YOU ASKED FOR IT! YOU GOT IT!

My last post featured poetry which one of you commented that you wanted more of. So, it is by popular demand (who am I to deny my adoring readers?) that my Fats friend and I are bound to reply:

The initials of that reader are mm. No, mistermuse isn’t the mm who asked for more. If you must know, it was magicmermaid, who I assume is a real person (not that mistermuse isn’t real — as real, at least, as magicmermaid….or as you, for that matter). You are real, aren’t you? — if not, just pretend you are, because mistermuse can use the reassurance.

THE FAUX PAS OF POSITIVE THINKING

“Doubt is not a pleasant mental state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.” –Voltaire

I can live with
Uncertainty and doubt —
It’s know-it-alls
I have my doubts about.

THE PETER PRINCIPLE

“I am not young enough to know everything.” –Sir James M. Barrie (author of the play subtitled The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up)

Sorry that things didn’t quite Pan out
(except in Neverland….or thereabout).

HOW TO BETTER CULTIVATE KNOWLEDGE

“Scholars esteem knowledge not for its use in attaining other values, but as a value in itself.” –Max Eastman

Know,
Weigh,

Hoe
Say.

KNOW PROBLEM

“If reality wants to get in touch, it knows where I am.” –Phil Proctor

But if reality says,
“Hello there, it’s me” —
How would you know
Absent a show of real ID?

 

 

 

 

 

 

A QUESTION OF DEPRESSION

Countless studies have shown that people who suffer from depression have more accurate world views than nondepressed people. Depressed people do not nurture the cheering illusion that they can control the course of their lives. And they understand, all too acutely, the basic conditions of existence: that their lifespan is just a brief blip in the cold sweep of history, that suffering is real and ongoing, that they and all the people they love are going to die. That outlook is known as depressive realism. Depressed people might be unhappy, but–when it comes to these big-picture, existential matters–they are generally more right than the rest of us. –Kathryn Schulz, author of BEING WRONG

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The National Institute of Mental Health lists six forms of depressive disorder/depression: major depression, persistent depressive disorder, psychotic depression, postpartum depression, seasonal affective disorder, and bipolar disorder (aka manic-depressive illness). NOT listed is Depressive realism.

I have never given much thought to depression (in the listed sense), probably because no one I’ve known (that I’m aware of) suffered from depression. However, the Schulz quotation strikes a chord because I’ve “suffered” from realism for years (since I’ve been free of inherited Catholicism), but without becoming depressed as a result….though heaven knows I have good reason to be (and perhaps should be), given that I “understand, all too acutely,” the reality Schulz cites. Why am I not (by N.I.M.H. standards) depressed? Why isn’t everyone depressed?

There are palliatives available before depression might come into play — for some, there is no shortage of such catholicons as drugs, alcoholism, power addiction, and yes, religion, to hold the wolf of reality at bay or serve as “the cheering illusion” that all’s well that ends well. Who knows, maybe all does end well, after all….but, given the mean time in the meantime, you could’ve fooled me. Life seems to imitate a product designed and built (sooner or later) to fail, but am I depressed? No….and, I take it, neither are you. Why not?

Well, it’s not as if life were an unmitigated disaster, that’s why — at least, not for most of us. The half-full part of the glass, I wouldn’t miss for the world. Even if our futures get short shrift, if our talents go under-appreciated, if we see ignorance, arrogance and greed thrive — even if love goes south — was it not “better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?” No matter what is terribly wrong with the world (thanks to both the Creator, if any, and the created), we see in small children not original sin, but original innocence (perhaps our original innocence), the sheer joy of being alive, the promise of hope….and we hope to God or Fate that their promise doesn’t go up in smoke.

After due consideration, my take-away from all of this is that if we really want to get it right, do not go gentle into that good night*; there is a more challenging way: depressive realism. Think about it. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.*

*from the poem by Dylan Thomas

 

 

KATIE DID IT

REALITY CHECK

When you argue with reality, you lose — but only 100% of the time. -Byron Katie

So, what’s the big deal?
Life is a blank check.
Just sign on the line and leave
experience fill in the rest.

So, what’s the “it” that Katie did? Made me assume that Byron Katie is a man, that’s what.
Then I found that he is a she (Byron Katie is the pen name of Byron Katherine Mitchell).

LIKE THE LADY SAYS

Don’t believe every thing you think. -Byron Katie

I think,
therefore I
don’t know
what to think.

Therefore, I
think what
I think I
know, I don’t.

So, what
do you
think? You don’t
want to know.

 

 

 

 

THE AGE OF INNOCENTS

I always feel young people are innocent. [They] have a certain beautiful innocence to them that’s touching and remarkable to see. –Woody Allen

Christmas is for kids. As truisms go, that is one I find especially valid. It seems to me that even if you’re not Christian, it won’t hurt your young children to believe in Santa Claus. They’ll have to contend with the real world soon enough (there could be worse introductions to reality than the day they discover the truth about Santa). So, while they may, let them be innocent and without sin and believe in pure, unalloyed being loved. Isn’t that the idea that Christmas is supposed to represent?

I may be old, but I’m not too old to remember the thrill of Christmas mornings as a boy in the early 1940s. What did I know of the World War raging a world away, where young men of my age little more than a decade earlier, were now dying like sacrificial lambs because innocence was foreign to the forces of time. Life is short. Life as a young child is short beyond belief, although wishful thinking can extend the warranty indefinetly. I wouldn’t count on it.