What Is the Bad Thing?
Flaemmchen Dearest
A word with you if I may. Granddad! You’re flushed with excitement. I’ve been sitting by my phone 360 days straight waiting for your birthday to ring and – finally! Ring-a-ding-ding! Yes. The torture of imperfectionem is almost over. You can’t imagine my sense of relief! Uh, yes, of course. Here, let me dab the perspiration off your brow. Why so much excitement this year? Contradiction! I peeled another layer of the onion and – voila! There it was! I understand completely, Granddad. (Orderly, physical restraints please.)
So, Granddad, do tell me more. You won’t mind if I attend to my birthday gifts and treats. How rude of me! Lost in my thoughts as usual. I do hope you enjoy my gifts. Especially the book about American history. Of course. It’s all teenage girls think about. And the book about physics. All that girls write of in their diaries when they’re moved by their innermost thoughts. Quantum gravity’s loop theory always brings my passions to a boil. Thank you! So encouraging to know that my one-and-only all-time favorite granddaughter has a head on her shoulders. You’re on your way! And for me to know that I have the wind at my back. A Granddad who cares. Who always senses what’s on my mind at the moment. (Orderly, Ketamine – quick!)
So, why all the excitement? The bad thing. That’s been driving everyone crazy trying to figure it out. What “bad thing?” You won’t find me unkind if I use you for an example. (Orderly — rat poison!) Yes, of course. How could I be an example? By scheming behind my back to have me hog-tied, anesthetized, and poisoned while I favor you with my incomparable wisdom. You think I haven’t been paying attention? In that case, we can cancel my call for room service. What room service? Eggs benedict, Époisses de Bourgogne, and a magnum of Moet & Chandon. To celebrate our Loving Friendship. Sacre bleu! I am undone!
And I am ecstatic that I am finally going to get the solution to all my problems. Yes. The Great Manipulator’s secret weapon, that keeps everyone guessing. The call to The Grand Hotel that made poor Greta Garbo want to be forever alone. Our dear Psyche’s unwanted guest . . . General Director Preysing preying upon Flaemmchen. Played by Mommie Dearest. No, I think Herr Preysing got the worst of that deal. Who was Mommie Dearest? Joan Crawford, an absolute terror as a mother. Who teamed up with Bette Davis to make Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? in 1962, a psychological horror thriller for which she needed no training. Interesting. What made her a terror?
Mind out to lunch
Once upon a time, long, long ago and all that, there was a condition that had no name. Like the way things were that never got around to being the “way” of anything. All that could be made of it was that it was agitated. It just didn’t want to be quiet and leave well enough alone. A kind of unrest that was wanting to be settled and quiet but something within it wouldn’t let it.
How awful! What would cause that? The big picture. Everything brought together in one place where it can be sized up and nailed down and figured out forever with nothing changing. And somebody who has it and knows everything and is therefore all-powerful and all that. A state of rest where there’s no reason to get agitated and move around and do stuff. Everything taken care of. All questions answered forever. Nothing more to think about. No more creative projects to work on. Total peace. And an old guy with a beard in robes snoring on the sofa, dead to the world.
Even more awful. Not to worry. It’s as crazy as it sounds, because no such condition can exist. Why not? It’s inertia. The state of Energy at rest with nothing to do. With no Mind to give it direction, so it just lies down and has a nice nap until it does get direction and something to do. Energy is the doing part of Mind that gets things done. And if it’s inert then Mind must be absent or at least on lunch break. This big picture is thoughtless and unmotivated.
Derivatives don’t come first
Total rest is missing something else as well. What could it be? Life. If it’s static it’s not growing. And if it’s not growing it can’t be living. Life is movement. Forward, expanding with motivation. I’ve been wondering about that. Where does motivation come from? Something that has a need that can’t be satisfied by just sitting around. Curiosity is one thing I can think of. Knowledge that always needs to expand its horizons if there’s movement and change. Always questioning.
