From deisenst@mail.coin.missouri.edu Mon Jul 13 12:10:18 1998 Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 12:10:18 -0500 (CDT) From: "David D. Eisenstein" X-Sender: deisenst@coins0.coin.missouri.edu Reply-To: "David D. Eisenstein" To: Jeff Brotemarkle cc: David Ackerman , Brother Mark , "Cheryl L. Hill" , "R. Thomas Cloud" Subject: Re: The World vs The Individual (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: RO X-Status: (Please see below for my response to Jeff.) -dde On Thu, 28 May 1998, Jeff Brotemarkle wrote: > > Habadashers -- > > I don't think this too personal to share, so not only is it a good > note to my mom, I can use it here as well, as it is on our subject. > > > Jeff Brotemarkle > jbrotema@mail.coin.missouri.edu > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 23:18:39 -0500 (CDT) > From: Jeff Brotemarkle > To: MaryAnn Brotemarkle > Subject: The World vs The Individual > > > On Tue, 19 May 1998, MaryAnn Brotemarkle wrote: > > > I was in a gloomy mood and felt like no one in the family wanted to > > see me because none acted interested when I suggested a breakfast > > Tuesday morning. Ernie phoned this morning saying, Let's do it even if > > we're the only two there. Amazing how that cheered me up! On the way > > back to Columbia, I began to feel gloomy again, but am trying to chase > > away the blues instead of letting them nest in my hair. Your email > > helped. > > > > Kiss a Frog Today > > > > MaryAnn Brotemarkle > > e-mail mbrotema@mail.coin.missouri.edu > > > > > > > I am glad you liked my e-mail. > Ah, the rewarding field of personal legislation, the process of > making what makes you sad illegal for yourself! > This week I am having problems in that area, as my pills, at nine a > day instead of the 1 a day I had been accustomed to, are, as a group, > depressing, intimidating, even a little frightening when one considers I > might easily live another 40 years and at that exponential rate (9x in 40 > years) before I am dead I could be consigned to taking 9x9, 81 pills per > day at some time before I'm finally outa here. Whew, bad dream for me, > too. > Did you know Mom, that when they let me outa there last week, they > gave me nine different little pills a day, 5 times a day? I saw a new > doctor who takes medicaid yesterday & he has mercifully released me from > my 9 pill a day habit, cut it into a third, three pills a day, twice a > day. This is still not back to the good times I have known since age 21, > once a day, one or two pills a day, but it is much better. Whew, > reprieve, sorta. > The depression is causing a review of personal legislation I thought > was settled & which worked extremely well under the zyprexa regime. Now I > am reasking, is it always good to be doing something? aren't there times > when it is best to be fallow, not doing anything? Isn't it nice and good > to pause for a time of doing nothing, to relax, between each activity? > How does this personal furious drive to constant activity relate to the > historical social disapperance of the commons in the 1500s, the conversion > of all possible available grazing land into private ownership? to > totalitarian agriculture, which is the zeal to convert every piece of > productive land to human use and deny its use by the biota that support > all life including human life? > Also involved in this massive review caused by what I think is > overmedication, am I to treat the problem of how I look, my clothes and > haircut, as a sign of my membership in and approval of this club of people > who believe agriculture ought to be considered a form of mining, instead > of being done sustainably, or should I treat it as I usually do my speech, > in particular my Missouri accent, as naturally acquired by the attempt to > pay my neighbors a compliment by trying to imitate them as I speak? > I get the feeling somehow we have never discussed issues like this > before, that it has always, on these topics, been one sided orders issued > by you, as if you absolutely cannot believe that there could be > intellectual content behind issues that appear on the surface to be > emotional ones. Maybe this is the first time I have been old enough to > discuss such things, a child being unable to articulate the reasons he > holds to his emotional behavior. > Oh yeah, that _is_ it. I am forgetting how regressive I was, how > very uncommunicative I was in my early childhood all the way into my teens > and twenties, I hadn't become the motormouth I am now until my late 20s or > early 30s. I now feel sorry for you and Dad, having to deal with me, the > child who, for any emotional purpose, couldn't talk, not even until he was > 25. I even now have a friend, Julie Donnelly, the one with the autistic > son, who has recently suggested that I might want to ask to be tested for > a form of light autism, the