(no subject)
Taking responsibility for our "selves" can be traumatic, saddening... Having to feel everything that has been deferred for a lifetime is exhausting business. Not fun at times, it is. The defenses we create to keep us safe from emotional pain from without (which create a sense of alienation and isolated individuality) keep us from seeing what we really are. Some days I can't blame people for being so blind. I envy most people at times, just going through their daily routines, never questioning. Life might be easier that way. I saw this blind man today who was obviously not very bright or very well off financially. I feel bad commenting on his lack of mental prowess, but it's the truth. He was walking into a corner having lost his way, and someone tried to help him. Just being nice but the blind man responded to his kindness with defensiveness and hostility saying, "So? I'm walking into a corner that's MY problem. *I* know where I'm going. Then he turned around and tried to skirt around the cars in the parking lot and his cane bumped into the car next to mine. The blind man said, "There's a car there. See? I know what I'm doing. *I* don't need any help from anyone." kindness rebuffed. In that moment I knew exactly what that man was feeling. He felt outcast, as if his lack of sight made him less than everyone else. As if all other people looked down on him but it was really HIMSELF, his own beliefs about what it means to be blind. He felt helpless and as if it was a crime to be so. That he was worthy of derision. His mind did its best to protect him from it's own sense of inferiority and that's the best defense it could come up with. All his inner anguish spilling out into the world. These words... They don't come close to describing what that man was going through and it hit me like a freight train. I knew. Everything he was feeling I understood on a visceral level because I've been there. I didn't do anything I just stood and watched then got into my car and breathed, "That poor thing." knowing that there was nothing I could do. I felt it with him and in so many words, it fucking hurt. I could do without that kind of sensitivity to other people's emotions. But any attempt to show compassion or understanding would have been rebuffed so... I did nothing. I felt helpless. That's the kind of fear that keeps us apart. I can't save the world I can't save myself I can only reach out to people who I'm fairly sure will reach back. Like a safe business investment. What kind of enlightenment is that? I need to show myself that sort of compassion but I simply don't know how. Only brutality only brutality. Caring so, wanting to take the entire world in and ease its suffereng yet having such a deep need for love and connection myself... It's a difficult combination. I can't ease the suffering behind my own eyes yet I want to take others' pain on? It will not work because my own need gets in the way. I can be selfish that way. I'm so insecure in my own relationships that it's difficult to be strong when others need me to help ease their own pain. To just be there. I worry that I'm not doing the right thing that they'll hate me and... There's that selfishness to it. As if I'm there for them because I want the favor returned; I have to do my damndest to keep from talking about myself in those situations. I hate that about me and yet I need other people. I think I don't deserve that sort of kindness from others. I don't deserve love? Maybe that's what it is. Anyway, I deprive myself of what I need. I saw myself in the blind man today and he was blind in more ways than one.