Another is Relationship, always looking for a partner to connect with in Loving Friendship. Those are two forces for movement and change that nothing can hold back. Love that’s life and growth. Logic that’s learning and questioning. Put the two together with Energy and you have the motivation behind maturation. Evolution. Inexorable, and so incapable of being held back or held down by anything static. Anything mindless, lifeless, and loveless. Like a silly static big picture with all the answers and a grand do-nothing poo-bah presiding over it.
The big picture went poof when Love and Logic and Energy all teamed up to make their big Move. Actually it wasn’t there in the first place. For anything to be “there” it has to be the product of Movement, not the source. Something would have to put it there. If the static know-it-all big picture was already there what put it there? If it was the denial of Movement it couldn’t have put itself there. Movement certainly wouldn’t have put it there.
How about conservatives? “Static know-it-all big picture” sounds like something they would invent. Yes. To make it look like they deserve to run everything. They have invented it. It’s the “ideal” behind all their efforts to turn back the clock. The state that was supposedly there at the beginning before Movement itself. A total absurdity. Just like “conservatism.” The political form that contradiction takes in our virtual reality.
Absurd or not, it was still an implication. And in a condition of anything goes implications have their place as well as the things that imply them. Derivatives. They just don’t come first.
Evolution’s first contradiction
Anything goes? If one static big picture doesn’t make sense in the presence of Movement — Life growing and evolving — then the field is left open to other pictures that aren’t all-embracing big. That have no one-size-fits-all limits to define them, no uniform coordinates to locate them, and so what can they do but define themselves? Locate themselves. Set their own limits, their own coordinates, and that’s what our picture has done. The Reality of Creation that Movement started and the form it’s taken in our reverse-virtual version of it. Defining itself, and why not if there’s no big picture to prevent it? If anything goes.
Open house for absurdities. Like the over-rated Hawking’s mad idea of a “boundaryless” universe. That just happened, like a Saturday night special that shot someone with no finger on the trigger. Hey everyone! The immaculate conception and I’m the conceiver! “God” the creator and my religion physics. At one stroke Hawking managed to kill science and put out an SOS for the field of learning he was declaring dead. Philosophy, that he’d obviously never thought much about. As good an example of contradiction making a fool of Sapiens as you’ll find.
Anything goes must include implications of what isn’t as well as the Reality of Movement that came before and precipitated them. Doing what anything goes is and what it does: the idea of unrest expressing itself in unrest. The idea of there being no one Answer, only questions that must be free to lead to their own answers. Leading to a situation where there can theoretically be many answers, all equally legitimate if they have an internal logic. If they make sense and aren’t silly like the big picture.
But all having their own built-in contradiction because the impossible big picture didn’t go poof! It latched onto Movement as a kind of rider. Automatically headed in the opposite direction. Backward when Movement went forward. Evolution’s first contradiction. The source of everything we think of as negativity when everything there is to Creation in Reality is otherwise positive. The ideal of Loving Friendship and the entire process and structure of Relatability that support it.
The way things have to be
If there were no words to describe this condition of unrest at the beginning where did your description come from? Evolution motivated by Love-Life growing and Logic-Knowledge Learning coming together spontaneously with Energy in the Now activated Mind with Relationship. The output of Mind thinking is ideas and feelings. The raw material of Creation: the circumstances of which we and our virtual reality are a part. And the source of language consisting of words which are representations of ideas and feeling. The inchoate condition of unrest was translated into an idea, the idea was defined as unreal, and rendered inactive. What idea? The idea of contradiction. The unhappy camper who comes along with Movement always complaining, always questioning, always pulling by implication in the opposite direction, against Movement.
It isn’t a drag? Certainly, in specific contexts. Never a drag in Reality where Mind-Relationship is Self-Awareness and Self-Awareness is always awake. But certainly a drag in our virtual reality where an extension or Child of Mind-Relationship is Free Choice learning its function by trial-and-error experience. In a state of self-unawareness where its errors have no consequences in Reality. Where contradiction wouldn’t test the character and integrity of Free Choice if it weren’t a drag.
