Yin and Yang: A fundamental concept in Chinese philosophy and culture in general dating from the third century BC or even earlier. This principle is that all things exist as inseparable and contradictory opposites, for example female-male, dark-light and old-young. The two opposites attract and complement each other and, as their symbol illustrates, each side has at its core an element of the other (represented by the small dots). Neither pole is superior to the other and, as an increase in one brings a corresponding decrease in the other, a correct balance between the two poles must be reached in order to achieve harmony.
So I sat for another hour with My Therapist this week. By the way, I hate people who talk about having a therapist. It makes them sound like they want to sound like they're really messed up which, admittedly, many of them are. How many times have I heard someone talking and thought: "Man, you need to go see a professional." Little did I know that they were saying the same thing about me.
Anyway, the session felt a little vague - I didn't really have anything too pressing on my mind that I wanted to talk about. To me that feels like I'm done so I didn't see the point of going to the meeting. My wife disagrees, believing that sometimes you need to explore to uncover things - she approaches a computer glitch as a puzzle to be solved; I use it as a rationale for smashing the computer with a ball-peen hammer. I'm so machine-like in my approach to life: you start, there's an efficient, logical, rational process, you have a result. You don't set up half of a plastic injection-molding machine and then see what happens. One is expected to follow detailed instructions to produce a bottle or a plastic grommet or a dashboard for a Corvette.
Maybe I'm still in the planning meeting. This is the kind of shit that should happen in the planning meeting, not forty or fifty years into the life of the plant.
Here are the facts:
My anxiety has attenuated. I'm not looking to eliminate it - that's a fool's errand - but rather to reduce it to the annoying, unwanted, but manageable background hum which is its historical precedent.
My physical obsession comes and goes. I'm trying to ignore the compelling desire I have to monitor how I'm feeling. I'm asking to be released from this. It's another manifestation of my overwhelming interest in myself. I would characterize any progress as incremental. I'm asking my higher power for some help and the fact that it isn't forthcoming to my satisfaction must mean I'm not learning the lesson that is there for me to learn
Goddam am I self-absorbed.
I'm ambivalent about my feelings about losing loved ones. I'm willing to be open to how I feel, to weeping, to hearing messages from these spirits emanating from Beyond The Grave, while recognizing that I'm going to keep feeling better if I can keep moving on down the road.
I suspect that the loss that is really bothering me is the loss of my youth, the attenuation of my physical plant, the suspicion that all options are no longer on the table. Unfortunately this is kind of vague and this is the kind of loss that all of us who aren't killed in an avalanche or bitten by a Black Mamba end up experiencing. Death - not vague. Free floating anxiety - vague.
So you see how I can concentrate far too much on the loss while simultaneously wandering around, oblivious, as in: "How did this happen, anyway?" I'm hyper-aware and totally in the dark. I don't believe in the yin and the yang. It's the YIN, or it's the fucking YANG. Pick one, don't waffle around in the middle; don't acknowledge that there's a little bit of the one in the other, and vice versa; don't re-balance if one becomes too strident . . . There's a winner and there's a loser and you're going to be better off if you're on the winning side.
Goddam do I hate to be on the losing side.
No comments:
Post a Comment