsic badness of mankind.

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.
James Madison

It is hard to argue with this notion, because so much bad seems to be going on, all the time. But maybe the notion of wrongness, and badness, and sinfulness, are just that: notions. I was raised to assume that there was good and bad, right and wrong, the saved and sinners. It was not just that I was taught this, but I had absolutely no doubt that I would never be RIGHT ENOUGH to be saved. There was never any question that right existed, but it was absolutely certain that wrong not only existed but it was widely spread over the entire earth.

Well, I’m not 5 years old anymore, but there is a 5 year old hiding inside of me. I have grown up a little. I don’t suffer like I did as a kid. I don’t feel wrong all the time, anymore. Before I felt wrong all the time. Now I only feel wrong most of the time. That’s improvement. In some ways my feelings are like me watching a movie. Part of me is sitting near the back of the theatre, eating popcorn and watching me battle with my feelings, sparring with my negative core beliefs. Sometimes, just before I step into a room where I am going to be pummeled by self-hatred and self-doubt, that other part of me is yelling, “Don’t open that door!”

If you share my tendency to always assume I am wrong then the following may describe you to you:


"I’m not good enough" means that I feel success is just not possible for me.

If you think, "I’m not lovable" then you are feeling, I am not cared enough about to be hated or loved.

If you think, I am unwanted then it means I belong nowhere, I will feel out of place, and in the way forever.

If you believe in your mind "I am defective" then you're saying, it is hopeless for me to even try to improve because I’m made of broken stuff.

If you think, "I am powerless," that means I have no control over my life.

And if you ever think, "I’m ignorant! I am stupid," that is like saying, why try to improve? I’m unteachable, and un-learnable.


Core beliefs are always stated in “I” statements such as the phrase, “I am stupid.” A statement like “Nobody believes I could ever be a lawyer,” is called a supporting belief. The supporting belief is always a prediction. One follows the other. Because THIS is true, that means that THIS OTHER GOAL will be out of your reach forever.

It may not feel like a lie, but let’s just agree for the moment that these core beliefs are untrue. It is possible that other people really do think you are too dumb to be THIS and too UNATTRACTIVE to have a romantic interest, or too weak to make a move or to change. Other folks may view you as a weak-minded, undisciplined, defective loser, because you have made it your job to convince the world that your core beliefs are true. The untrue core belief is what helps other people to label and dismiss you. In other words, these fibbing core beliefs become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

I believe that I trigger my core beliefs when circumstances remind my child mind of times when those entrusted with my care, those charged with the responsibility of nurturing me, instead crushed me like a swollen seed; they smashed me before I had a chance to germinate.
What if Wrong is not Wrong? What if Wrong does not exist? What we call wrong is actually just a choice. Usually when someone does something you think is wrong, you are actually saying, “That choice is not likely to be good for me.”

I remember my Uncle Charles at a gathering of men from THE TRUE CHURCH. These were farmers and ranchers that were suffering from a long Texas drought. Someone lead a group prayer asking God for rain. Uncle Charles objected. He pointed out that while rain would be very helpful to farmers and the pasture land, it would be very bad for a company in town that dried and processed cow manure for shipment to garden centers. The rain would help one group and hurt another. Rain would be right to one group and wrong to another.

I watch the Discovery Channel and sometimes I see something like a polar bear trying to kill and eat a seal. If the bear succeeds the seal dies. If the seal escapes the bear and/or her cubs may starve to death. Which outcome is the wrong outcome? Neither outcome is the wrong outcome. Neither outcome is the right outcome. Either outcome is just an outcome, it is just what happened.

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
Alan Watts

Have you read Mark Twain’s War Prayer?

SEE http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/making/warprayer.html

How unloving it is to pray for victory at war.

It might be war, and it might be a football game, but in any conflict there is going to be a winner, and many of us believe God will be on our side, because why? Will God be on our side because we just want what we want. We think we’ll get a little magical assistance if we pray. If an outcome doesn’t go my way I may feel it is wrong, because the only right way is the way that helps me.

The Road My Road

And Achish said, Whither have ye made a road to day?
1 Samuel 27:10

King
James Bible

My therapist told me to draw a road. That was the beginning and end of her instructions. Obviously the word road has enormous representational significance.

There is the road to ruin, the road to riches, the road to nowhere, Lonesome Roads (played by Andy Griffith), then there is Road Rage, the End of the Road, our marines hit the Dusty Road. We’ve got Gravel Roads, Paved Roads, Asphalt Roads, Cross Roads, Road Closures, Open Roads, and Road Blocks.

There are Roadsters, Road Races, Bad Roads, Wrong Roads, and Dead End Roads. Before GPS we used Road Maps (We unfold but never properly refold them).