But overall it’s the opposite of a drag. Because if Movement and Creation have to do without contradiction they’ll lose an element built into their Being from the start. The requirement of anything goes, the condition that stands in place of an all-embracing big picture: that by definition Movement be accompanied by its own implied reverse-opposite. Its contradiction. Just the way things are, but more than that, the way things have to be or they wouldn’t be at all.
Self-centered, arrogant, and nuts
The requirement I speak of can be thought of as a mirror. That every part of Creation, Life living, learning, and growing, can’t get along without: the ability to look honestly and critically at ourselves while we change with our circumstances. An essential part of Self-Awareness when “Self” is everything that is. When there’s no “there” out there to be aware of and monitor. Only here, and “here” is inside. To be aware at all is to be able to look inward at ourselves.
To see in the case of Self-Awareness a critical fact about itself that has a direct bearing on the toxic blast of contradiction threatening civilization today. That it’s something not everything. Within its perspective, the way it defines Reality in part by what it isn’t – nihilism or anything goes, – it does account for everything that is. Everything within it, nothing outside of it. But in the absence of a big picture that’s everything it can’t claim to be more than something. The origin of the Lincoln Memorial on Constitution Mall: the idea of humility. If we need an attribute to distinguish the blast of “conservatism” threatening civilization today there it is: arrogance. The idea that there’s an everything and it’s it. Everything. Self-centered, arrogant, and nuts.
The mirror did it!
The mirror that gives Self-Awareness this ability isn’t the implication of its reverse-reflection. If it were one look from Self-Awareness would make it real. It’s the Conscience of Creation that came about with the first Movement of evolution. When Spontaneity-Love, Logic-Order, and Energy in the Now came together spontaneously, first to establish the principles and values that define Creation, second to activate Mind-Relationship with Self-Awareness. In that order, so that every part of Creation is aligned with Guidance, its Conscience.
Meaning in virtual reality that there is now a presumptive source of “guidance” competing with Guidance. The voice of anything-goes nihilism brought to “life” by self-unawareness. Contradiction. Always speaking first and always wrong. Forbidding Free Choice, the Mind-Child of Mind-Relationship its Parents, to look within to connect with Conscience. Where it will learn of the deception and choose again.
Virtual reality, where there seems to be a “there” out there distracting us from looking within. An obstruction to Sapiens’ evolution that Sapiens must reverse – must re-contradict – if we mean to learn Free Choice and Character with Integrity. Where we come equipped with reverse-reflections in our own mirrors but it seems that everyone else is holding up a mirror to us as well. Sometimes reflecting images so unpleasant that we feel moved to correct them. By looking within to consult Conscience but not always. Often blaming the mirror instead. Refusing to learn and grow so our metaphysical Self will awaken to its role in Creation: Free Choice, Character with Integrity. Cutting ourselves off from consulting Conscience from Guidance. Our one and only connection to our Home in Reality and Creation. To peace, truth, and sanity.
Honing Character with Integrity
Contradiction is the bad thing? Yes. The mirror that it holds up to us. Bad for reflecting everything that our metaphysical Self is not in Reality. The reverse-reflection in anything goes that was never more than an implication in Reality but now, when Mind-Child is self-unaware, is mistaken for real and set loose in its own imaginary world. When Sapiens fails to use its ability to differentiate and to empathize when it looks into this mirror and so misperceives, misunderstands, and misjudges. Gets it wrong – itself and everything in the space around it. Badly misled, and this allows it to be manipulated by the bad thing.
