No to obsession and obsessive, often unbidden, thoughts; try stopping them, particularly when they're your friends as well as your enemies. Books fall into that category, as do issues that cannot be resolved or that I don't have ultimate control over. And these issues may be positive indeed, just too many all at once and dependent on other people as well as your own feelings. Good things can bring uncertainties, periods of instability and upsurges of cortisol. Good stress is exhausting and real, although it could also be it's just a perception of mine.
The Schizoid Type, in the split-pea soup, though I'm not, I don't think, but then neither do I think there's anything freakish about it, not if that's how you're made and to live with a split is manageable. What other choice do you have? And don't we all do that to some degree: live with a split, or in danger of splitting, personality?
I came across the split-pea definition in a novel by Saul Bellow, though it's probably uncool of me to like and not be offended by it, as is my use of 'uncool'. An inoffensive yet tired, nearly expired expression. I'm an eighties child, only really I should have been born way, way, way before that, so what did you expect? That I would condemn it, follow the spoken and unspoken consensus? In a word: NO.
I willingly let go all the rules I'm supposed to follow to be socially attuned and make my own, as I see befitting me. That's my prerogative, isn't it? I uphold all the civilised ones that polite society used to maintain, those largely forgotten by others, such as saying 'please' and 'thank you', holding doors open and avoiding talking with my mouth full.
Tune out, drop out is my mantra. Don't ride the modern bullet train. Slow down, calm down, stand still. Chill off the grid. Switch off that mobile device, lock it away, shove it somewhere you can't see it. No, I'm not being crude, I could be but that would destroy this polite argument, and disappoint my late grandparents if they happen to be looking down on me, if they still happen to be interested in what's going on down here. They'll probably glad they departed when they did, although might wish it had been under better circumstances. Maybe they no longer care. But that's a different argument that has nothing do with being brought up a nice young man or a nice young lady, and remaining so as you age.
Religion does not enter into this, or it shouldn't, although we do worship modernisms as if they were gods. As well as defer to a god, through a prayer, through a plead, in moments of need. Raise our eyes to an all-powerful figure shielded from view or petition the almighty universe to intervene.
These attainments that are so-desired are nothing. There's always someone or a system to outdo. Would we be happier, would we lack purpose, if there wasn't I wonder? The obsession (to outdo and to grasp) exhausts the man, which if memory serves (a human one with the ability to make errors) one of Saul Bellow's characters also said in a spiritual conversation with an alter ego, or maybe it was a guy friend, though in, I think, a slightly different context because the time frame would have been, if I'm correct, 1940s Chicago when there was more to lose and there wasn't so much to have.
There's nothing wrong-headed with being, what was described and maybe still is (I wouldn't know), a deadbeat. But you object: it's a derogative term. No. That's just how you've been led to think of it. Because couldn't it be someone who's doing their own thing, going their own way, at their own pace and not doing what's expected? Yes, you may think they're wasting time, delaying the necessary – those essential requirements to get on and be a contributing member of society. Isn't that so? That's your world view. Yet they could come good if left.
What's the rush? Time may appear speeded up but you can't rush growth.
Picture credit: Man Lying on a Wall, 1957, L S Lowry
