Perfectly put!
Thanks for the input, what you are saying makes sense. I was absolutely lost in the complexity.
Nothing wrong with understanding things / yourself better, but confusion itself is a vibe that it’s easy to get lost in and ultimately used as an excuse for not becoming free. Prioritizing the [felicitous/innocuous] vibe & strengthening the connection to pure intent is always a better priority than endlessly generating impressive-sounding maps & realizations. As Richard describes it, realizations along the path are an encouraging side-effect of becoming free, not the goal.
I remember him writing that they make way for actualisation.
Wheels within wheels. Like a Jackson Pollock painting, strangely coherent despite the chaos.
Indeed. My friendship with myself is leading me in a direction of honesty which, though I can’t feel it right now, will bear fruit.
To get there, I feel myself going in a strange direction. It makes sense however. Isn’t the very concept of changing, the antithesis of remaining myself?
If I do what I always did, I will get what I always got.
Holy shit! I finally understand what compassion is!
I still love her, despite her behaviour, despite her already being with someone before she had left the apartment.
I am my mother!
My mother endlessly forgave my father. No matter how many others he had sex with. She forgave him even though his exact words were “I don’t know why you are upset” ( that is what she told me he said).
Compassion is suffering. It forgives before it is even offended.
What a bizarre thing!!!
How does it make any sense at all to be this!!
Wow.
It’s me. The common source.
Anyway, not to be melodramatic about it itsso clearly obvious how continuing in the very unfamiliar direction make sense.
Being my best friend. Honesty. Kindness towards myself first.
God is Love.
In the decade I have been interested in actualism, I never saw who I was.
I was like white rice, on a polar bear in a snow storm.
My particular psyche is so encased in empathy, compassion, love.
Of course, all completely control oriented.
It’s really amazing to be my own best friend. I am never particularly lonely. There is still the void, all the yet to be accepted feelings, but there is progress.
For the last few days it’s been freeing to admit I still love her.
Honesty. It reduces all the spin off anger and void to simply acknowledge the feeling.
I am not “meant” to love her. I am meant to be angry and betrayed. Yet, what sort of empathy based being would I be if even betrayal and lies could stop my love?
It’s really lovely to just acknowledge the feelings. Each time I do it, there have been sparks of naivete.
Ideas pop into my head; “oh, I could join a band again!”
It’s not about the doing of anything in particular, though I have a daily appointment with the sunset over the beach, but more about kindling that internal honesty and kindness.
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I perceive myself extended in a warm familiar way, like a football field in front of me.
I like the metaphor of an oil tanker.
So far in my life it would seem I was in the bridge fighting with the crew. No one was actually steering the ship!
There were arguments about what colour the bridge should be. Where the proverbial deck chairs should be. Meetings about meetings.
The whole time this colossal enterprise is sailing on. Unperturbed by the commotion in the bridge.
So now I am walking the decks. Looking in the engine room. Examining the cargo. Watching the waves.
Out of nowhere there are glimmers of original thinking. There isn’t any need to have those fights on the bridge. The ocean is vast, the ship doesn’t need to be turned around.
What it needs is a party. 
I’ve been pretty lonely bored etc etc.
Last night I felt fractured into pieces and none of them was me. Panic was there as I wasn’t ‘whole’.
I’ve been riding my motorcycle every day for 2-3 hours. Visiting scenic spots around Perth. Checking out different tennis clubs. See things I didn’t know existed. Visiting childhood places.
I enjoy the movement. The concentration.
However, the all pervasive damage done (both pre-existing and recently) to my sense of self was really worrying me.
However, just now, I started writing a list of all the activities I could get involved in to both enjoy and meet new people.
I am up to 11 items.
All of a sudden, the little boy in me lit up!
Smile on my face as it sinks in just how much freedom I have to change this situation.
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Ended up tonight at a kizumba dance class/party and really enjoyed it.
It’s a very intimate dance style, which I hadn’t seen before.
So the plan is to continue down my list and fill up my life with as much fun as possible.
Even saw a woman I had dated before there, which was a nice surprise.
It was confronting watching the advanced dancers so intimately close. However, it sure beats sitting at home contemplating the void.
As my own best friend, I find it is such a different experience from previous years where I was there because others had encourage it. I am there on my own initiative and volition.