So here we are. Sapiens, a species of ape, our minds able to differentiate and empathize. More evolved than our ape ancestor but still held back by our metaphysical ancestor, whose Psyche harbors contradiction. The bad thing without mind, life, love, and logic – without definition, – coming at us in all sorts of forms. Dysfunctional, sick, and wounding. Undoing, disconnecting, and in need of healing. When contradiction can’t be “cured” by making it not exist in virtual reality where nothing already “exists.” But it can be managed
How? When it uses differentiation and empathy Sapiens knows not to pay attention to the wrong mirror. It chooses to relate to Guidance from Creation and look at Conscience instead. To be guided by principles and values consciously – by peace, truth, and sanity — and not manipulated by their reverse opposites. By wrongdoing.
It’s in the act of using Sapiens’ mental faculties to challenge wrongdoing that it hones Character with Integrity. That it progresses toward Free Choice. Toward Self-Awareness and liberation from being manipulated and forever deluding itself. Forever making a fool of itself and causing injury, pain, and destruction. When it fails to stand up to the bully.
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Managing It
Beyond self-appointed arrogance
And now you’re going to tell me what all this means. For you or for me? They’re not the same. How about for both of us?
Contradiction is loaded with meaning. It’s questioning but not the garden variety that leads Logic from one implication to the other. It’s wild. It doesn’t originate with Logic or its sequence that we think of as process. It originates with the idea of reverse-logic: not-process. And since Logic is where we get boundaries for definition it’s not-definition too. The idea of a big picture is nuts. So if the reverse-opposite that attaches to Movement whenever it moves is anti-movement it’s nuts. Bonkers. The first thought that comes up when Mind thinks of it is contradiction is a thought that makes no sense. It can’t possibly come from a Mind that’s in its own right mind.
Then where can it come from? From Mind that isn’t in its own right mind. One that either lost consciousness or hasn’t yet come into it. What? Our virtual reality doesn’t make sense. It’s different things being true all at once. Opposites that should cancel one another out if things did make sense but here – anything goes. Our version of reality is the back side of the way things originally were brought to life. The dotted-line implication. The unhappy camper; our world is its home. Because the Mind thinking all this is unconscious and dreaming. Dreaming a world that’s the mad idea of contradiction full of contradictions. Why unconscious? Why dreaming?
Mind that Movement activated with Relationship can’t stop there. Relationship between Love and Logic so that it can provide direction for Energy. Express its Ideal of Loving Friendship through Creation. If it did stop there the whole operation would reek of willfulness. Why? Because it would be saying Creation is a big deal because it says it is: “Take my word for it.” Maybe that would be enough for some but not for Love. Not for Logic or the two together. They stand for Loving Friendship that can be trusted. That has real Worth, and there’s no possibility of either unless it’s earned and learned. Proven by evidence beyond a self-appointed “authority.” Beyond arrogance that’s proof of manipulation. Self-worthlessness.
Risking all on Conscience and Free Choice
What could possibly provide proof? Something dear to your heart. Free Choice. Choice that knows the difference between right and wrong, true and false. Between worth and worthless, judgment that’s independent and judgment that’s manipulated. Choice that’s free because nobody tells it what to do. It has integrity. It serves no master. Not two or three or four masters, like people do in our world. But because it’s the child of Mind-Relationship and it has a Mind of its own, it does have the choice of serving an ideal. The Ideal of Loving Friendship that motivates Creation. The Ideal of Life Growing and Learning in service to a Cause that in turn motivates evolution. Which it can embrace or not as it sees fit.
Scary! This dude has a Mind of its own? What’s to prevent it from running Creation into a ditch if it feels like it? Conscience. Its Parent Mind-Relationship answers to Conscience or else it would rule like a dictator above the law. Creation didn’t come about before Love, Logic, and the spontaneity of Energy made their values definitive for all of Creation. Including Mind-Relationship itself. When you’re talking about Loving Friendship and the whole edifice of Creation and Creators who support it, you’re talking about seriously Good. That no willfulness or arrogance can penetrate.
Free Choice needed to make all this more than a movie studio-lot façade is another matter. Its Mind of its own does have a Conscience, but as with everything about it, it must be chosen. And it must choose to be guided by it. Obviously a challenge in our virtual reality of contradictions, where trust, credibility, and the Worth of Character with Integrity are regularly sacrificed on the altar of corruption. Where the disempowerment of contradiction by Definition in Reality offers no protection. Here, contradiction is “real” enough and the gloves are off. You make it on your own or you don’t make it.
