Accepting and loving myself

I strive to love myself, and most days I do. I love my unique blend of abilities to think, to feel, to intuit, to attract, to act, and to control.  

Think. Feel. Intuit. Attract. Act. Control.  

These are all vital functions of the psyche.  I could wish for a little more in the intuition and attraction departments, but mostly, I am grateful. Everyone is unique, and everyone has a place in the world. I like how I was made. If anyone tries to change me, I react with scorn and indignation.  I am grateful for who I am!

I do wish I were better at releasing the right functions at the right time.  Sometimes I Think when I should be Feeling, or Act when I should be Intuiting, and so on.  But... I suppose... Who's in charge of "should"? It's a matter of using the function at the right time that gets a result that makes me happy, ultimately. But I am not very good at judging which is the right one for the situation, nor of controlling which one rises up, when. It's like each function has a mind of its own and rises up when it wants to. It often produces awkward moments, where I feel out of place with the world, unsure of myself and unhappy with the results. But even this awkwardness, if it is what it is, is how I was made, and I should love it. I'm doing me. And I'm trying to love it.  Maybe I will get more skilled in regulating and controlling all of these functions as I grow older and keep trying.

The function I have been pondering a lot lately is the Thinking function.  It might be my strongest one.  It's my default.  I am very conscientious--I have a very strong sense of "should," and always strive for what is "right."  I have a firm grasp on reality, and a head for logic.  I am critical and skeptical.  I love this about myself. It keeps me honest, open minded, realistic, consistent, and accurate. It sometimes paralyzes me in over-analysis, which can be annoying. And it sometimes leads me to self-judgement and  harshness, which sometimes leaks out onto others as well.  If people only knew-- as judgmental as I can be of others, I'm 100 times more so with myself. 

So, obviously, this trait can be dysfunctional, but it has a lot of strengths, too. I am an excellent editor. I can figure things out. I can create structures and systems that work flawlessly. I can see through bullshit.  I can discuss intellectual ideas.  

To love my strengths is to remove the poison from them, preventing them from becoming weaknesses. Right? So the theory goes; we shall see. Loving myself. It's no small thing.  Because despite how hard I've tried, my life hasn't been what I wanted.

I do hope I can do better than I have in the past to make the most use out of how I was made. Looking back, I think I have wasted a lot of what I was given, even though I always tried so hard. But I can't change that. Only now counts.  I hope I can learn to be as grateful for my past as I am for the present and for my potentials. 

This is why I react so strongly against someone trying to change me, even slightly. Nobody has the right to control me, and nobody has the capability of, or motivation for, scrutinizing my life as I, myself, already do. Nobody could be more serious about improving my life than I already am, and nobody understands the long string of circumstances and choices that brought me to where I am. Nobody knows more deeply than I do, that in each circumstance that arose in my life, I tried my absolute hardest to do what was right. For anyone to presume that they know better, that they can take over my ability to think, is highly insulting.  Maybe I overreact a bit when it happens, I don't know...

I struggle with the fact that I struggle. It's a weird tension between loving what is and working for making things better.  If I love what is, what motivation do I have to notice injustice, dysfunction, imbalance, and suffering, and to use my gifts to alleviate those things? How do I find the resolution between these two things--resting in what is and working towards what should be? 

And then, how can I both love myself and come to terms with the fact that "me-doing-me" sometimes leads to mistakes, pain, suffering, and injustice? When I am harsh with myself, I know that is violence and ingratitude, but maybe me being harsh with myself is also part of who I am. Why would I shut down part of who I am, if I am supposed to love who I am?  How do I resolve this, grow through it, and hold on to love?

My friend Chuck

I just got the news that my friend Chuck committed suicide.  This is a truly tragic loss. I am in shock and grieving.

Part of the grieving process is feeling guilty. I knew he was going through a difficult time, but I wasn't as available as I should have been and wanted to be. I spoke to him a couple months ago, and meant to stay in touch. I  thought of him several times the past few weeks, and intended to call, but I didn't call.  Why didn't I call?  I let my own worries and life distractions prevent me from calling.  I wish I had called. It might have prevented it, it might not have, but at least he would have known, in his last moments, that I cared about him.

