The Impossible Human Condition

The following examples come to mind today about the impossibility of the human condition:

1. Most of us despise change, we long for stability and predictability, yet human life involves constant and continuous adaptation to change on all levels:  body, mind, spirit (feelings).

2. We have mixed feelings toward almost everything, including those we profess to love, even, or especially, our parents, who have given us the great gift of life.  However to express our ambivalence, our hate entwined with love, is highly inappropriate.

3. Life isn’t fair. Often there is injustice and/or lack of resolution. A woman I know suffered extreme abuse in the care of her mother and a teacher yet these people died  highly regarded by the community. They escaped unscathed, never forced to face or acknowledge their abuses.

4. Life doesn’t get easier  as we age (as I’d assumed). At least in a physical sense, time can be viewed as an insult.  Our bodies deteriorate, causing  pain and  requiring increasing amounts of maintenance , and ultimately, we suffer  the greatest narcissistic injury, the loss of life itself.

5. A long marriage, filled with  love and passion, does not guarantee a happy ending. A couple may split up in their later years, regarding each other as their worst enemy. Witness the case of Leo Tolstoy (great Russian writer (1828-1910)  and his wife,  Sonya, who because of political differences, died painfully estranged from each other (depicted in the recent, powerful movie The Last Station).

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)

Are We Born Broken?

The Pulitzer prize winning playwright Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) said, “Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.”

(The Great God Brown)

Years of experience and psychological/psychiatric study since O’Neill’s time, show that the theme of broken-ness and whole-ness in human existence is a huge and complex topic.

We enter the world as newborns with a  unique combination and assortment of genes on our forty six chromosomes. No one else in the world shares our precise genetic makeup. Even identical twins show variations.

Are we born broken? Do we heal/mend by the Grace of God? Luck has something to do with mending but we’re not born broken. We’re born with vast potential to develop along avenues to some extent, but not entirely, dependent on our environment.

 Freud thought a newborn enters the world with a tabula rasa, a blank slate.  Genetic studies, with the possibility of gene mapping, show us that much of our future is determined in this genetic blueprint.

For all intents and purposes it doesn’t appear that it will ever be possible to decipher the degree to which each, our genetic constitution and our environment, determine the course of lives because  no two humans have precisely the same genetic constitution and no two humans experience the exact same environment.

We  know our genetic constitution  predicts a great deal; we know environmental factors can interfere with development,  cause fears, phobias, anxieties, etc., and we  know that ‘mending’ is both a matter of luck as well as an  active process in which the individual  plays a huge role.

Do we take responsibility for who we are and who we become or do we see ourselves as victims?

In Man’s Search for Meaning (1963 ) Victor Frankl writes,

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms…to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. “

He continues to list the ways in which we find meaning   and direction in life: 1.By doing a deed; 2. By experiencing a value; and 3.By suffering

As Frankl observed in the worst of life’s circumstances, ultimately a person has will and choice.  What matters more than our genetic constitution, is our values, the meaning we find for ourselves in our lives.

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)

Inside the Mind of The Outsider

Feeling like an outsider is a common experience, an unavoidable reality because each of us is an outsider in certain circles. Being an insider at all times in all situations is impossible.  For example, I’m either an alumna of a college or I’m not.

The problem arises when we think we’re an outsider when we want to be, or actually fall, in the category of ‘insider.’

For example, a woman  moves to a fancy little town where she feels like an outsider because she tells herself, “Everyone has more money than I do.”  She defines herself as an outsider based on economics.  The problem arises when she imagines everyone  thinks of her the way she thinks of herself, as a ‘poor’ outsider.

In actuality, she is an insider because she pays rent and taxes in this town and has every civil right any ‘rich’ resident has.

I was raised by parents who held radical political beliefs and shut me out of weekend discussions held in our living room with their comrades. Then they condemned  my alternate plan to attend  Sunday school with a friend. I had many years and experiences which contributed to my feelings as an outsider and finally began to feel like an insider when I committed myself to my personal writing.

It is difficult to imagine a more unique outsider than William Blake (1757- 1827). The mystic artist was an outsider who contested much of what his culture offered.  He was misunderstood and unrecognized as a great painter and poet.  His art didn’t sell and he experienced extreme poverty. But he was content because he wasn’t an outsider in his own mind; he was a mystic high on his creativity and relationship with the Universe.

In the final analysis, the goal is to be an insider in our own mind. Poet Robert Bly following in the footsteps of mythologist, Joseph Campbell, advised,  “Follow your bliss.”  We feel like an insider when we are comfortable in our own skin which may involve discovering and following our bliss.

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)

Taking Risks

I had little choice but to drive myself through the unpredictable snow storm on October 29, 2011. I’d always remarked, “I don’t do snow,” meaning I certainly don’t drive in the falling white stuff, and whenever possible I don’t leave the house on foot or on skis. (I follow the example of the squirrels who hole up in the tree tops and assume-“This too shall pass.”) But unpredictable weather falls upon us more often than we like to think. Especially in our country where the science of weather forecasting has not been  perfected. (One advantage of traveling this past June: I learned the Germans can forecast the weather!). In any case the choice was to pull into the crowded dismal parking lot off Rt. 95 in Jersey and wait an indefinite time, until either 1. The snow stopped falling or 2. I mustered up courage to continue.

I chose what felt like the foolhardy approach: to persist through the blinding white stuff while attempting  to quell my near panic.“Follow the tail lights,” became my mantra and guided me  within the white lines of  the lane. So grateful to the other stalwart drivers with good vision who kept their cool, I developed a new respect for humanity, and an awareness that I am more capable than I thought.

The question is: When do we take the Risk? Certainly I could have crashed, and then the risk would have been regarded as foolhardy. Instead I recognized courage in myself.

Decision making is tricky, another peril of the human condition which can only be avoided if we decide to stay in bed for the rest of our lives. Actually, even this can be dangerous, because we depend on someone else to take care of us, and they could botch up the job; witness Andy Warhol’s death in the care of a special duty nurse after his surgery who administered too much intravenous fluid,  over-hydrating  and killing her famous patient! (The surgery was a success but the patient died!)

In brief, we can not avoid risk taking. Nor can we always collect others’ opinions to help us reach a decision. Ultimately we’re on our own (and also at someone else’s mercy) and can only do our best and hope the other person (s) will too).

(In a situation of Chance, I’m comforted by prayer, but that too is an individual matter.)

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)