“Victory” is fleeting
This is an even fight between Good and evil? Just so, from the perspective of contradiction, which will tell you that the fight is rigged in favor of Good so that when evil triumphs it will look even better. What gives this the appearance of an even-steven contest is the nature of the “combatants:”
- Contradiction a wild card born of unrest that resists definition – the joker in the deck. Lacking the freedom to think, feel, or do anything on its own. An agent of manipulation intent on replacing every work of Spontaneity with its own will. A manipulator with neither autonomy nor a will of its own. The personification and embodiment of corruption. The self-appointed enemy of character with integrity. The appearance of invulnerability masking the reality of
- Free Choice a function unlike any other, offered the opportunity to put Mind-Creation where its mouth is. To translate proposition into fact, cause into effect, should it freely choose to do so. By earning character with integrity: gaining competence from experience that isn’t handed to it on a silver platter. Until it can stand on its own two feet and accept its role if it chooses. And then to risk error willing to pay the price. Answerable to no one but its own Conscience. Its autonomy uncompromised by any force including its Parents, Mind-Relationship. By any will that would manipulate it. The vulnerability of choice and freedom that stand for its
There can be no “fight” between a thing and its implied opposite. Between something that’s Real and “there” and something else that’s not real and not there. Make-believe deceptions and impostures. Facades that mask who we are and what we’re about. This is true whether the function Free Choice is awake or asleep. Virtual reality makes it appear that we’re in a fight. But only because virtual reality is play-acting that’s entirely made up of manipulations. One hundred percent make-believe. What’s to be gained when masses of bodies crush together like tectonic plates and one mass is more or less crushed than the other? Does “victory” or “defeat” produce any lasting effect? When time and evolution will erase all of it anyway? Is there any point other than the self-satisfaction of manipulation?
Points you’ve made so often I may be in danger of remembering them. Then you’ll be sorry. Why? I’ll think like you and I’ll have to be put into special ed. Besides, I like my masks. Girls don’t want anyone to know who they really are. They want to be mystiques in high heels and perfume so they can lure bumpkins into their webs of intrigue. OK. Then you’d rather not have your birthday present. As long as it’s perfume and stilettos. It’s perfume and stilettos. Thank you. You may proceed.
The sparring partner
The bad thing is manipulation. A version of contradiction that’s arrogance crossing boundaries and taking control. The nutty idea of a big picture with one dude presiding over it. Arrogance manipulating the truth and everything else to suit itself. Attached to Movement like a tin can to a car, reversed into the car in our virtual reality with Movement now playing the tin can. Giving each of us a test of character, whether to choose to do our part to re-reverse this craziness back to making sense. To Movement forward or to staying here in paralysis, going nowhere. Letting ourselves be manipulated like helpless ninnies out of our birthright: Character with Integrity. The Conscience and Ideal of Loving Friendship.
Ah! Good contradiction! Exactly. What’s misrepresented in our virtual reality as a war between Titans and Olympians is nothing more than common sense contradicting nonsense. Virtual reality’s contradiction of Reality. A “clash” between logical thinking and a mad idea that got inside by mistake. Like a rodent or a skunk that needs to be put back outside. Or a wild Siberian tiger that can never be housebroken. An intruder that may appear to be housebroken because it excels at mimicry. But If it’s wild it belongs in the wild.
How can I tell the difference between good contradiction and bad contradiction? Nihilism – the absence of Conscience. The rank ideology of cruelty. The same glorification of insensitivity that overcame 1930s Germany with “national socialism.” The perversion of “leadership” that’s deluding Sapiens into an orgy of self-destruction today. Manipulation. Arrogance. Irrationality. Injustice. A few of the most toxic markers of bad contradiction.
