“I was looked at, but I wasn’t seen.” ~ Albert Camus.
I’ve been like a dog with a bone for the past two newsletters. Highlighting this insidious glitch in the matrix that Generation X’ers like me have been encountering in the twenty-first century. To either take the blue pill and live in repressively painful ignorance. Or take the red pill and confront the disturbing truth that we were unwittingly zombified in our youth. That we can regain our humanity, not seen since we were wailing babies, if we are only prepared to lean into some gut-wrenching yet potentially rewarding shadow work. After all, how badly do I want to be seen?!
But bear with me! As I’m trying to get a Scooby Doo here! For as I see it right now, the problem is in attempting to hold space for my right-brain, in its complete spectrum of feelings, that space is being rented out by the landlord, my left-brain. Translation: the lyrics have changed but I’m still singing to the same old rhythm section. What’s more, or indeed, what’s worse, is it’s like making a deal with the devil that was once a BFF. My life is seen through the lens of my left-brain under a constitution exclusively drawn up in my left-brain. Pragmatism has always been king and that king is now begrudgingly doling out shekels to the pauper that is my right-brain. The irony is, now that I am nurturing my right-brain, I am reinforcing my left-brain hegemony. Which is to say, I’m inadvertently defeating the purpose of this life-changing exercise. I need to, somehow, find the chutzpah to jump in the deep end of my right-brain and “almost” drown in my feelings until I learn to swim. Calling Dr Becky for some re-parenting work! The problem is I have a life to live which expects responsibility and requires discipline. I can’t be lurching from one meltdown to the next while I learn the lessons of a self-emotion-regulation I’m now wishing I’d have learned in my formative years.
I’m not a gambling man per se but I “want” to back myself. Which is to say, somewhat oddly, I don’t “need” to back myself. For I can live out the rest of my days in unconscious obliviousness, hiding behind my ego, as the emotional Zombie that I am like the rest of my Generation X comrades. The thing is my constitution says don’t front. Don’t be a moral fraud. Which, again, is ironic given what I’ve just revealed in baring my ass. You see, it’s one thing to be a fraud to yourself, it’s something far more odious to be a sociological fraud. That’s the upside-down-people-pleasing thinking us Generation X’ers were imbued with in our formative years. Which is how you keep a generation on the straight and narrow. Except there is always a minority who slip through the net - like me. Call it a midlife crisis but, after ten years of incarceration, I’m up for something new. What do I have to lose?!
I no longer want to continue to retrograde my life. I’ve just got to figure out how to balance my daily responsibilities such as writing these newsletters and my memoir with my spiritual/emotional evolution. I’m shit-scared of the challenge in front of me! Paradoxically, I’m also hopeful for a better quality of life. You see, as insidious as it sounds, as a man, I have patriarchal privilege, and the spiritual freedom that affords me is a natural counterbalance to my repressive people-pleasing ways. I don’t just know it to my bones, I live and breathe it. I have a right to my own sovereign point of view which makes the changes I’m trying to make conceivable. I’m immune to the sociological construct that is Cancel Culture because, since I’ve literally transported myself to the back of beyond, nobody knows who the fuck I am and what wicked things I’ve done. Psychologically, however, the shame induced from my crimes has me unconsciously canceling myself.
So two questions come to mind. Is the spirit of a people-pleaser bigger than patriarchal privilege? People-pleasing, I suspect, has been in me since consciousness, as has patriarchal privilege. For me, people-pleasing has unleashed my ambition. As I have said before, and this is not to toot my own horn (though it probably is), I am a degree-educated professional who once commanded a six-figure annual salary. But people-pleasing has also strangled my ambition in that I haven’t dared to dream of more than those social-mobilising achievements for fear of standing out. For I am fundamentally an introvert who learned to add a thin layer of extroversion on top. The second question is, is the spirit of patriarchal privilege enough to subdue nefarious shame? The one thing that can shut me down is talk about my crimes. That’s a straitjacket I’m learning to work loose with my Psychologist.
“If everything around seems dark, look again, you may be the light.” ~ Rumi.
I woke up in an opaque state of mind. I could not see the content of this newsletter on Sunday, all I could see was a blank document on my laptop, a Tuesday deadline and no ideas. All of which elicited undiluted anxiety. Yet there is agency in life when there is life in agency and vice versa. Which is to say, life comes to me when I let it breathe. Or rather, when I breathe and stop living through fear. In the afternoon, a seed took root, as an itch in my brain, regarding the ransom my left-brain had over my right-brain and I rode it to its natural conclusion. This is the love I seek, I now have to make space for said love. I have to believe a disciple of Generation X like me is worthy of a love of self, my complete self; be it happiness, fear, anger, disgust, surprise and/or sadness.
Cue the calm before the storm! The excitement elicited from a job well done on this newsletter meant my brain was going like clappers by bedtime. The need to sleep only exacerbated the revolutions per minute of my mind. I’m all over the place on the Emotions Wheel tonight. At first I thought I was just “Overwhelmed”, given that I should be sleeping. Then I thought I might be “Terrified”, also known as panic, because I’m still catching ideas when, again, I should be asleep. Both feelings of which are shepherded by Fear. But then I thought, given the steady flow of idea nuggets I’m feeling compelled to type up, I’m also feeling “Inspired” which is a Happy feeling. The more I try to self-soothe, the more “Aversion” I feel which falls under the umbrella of “Disgust”. I’m in a Mexican stand-off with Fear, Happiness and Disgust! Which is to say, metacognition is a bummer! Pulling the data has me so stressed out that I’m in a death spiral. The more I snitch on myself, the more anxiety I feel. I can’t get no sleep! Argh! So here I am at midnight typing away on my phone about this ordeal in order to still my mind. I have all this green fuel inside me to make me productive but I haven’t learned how to control it, more specifically, regulate it. So I defaulted to that old chestnut for coping with stress, I sought distraction to enable me to ignore my feelings. I streamed my favourite episodes of The Big Bang Theory to cultivate an emotional climb down. This is what it means to be in a need for meltdowns to be time-sensitive! I think I was finally out by three o’clock. But given my excitement, I’m in light sleep mode so I was up at four o’clock. I could not at all see the stoicism in this shit. I mean, further to that, I managed to close my eyes for four hours, but I don’t think I got any REM sleep. So I gave up at eight o’clock and got on with some Yoga to enliven me from my groggy mental state.
All in all, success will depend on the “size of my cojones” which depends on my ability to “surrender to the madding chaos of my feelings”. Which is Old-school-Generation-X talk, my mother tongue, versus new-school-twenty-first-century talk, my foreign language. Me is a wild ride! The only thing that can stop me is old habits. Which means the only thing that can stop me is an inability to tolerate the unknown. Can I do without the knowing that my pragmatic-left-brain dominated constitution craves and expects? You’ll just have to stay tuned to find out, I guess.
As ever, all views are appreciated, feel free to let me know how you feel in the Comments.
Thanks, Cork! Even though I have feelings, consciously speaking, I’m still new to this!
Great post. Your ability to encapsulate so many of our innermost feelings (whether we want to admit them or not) through your own experiences and then lay it all out so succinctly is uncanny.
I love the quote in the Emotions wheel chart:
"Feelings are much like waves. We can't stop them from coming, but we can choose which ones to surf."