SteveY's thoughts on...: March 2011

Change is hard. Once one decides change is necessary (which is a whole conundrum in and of itself) then you have to decide how. By this time you've already decided what, albeit, alcohol, drugs, women, men, gambling, psych issues or a whole host of lesser but not so much any easier issues one may need to change there comes with it an entire life style and sometimes core belief change that needs to take place. Once one gets to this point some sort of help is almost mandatory. From this point on I'll use myself as an example.

Getting to the point I mentioned above, for me was a complete surprise/accident. Why or how did that happen? Well, basically because had I already given up. I had pretty much decided that this was the way it was and I just didn't have any more fight left in me. Nor did I give a damn. See, I became a master of indifference. Which strangely enough gave me a certain amount of control, or so I thought. Now it's important to remember at this point that I did not consciously get to the point previously mentioned as of yet.I was just taking a break from "self destruction" for a little while when I met someone. Someone, who for what ever reason, saw in me what I haven't seen in myself in over twenty five years, if I ever did! What was amazing, at least to me, was she had the patience and skill to allow me to see myself not just in the way she saw me, (that wouldn't have been enough) but she allowed me to see myself through her eyes. Explaining to me not what she saw, but what I saw! I was so far gone that anything less would have been wasted time. She broke some of her own clinician/client boundaries as well as invested enough emotionally to get hurt. I mention this only because I knew this and instead of using it to my advantage (even if I could have) I actually honored it! Something I never thought I would do again. Caring and respect for someone else and beginning to care for that stranger I was getting to know though her eyes was enough to literally break that psychological hold of indifference to self and the rest of the world. Talk about an emotional roller-coaster ride! I learned that the ride was what let me know I was alive. That the goal is in "living" the journey not in ""arriving" at the destination. Very difficult for me, the goal oriented, practical, logical man that I am to assimilate into my psyche and my paradigm. I lived my life one goal to the next at a time. Never even noticing the actual time in between as anything more than it was time I needed to fill. To run away from This whole outlook on life this paradigm was a Mis-perception of Control. As well as diving into my cubyhole of indifference that I had to cuddle up in before. I use the cute words to describe it because it was not the manly assertion of control I use to think it was. What it was, was a Mis-perception of Control. With the "spell" of indifference broken and a tad of "self-sight" re-instilled in me I ventured forth through the "fog" of reality to try and put a life back together

I wanted to explain some of my humble beginnings in trying to live my life as a viable member of society(even if I don't really like it) as well as up to my personal standards and satisfaction and to show how I ended up on this path of getting better and changing, as well as this path of current Mis-perception of Control. The only defense about it is that I have is it's not a defense mechanism that I spent time developing as was indifference. As a matter of fact I didn't even know that phrase existed until a week ago! Ha! It took someone closer to me than I have any right to expect to point it out to me. How I have changed and how far that change has taken me is beyond my ability to express in words. But contrary to my own legendary self opinion of myself I still remain susceptible to mental human frailties (as well as the physical, but thats another story). Even more so actually. Which made it all that much harder to let a lot of my defense mechanisms go even though they were ultimately self destructive.

So, here I am three years into this "change thing". It's been okay, very, very, revealing as well as "epiphanic" . I'm waiting for the federal and state bureaucracies to come to conclusions to restart a large segment of my life. Doing nothing positively is probably the hardest thing I've ever done. I also have some physical limitations that I'm having a hard time accepting and/or dealing with. So while in the middle of stripping through layers of my psyche like an onion. BANG!! I crash. I don't know why or how this happened. I lost all interest in what I was doing, I had no real desire to pursue anything actually. Slowly and very subtly I slipped into indifference again. I suppose indifference is an effective tool for self preservation when your dealing with back to back life atrocities and usually life altering things on a daily basis but NOT for regular daily life events. Because what happen is I become indifferent to myself. I had to before to be able to live with myself with all the things I did and was still doing. Becoming indifferent to myself now just leads to neglecting myself even more! Mostly unwittingly but that is not at all any sort of solace. That is a consequence of being responsible today. I try not to lay anything off on anything else.

Anyway a result of all this was; I also slipped into a new stage of Mis-perception of Control as a result of trying to do nothing positively while waiting for the wheels of bureaucracy to grind their way to me. I convinced myself sitting home feeling sorry for myself, fighting off anxiety attacks and generally slipping into moroseness was in fact asserting control. When I decided it was noble to be a psycho, wingnut martyr I'll never know, but here I am. Hence the Mis perception. Re-enforcing my old paradigm of dynamism. Which was, even after all this time, easy to fall back into. Even though it is inevitably self destructive for me, the whole philosophical direction is a known quantity to me so I just naturally ran w/it. Ending up lost and confused but holding on to the "perception" that "I have a handle on this, I'm in control" I guess I fell into all that because I don't have enough quality people in my life. My friend always reminds me that I'm not only capable of relationships and love but worthy of it too! She mentioned that one phrase "Mis-perception of Control" and a light bulb POPPED! All this understanding just rushed in and it took a few days to process The end result is here I am blogging it all out.

Well, I guess that's it for now so I will bid you a fond adeau until next time...

I thought I’d share a few of my favorite quips. Enjoy?!

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

– Elie Wiesel

(New Science.com)

What is physical law?

Physical law harnesses chance, making existence possible.
Physical law is a limitation on possibility.

If we forget what we have done... we will forget who we are.

(Ronal Reagan)

God is all powerful. 2. God is all good. 3. Evil exists.

You can LOGICALLY reconcile two of these statements, but not all three.

(Plato?)

Retrospective curtains,… hide unacceptable facts.

(Don't know)

Some invent, others endure, some create, some go mad. Sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference.

(Anonymous)

To say no to our fictionalized Gods is to say no to submission...

(Satanic Bible)

Man is born free, yet everywhere he lives in chains.

(Rousseau)

Man is not born fearful, he is born to love, with the courage to protect that love

(John McCain)

Is being human, actually reason enough, to be loved?

(Don't know?)

Many of the things I've done, I've done out of simple defiance.

Simply, out of defiance of my better self.

(don't know)

To live to safely, is to not live at all.

(Thomas Jefferson)

Sympathy is between Shit and Syphilis in the dictionary.

(Anonymous)

We should take care not to make the intellect our God.

(Albert Einstein)

Or God our intellect

(Addendum is me)

A thought... The human brain contains a hundred TRILLION possible connections (massively parallel). All capable of simultaneous calculation and that's just for processing! It also can hold the equivalent of twelve hundred TERABYTES of computer memory. Equaling SIX MILLION YEARS of the Wall Street Journal!!

(Anonymous)

The primitive instinct mixed with human intelligence is the genesis in which evil is spurned

(Some author)

Evil doesn't flourish in the light... So illuminate the mind

{Same author)

Appearances aren't deceiving so much as incomplete.

(Anonymous)

I'm speechless!

But, that won't last

(Unknown)

Stupidity got me into this mess—why can’t it get me out?

(Will Rogers)