But before our good contradiction heroes head out on their ghostbusting mission it’s well to remember that the “enemy” isn’t to be extinguished. It’s only to be managed. Why? Because of the part that it plays in our virtual reality of play-acting. Without it Free Choice would have no opposition to test its Character. No corruption to test its integrity or challenge it to grow with understanding. To help it gain the competence to perform its role dependably in Creation.
While “bad contradiction” is to be let out of Mind it has to be allowed to spar with good contradiction first. Until Free Choice is ready for active duty, honed by experience into Character with Integrity. Into strength that can handle any situation with confidence. Knowing the nature of the “enemy,” its own nature, and the rules of the game. The way things are in a virtual reality of anything goes and in Reality where Loving Friendship is the way things are. Where “anything goes” is inactive and harmless where it belongs. An implication.
The teacher and the right Guide
Your birthday present is a moral compass that will get you through any situation. A way of navigating through a life of contradictions that isn’t debilitating and immobilizing with frustrations. Even one like Viktor Frankl’s, stuck in a Nazi concentration camp. Taking it and finding use in it. Making something good of it like he did with Man’s Search for Meaning (1946). Mind-Relationship set the example when it took its hanger-on and made it an integral part of Creation. The crazy idea of a big picture: contradiction. And used it to begin training its Child how to authenticate Creation with meaning and purpose. With the Integrity of Character that chooses freely, taught by the idea of contradiction. Now for the Child to emulate its Parents and the example they set. By recognizing in virtual reality the gift that it represents. To be made use of even while it’s being cursed. The abomination of nihilism and its gut-wrenching injustices: the gift of learning.
Contradiction is a teacher? Absolutely. In our world it’s the best. You and I and your Dad are part of an ancestral tree. A continuum of genetics that plays a central part in the causes and conflicts we get caught up in. What do you mean? We aren’t blank slates at birth by any means. When sperm met the egg it predetermined the script we’re to follow while we bounce our way, from pillar to post, through “life.” An attempt by “fate” – contradiction – to deny Free Choice by forcing its will upon us and for us to deny “fate” what it wills.
How? By using the experience not to act out what was programmed for us but to become aware of who we are while we’re doing it. To repair to the right contradiction. To its mirror of Conscience from Guidance instead of deluding ourselves with the reflection of nihilism in the mirror of anything goes. Held up by the wrong contradiction. So that we can earn and learn Free Choice by choosing the right Guide. Its first and most important requirement.
More to life than appearances
In ours as in every family tree there are positions taken by personality types. As though meant to assume roles in a play, which, as it happens, may be what they’re meant for in a virtual reality of make-believe. That an obtuse idealist like me assumes are compatible since they’re family when in fact they aren’t. The lesson I share with you that you may already have learned, is that the roles don’t make it easy to get along. I’ve noticed. They can make it hard. But the lesson doesn’t stop there. It’s that they’re meant to be hard. To push relationships to the breaking point and beyond. Why? So that the lesson penetrates our thick skulls. So that we learn it and move on.
Parents can divorce but kids can’t divorce their parents. No. But in so many ways they can want to and actually do it psychologically. They do what they have to do to survive. I’ve done it myself. Divorced myself from parent and child. But though separation may offer temporary relief from the pain of incompatibility and abuse it’s an affront to the ties that bind us. To family and the ideal of Loving Friendship. Even if it’s unattainable while we act out our roles on the stage of life. There’s more to “life on Earth” than appearances.
Breaking the cycle of abuse
The lesson is we don’t need to excoriate one another while we’re not getting along. We only need to look within with every provocation. To let feeling lead us where it will. And since feeling is Love before it was perverted by contradiction into fear and hate, it will lead us where we’re actually meant to go. Toward Love not away from it.
