 |
About Us
Do You Lead A Life of Quiet Desperation?
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau was right, of course, brilliant philosopher that he was, but he erred about most men and women's desperation being "quiet." How I wish that it was so.
Perhaps it's because I'm a professional psychic and get paid to channel advice from the other side, but in my experience most people (not my clients, mind you) who learn that I am a psychic are more than happy to trumpet their desperation loud and clear and straight at me, practically daring me to advise them in such a skillful and forceful way that all their demons are slain and their desperation evaporates. Whether you've developed your native intuitive talents or not, I'm sure you get the same treatment from friends and family, the more desperate they are the more loudly they complain - their version of throwing down the gauntlet and challenging you to come in to their burning castle and rescue them.
What do you do? What can you do? Even if you're the most skillful therapist, how can you help someone to change their behavior when they are obviously getting something of value out of their present behavior and their refusal to be themselves fully? The comedian Henny Youngman told (stole?) a joke about a man who told a psychiatrist "My brother thinks he's a chicken!" The doctor said "So why don't you bring him in to me, I'll cure him." To which the man replied "I need the eggs."
We are all like that to some degree. Our bad habits, blind spots, and tortured logic that produces questionable decisions, all do make perfect sense in some way known only to a renegade part of our psyche. We need the eggs, the life-giving nourishment that we somehow derive from some of our very strange behavior.
But it certainly isn't the quiet desperation that Thoreau knew living on Walden Pond. Welcome to the 21st Century, Mr. Thoreau, where each person seems to be living their life as if a reality show TV camera were trained on them 24/7. No quiet desperation here, just us reality TV show stars. And the pace of it all is very difficult for almost all of us to deal with. It's literally killing some people. Ah, death, a favorite subject of the psychic medium because we hear the dead speak, so what we call death we should more accurately call transition.
We all must transition/kill something else that's alive in order to eat but it is what we are willing to kill to survive that defines who we are to a great degree. In similar fashion, we are all addicted to something - more like some things - and it is what we are addicted to that defines us. Many are addicted to what they complain to us about. Wouldn't it be great if they got addicted to actually taking action to do something about what they complain about so loudly and so often? So, what are you addicted to?
At the risk of nauseating you, I, who was addicted to marijuana for over a decade and, for a year or so back in 1980, to cocaine, am now addicted mainly to loving Amy and Zane, being the wordsmith for The Enchanted World of Amy Zerner and Monte Farber, reading the news on the internet till all hours, and trying to write cogently about the reality, problems, and solutions of living at this time in history. I used to stay up for days when I was a musician now it's "Oh, Amy, we ate cheese yesterday - we are living on the edge, eh?"
So, what are you addicted to? I hope it isn't marijuana or cocaine because I did so much that I'm sure the shortage still lingers. I'm joking. Again. I guess I'm addicted to joking, too. Like drugs, being funny and hearing laughter and knowing that you've given people that supreme gift takes you away from your quiet desperation and helps you forget that you're going to die and that you are presently not singing your song, as Thoreau put it, as well and as forcefully as you know you can. Almost everyone feels that way, especially those who work the hardest. Or should I say those who are addicted to work?
Just as the war on terror will never be won because terror is not a person or a nation, but a tactic used by terrible people and nations, so we can never win a war designed to eliminate killing - even vegetarians kill for their food. Only those who eat only fruit that drops from its host plant do not kill to eat. And we can never win a war against addiction, whether that is to drugs, alchohol, complaining about not having the right partner, working, avoiding work, whatever. Addiction is another word for structure.
Oh, I believe those who are addicted to drugs are doing so first and foremost for the numbness it brings to self-criticisim, unpleasant memories, anxieties about the future, you name it. But addiction also forces us to structure our lives around feeding our addiction, whether that is figuring out how to obtain and use drugs and taking action to do so or how to realize a well-planned career. We must all be addicted to something. That's just the way things are.
I just wish that those who have a secondary addiction to talking at me and sharing in an inappropriate manner a lengthy description of their addiction(s) without caring in the slightest whether or not I want to hear it or, even worse, without considering or, apparently, even hearing the advice they seem to be requesting from me will shut up, get their "eggs" elsewhere, and leave me to my own life of quiet desperation. Like everyone, I think I could be singing my song a bit better. The difference between me and those who've obviously pissed me off enough to write this blog is that I am working every day, actually doing something about that which concerns me, not just talking about it.
So if you, too, feel you are living a life of quiet desperation, join the club. Just like what you're willing to kill to survive and what you're addicted to, you are defined by that part of your inner "song" that you have not yet figured out how to get out to the world.
So, my unsolicited advice? Use your quiet desperation as a dynamic map, showing you where you are now and where you would like to be. All you have to do is finally, after all these years, get off your lazy butt and stop bothering me and everyone else around you about it and FINALLY, stop boring everyone with your craziness, stop forcing everyone to look at you like an aging movie star clinging to her last dramatic role, and start taking care of business! And don't keep lying to me and everyone the way you're lying to yourself. Even you don't believe you anymore, so how can you expect me to believe you?
So stop being a cliche - a garden variety boring, lying, dishonest junky who thinks they're so cool - and a fraud and a wimp and so very, very, very selfish. There are good cliches and bad cliches, such as: Just do it (thank you, Nike) and Just say no (thank you, Nancy Reagan), to your selfish gluttony, to your addiction, to your boring life that is hurting the very people you claim to "love," and say hello to the you that can be singing your song for the brief time you have left to enjoy this wonderful planet and the wonderful people who, despite all the pain your selfish dance of death has caused them, still love you and are cheering for you. Just do it, one minute at a time. No grandiose plan, just one foot in front of the other. Peace is every step (thanks, Thich Nhat HanH). You know who you are, I hope, and now you know what you have to do. |
|
|
  |
|
 |
ShareThis