I am thinking rock climbing next.
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Exploring empathy.
My neighbour in the block of government apartments next door has been screaming “fuck you” all day. From before I woke up at 4:30am.
He is self-conforting.
Some sort of psychosis.
Every day is something new from this apartment block.
It normally brings out a lot of disgust in me.
However, it occurred to me that I deliberately block anything empathetic in me.
He is screaming now. (My balcony overlooks the apartments, my bedroom is about 20 meters from the building).
A part of the recent insights into my supposedly empathetic persona, was questioning just what evidence I had of the classical definition of “empathy” in me.
He screams “fuck you” and obviously gains something from it. Over and over at the top of his lungs. Every 30 seconds on average. He is comforting himself somehow.
I contrast to this with my actual neighbours down the hall, who are obviously a very stereotypical cluster B woman, with a cluster C man.
They function in “normal” society, but the damage they inflict on their 18 month daughter is obvious.
Indeed, there is little contrast at all. Same same, nearly.
Here I am in the middle. A single middle aged man, sinking again into inactivity. Not completely back to apathy, as the circumstances are spiralling “upwards” as I pass into this territory again.
Having the understanding of “fuck you” man, and feeling the compassion for him, is quite liberating.
We are all in this together. My tax paying B/C couple, the single gen x man (me), and “fuck you” guy. All holding on to something that comforts us, if only in the moment.
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So there is a peaceful feeling.
Everything that had to be sorted out, pretty much is.
The taxes, the job, the cool apartment, but mostly the friendship with myself.
There really isn’t much for me to do now, except connect more with my youngest son.
I reached out today, and turns out he is 3500km away in Melbourne. Great city. On some sorta “business trip”. Whatever that means. I am very proud of him, and let him know the same. What a champ.
All my responsibilities are fulfilled. Everything I am meant to have done, just about completed, as far as I can see.
Sunsets over the beaches from now on.
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There is such a sense of relief to know the son whom the divorce hit the hardest is doing well.
I remember so clearly him as an 11 year old balling his eyes out when I was leaving one day early on in the seperation.
I remember the feeling that I had, seeing my own father leave for what could be months or forever without say goodbye. Crying into a pillow out of shame of being seen.
And yet, he is not me. His mother, with her ruthless drive to have them and raise them, and my own somehow unfathomable way of doing my best, has meant that all three sons are not only magnificent to look at, but have the grit and insight to navigate this world.
My own selfishness, has in the end, been beneficial to them. My actions, whilst deplored by the classical definition of what a “father” should do, was ironically, not unlike my own father (to the best of his ability) exactly what a father should do; push outside the confines of safety. Make sure their offspring can make it.
My father’s success was 2 out of 4. Mine, 3 out of 3.
In everything, we start out badly. To have any success is a miracle.
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Finding out “how I tick” from the inside, rather than a top down approach.
I spent most evenings now at the beach watching the sunset. I had the choice today whether I would go to tennis, or go to the beach. I chose the beach because I felt like it.
In that decision, I had a conversation with myself, and agreed that I will definitely go to the beach. That was interesting in that how many times I have expected others to do what they say in the context of relationships, and how fragile my own agreements within myself have been.
It was a very windy evening, and I caught the eye and sideways smile of a woman. It’s the second time that I noticed someone smiling in the way I smile at people.
However, my heart isn’t brave enough yet to strike up conversations.
I wondered just now why, why I pre-judge my chances of finding someone like this.
It led me to think about myself in a way I hadn’t before. Through the lens of what I had learnt about the control a co-dependant type seeks to wield.
I reflected on the apathy towards improving myself, and discovered that they are one and the same; a co-dependant/ dependant type seeks control via the empathy/sympathy of others.
So, instead of dealing with an individual feeling or belief, I am looking at the landscape. The entire schema.
In this way, it’s a blessing to be living next to those completely dependant on government left-wing policymakers. How, the more pathetic one is, the less expected and the more given.
It’s confronting to say the least to see this trait in me.
The reflection includes the fact that in all these years the contemplation of spending every moment for the rest of my life “feeling good” at the minimum, had never occurred.
Of course it hadn’t!! I have had a vested interest in being pathetic. In being someone with “empathy inducing” events that can be leveraged to elicit sympathy, and empathy, for the purpose of having control.