Let distancing stand if other personality types need it to play their roles. Like creatures in the wild we come across, give them distance and show respect. It’s not for us to claim ownership of the field but only to share it. By staying within our own boundaries and there do the work of living: taking what we see in the mirror and changing it. Getting rid of what contradiction and ancestral genetics have put there out of sight and out of mind. Bringing to awareness what had been lurking in the shadows, the animal urges of instinct in the subconscious. Shaping the selves that we choose to be instead of wielding the weapons of manipulation against one another. Breaking the cycle of parent to child abuse that arrests development and obstructs the work of the next generation.
Introducing Tortuous Convolvulus!
You speak from experience? As much as anyone who had a Dad and Granddad. Who has a son and a Granddaughter and has lived long enough to relate to all of them and reflect on what it was all about. To recognize the signs of contradiction at work and to realize that unless I distance myself from its make-believe I’m no less a part of its script than anyone else. That what works for me isn’t yielding to the demands of anything goes. To surrender Character with Integrity so that I can “go along to get along” in a play-act of whatever. What works for me is Loving Friendship with Guidance that makes sense. That isn’t “whatever.” That isn’t manipulation. To commit to it, and that means to accept the consequences. Own the consequences. Make my choice and be accountable for it.
We need the mirror of contradiction. To look into the mirror of Conscience forthrightly and with conviction. Avoiding it is a big mistake. Seeking to be told what to do by the wrong mirror is a big mistake. Identifying with its reverse-reflection or the mirror itself mistakes that can cause lasting psychological and physical damage. Would the reverse-reflection be anyone I know? Certainly someone your Dad knows: The title character in Asterix and the Roman Agent (1969). As accurate a description of this noxious character as there can be. Does he have a name? Tortuous Convolvulus.
Choosing the right mirror with the right guide is what works for me. And to make what it’s taught a birthday gift to you. The mirror that I offer for you to look into as I’ve looked into yours and your Dad’s. To hear its questioning and to answer as best I can. To learn as I’ve learned, that though we may differ and the differences may keep us apart, they’re also precious gifts. To be grateful for when we put them to use. Do I love you and your Dad? Way more than I ever thought was possible.
Easily parted from sensitivity
What will I see when I look into a mirror? You may never look if contradiction doesn’t make you. The first part of your gift: understanding that contradictions in our virtual reality aren’t to be avoided but to be put to good use. For removing our masks and getting to know ourselves better. It’s refreshing, liberating. The second part is your question, and you won’t see anything unless you’re ready for anything. With the courage to see the person you are. Vulnerable, imperfect, and relatable. Lured as I am and we all are by an apparition of perfection and invincibility. Ruler of the galaxy. Always having to compete and win. To play the game when self-Worth isn’t a game of Monopoly. It’s Life to be lived spontaneously and honestly.
When I looked into the mirrors handed to me I became aware of masks that weren’t fooling anyone but me. That set me off into the world with a primitive idea of human nature and my place in it. Super-sensitive to my vulnerability. Easily offended and unaware of it at the same time, and so super-insensitive to others’ vulnerability. A hardass easily deprived of independent judgment and Free Choice. Doing it to myself. Manipulating myself.
The magic ingredient
I was hoping my birthday gift would make me the best. Your gift is to know that you’re already the best. That you don’t need masks of invulnerability when it’s your vulnerability that makes you the best. The vulnerability of Love. That has no hesitation to look at itself in the mirror knowing that what’s to be seen is relatability, not perfection. I once thought of women as better candidates for Loving Friendship than men. Of course! They’re better at everything than men. Then I discovered that their furies are as dark as darkness can get. Contradiction is every bit as alive and well in the female Psyche as it is in the male.
But I still love Femininity. That’s different. Why? Female is body. Femininity has nothing to do with bodies. It doesn’t need to perfume itself up and walk around in stilettoes to waft its partners into ecstasy. My knees buckle just thinking of it. Ah! Something else then to waft the fool into my web of intrigue. (Orderly – fetch my blonde wig and xanthan gum.)
My mirror, mirror on the wall. Telling you you’re the craziest of them all. And I love you. Thank you, dear. Thank you, Granddad. Happy Birthday!