name of which escapes me, (azburn's syndrome?) > which she has heard of and might explain my crazy symptoms better than > bipolarity or paranoia do. I remember in particular an episode with Dad > when I was in my teens where I refused to do something or other and > retired to the back yard. Dad came out to the back yard and made a > statement, that what I was doing seemed to him to be in total denial of > relating to society in a normal manner. What Dad probably didn't realize > at that time, probably didn't realize until I went crazy at 21, maybe not > even then, maybe he still hasn't realized it, is that relating to society > on _any_ level is _still_ a live issue for me. It is such a live issue > that it is going to take me real work to overcome and come up with a > successful approach to. It is not something that will simply go away > because it is simply named. It is not something that will simply go away > because you order me to get a haircut. > This society has real problems of long standing that I would like to > contribute to solving, or at least that is one of my goals. That goal I > remember now is in competition with the goal of burying my head in the > sand to those problems while I try to improve my musicianship, or my > literary pursuits, or science, or whatever, and I've got some real > problems with the sheer volume of resentment I hold to the world and its > problems for interfering with my goals of improving myself. And of course > those two goals are in competition with a third goal, taking it easy, > sleeping in late, taking my pills on time and being an unemployed crazy go > lucky good fellow. > These are the same three problems mentioned, in more general terms, > by Joe Dominguez, the author of the cassette tape course and book, "Your > Money or Your Life", which proposes to solve the problem, how do I retire > from the rat race, quit my job, and still feed myself? His solution is to > save enough money to live off the interest. And (my point) one of the > first questions he asks in the tape series is, why do you want to do this? > why do you want to quit your job? Is it to enjoy yourself, vacation, play > golf? to improve yourself, learn a musical instrument, a foreign language? > or to be of service to humanity, to solve some problem in the world? The > reason he asks, he says, is the answer will probably predict whether or > not you will succeed in quitting your job. He says people who answer in > either of the first two ways usually don't make it thru the course, they > do not end up quitting their job. Usually, he says, the people who > succeed at his course are the ones who want to quit their job in order to > be of service in and to this world. > I guess those three Joe Dominguez goals don't quite cover all my main > goals, I must admit I've really got a 4th goal besides the three he > mentions, I want to increase the percentage of my income that I earn > myself from 1/3 to, well, just to increase it. I guess Joe Dominguez' > course would implicitly include that goal since one subsists on the money > that one has earned and saved onesself, but I wanted to include it > explicitly and for me in particular. > But, really, I've been able up to now to get close to some of these > four goals as I'm already living, I do earn some of my own keep, I have > never felt burdened to earn all of it as long as I could live legally and > without a lot of karmic imbalance without so doing, the other three goals, > taking it easy, improving my musicianship with Shape Note Singing, helping > improve Boonville Correctional Center with the Alternatives to Violence > Project, well I am already doing all 4, you see. The only question now > is, can I improve at it, do it better? > > Jeff Brotemarkle > jbrotema@mail.coin.missouri.edu Dear Jeff, and Habadashers, In my process of awakening, I am finally getting around to dealing with the note to your Mom which you generously shared with us well over a month ago. I apologize for my long silence on the matter. You got some good responses from Tom and from Cheryl, but not from St. Louis (Br. Mark or David Ackerman or me). After having re-read your note to your Mom, Jeff, my gut-level tempta- tion is to want to look at and talk about the nature of passive depen- dency (which has been a hot topic for me all along, I guess), the nature of human expectation or wants, and the nature of self-created belief systems and their comparison with belief systems that live in other selves. I suspect, Jeff, that your father had a point about denial. It hits home with me. It occurs to me that, perhaps, you and I share a common trait of habituating looking at the world through black-colored glasses, or subscribing internally to the notion that "every cloud has a black lining." We are so accustomed to seeing the bad that that becomes all we know how to