Judy Garland sang about following the Yellow Brick Road. We follow Road Safety; or the Rules of the Road, there is a cartoon and actual bird named the Roadrunner. If we are too broke, or too scared to fly we go on Road Trips.

There are books, poems, songs, and movies about roads: Revolutionary Road, The Road Less Traveled, Road House (with Patrick Swayze RIP), the Long and Winding Road (thanks John and Paul), Tobacco Road (I like Steinbeck), On the Road Again (Thanks Willy), On the Road (remember Jack Kerouac?), there are Road Pictures (staring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope), Thunder Road (my actor cousin Jim Beaver was in that sitcom),and the History Channel series: Ice Road Truckers. We care about Road Signs, we make choices at the Fork in the Road, we are concerned about Road Conditions, we travel on Toll Roads, we Hit the Road, there is the Roadway, and let’s not forget Rail Roads.

We hate Uphill Roads, and we usually like Downhill Roads. In hundreds of thousands of counties there is at least one road called Rollercoaster Road. The road I like best is the Road to Recovery.

It is easy to see why the word and idea of Road has so much symbolic potential. Roads take off places and return us to the starting place. The journey of life can be symbolized by the Road. We may have a term Road to Nowhere, but really, in almost every case, roads go somewhere.

To examine the road of my life, I can look at it and see where I came from and extrapolate as to where I am going. I can hear a voice in my head saying, “Hang on texarooty. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

But still I hope it is going to be a Road to Recovery.

WHO AM I ?

The Star Splitter is perhaps my favorite of Robert Frost’s blank verse poems. In this narrative poem the protagonist, Brad McLaughlin, loses his interest in farming and in stead falls in love with the night sky.

He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a lifelong curiosity
About our place among the infinities.


I think it is interesting that the protagonist in this story bares the last name of McLaughlin. The name contains the word Laugh. It is as if the writer wants us to see this character as laughable, or, perhaps Mr. McLaughlin’s obsession is ludicrous, ridiculous, and, yes, laughable. Any man who would burn his own house down so he can by a really good telescope, is a man deeply obsessed with something.

He had been heard to say by several:
`The best thing that we're put here for's to see;
The strongest thing that's given us to see with's
A telescope. Someone in every town
Seems to me owes it to the town to keep one.
In Littleton it might as well be me.'



As the story progressed Mr. McLaughlin and the speaker in the poem went on to spend many nights together studying the stars and talking.

Bradford and I had out the telescope.
We spread our two legs as we spread its three,
Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it,
And standing at our leisure till the day broke,
Said some of the best things we ever said.


The poem ends with some philosophical reflection.

We've looked and looked, but after all where are we?
Do we know any better where we are. . .?


As I take on, what well could be my final quest, I want to do what Brad McLaughlin and the speaker in this poem do, I want to pause and give my life, and life in general a little pensive consideration. After Mr McLaughlin’s extreme choices, after spending night after night looking into the soul of the universe he asks, “. . . where are we?” After giving up his farm, and burning his house down, and after spending hours, nights and years looking at burning orbs suspended in the vastness of space, he wonders if it was worth it. “Do we know any better where we are. . . ?”
If you want to feel free and be free you have to cast of the chains of outer assessments. We must demythologize and demystify ourselves. Eric Hoffer once said that we know ourselves “by hear-say.” That is the problem. We know who we are “by hear-say.”

When I think about it, I realize that most of the literature I like is connected some way with the question, WHO AM I?

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan deals with an Asian American with a strained relationship with her mother, and by hearing the mother’s story she understands both her mother, and gains insight into herself.

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton a first novel by a Tulsa high school student . The writing is a little rough, and the plot a little thin, but this is a great novel for teens, it is a great book to get reluctant readers to read, and it speaks to the adolescent need to define and establish their adult identity.

The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank This young lady found herself living in a world gone crazy, existing under a constant threat of arrest, deportment, and death, and nothing focuses your mind on what is important in life like the possibility of dying in a concentration camp.

Breaking Away (movie) One of my favorite movies. The past industry had been cutting stone for construction, but most of the cutter jobs were gone. You may think it is about a budding bicyclist, but it is really about a group of guys, and one guy in particular trying to carve out

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie (also movie version, Smoke Signals) This guy is one of the finest writers in American, and, as a native American he is truly an American writer. Like The Odyssey and Huckleberry Finn this is a road trip by two frienemies to pick up Victor’s father’s pickup truck and his cremation. Along the way, experience after experience both boys discover who they are and how they relate to one another, their fathers, the REZ, and the world.


If you are so inclined add your own books, movies, and poems that revolve around self discovery and the quest to answer the question: WHO AM I?

I Am Going On A Quest

There is a business in Oklahoma City called the Cock-O-The Walk Bar & Grill. The word Cock-of-the-walk has an interesting definition. Idiom Definitions for 'Cock of the walk' is:

A man who is excessively confident and thinks he's better than other people is the cock of the walk.

