Or in other words, how reasonable is it reasonable to expect oneself to be?

After all, we don’t want to be unreasonable about it.

Patient readers will recognize that I have dealt with this topic before, although probably not in those exact words.

Another way of expressing the sentiment is “moderation in all things, including moderation”. The idea is that human beings, in order to be happy productive citizens, need to relax, let their hair down, and be unreasonable and/or excessive sometimes.

Essentially, we need to retract the superego and let the id and ego out of play andburn off some steam time to time.

And for most people, this is no big deal. Over the years, they figure out what they can do to alleviate the pressure and make that part of their emotional hygiene routine.

Or, less desirably, they just become irritable now and then and this inevitably lead them to getting super pissed off at someone or something and they get catharsis that way.

Personally, I can’t imagine being that emotionally irresponsible. I find the idea of lacking the self-awareness to realize what is happening and the strength of will to take steps to make sure it doesn’t to be, quite frankly, disgusting.

But maybe that’s the problem.

Because for the all too rational types like me, that’s not acceptable. I demand far, far more self control of myself than that.

But that means there is no room left for any kind of outlet. Without the ability to relax my self-control from time to time, those pressures are left to build inside me and my poor abused and underfed id never gets to express itself.

Jesus, I wouldn’t treat a dog this way. Or a child. When it comes to others, I totally get the need to express their id now and then.

But not for myself. Somehow, for me,the rules are different.

And I think at the heart of it is a kind of superstition. Deep down, I feel like if I was to relax and let go, something terrible would happen. I would go completely crazy, or at least I would do something reallly crazy, and I would end up wishing I hadn’t done it.

And there’s the question of having little to no experience asking myself what I want. I have never had much money, and so that question has not come up because I never had a lot of options in the first place.

And given my issues with option paralysis, perhaps that as for the best. I can totally imagine working my myself into a lather of anxiety and confusion when faced with the “problem” of a fat wallet and time on my hands.

Anyhow, what matters is that I honestly have no idea what I want most of the time. I have little experience with acting to satisfy a desire.

Instead, I live a measured, controlled life where I mostly make do with what I have and what I have has been determined by a very careful expenditure of resources which does not allow for any spontaneous indulgence of desire.

And honestly, I don’t know how to live any other way. Deep in my mind lies the conviction that to do anything else would lead to disaster.

Or worse, to the complete unknown.

Personally, I prefer disaster.

It’s a lot more predictable.

More after the break.

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My world, not yours

I suppose there are worse things than living in your own little world.

Sure, it’s cold and it’s dark and it’s damp and it’s lonely in my pretty little bathosphere at the bottom of the ocean. The air is still and stale and I can’t even remember the last time I was warm and/or dry,.

And sometimes I hear the strangest noises…..

But at least I am safe. Safe from….. um…. bad stuff. Bad stuff of some kind that exists out there beyond the glass somewhere.

I assume. Truth be told, I don’t remember exactly what chased me into this cage. i just know it was bad and that if I tried to escape it will GET me.

And even if there’s nothing out there waiting to GET me, this is the only world I know now. I know that at one point, I lived a nearly normal life on dry land, but that was so long ago that it almost feels like it happened to somebody else.

But what that leaves with is my cramped little world and the big bad world outside it which is virtually unknown to me now.

So it’s me versus a planet sized question mark. There are so many possibilities out there and so much stimulation and no way to control what happens to me and no way of knowing I will be okay and I am getting a panic attack just trying to think about it.

This is what happens when your distrust of everything runs so deep that only that which you can control and predict is considered safe and all else is chaos annihilation madness to the nth degree.

This is clearly not the way to be. It’s very deranged and unhealthy. A healthy organism learns to deal with life on the fly by getting used to it. It copes because it has no choice.

But the degenerate organisms like myself know that there is always a choice : you can always refuse to deal with things and run away instead.

And so you never adapt. And that means you never improve. You never get used to life. You never get stronger. You never get tougher. You never learn to handle things.

So life remains just as scary and hard and dark and confusing as it is to a small child, even if you have a brain the size of a planet.

And I don’t know how to escape that. The easy, glib, and insufficient answer would be to gradually expose myself to reality in slowly increasing doses, but there is no way I have the willpower, emotional stability, or executive function to do that.

And who is going to do it for me? Who would be willing to hold my hand as I take baby steps into the real world? Who would be willing to nudge me in the right direction when I stop, and stop me when I am about to hurt myself?

Who would be willing to do all that?

Nobody, that’s who.

And if I can’t do it myself, and nobody can do it for me, then I guess I am fucked.

Story of my life, really.

Might as well just go to sleep.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.