Part of the grieving process is anger. But it's mostly anger at the systems and the people who tormented him and drove him to take this final action.  His wife for being really nasty in the divorce process and alienating him from his kids, who were his life's joy. The legal system that makes divorce 100 times harder than it should be and allows people to torment other people. Our fake, materialistic culture that punishes creative and moral souls while rewarding those who are shallow and egotistical. Our mental health system for over-relying on drugs and profit while neglecting the human and compassionate approaches to treatment.  The American economy that doesn't look out for the weak or for people down on their luck.  The American Evangelical Christian culture of judgmentalism and brainwashing, creating presumed insiders and outsiders to God's love.  (I shudder to think what those horrible, evil church people are telling his beautiful children.  "Because your daddy didn't accept Jesus in his heart, he is now burning in hell!" Those idiotic, narrow-minded, nasty, brainwashed people! They have absolutely zero concept of true spirituality or the nature of God!)  I know Chuck made a choice, and the ultimate responsibility is on him.  I'm sure he regrets it now.  But I'm not angry at him. He had a terrible moment of weakness.  I'm angry at everything that drove him to feeling that he couldn't cope anymore.

I'm also a wee bit jealous, to be honest.  His suffering and struggles are over. He can find peace now.  I know it's terrible to say it, because this means his adorable children will suffer horrifically from losing him.  There's nothing that will make that easier or better or right.  But as far as Chuck is concerned, he is in a better place.  He doesn't have to struggle to find money, to find shelter, to shush the voices tormenting his mind, to worry about the legal strategies for getting to see his kids again, to worry about pleasing a boss or clients, or worry about anything else.

I can't afford to travel to Chicago to attend his funeral, and I'm feeling helpless to do anything to alleviate the situation. I don't know his family or most of his friends to be able to commiserate.  Chuck and I met through the online Atheism for Lent course, and have been good, distant, online friends ever since, but our daily-life circles didn't cross. I don't have money to contribute to the gofundme account for his children. I can't do anything.

I can't do anything, but I can honor the person he was, at least in my own small way.

I knew him as a truly good man. He was a devoted and caring father, and a survivor who overcame horrors most of us would be decimated by.  Despite all the difficulties in his life, his intelligence, creativity, wit, and profound morality shone through.  He was wise and self-aware.  He had not only a deep mental intelligence, but keen emotional intelligence as well.  He was not afraid to express his feelings, which is a rare trait for a man in today's world.

Physically, he was gentle and unimposing in appearance. But mentally he was formidable.  His knowledge on a host of subjects was vast, and his ability to navigate complicated philosophical subjects with deft ease was simply amazing.  I looked up to his intelligence, and greatly admired his ability to express it.  And yet, unlike many whose intelligence is far to the right on the bell curve, he was compassionate and never arrogant.  He would put you in your place if you needed it, but he never did so just to feel superior or to boost his ego.  He cared about truth and beauty and morality and experience, and was never shallow enough to play any kind of ego games.

Chuck also had great insight into the human psyche.  He was a playwright, and his plays he gave me the honor of reading explored tapestries of emotions without ever approaching either melodrama or kitsch.  He practiced meditation and non-judgmental, body-based emotional processing, and was not afraid to share his feelings openly with his friends.

The world is truly a worse-off place without Chuck to brighten it.  I miss him, and wish I could have at least said good-bye.

Brokered Emotions

In general, most people don't like to think of relationships in terms of transaction, at least not relationships that are supposed to be loving and intimate, like family or close friends.  Most of us know instinctively that affection and love do not derive their meaning from a "you do this for me, and I'll do that for you" mindset.  However, the emotionally healthy among us also know that overall, there should be a balance in a healthy, power-equal relationship (such as a romantic partnership or a friendship between adults).  Not that we are keeping score, but roughly, each person should be putting about the same level of energy into the relationship as they are getting out of it.  The commodities being "traded" in a relationship vary—emotional support, physical services, intellectual discussions, quality time, and so on.  Everyone is looking for a slightly different set of ingredients from their relationships, and needs to make some trades in order to find what they are looking for.  A good relationship doesn't reduce to transaction, not at all (!!), but balance is an important element.  Relationships involve transaction, there's no need to pretend this isn't true.

Image by winnifredxoxo on Flickr.com Creative Commons Attribution license.

It is generally good advice that in a relationship that is supposed to be power-equal, if the balance goes too far towards one person's favor for too long, this is not a healthy relationship, and boundaries should be put in place.  However, I have been realizing lately that even if a relationship has a balance that is roughly equal, there can still be something subtly but deeply wrong.  I am envisioning a style of relationships that I will call "emotionally brokered relationships."

