It delights in every opportunity
of excitement and forgetfulness of itself, and the worse a man's disposition
the more he delights in this, because he likes to wear himself out with busy
action, just as some sores long for the hands that injure them and delight in
being touched, and the foul itch enjoys anything that scratches it.
Similarly I assure you that these
minds over which desires have spread like evil ulcers, take pleasure in toils
and troubles, for there are some things which please our body while at the same
time they give it a certain amount of pain, such as turning oneself over and
changing one's side before it is wearied, or cooling oneself in one position
after another.
Many of
us will know that feeling of actually enjoying being miserable, of finding
pleasure in our anger and complaints, not because there is any good in it at
all, but because there is nothing else good in us at all. Piss and vinegar is
all that we have left. So we snipe, and we bicker, and we gossip, and we run
about, here and there, stirring the pot and poisoning the well.
I think
of how many times I have come to work, or gone to church, or simply sat down
with people for coffee or a beer, and this rather odd ritual begins. First,
there is a sort of litany of suffering, where each person explains how
difficult his day has been, and how much he has had to do, and how exhausted he
is from his many activities.
This
then transforms into a sort of litany of resentment, where each person proceeds
to blame the failings of others for his suffering, insists that no one
appreciates him, and bemoans the sorry state of the world.
There
are perverse bragging rights involved, about who can win the trophy for being
the busiest and most harried victim for the day. There is an unspoken rule that
one never accuses those who are present at the moment, but they become fair
game as soon as they leave the room.
How
tempting it is to play along, what a guilty pleasure it can be to get caught up
in all the griping, only because it lets us forget, if only for the moment, how
directionless we are inside of our own souls.
I will
try to catch myself and drag myself away from it, only to fail again, because I
have forgotten that no good comes from wallowing in discomfort, and nothing is
ever solved by pointing the finger.
Yes, it
is very much like frantically scratching at an itch, only to irritate it more,
or nervously picking at a scab, only to reopen the wound. We will often speak
of anxiety as a nervous condition, and that it can most certainly be, but I
suspect it can go much deeper than that, to a restlessness of the heart and of
the mind. As a professor of mine once said, “It’s existential, not just
environmental!”
A dog may
constantly pace back and forth if he is kept locked up in the yard with nothing
to do. One of my cats will claw and chew on pillows when she is being ignored.
Children can easily get into all sorts of mischief when they become bored.
And I
will start to occupy myself with more and more busywork, changing my focus of
attention from one moment to the next, only to divert myself from facing
myself. If I have nothing pointless to do, I become terrified that nothing has
a point.
I never quite
understood the meaning of that phrase, “running around like a chicken with his
head cut off”, until I was told that being an adult required doing all sorts of
insignificant things, so as to avoid coming to terms with all the things in
life that are actually significant.
Written in 5/2011
No comments:
Post a Comment