philosophy

hinting much?

Jun 23rd

Posted by Michael in general

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Just thought I’d post a cou­ple of snip­pets from recent com­ments and emails from friends & family.

From my cousin today:

And, you’re a good writer — that’s not a com­pli­ment, just an obser­va­tion :) I always said you’d make a good Eng­lish major, should life send you back to school some­day, and I stand by that!

And from a friend a few weeks back:

I won’t give you any com­pli­ments about your self, as I would be wast­ing my words because you don’t believe a pos­i­tive word any one says, but you are a good, solid writer. Your words are lyri­cal, a hard thing to accom­plish for most. Keep writing.

paralysis

May 24th

Posted by Michael in life

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So I spent some time recently re-reading ‘Born only Once: The mir­a­cle of affir­ma­tion’ by Con­rad Baars, and I think I real­ized why his advice to sim­ply be open to being affirmed isn’t work­ing for me.

I think he didn’t go far enough with his the­ory of affir­ma­tion, as he only presents 2 options, either affirmed, or not affirmed (or some­where in between, but really, its just 0 or 1.)

I think he missed a –1 that belongs on that con­tin­uüm, which would mean or rep­re­sent some­one being ‘Denied’ to use his own terminology.

I cer­tainly feel that not only am I totally not affirmed, but I’m so far in the neg­a­tive, that any attempts at affirm­ing me are futile, until I some­how break free of these sources of con­stant denial.

I think the fact that I’m so emo­tion­ally and men­tally damaged/paralyzed that I don’t gen­er­ate pos­i­tive emo­tional responses is evi­dence that there’s a neg­a­tive affir­ma­tion scale, or denial scale.

I guess to expand on that a bit, for any­one who I haven’t shared this with (or hasn’t already fig­ured it out on their own), I don’t gen­er­ate pos­i­tive emo­tional responses/reactions. For exam­ple, com­pli­ments are lit­er­ally lost on me, so much so that while I ratio­nally reg­is­ter that some­body is say­ing some­thing nice about me, I will usu­ally reg­is­ter a neg­a­tive emotional/mental response. Its even worse when they’re being crit­i­cal, espe­cially with so-called ‘con­struc­tive criticism.’

And I think this behav­ior, that I’m totally self-denying, is a result of being stuck in the neg­a­tive end of the affir­ma­tion con­tin­uüm for all of my life. Hon­estly, from day 1 of my mem­ory, I think the peo­ple who had most con­trol over my affirmation/denial did every­thing they could (prob­a­bly unknow­ingly and for what they thought were all the right rea­sons) to deny me, because they them­selves were unaf­firmed (if not denied) indi­vid­u­als, couldn’t ever pos­si­bly affirm me.

So now I just sit here, par­a­lyzed, with nowhere to go in life as long as I’m under the influ­ence of these sources of con­tin­u­ing denial. I know that I even­tu­ally need ther­apy, but when I always have to return home to a per­pet­ual source of denial, will it even help? I need ther­apy before I can even be a can­di­date for reg­u­lar ther­apy, wow, that makes me feel good about myself.

the strongest memory association…

Nov 21st

Posted by Michael in life

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These lyrics, this “poem” has spo­ken to me for a VERY long time, still speaks to me today, and will likely speak to/for me for the rest of my life. I absolutely LONG for the abil­ity to express myself like this, not for cap­i­tal gain, but in a way that other peo­ple resemble/relate to beyond my years, to immor­tal­ize myself, to “tran­scend the char­ac­tero­log­i­cal lie about real­ity” through art… maybe that’s what I resent, that I’m not artis­tic? Or maybe that I don’t seem to fit any­where at all?

“Sum­mer time and the wind is blow­ing,
Out­side in lower Chelsea,
And I don’t know
What I’m doing in this city,
The sun is always in my eyes,
It crashes through the win­dows,
And I’m sleep­ing on the couch,
When I came to visit you,
That’s when I knew,
That I could never have you,
I knew that before you did,
Still I’m the one whose stu­pid,
And there’s this burn­ing,
Like there’s always been,
I’ve never been so alone,
And I’ve never been so alive,
Visions of you on a motor­cy­cle drive by,
The Cig­a­rette ash flies in your eyes,
And you don’t mind,
And you smile,
And say the world doesn’t fit with you.
I don’t believe you,
You’re so serene,
Careen­ing through the uni­verse,
Your axis on a tilt,
Guilt­less and free,
I hope you take a piece of me with you,
And there’s things I’d like to do that, You don’t believe in,
I would like to build some­thing,
but you never see it hap­pen,
And there’s this burn­ing,
Like there’s always been,
I’ve never been so alone,
And I, I’ve never been so alive,
And there’s this burn­ing,
There is this burn­ing,
Where’s the soul, I want to know,
New York City is evil,
The sur­face is every­thing,
But I could never do that,
Some­one would see through that,
And this is the last time,
We’ll be friends again,
and I’ll get over you and you’ll won­der,
Who I am,
And there’s this burn­ing,
just like there’s always been,
I’ve never been so alone,
And I’ve never been so alive,
I go home to the coast,
It starts to rain,
I pad­dle out,
On the water,
Alone,
Taste the salt and taste the pain,
I’m not think­ing of you again,
Sum­mer dies and swells rise,
The sun goes down in my eyes,
See this rolling wave,
Darkly com­ing to take me,
Home,
And I never been so alone,
And I’ve never been so alive”

– Third Eye Blind “Motor­cy­cle Drive BY”

exploration and beginning…

Nov 21st

Posted by Michael in general

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And I’ve real­ized tonight that I have more un-resolved issues to rec­on­cile than I pre­vi­ously thought.

Think­ing of the past, and fan­ta­siz­ing about what lives my pre­vi­ous acquain­tances might now have, it makes me feel lazy, and unim­por­tant.

(both might be true)

Maybe its a last-ditch attempt to try and impress old friends and make old flames jeal­ous (even though they ought not be?)

I’m not sure of any­thing any­more, except that, regard­less of how socially awk­ward I was and still am, I miss my old friends.

Frankl said it best, life can have mean­ing in one of 3 ways, and one of those was by expe­ri­enc­ing some­thing OR encoun­ter­ing some­one.

Maybe mean­ing can be found by sim­ple encoun­ter­ing friends, even if they have no super-meaning for soci­ety as a whole?

Or is this another futile, fruit­less attempt at self-affirmation? Another attempt to direct what lit­tle ambi­tion I have left at defin­ing myself in spite of what I have failed at, what I may have suc­ceeded at, and what I have still yet to dis­cover about myself?

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