To come up with this term, I used a metaphor from the financial industry. I was inspired while reading Gordon White's book, The Chaos Protocols, in which he describes solutions for dealing with the reality of today's economy (the book is not really about relationships... my mind just jumped to that topic).  In the first chapter White proffers a brief history of how the global economy got into the mess it's in today.  In general, the main problem is that the economy is no longer operating on trading real "wealth" (physical goods and services based on human personal interactions), but is instead an elaborate system of relativity.  As currency moves further and further away from the concept of actual wealth and direct transactions, more and more inequalities and dysfunctions are created.  For example, a couple decades ago, the mortgage system made a shift from using straightforward mortgages to security-backed mortgages.  A straightforward mortgage is simply a loan that the bank gives you to buy a home.  A security is a piece of paper that gambles on the  assumption that you will pay the mortgage back (with interest), ensuring future profit. They are basically IOUs on IOUs.  The banks can then mess around with these IOU's and gain incredible wealth, basically out of thin air.  The incentives behind providing loans then became less about offering a service to individuals who needed it, and more about hedging bets and maximizing profit in an abstract inter-bank market.  As White put it, "Banking moved from being relationship-based (which enabled real investment in a real economy) to being transactional; bankers changed from being investors to brokers."  In this system, even a mortgage that is technically "fair" for both the lender and the buyer, isn't truly an authentic transaction, and behind the scenes it's almost always working in favor of the big bank.

I think a similar difference can be described in how some people conduct relationships.  For some, even their intimate relationships are not engaged with for their own sake, but instead are used as a form of social capital to increase personal power.  Part of the psyche separates itself from the direct relationship and tries to direct and manage the transactions towards an ulterior goal. There is something quite nefarious about this mode of operating, and difficult to discern.  One blatant example of this would be when people brag about how good their relationships are, as a form of ego-boosting, or to sell a book or workshop, or something like that. But there are other subtle ways that people can do this, brokering out the relationship to serve a dark ulterior set of motives.  In relationships like these, even if the relational transactions are technically "balanced," they actually aren't, really.  The party doing the emotional brokering is actually operating from a place of deep selfishness, and will always be looking for little ways to cut corners on the relational transactions, or grasping for subtle psychic superiority.  Evil people conduct all of their relationships this way, and use every opportunity to take as much as they can, only giving back when it will lead to personal advantage, calculating every move to ensure personal psychic profit.

I said this mode of relationship is nefarious, but I am now thinking of situations where it doesn't necessarily have to be.  Perhaps it is sometimes even necessary for health.  When people have their guards down, and relate to each other directly, and build that balance of inputs and outputs together, there is an authenticity that leads to joy and mutual satisfaction.  However, the unlucky among us quickly learn that this unguarded style is not wise to use with every person.  Some people are dangerous.  It can be a sign of maturity when one learns that relational transactions must be "brokered" to some extent, to ensure that you don't get taken advantage of.  Part of your psyche needs to separate from the transaction, and observe it objectively, to make sure it's actually fair and going well.  If that starts not being the case, that part, "the broker," steps in and takes measures to protect you.  The ulterior motive here is self-preservation, which isn't necessarily evil.  Indeed, it should be a given.  The difference between this nicer way of brokering I'm thinking of, and evil, is that the motives are still relationship based.  The players want to have a healthy relationship for its own sake, and they want fairness. They just need to make sure it's safe before they let their guards down.  As opposed to the evil person I mentioned earlier, who only wants relationships if they serve the ego.

Problem can arise when a person uses the brokered mode for so long, they become incapable of switching into a direct, authentic transactional mode.  Brokering is not a satisfying way to conduct close relationships, because it necessarily precludes intimacy, which brings true joy.  At some point, when both sides know they can trust each other with their hearts, the relationship "broker" must be abandoned, and the two parties must face each other directly, nakedly, and authentically, and they must build something together.  If one or both parties are unwilling to do this, then true love will never grow.  Even if such a relationship has every indication of being a balanced one, it is not really healthy.

It's tricky to know when it's safe to "fire your emotional broker" in a relationship.  Myself, I have been hurt so much, that I find myself needing lots of proof from another that they are trustworthy.  I will enter relationships not fully engaged, but "trading relationship commodities" in as fair a manner as I know how, and watching to see if the other operates fairly as well.  If s/he doesn't, I bolster my walls and might even go as far as removing them from my life.  I think this is healthy, even if it's not as fun as falling in love every other week.  I have a lot to offer; this makes me a desirable target for people who would like to take a lot.  I have only a few friendships in my life where I'm operating from an unguarded position.  I do wonder if I'll ever be able to let go again and relax with my full self exposed in a romantic relationship... and I wonder how hard a fight my "emotional broker" will put up, when it's time to step down.  I feel like it would take awhile, given my experiences with men so far.  I need to know that the other likes every last weird piece of me and would never judge me, would never exploit my weaknesses, would take a bullet for me, would help me, would listen wholeheartedly to me, and would keep my best interests at heart always.  And I long to offer all of the above to someone else as well.  Not just because that's only fair, but because that's what true love is.  And true love is its own reward.