Broke Down Spirit

1. Valkyrie Said,

   Not too long ago someone commented that I was walking around like an angry pillar ..he said you literally could see the flames coming from me.This was no surprize to me because I was angry,furious, (need more adjectives)…so angry that it consumed me. The ironic part of this is that I thought I was hiding my anger pretty well but it was spilling into every aspect of my life,and health. The other thing that shocked me so profoundly was the fact that because what I was railing again was a righteous cause( to me) but it caused me to act in the same manner as what I was fighting against. The anger caused me to hold grugdes, store hurt and withdraw from people who meant me no harm. Discovering that what I hate is what I was becoming brought me to my knees. It also pointed out to me that as sharp and perceptive as I like to think I am, I missed the obvious.

   I haven’t conquered all my anger but I am trying to rename it ~being hurt. But it is hard to admit to anyone, that I can be hurt. Somewhere in admitting it to myself I found some peace. I still am angry but just the admission that it my not be all anger stills me.

2. KC Said,

   This is the first post I’m reading and it really begs me to read more of your blog to find out what caused you to give voice to your intense feelings.

   My first impression – having read nothing but this post, is that this is what blogging is supposed to be for. You get to express your opinions, feelings, beliefs, rage against the machine if you so desire. To me, it’s way cheaper than therapy and it can accomplish the same thing. To hell what anyone else thinks. You do what you have to do. My best writing happened when I was angry. I got to the heart of what I cared about the most when I was trying to write about what made me so angry.

   Dabrowski believed,

   “We feel comfort among those who agree with us – growth among those who don’t.”

   We sharpen the axe against those who question us, who challenge us. It has always been invigorating to me to come up against disagreement if I strongly believed in something. It always made me examine my motives and my beliefs when I had countering arguments.

   As far as any delusions of grandeur you might be facing, I don’t know enough about it to address that except to say this – if you don’t believe in yourself, no one’s going to do it for you. Having been kicked when I was down many times by my family when I was forming my self-esteem, I realized it had to come from within. They were not going to validate me no matter how much I needed them to. But at the same time, they were sharpening my ax of what I believed was right for me. I learned to find my own way because they constantly set out obstacles. They don’t know it, but they actually did me a favor by constantly getting in my way. I learned so much more self-reliance from their opposition. That doesn’t happen for everyone though. I was highly sensitive, but something within me gave me strength and kept driving me forward. A self-preservation mechanism kicked in I suppose.

   But, despite my upbringing, I still have a very strong compassion for people. I see everything you said in this post – indignation, pain, loneliness – but I also see something else…incredible self-perception and a dash of humility. If you didn’t say this, “PLEASE!!! I want to learn…I want to grow.” I would have made a different assumption about you.

   As far as love and companionship goes. I’ve always actively sought it out. I believe that there are intrinsically good people out there – not everyone is mean and bitter and out for themselves. I looked for the quiet types, the oddballs, the “weird ones”. Those were the ones with the depth of character, the thoughtful ones and the ones that loved deeply. I would give the benefit of the doubt – anyone was fair game until they proved me wrong.

   My simple advice – you find love by giving love where-ever you can. It breeds more love. Love yourself so you have love to give others. When you find it reflected back, you know you’ve found a real treasure. It’s kind of a positive wish-fulfillment. If you believe people are worthy of love, so they feel you are worthy of love too.

   If I sound a little Pollyanna-ish, maybe I am. But I believe there is an intrinsic goodness in most people that will flourish if given half the chance. Ask me how many have fallen in love with me because I love unconditionally? It’s a magical thing, I’m telling you. Love begets love.

3. KC Said,

   I wanted to amend something. It keeps bothering me what I wrote in the end and it needs clarification. I am of average looks but above average sensitivity and empathy and quiet confidence which more than makes up for the average beauty. Not only do I really get interested in those with depth of character, but by closely paying attention, I can read between the lines of what they are saying and give them things to ponder while talking with them. You would not believe (or perhaps you would) how many women don’t REALLY know how to talk to a guy. They only stay at one superficial level and they never delve deep enough to get to the heart of someone. I’ve always been pretty much an open book, and genuinely interested in what others had to say.

