Caution: Too Much Blind Faith Will Kill You
Saturday, August 4, 2007 at 03:20PM Most people just are not all that perceptive of other people. Wrapped up, each, in their own miseries they have no energy to spare for the problems of others. They tend to pigeonhole people as they did ideas and react to that deviation (from a wholly imaginary picture) with astonishment and annoyance.
"Wow, of all the people, Julia must have really changed since high school." or Good 'ol Chuck, he wouldn't do a thing like that!"
The thing is, though, Julia and Chuck? - they haven't changed at all.
They, like all of us, were not one static Julia, one unchanging Chuck, but dozens.
At differing points in our lives, each of those dozens is in control for a little while. Eventually, most of the people who think they "knew" us just haven't happened to see the one who finally breaks out for good.
Now, I'm not saying that we don't change as we move through life. That we don't grow and incorporate our lessons as we go along. I do, however, think that much like battered psyches, at our hearts we're what can only be called multiple personalities. We're little walking disorders.
Proust believed that each person is made up of thousands of what he called "little selves", almost like the cells of the body. Each one of them came into being at a time of life that was important in one way or another. And they just co-exist side by side, without communicating with each other or even knowing each other exists.
He figured the reason that people can contradict themselves, by word or action, is because one little self, or group of little selves, believes one way and acts one way out of habit, while another one, formed at another time, goes right on behaving in the opposite way as though that were the only way possible.
"Pathfinders" states that an individual who is seperating from aspects of an old self must endure some loss of belonging while a new and different path is being explored. That it may be temporary and end with rapprochment. But a pathfinder must be prepared to face ostracism from his or her reference group. By the time that those who are most sorely threatened by the pathfinder's changed course are ready to accept it, the pathfinder may no longer care about their friendship.
I think that as we go through life there are points at which we can consciously decide to forge a new little self. I think the best thing we can do for ourselves, to honor our struggles, is to do all we can to ensure the new self incorporates the best of all our others - merging our multiple personalities into a better, stronger version. A version that is better equipped and more self-aware than the ones that have gone before, a version that is actually learning the lessons it was put here to learn.
Much like the six million dollar man. heh.
Personally, I know I've refused to learn lessons I need to. Or, rather, there are some I've been unable to learn, for whatever reason. That while I've incorporated much there is so much more I've lost and so much more to learn.
All through this last year in dealing in a far better way than I ever would have (or did) previously with the physical limitations and the financial losses that being 'broken' has brought I've still managed to hold onto the optimism that firmly believes that my body can be 'fixed'. I haven't lost that woman, and she's a woman who doesn't endlessly complain and god, I'm so proud of her.
It's only been in the last couple of weeks - and over this last week spent mostly in bed with a devastating permanent headache - that I've come to understand that the doctors aren't giving up but that, at some point, *I* have to give up the notion that I'm going to be able to go back to the way life was before the military. That maybe, just maybe, I have to start thinking of myself as 'disabled'. If only for the simple reason that I'll never be able to do things I've always taken for granted and that I'll need to change the way I think of myself and my physical abilities.
That when they say I've plateaued, after all this hard work and hard time, that I won't get any better than I am now - they really mean that I have to change the way I cope. That I have to forge a new self from the old.
That optimism can no longer be what keeps me going. That if I continue to rely on it and only it - it will destroy me.
But, I also think that it's useless to fully swing the other way. I refuse to believe that I won't get worse - unless I exercise, as they've opined. Embrace that and I may as well fully commit myself to the path that Burgle laughingly put forth the other day. The path of refusing to do anything, anything but sit on the couch and eat. To make my new goal in life a BMI of say, 80. To literally take them at their word.
To find new ways of dealing and completely new routes of getting where I wish to go. To take a headache that responds to no painkiller on earth and, like today, erase it with an anti-inflammatory and a bath of lavender and peppermint.
Even if those things don't always work - they prove that hope for relief, for times of normality exists. And sometimes, it benefits no one to allow optimism to die. Re-thought, re-tooled, approached from a different direction maybe, but not abandoned entirely.
I won't be able to jog or run. But, seriously, *brrrrr* who the hell wants to? I can walk. The large muscles in my legs may not be able to bike up hills but there are bikes in gyms that don't require them to.
I'm sure that there are ways I can utilize a pool - I just have to find the right strokes. That I may even be able to learn a modified kayak stroke that won't kick in the nerve impingement.
The possibilities are endless. And, if I'm not starting a campaign to become the world's most obese woman, what else would I possibly want to do with my time?
I've got places I want to go. And no one's going to get me there - but me.
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