look for -- our ability to see the good, the potential for happines, the potential for growth in any situation has, as least in my case, atrophied. Such leads to sealing onesself off from the world, particularly the lovingkindly parts of the world. Which leads to a "versus" relationship between the world and (this) individual rather than an "and" relationship: The "world vs. the individual," rather than the "world AND the individual." So my first point is to take issue with your title. Yesterday, my Dr. suggested to me that perhaps I am not so much ad- dicted to misery as I am addicted to passivity. Addictions, as we may all be aware of to various degrees in our group, make up all kinds of excuses to perpetuate themselves. "Oh, the world is so painful to deal with! Oh, people are so greedy and self-interested! Oh, the workplace is filled with bullies! Oh, there's no way to work for a major corporation unless you want to be guaranteed that your morals will be stretched to their limit! Oh, year 2000 is coming, and the computer Year 2000 Crisis will trigger Thermonuclear war and Arma- geddon! Oh woe is me! Oh pity me! Kyrie Eleison! Christe Eleison! The sky is falling!" Baloney! I remain hiding at home that I call "unproductive" because, to some extent, I choose to. Because it is comfortable. The other day, I shared my poem, "To", (did you ever see it?) with another friend of mine who was referred to me by a local pastoral care minister. He found my poem, "To", to be too sad for him, and, apparently as a result of that opinion, told me that I have been merely spinning my wheels, that I've been sick far too long, and needed to get moving. So he suggested a regimen of getting up in the morning every day, showering, shaving, looking in the mirror, seeing myself not as perfect, but as 75%. And telling myself, being 75%, that I am good enough, and can fit in the world such as it is. He prescribed for me that I needed to get another Dr., because obviously (to him), I was not being healed by the present Dr., and that I needed to go over to Barnes and find someone else. (My Dr. agrees with the regimen. But, obviously, not with the other.) I told this friend, "Perhaps I'll do that." He retorted, "Don't say 'Perhaps I'll do it.' If I am right, and I am, do it!" Now your note suggests that there is a time and a place for fallow- ness. I agree. Cheryl responded also by agreeing, I think, that that is exactly what she is in the business of doing right now... slowing down, relaxing, enjoying life at a slower pace than she has been permitted to do for years. People need times of rest and relaxation. Everyone is different, and has different needs and sensitivies, abilities to respond to pain, joy, fear, what-not. Sometimes I think my level of pain-tolerance is that of a baby ... the least little thing will set me off either in anger or in whining or crying or hiding or going to the corner and sucking my thumb, which I still do from time to time by the way. In being a kid, I was sometimes called a cry-baby. (And when not calling me that, there were some who put in overtime hours provking those tears.) And i assume that some adults would look at me and consider me the adult equivalent of a cry-baby, or, perhaps if less tolerant, "mentally ill." But, to be honest, I believe I *am* mentally ill. To say otherwise I think would be denial. And I am tired of being sick, of hating or feeling scared of the world, which is really a reflection of my own internal problems. The other day, I wrote a fellow, a Catholic Priest that you and I met at Fr. Dominic's ordination. I ended up asking him about what one does to get away from hating onesself -- doing self-defeating things. This is his response: "We all have some sense of hatred about that which leads us away from our Source. Call it an awareness of sin. That which leads us away from misery in our lives is the God of all goodness who constantly reminds us that there is peace and serenity for all who choose true freedom through surrender of the self to a Higher Power." ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- In your note to your Mom, you said, "This society has real problems of long standing that I would like to contribute to solving, or at least that is one of my goals. That goal I remember now is in competition with the goal of burying my head in the sand to those problems while I try to improve my musicianship, or my literary pursuits, or science, or whatever, and I've got some real problems with the sheer volume of resentment I hold to the world and its problems for interfering with my goals of improving myself. And of course those two goals are in competition with a third goal, taking it easy, sleeping in late, taking my pills on time and being an unemployed crazy go lucky good fellow." Jeff, I don't know that wanting to help fix the problems of the