   I feel sorry for many single people out there, because there are many that have attachment disorders so that they really have no idea how to connect to people. There is a lack of basic empathy for others. I think this is because if the society values individuality and independence above all, there isn’t room for interdependence (which is distinct from co-dependence). The mind-set is “what can you do for me” rather than “what can we do for each other”.

   I watched my mom constantly tear people down (my step-dad, myself, my siblings to a lesser degree and to anyone who disagreed with her way of thinking). I heard her message loud and clear that “all men were assholes”. But I didn’t buy it. I couldn’t believe that was true. I rejected her statement and her logic behind it (just because she got treated poorly by men didn’t mean I had to suffer the same fate).

   I refused to believe that men were awful creatures and in doing so, worked harder to find the goodness in them. I was richly rewarded. To this day I don’t know how I got so lucky, except perhaps for that positive wish fulfillment (or that the powers that be determined I suffered enough in my childhood/young adulthood and placed in my path young men I could trust with my broken heart). Quite honestly, as much as my mother hated men, I probably loved men 100 x as much. Perhaps it was the fact that I had two fathers and neither one of them really loved me, that I gave a lot of my heart away to those I felt would take care of it (because I was intuitive enough to know who I could trust and who I could not).

   In the dating relationships I had, I learned something from them,and gained new insights about me and about what went right and what went wrong. I can honestly say I never had a “bad” relationship, because even in the ones that weren’t successful, I took something valuable away from the experience – and even when I knew it was a sinking ship, I did my best to help them retain their dignity on the way down.

   But…I know others aren’t so lucky. Some can’t rise above their initial childhood experiences and continue to make bad choices that further cement their fates. And they are stuck in some of the same mindsets or negative wish fulfillment (if I believe nothing good can last, then I will probably do something to sabotage it).

   Sigh. I’m also sorry to say that there’s not many women like me around. Most women (most people I imagine), walk through life without thinking – just reacting to events. One of my most favorite quotes – “The unexamined life is not worth living” said Socrates as he’s on trial for heresy, for encouraging his students to think for themselves and not accept the status quo.

   At any rate, I’m beginning to lose my train of thought. I didn’t go to sleep until 2 am last night (engaged in another thought provoking online discussion) and now I’m feeling the effects.

   Peace.

4. Broken Too Said,

   Bless you, KC. What wonderfully encouraging insight. Average beauty? Beauty is beauty…and there is some truth to the “eye of the beholder” qualifier. Yes, I would believe how many women don’t know how to talk to a guy…and how many guys don’t know how to talk to a gal…just how many people don’t know how to talk to people. We have more ways to communicate than most would have imagined a few decades ago…yet true CONTACT is lacking. [I have a theory on this. It's not new, but it came to me long ago before I had the opportunity to study others to whom it had come long before that even. I'll "soul puke" about it sometime soon.]

   True…basic empathy is lacking. Brief mention of another interpretation of some old philosophy. Jesus–and others–taught about loving others as we love our selves. I would submit that one who does not know self cannot love self and cannot love others. Or, at least there exists a dynamic and “proportional” relationship regarding these factors. As self-acceptance/love grows…the capacity to love others grows. The interdependency/co-dependency thing is near and dear to my heart. My mother was a family program counselor at a drug and alcohol rehab center. Many years ago, the co-dependency fad hit “the industry.” She went co-dependent-no-more crazy! The whole time (this was in my mid-teen years) I’m asking, “What about healthy interdependency?” Well, “they” didn’t have time to address my concerns.

   Yeah…according to “the women,” all men are assholes. According to “the men,” all women are whores. Sorry…I just couldn’t sign up for that kind of game. You know? There’s just not much hope for an asshole in search of a whore…um, I guess that depends on where one “shops.”

