It’s been on my mind lately.
The question is, would I be better off if I just gave up, let everything fall apart, did nothing I did not feel like doing, and let entropy reign for a while.
It would be the opposite of my “just keep going” programming and the idea would be to let my system truly fully rest so that it could come back fresh and strong.
Other people seem to do this. Admittedly, they’re not usually planning it ahead of time as a conscious choice, they just fall apart now and then.
Which shows that they are smarter than I am, at least. They “know”, on a deep level, that they need these periods of rest and renewal to do “self care” and look after their sanity and their spiritual health now and then.
And yes. I am primarily talking about women. We men are not that wise.
Take my own example. I just keep limping along and keeping everything exactly the same because deep down, I am convinced that if I lay down,. I will never get up again.
And I can see why I feel that way. To truly lay my burdens down would mean entering into brand new territory for me and I have no idea what lies in wait for me there.
And replacing the unknown with the worst case scenario in our minds is a very human thing to do.
I don’t know what’s there. Ergo what’s there is the most horrible thing I can imagine. Even that is preferable than not knowing at all.
Here be dragons, and all that.
And to let it all go would be to surrender this life-pattern of mine on the hopes of coming up with something way better once I have my rest and renewal.
That is technically asking me to take a lot on faith. But I don’t really see it that way. The idea that I need to reset and renew seems sensible and logical to me.
And honestly, what do I have to lose? My oh so precious worthless life? My pathetic world of video games and naps and a total lack of worth or meaning? This soulless existence clinging to life despite the staggering weight of my own failure to enter the adult world at all despite being 51 fucking years old?
Gee, wouldn’t that be a tragedy.
And who knows, maybe after a fresh reboot I will be a hell of a lot saner and stronger and smarter. Maybe that invisible wall I hide behind will be a lot thinner and more negotiable. Maybe I will be able to pass through the fires of eternity so that I might have all that is impure and unworthy of me cleansed from my soul. Maybe, at long last, I will finally learn not just to survive but to cope.
This all makes perfect sense to me. But logic alone won’t get me anywhere. All it can do is lead me in circles so big that I forget I’ve already seen this tree or that rock a million times before. Real progress will come from turning to face the flames.
Like I said before, it will take voluntarily choosing to do something that I know will be scary and/or painful and/or hard when I could go on without doing so forever.
In doing so, I would be placing value on my own self-actualization beyond the shallow, callow, sallow logic of my depression’s infinite apologists.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the things we do to actualize ourselves rarely if ever make logical and pragmatic sense. It will always be safer and easier to languish in the doldrums while we slowly rot away on the inside. And the things we need to do in order to fight that decay will always seem “crazy” to our lazy, degenerate selves.
But if we are wise, we do them anyway, and thus enable our own spiritual growth.
More after the break.
Holy crap, Joe!
So I wander out to the kitchen to make supper and I hear someone out on out little balcony so I shout out a greeting, when who should come out but Joe!
I know why he’s here. We’ve been told they are going to be working on our balconies soon-ishly, and therefore we need to get all our stuff off of ours.
And that’s a lot of stuff. We’ve basically been using it as a supplemental storage area. All that was required was to throw some tarps over the stuff to protect it from the rain.
Not that the balcony gets a lot of rain, The wind has to be blowing from a very specific direction in order for any rain to make it to the balcony. Otherwise, the balcony of the apartment above us is our stuff’s umbrella.
Anyhow, holy shit, there I was, laying eyes on Joe for the first time in six months! Unexpectedly! What a happy surprise.
Then who should walk in from the front door but Joe’s dad, Joe Senior.
And that was…. a problem.
Because, as is my wont during the hot summer months, I was in a style of dress I affectionately think of as “Winnie the Pooh mode”.
See, that’s how you know he’s a stuffed animal, otherwise you could see everything.
So there I was naked between shirt and socks with Joe Senior out there on the balcony and me spending a long time standing with the fridge door open, shielding me.
It was no big deal, really. I slipped back into my room without them even noticing as they were busy with the stuff on the balcony.
Still, I want to know something : Did you know this was going to happen tonight, Julian? Because if so, you really should have told me.
I would have put some pants on for my sortie to the kitchen and saved myself an admittedly fair trivial amount of stress.
But hey, at least I got to see Joe!
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.