Doing so (contemplating feeling good at a minimum), I see that what Kuba was saying about actuality being more that “facts” is the only direction that can make sense of such a life.
To never feel sad again. To never feel the desire for control, to never feel at all; only something “way beyond” can make sense of that.
It’s really cool actually to be one’s own best friend. To actually listen to oneself and what is going on.
The challenge, quite obviously, is to leave that life behind.
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.
Inner Passivity/Apathy.
I am currently wondering if this is learnt behaviour.
Like shame & guilt, which are instilled via socialisation, at what point did I accret apathy?
Certainly Christianity is full of apathetic waiting and prayer.
The east has it no better with it’s mantra of “this too shall pass”.
Naive children have no problem with enthusiasm, everything else being equal.
I became very agitated yesterday walking back from the beach. Feeling incapable of enthusiasm towards anything. I was angry at this situation.
Again, it’s so much better to be asking open ended questions of myself, with the curiosity to find “bottom up” answers, rather than “top down” fait accompli conclusions.
I allowed myself to do what I wanted to do, which was not go to tennis.
There was a feeling of guilt, that I am going backwards into apathy. Despondency, actually.
Later, I felt the impulse to ride my motorcycle down to the ship loading yards. I was alone and wanted to be alone riding my bike. I had skipped going to the beach, because I see happy couples and attractive women, and it makes me self conscious and think about relationships.
I didn’t want that.
So I rode down to the harbour. I saw a couple of motorcycles ahead of me and thought I should catch up to them as they were heading to the “north mole” lighthouse, which I was going to visit.
I got to the lighthouse, and there is at least 40 motorcycles all parked in a group.
I park up next to them, assuming it’s an organised Facebook ride. It was, and I got chatting with a couple of the guys.
Before long, I am in a convoy of roaring bikes, heading across the city!
At one of the traffic lights, I accelerated so hard, I was doing a “wheelie”!
I do need to be around people. It’s just more fun.
Though, not women. Somehow, I am just so over relationships after that last try that any reminder of relationships just makes me feel horrible.
Funnily, every night this week I have had a girlfriend in my dreams. I different woman each night. A gentle kiss is all I remember of the dreams.
I have been making an effort to get a full 8 hours each night. Ear plugs for the social "welfare " rabble next door and face mask to stop the sun waking me at 5am.
Ah sleep! Poor man’s nirvana.
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I would say I am picking up on anything which knocks me “off centre”.
I had noticed and even joked that I was always “externally motivated”.
In psychology terms; “an external locus of control”.
This was one of the themes that came out after the last breakup.
Now that the “big feelings” around that have faded away, I am noticing the smaller “I should do this” type of “external controls”.
I should go to the beach. I should clean the house. I should go play tennis.
I like all of those things, but there is a should in them often, and that it what I am picking up on.
There is no “should”. Not really. There are things that are better done now, but almost never is anything actually necessary right now.
So the days, even at work (I have almost complete autonomy on what projects or tasks I will do next). It’s whatever appeals to me that keeps my “centre” in my chest.
I don’t know why I would right something now.
I was surprised to read my last post, before writing this one.
Most days I have many moments when I really would prefer not to exist. I am indebted to a younger me who brought children into this world, and to Richard for pointing out the utter ‘selfishness’ of suicide. I can’t kill myself because there is nothing more abhorrent to me than to let my sons down.
I have to continue to try.
I watched one of those massive Airbus planes cross the sky yesterday. It was like a cartoon. So amazing really to see it.
I often imagine that it is 1985, or some time in the 1970s. Some time I feel nostalgic about, even if I wasn’t there. It makes me feel good.
If I live, this time will be nostalgic to me.
I like that feeling. That this time is the same as those times which I feel nostalgia about. This is that time.
I am still alive. Just.
I broke 3 ribs and my pelvis a month ago. Almost died in bed, if I hadn’t decided to make an effort to get up and call an ambulance. It was a quad bike accident. I made it home, and was in so much pain I was nearly blacking out.
I can’t describe how much it hurt.
I want so much to be dead. But, I really don’t want my sons to feel that grief.
Or, maybe I just imagine that they would be sad?
I actually wish they didn’t care and I could go forever. It would be so much better for everything to stop.
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