   The unexamined life sure seems to be “worth living” for a whole bunch o’ folks…but not this folk.

   Peace…

   Broken Too

5. KC Said,

   I agree, most people don’t want to examine their lives. Out of fear, out of inability, out of ignorance, I don’t know which.

   From a young age, I really was interested in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Many people are stuck in the lower levels of need: your basic food, shelter, safety requirements. Unfortunately, because of the major screw-up with the financial state we’re in, more people are going to sink to that level. Forget about self-actualizing – if you need to live paycheck to paycheck, you can’t think of much else than the basics. Because of that, I try to keep in mind that basic survival is priority for many folks right now.

   But recently, in reading about Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration, not everyone is capable of moving up levels, even if basic needs were met. Some choose not to because they are afraid at looking at their lives too closely, others it simply does not occur to them to do so, still others think that the upper levels are reserved for historical characters like Jesus, Mother Teresa, Ghandi (ie, there’s no way I could compete with that). His whole theory fascinates me, because unlike other theories of development that are age or stage based, you move up levels regardless of your age or stage in life, which is why many young people can seem way more developed than someone who is many years older, Which would definitely explain why as a teen you came up with a line of thinking that was beyond your years as a teen.

   Can this type of thinking be taught? I think so. I think it should be required of all students to have a classical education. I can’t sum it up in a few words, so I’ll provide this link: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/classed.html. Everything wise thing I have learned, it was because it had a basis in philosophy, because i see an inter-relatedness of knowledge, because I looked at things analytically, because of an deep curiosity about what makes people do the things that they do, because I got good teachers that nurtured analytical thinking.

   I was one of the lucky ones in high school, because I got to be in the advanced literature and history classes where the emphasis was less on rote memorization (though in the early years that has it’s place), but more on the analytical/logical dissection of a body of work. For example in history, I read books like the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and had to complete essay questions comparing and contrasting ideologies of Hitler and Franklin Roosevelt. We later compared/contrasted Hitler and President Reagan. I thrived in that class.

   When I spoke to my classmates at my high school reunion about what they remembered about history, they only said they were asked to memorize names and dates and places and basic facts about the events that took place, without any emphasis in critically thinking about the events that happened.

   Reading good works of literature can teach one how to relate to people. Many of the themes in historical literature are so appropriate for today – because there is nothing new when it comes to human relations. The veracity of the stories in the Bible may be disputed by skeptics, for instance, but the truth of the matter is that the problems encountered 2000 years ago are some of the same ones encountered today. From a historical/literature standpoint, I love the Bible for that reason. From a theological standpoint, I have trouble with the blind faith and reconciling some details – so rather than rejecting it altogether I suspend overall judgment based on the fact that there are things I can not know. It’s a fascinating book to me. There is lots to be learned about how to treat another person because by and large, most problems we face as humans have been addressed many times over in literature. Too much time is spent on tv and other forms of media and not enough time broadening their minds with exposure to good literature. Modern education is piece-meal most of the times and definitely not with the “big picture” in mind, covering breadth perhaps, but definitely not depth and not with the intention of seeing how all the pieces fit together.

   Oddly enough, when I was a child, I missed out on a few good ones. I wish I had known about books about gifted children. I am currently reading A Wrinkle In Time (because it’s on my reading list about books for gifted children) and boy, would it have helped me as I was growing up (knowing I was the oddball in my family). I am very much like Charles Wallace Murray, who has a very intuitive way of knowing about things and people, of being determined to find out what he wants to know. I think it would have gone a long way to read about children who were just like me when I was a child. But in many ways I’m like Margaret Murray, who is a very angry little girl because she feels so ostracized by her classmates.

   At any rate…I could go on and on, but I seriously must end this somewhere. Here’s a good spot. Or maybe here.

   Peace

6. KC Said,

   carp – I hate typos. forgive them. i used to be better at self-checking mistakes. not so much anymore.

7. the kittycat Said,

   hmmm

   this would be better

   xoxo

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