world necessarily needs to be considered in competition with improving yourself. (It can be though, because if you focus too much on the world and too little on the self, that can have devastating results because of its unbalance. And vicey-versy. There is that pesky problem of a temptation I think we(?) have of taking a speck out of another's eye while ignoring the log in your own. At least, I think I have that problem.) It depends upon what you mean by self-improvement. And it all depends upon how lazy you want to be; how much of your life as a percentage you want to be fallow fellow? And that is a choice, unless you feel too lazy to make the choice, which in and of itself *is* a choice. :) I have just yesterday borrowed another book by Dr. M. Scott Peck ... a sort of a capstone book to his "Road Less Traveled" series. It's called _The_Road_Less_Traveled_&_Beyond_, which I have borrowed from my church library's recommended readings table. Your mentioning your resentment towards the world and its problems reminded me of something Dr. Peck says. However, before I get into that, I can't help but observe and marvel how very hard you seem to be working at growing, at least many times you share with our Habadasher Soup. You bring up some tough and real issues for you, and have the courage to share them. Like me, you may feel like you're taking 4 steps forwards and 3 steps backwards, and capitalize on the 3 backsteps and minimize the 4 forward steps when trying to analyze where you are going or where you've been (a function of low self-esteem -- minimizing the things you do or are capable of). But, despite that, you keep trying anyway, taking those steps, and for that I say Bravo!! And keep sharing! It's a lovely dance! Dr. Peck says this: "Although people are different, an all-too-common flaw is that most tend to believe they somehow instinctively know how to think and to communicate. In reality, they usually do neither well because they are either too self-satisfied to examine their assumptions about thinking or too self-absorbed to invest the time and energy to do so. As a result, it is impossible to tell why when challenged, they show very little awareness of--or become easily frustrated by--the dynamics involved in truly thinking and communicating well." He further shares, "From my practice as a psychiatrist and my experiences and observations in general, I have become familiar with the common errors related to the failure to think well. One, of course, is simply not thinking. Another is making assumptions in thinking, through the use of one-dimensional logic, stereotypes, and labeling. Another problem is the belief that thinking and communication don't require much effort. Another is assuming that thinking is a waste of time, which is a particular factor in the quiet rage we experience around the failure to solve many social problems." His assertion is that our society is mislead to believe by many forces that thinking is a waste of time; and laziness in thinking -- that inevitable production of well-meaning half-truths that sound good but don't hold substance -- creates many of the social, interpersonal, and intrapersonal problems that he sees. According to Dr. Peck, a half-truth is really much worse than a bald-face lie, because it creates much more confusion in the world. He quotes Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "A lie which is half-truth is ever the blackest of lies." If you have resentment about the world's problems, and really want to help, you are evidentally in very good company. M. Scott Peck, Val Hinshaw, Lorena Jean Tinker, me, Bob Marble (may he rest in peace), Dee DeLarm (?), Rev. Moncure, MaryAnn Brotemarkle, Cheryl Hill, Mahatma Ghandi (may he rest in peace), Jesus Christ (may he reign in peace), Tom Cloud.... you don't need to feel alone, Jeff! And you don't have to do the work alone. Working together with others doing something truly good in the world makes the work fun! It can even be more fun than complaining about what a terrible place our world is and feeling sorry for ourselves or for our world and leaving it at that. Feeling joyful about the wonderful potentials our world has really seems a lot more fun and enabling and life-giving. We can then say, "Look out, world, for we're gonna getcha!" with a wicked grin on our faces. :) Now off I go see the Director of the People's Self-Help Center (where you and I had lunch on Friday), to the Salvation Army or some such other place to continue seeking my destiny. You all take care. Cheryl is going to be gone to Montana, by the way, from the 14th of July to the 28th of July, to visit her husband. Let's keep her in our prayers as she travels and visits. Happy visit, Cheryl! :) Cordially, David Eisenstein ps: Jeff. If you wanna share this note with your Mom, you are welcome to do so. In its entirety. -dde