Outsider-In, 8/8/12

Outsider-In, 8/8/12

Not at all sure what to write this morning. Just know that I have schools thoughts flitting around in the sea of my mind. A few sharks and lonely whales, too. One dominant theme seems to be that of personal edification. I feel now more than ever, am I in need of some personal work, some sort of psychic edification. There is something going on with me that is simply so mysterious and also more and more demanding of attention that I cannot let it go much longer. If I do, as I have for too long, more psychic damage may even further my blockage in writing. 

And here, I feel I have to dive into some identity stuff. I have carved out my little role in life to such an extent that I am too comfortable in some areas. One of these is my role as father. I feel that I’m not as communicative with Gavin and Rachel as I need to be. In  this there is something of ol’ Dad. He was never someone to talk very much about personal matters, especially not his own, and when it came to his own obligation to feed a relationship with me, I think he felt a little helpless. In later years we managed to speak a little more heart to heart, but our conversations rarely if ever evolved into the sort of emotionally supportive trade-offs that I knew other sons had with their fathers. I know I need to develop this with my kids--they need to see my vulnerable side, and they need to hear me talking about it with them.

What are my vulnerable sides? Too many to count. I’d say my addictive tendencies are among the most obvious to me, and of course, the most hidden. There is inside of me a reckless, no holds barred narcissist whose sole aim is to rot my person from the core out. It is this hideous and destructive force that I wish to protect my kids from the most; and yet it is the very aspect of my nature that they need to understand, if they are to understand me. Perhaps I need to write about my substance abuse just to get it out. Perhaps Gavin and Rachel need to be my audience for this piece, something for them to read later in their lives. Writing this would at least open the door to becoming more honest with them about who I am.

Another vulnerability might be my my ego, the boulder I’m constantly rolling up the hill. Thinking now how appropriate that image is. My ego is a Sysophean weakness in the sense that it limits me, binds me to who I take myself for, which in the end, doesn't count for much. I take myself too seriously and then take the consequential, totally predictable fall down the cliff. I pick myself up, inspect my wounds, get back on the trail. This seems to be my life. Maybe this is what I find so symbolic in the fall I took in Sri Lanka. It was my own inflated sense in myself that made me over-confident and ridiculous in that black tropical night. It is the same that got me into a stupid and trivial ego battle with a student yesterday over his own shortcomings and perhaps similar weaknesses. 

Finally, I would say that an important vulnerability that I often ignore, and one which is sometimes a strength, is my reclusiveness. I have a life-long predilection for being alone, especially in the wilderness. This I regard as personally fulfilling but also a retreat, or perhaps an escape, from the community of friends and family. This has been, and continues to be one of the greater challenges in my life: striking a balance between self-fulfillment in a cosmic way, while nurturing my own involvement in socially supportive and conscientiously engaging ways. I am not a social person, an outsider, I tell myself this all the time on various levels of awareness, but I am ever seeking ways to be on the inside. Funny, though, how once I find myself on the inside of a certain social setting, I struggle to be free of it!