Yup, I’m sick

It’s officially a chest cold now, although cold tend to move around on me, so it might become a head cold eventually.

But right now, I have the scratchy throat and heavy chest that indicates a chest cold. And I am tired. So very tired. Not sleepy, just…. not firing on the majority of my cylinders. Writing these words is taking a lot out of me, and it is not usually ever this hard. But I am plum wore out.

It’s a FRED night. Not sure if I should go. I am quite ill feeling, but that’s not enough in and of itself. I feel like crap all the time, can’t let that stop me. But I am also presumably quite contagious, and so there’s that to figure into the equation. I am especially worried about Barb. She’s a delicate creature and I would hate to be responsible for putting her in the hospital.

And I have to admit, staying in and just ordering Chinese food (for the nutrients) or pizza (for the nom value) does sound appealing. But appealing in a bad way. I am trying to overcome my tendency to isolate myself. I will never learn to feel safe amongst others if I continue to flee their presence. And the FRED crowd are people around whom I feel pretty comfortable. So they make for good practice.

So I dunno. I will play it by ear, I suppose. I will make up my mind by 6 at the latest, so there is still time for me to text Felicity and telll her she doesn’t need to pick me up should I decide not to attend. That will give me time to decide how I feel about the whole thing and how I am feeling health wise.

Funny how the products of reason so rarely lead to a rational decision with me, despite my high level of intellect. it’s that whole playing for stalemate thing. What my intellect can formulate, it can counter-formulate, and therefore it is always up to emotion to break the tie.

Perhaps that’s universally true : that intellect informs, but emotion decides. Or if not emotion, will. Decisions require the inner strength and confidence to commit oneself to a course of action. That means accepting the risk of being wrong. The intellect on its own wants to make all decisions based on sure and certain knowledge. But that is a rare substance and the demand for decisions far outstrips what anyone’s intellect can supply, no matter how intelligent. It’s rare to even have a clear sense of the odds.

So for the intelligent people like myself who tend to “lead with our heads”, the devil is in making decisions with insufficient information. To gamble, basically. Take risks. Face the unknown and unknowable. Thinking that one will be fine when one cannot possibly know that is a very potent kind of faith, and yet it seems to be necessary for mental health. At the very least, it requires that one extrapolate an overall trend of doing okay from one’s life experiences, and that’s the sort of thing that can’t possibly be used in a predictive matter.

Woe to me that I have traveled along the path of “pure intellect” for so long. I look back upon my life and I think about all the time I have spent without understanding that there is more to life than the mind, and that you don’t have to understand something before accepting it as true, and that mental health requires experiences just as much as thoughts in order to spur inner growth.

Even stupid people understand that, though they can’t be said to know it. They just have to listen to the wisdom of their instincts, and do what their emotions tell them to do, and while they will win no Nobel prizes that way, they will at least pursue their own inner needs on a regular basis.

And then there’s we, the blessed idiots, who are too smart to know what we really want, let alone truly need. We are truly les idiot savantes, capable of great feats of wizardry but with our heads so far up our own clouds that we trip on pebbles and end up in the gutter right alongside the basest of fools.

And there is only two ways to get back onto the right track. Either go all the way back to where you went wrong, which is a tad daunting when you diverged from it as a preschooler, or forge your own route back through the dark and terrible forest of your mind. That requires a great deal of effort but it’s the more direct route. And the wood is full of monsters… but you own them all.

We come up with so many ways to hide from ourselves and hide from the world. We create roadblocks then forget we are the ones who put them there so we can pretend that we really do want what we are supposed to want, and it’s only that darned roadblock that is keeping us from going for it.

When the truth is, we are choosing to preserve the ideal by blocking its pursuit. It’s like loving someone from afar. By never approaching your goal, you eliminate all risk of it not living up to the ideal in your mind. And best of all, it also means you don’t have to do with the hot, messy, complicated real world, and can remain in the deep sharp shadows of the light of intellect without the warmth of emotion.

It’s a terrible neighborhood, but at least the rent is high.

And to think that it all boils down to faith : the ability to believe in that which is not known…. or knowable. The feeling that you will come out okay no matter what. It is something no act of intellect can deliver and yet it is the vital core of true mental health.

It is an ironic fate indeed to die of skepticism.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

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