Today, in my reading, I came across another work that caused me to stop and think: cocksureness. The word cocksureness contains the word cock which is a euphemism for the penis. I do not think this connection is accidental. I have noticed, throughout my life, that most cocky humans almost always have a cock. It is almost as if being a man comes with a predisposition to be cocky, cocksure, sure, certain, self-confident, decisive, in control of one’s self, of one’s family, and of the world around you, that a true man has will power, a stoic manner, a high threshold for pain, and self-confidence.

Even among males the nerds, the geeks, the wimps and the losers, such as myself, we still know how a real man is suppose to act. We may actually disapprove of the macho man stereotype, and yet we find ourselves attempting to display those traits, especially if the circumstances call for them. I may not be a he-man, but I still sense that this is what a man is supposed to be like. I may believe firmly that the expectations of males is unrealistic, that no single man portrays all of these traits, I may think striving to be A REAL MAN is stupid yet I will still, from time to time, make a run at being A REAL MAN.

Why do so many of us testosterone poisoned human beings strive to be some sort of prototype man? Are these male traits etched into our DNA, or might this be conditioning? Perhaps my image of a man grows out of a historical, cultural inculcation of values. Are we raised up to have this image of being a male, or is it hardwired into us via our genetic makeup?

Could my near instinctual view of maleness, come from the way I was raised? Little girls are given dolls, and little boys (at least back in the 1950s) were given cap pistols. If I were to speak out against this male pigeonholing, I am certain I’d be accused of protesting too much, opposing these manly traits because I lack manliness myself, and there might also be some comment about me being light in the loafers, or a girlyman.

Obviously all men do not share the same values, or have the same image of maleness, just as all women do not share the same image of femaleness. I think of women as being dependent, physically weaker than men, they allow their emotions to flow freely. I expect a woman to say “Ooooooh, it’s a puppy,” and a guy to say, “nice dog.” Women are nurturing, nesting creatures and men are providers, ridged, and usually incapable of talking about their feelings. Women want a commitment and marriage, and men want sex and to avoid commitments whenever possible. My image of what women are like is as meaningless as my image of what men are like. We are not run through a machine and pressed into a particular shape with set behavioral or emotional traits.

Sometimes we explain away the behaviors of men that don’t fit the stereotype, by saying, “He has a strong feminine side.” A man who can use the phrase “my feminine side” is most certainly an open minded progressive man. Or gay.

There is hardly anything more manly than going on a quest. Knights went on a quest to find the Holy Grail and in that effort they did battle with dragons, other warriors, and with themselves. But ultimately, all quests are about asking questions. The one on a quest is a questioner.

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers.

From Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke:

The questioner man does not really fit with the qualities of manhood so popular with the Southerners all around me now.

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate -- that's my philosophy.

The Skin of Our Teeth,
1942 by Thornton Wilder

My parents could never be the parents I thought I needed.
My wife turned out not to be the kind of wife I thought I was getting.
And I fell far short of my own expectations as a father, husband, son, and provider. The selfish thing that is most important to me is my art work, and even there I am not filling my own needs.

Where am I? Who am I?
How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
How did I come into the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And If I am compelled to take part in it,
Where is the director?
I want to see him.

~Soren Kierkegaard

I am going on a quest. I will be asking a lot of questions. I will ask questions that, as far as I can tell, have no answers. It is interesting to notice that it is very common for a question to have ONE answer. But every answer can fit with an infinite number of questions.

For example: If I say, "what does 2 plus 2 equal? The Answer is 4. The question has one answer. But the answer 4 can answer millions of questions. 4 -- How many people were in the car? How old is your daughter? How many years will you be in college? How many years have you been married? How many eggs do you want in your omelet?

You know, I read that there is a lot of worry about the loss of privacy because of facial recognition technology. The fear is that there will someday be more cameras on the street, and Big Brother will be scanning the faces of everyone on the street. The aim would be track down and capture criminals, but what if that technology is used to track down and detain people who have the wrong partial parties, or the wrong religion, or the wrong writers, or the wrong artists. If the Chinese had facial recognition during the Cultural Revolution Chairman Mao Zedong could have totally annihilated the intelligentsia of China . But the problem is not going to be the ability to gather the data. The problem is going to be that facial recognition is going to gather too much data. Facial Recognition will scan every face and soon the number of faces will be so vast that only the highest priority targets will be found, because it will be just too complicated to analyze every single face. Too much information can be just as bad as too little.

Answers are everywhere. The right question brings order to the mass of answers. Here is my plan: to go on a quest for questions. I will not be cocksure of anything. I will, however, have powerfully potent doubts. Doubts give birth to questions.