YOU MAY MEET YOURSELF MANY TIMES ALONG THIS ROAD

I VOWED I WOULDN’T BE RUNNING FROM CHILDHOOD NEUROSES once my fiftieth year rolled around.

I’m betting a person’s reaction to that sentence says a lot about where they are in life. It would be interesting to go around the room and hear what each person’s thoughts were. Do you have a similar oath you’ve repeated to yourself? Maybe you didn’t bundle up all the neuroses. Maybe one in particular hounds you.

When I formed that idea in my mind, it seemed the kind of vow I couldn’t fail at. I had very strong feelings on the matter, for one thing. For another, I was giving myself a vast amount of room. At 25, your late 40s seem as far away as the stars.

But now I see it as a hard division and self condemnation that isn’t, maybe, so healthy to swear by. In the end. Ha, you must be close to 50! You laugh, proud of yourself for the insight into my capitulation. You would be right that I am not so far from 50, now.

That thought about what age was too late to be acting like a blind-to-my-own-mind fool was one in a line of many, spurred by looking at those around me, older than me, supposedly wiser than me. (A line of observation that began when I was a young child.)

Thanking of it now, I don’t imagine there was a single adult in my childhood life, from parent to doctor to teacher, who wasn’t utterly compromised and compensating for one or more neuroses. People are a mess.

I don’t think we have to be. But the world we have made, and the one that we are steeped in (as hazardous as ‘we’ is to employ, I will dare to speak as an American) is a treacherous one. And we mold ourselves around it in order to survive. Society demands it, in fact, and will come at you with knives and cages if you refuse to tithe some part of your mind and integrity.

At best, you will be protected by luck. Most likely, you will become a fantastic performer who forgets you are playing a role most of the time. At worst, you will be destroyed.

(Is that last option a redundancy?)

∞

How would one try to fulfill such an oath? First, “running from childhood neurosis” would need to be defined. How you do that depends on what school of thought you want to speak in. The psychological is implied by the language of “neurosis.” So which paradigm? Cognitive Behavioral? Psychoanalytic? Sure. Freudian? Jungian? Okay. Lack of shadow work. One interpretation of running from childhood neuroses” could be interpreted as projecting your shadow self onto the world, and others.

But I wasn’t thinking of Jung when I swore that to myself. I was thinking of the Nazi’s son, Geoff.

∞

I don’t really know why we expect those we admire as children or young people to be flawless. I suppose it’s part of trusting those who are charged with caring for us. An instinctual vestige, one of which we will soon be relieved.  And as we grow and look at elders, do we expect time to smooth out the damage they have sustained—all on its own? It doesn’t. If anything, people learn to rationalize more. And sometimes that damage is like rust. Sometimes it has many mouths that won’t stop chewing. Sometimes, it eats them all up before they ever learn better.

I had that thought, over 20 years ago, upon seeing the various sides of a man I knew (who had been raised by a Nazi father). Well, he wasn’t just a man I knew. He was a neighbor, a landlord, and my employer. How does that relationship sound to you? It’s not ideal, in my experience.

I was a wreck at the time. Living with someone who was driving me out of my mind. Living with consequences. Feeling there was no way out. I was, most likely, having an extended and excruciating nervous breakdown. Life, though, had taught me to see such situations as…well, life. Just another stretch of life. I’m a writer, I would think to myself, clutching the thought as one might clutch a holy symbol on a long, dark, night of the soul. Living through this horrific situation will help me better understand the human condition.

I wasn’t wrong. (Though if anyone is having similar thoughts right now about an unendurable situation…well, you have my sympathy. Let me know if I can convince you to give some more care to your mind than to your writing chops.)

I guess I was hoping that if I just held on, everything would be all right.

And then, there was evidence in front of me that I might hold on for another 20 years, and still not be free of my own folly.

Like Geoff.

∞

Geoff was proud of the business that he owned. He saw himself as a benevolent boss. He gave me a gem at one point. A gem of thought. Look out for these. You can collect them from all characters in the game. A foe, a friend, an NPC, it doesn’t matter.

The gem Geoff gave me was this:

Working for an employer is a trade. Your labor for their money. Don’t let an employer make you feel you owe them anything beyond that. It’s an even deal.

As a twenty-something year old who had been doing labor jobs since he was 14, and caught many a condescending attitude from higher up the pay chain, I liked that idea. And I held onto it.

Geoff wasn’t all bad, of course. (I’ve never met anyone who is all bad. But I’ve lived in neighborhoods that stood in the shadow of maximum security prisons that were holding one or two individuals who were all bad. You’d recognize their names. So yes, I do think they exist. And I do think you need to understand that and act accordingly in life. It is extremely hazardous to do otherwise. At least, one should never play Jesus if they aren’t willing to die like him.) He was just another human being. Simple at heart, complicated of mind. And a little jammed up in the places where the two weren’t connecting optimally.

I admired him in a few ways. For a time. And the disillusionment that followed, eventually, was what gave way to my oath about being different than what I saw in him—and in many other (older) adults. The truth is, it terrified me to think you could reach his age, own your own business, be charismatic and seemingly happy…and yet have glaring issues that were having a major negative impact on your life. Issues a 25 year old employee could list and dissect from the passenger’s seat of the sod truck.

It seems almost dear, now, that I had been thinking so highly of a 45 year old in the first place. Simply for being 45.

∞

At my age, I know the undramatic truth.

There is always shadow work to be done. Or centering work. Or inner work. Or decolonizing work. Or healing work. Pick a discipline, choose your language. A person, while alive, will never be free from all distractions and challenges of the mind and ego. We would imagine a candle flame without a shadow? Fearing our wholeness, we yearn to be pure, and clean of stain. To be enlightened, evolved, and only Of Love.

Some say we already are, and the struggle misses the point.

Do you think so? Do you think we unintentionally make great effort to suffer? Are we addicted to it? To the agita, to the pain? To a psychic fable?

Maybe it’s true that the protracted inner wrestling is also an invention of the mind. And just being, just breathing, just you as you are—is perfection.

Just you allowing yourself to be you.

That’s a beautiful thought.

Doesn’t leave much room for vows, though….