Navigating the Internal Divisions
August 13, 2005
The question at hand is how to create some semblance of a real person out of the increasingly divided parts of myself. That there is more than one me, and that some parts can operate independently and seemingly without difficulty has been the ruin of many friendships and more than one more intense relationship.
My workaday life, barring finding myself unable to get out of bed to begin the day, largely runs itself. I’m fortunate to have a job that I enjoy and co-workers that I genuinely enjoy being around. But even at its most intense, work doesn’t involve the deepest and most important parts of me, the far reaches that are stirred only by a few things: love, poetry, despair, creation…
I can do a good–even exemplary–job at work while that more important part of me is completely disengaged, distracted, or dying. This compartmentalization might be a survival mechanism, but when the compartments start to become so strong that even I can’t move between them, what’s left? Or what if what I see happening on one side is so horrible and so devastating that I can’t enter anymore, leaving just the workaday me to totter about in endless, predictable circles?
I don’t mean this to be an abstract question. If the aspect of myself and my life that allows me to create becomes submerged in an essential loneliness that until recently I was able to ignore, leaving only the automaton that shows up to work everyday, what’s the cure? I can’t put the genie back into the bottle– I’m overwhelmed by a lifetime of regret: the people I’ve hurt, the chances I’ve missed… a torrent of mistakes punctuated only by brief intermissions of doing nothing but putting one foot in front of the other.
I fooled myself for a long time. But now exposed, I can’t just pretend nothing happened and go back to who I was (as much as I sometimes want to). Can’t go forward, can’t go back…
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Psyche
All me-stream all the time.
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August 16th, 2005 at 12:39 pm
Chris what you describe is what goes for 95% of people. It is called being human. It is not so much a division but a multiplication. We need to reduce the number of things we grasp after with no hope of attaining them. It is letting go. Setting priorities, time management, and mindfullness of what we do and think. It is also enjoying the moment. It is also letting your hair down or letting it all hang out as the saying goes. Become a child again.
Have a good day Chris!
August 16th, 2005 at 4:44 pm
One of the most difficult things to learn about oneself is that we are not perfect. We do make mistakes, hurt the people that we care about the most, do things that can cause regret the next day. Perhaps what is important is not to focus on those things that cause “regret,” but instead focus on how to turn the negative thoughts and feelings into something positive.
Maybe you could try writing about the “mistakes” in some form or another. It may help to break down the walls that compartmentalize your life, and allow that part of you that loves and needs to create to stretch its’ wings again.
August 16th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
Bach is left.
Chris Murray
August 16th, 2005 at 8:06 pm
Or more directly, I should stop pining over that which I know I’ve lost permanently as well as that I will never have. It’s living with that compromise I’m having a hard time dealing with.
Writing it out isn’t going to do it, though it’s been a reliable method in the past. It’s instead a good method for avoidance, knowing it will be ineffectual makes it easy. Like posting here!
I’ll have to see if Bach has any answers.
August 16th, 2005 at 9:49 pm
Your recurring high/low, high/low cycles throughout the history of your blog remind me of what Samuel Beckett said. “I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go on.”
August 16th, 2005 at 11:04 pm
That puts me in good company. I found this reference on the net: “In the closing words of ”The Unnamable,” his most intransigent novel, Beckett put this paradox more succinctly: ”You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” Looks like a book I need to read.
August 17th, 2005 at 10:26 am
‘I Cannot Grasp Yesterday.’
(Poem Ronald John Symons wrote two days ago-strange hey!)
I cannot grasp yesterday,
Hold it to my breast.
Even if my heart cracks open
Trying to bring it back,
I cannot touch the sunlit hair
Cascading over your eyes, yesterday.
Nor kiss your warm lips.
Slipping beyond sight.
Holding out a hand is useless.
You turn away; fade away,
Between now and yesterday
Nothing…
August 17th, 2005 at 4:37 pm
Another Beckett, here on Bram van Velde, worth savoring, “My case is that van Velde is … the first to admit that to be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world.”
August 17th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
Or more directly, I should stop pining over that which I know I’ve lost permanently as well as that I will never have.(Chris 16/08)
Chris this is not compromise but realism. If you could just do this you would feel a weight off your shoulders. It would empower you to new levels of creativity. There is no reason why an artist must fail. In the first sentence of your reply “I” was mentioned 5 times. That is the problem. You have to overcome the self to liberate the artist within you. Not easy!
February 5th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
You need to cut small holes between your compartments and string tin cans between them. That way you can always listen to the other side of the wall when a room starts getting too hot for you to tolerate.