In the trenches of life
If man is the more normal, healthy and happy, the more he can successfully repress, displace, deny, rationalize, dramatize himself and deceive others, then it follows that the suffering of the neurotic comes from painful truth. Spiritually the neurotic has been long where psychoanalysis wants to bring him to without being able to, namely at the point of seeing through the deception of the world of sense, the falsity of reality. He suffers, not from all the pathological mechanism that are psychically necessary for living, but in the refusals of these mechanisms that is just what robs him of the illusions important for living. He is much nearer to the actual truth psychologically than the others and it is just that from which he suffers. – Otto Rank (From The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, a Pulizer winner in ‘73 and by far the most important book I have ever read, by a huge margin. Although not perfect, it examined me while I read it, brought me to rolling tears of honesty multiple times and made me realize what I was searching for. It’s changed my life.)
As Ivor told me… just write it out, that’s how guys like us heal and grow. It’s our form of art.
Before I start: Thank you to Josh for going through this with me (you know my mind better than anyone), to Catherine for teaching me so much about what really matters in my life, to Maggie for letting me feel I’m not crazy for pushing my thoughts so hard and finally to Edmund for knowing we share different opinions but not letting it jeopardize our lifelong friendship. This is for you guys and for perhaps for my future kids to see what made their father the man he is, faults, talents, faith and all.
I’m usually very happy about life and stoked for what it has to offer and lately I’ve lost a good chunk of that deep hope and happiness. Sure I will be eating some of my old words, but when I’m wrong I am glad I found out as soon as possible. The unhappiness was just the shift I needed, to truly feel loneliness is overwhelming but it taught me in a way that nothing else could. What brought me to this unhappiness? Disillusionment.
Imagine what it would be like to see things as they really are, to truly know nothing and see the illusion of reality. There is a balance I’m finding out and have come to grips that to be normal you have to be in a illusion to some degree. I don’t want the whole truth anymore. Finally I feel that I arrived at the heavy gate to reality. Pushing it open all that greeted me was lonely neurosis (Def: Neurosis is a “catch all” term that refers to any mental imbalance that causes distress, but, unlike a psychosis or some personality disorders, does not prevent rational thought or an individual’s ability to function in daily life.)
I looked at what kind of life continual truth searching had to offer and shook my head, no thanks. Truth will set you free? To a certain point, keep peeling back the layers and you can end up like a troubled artist or lonely intellectual, people who don’t let the secure barriers of time tested culture wrap a warm blanket of comfort and drunkenness around fear. Everyone eventually faces up to the truth of life and pays its dues. It’s in the mechanisms of culture and society where we can overlook the main problem of life: our eventual death.
Thinking about how I will feel when my parents pass away scares me I have no idea what it will do to me.
So what am I going to do now that I had enough of a taste of disillusionment? I’ll let that happen as soon or as late as it takes but I’m done pushing it, its taken about six years to get to this point. It had its run, but I’m done with that, something I needed to do, but since I want a happy life, I’m moving on. As Josh would say, I stopped believing in Rock ‘n Roll. What is valuable and makes me happy is my loved ones, making a positive difference in the world and being ok with the course life takes. Regardless if it makes me soft or not, I’ll continue to enjoy simple prayers and see where that leads me. I am mindful of what Carl Jung said in his theory of neurosis:
The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who had lost their faith (Jung, [1961] 1989:140).
It’s time to find some faith, find some hope and let it happen. Ideologies will always keep evolving but we will always search (and I believe we should) in ways to become immortal. I’ll always be in the process of becoming. I’ll admit it, I want to be a hero is some way. Sounds crazy huh? But don’t we all want that? To live forever or to create something that lives forever that improves life for others. Maybe a book, an idea, a piece of art, unconditional love that spreads long after one fades?
It’s the inescapable human condition. Our bodies are temporal but our conscience is god like and has no limits. We stand in the awe of why life can be so expansive, why morals feel right, why we love staring at the ocean because it seems to go on forever. For me, if I don’t allow my mind to reach out to this unknown life force (maybe even call it God) I will be unhappy. I don’t want to predict the next couple months, just let them happen.
What am I going to do with all this energy I used to invest into finding truth? I’ll move it into the next logical and useful thing in my life, focusing that energy into learning how to give my life. It’s foolish to think I can stop my drive, it’s how I’m built, I can just choose to pick what I do with all that fuel.
I’m not trying to invent the wheel, I’m taking notes from mentors I have, trying to emulate tried and tested ways of successful family men I want to become. I’ll still fight for the proper treatment of all, but I won’t think I have anymore right to saying I got all the answers to people with different ideologies. We all use some form of belief to be happy, and I’m finally cool with that.
