(Inner) Space...The Final Frontier

Have you ever much  thought about human emotions?  How accurate are the things we feel versus the things we know or determine by logic?  Can we always trust our emotions?  If not, when can we trust them?  Are the answers to these questions the same for everyone, or do they vary with individuals?   Personally, I have never been sure how much to trust my emotions.   In a previous blog I explored a negative experience I had with emotions in my life, so I am a bit leery of relying on feelings too much.  Still,  I think denying our feelings is denying a part of our humanity.  

When I was a teenager, my favorite TV show was Star Trek.  If you are a SciFi geek like me, you know that the five-year mission of the Starship Enterprise was to explore "Space, the Final Frontier...To boldly go where no man has gone before."  Although some of the acting was atrocious (think William Shatner), the stories were compelling and the themes dealt with contemporary issues such as war and racism.  We got to meet all kinds of aliens that were really intended to get us to examine ourselves and our fellow Humans (as opposed to Klingons or Romulons, for instance). 

The alien from Star Trek that made the biggest impression on me was the Enterprise's science office, Spock.  Like all Vulcans, he was devoted to Logic.  The defining characteristic of the Vulcans was that they had learned to supress all emotions.  Their history had been a bloody one, like that of Humanity, and so, to save their race from completely killing each other off,  they had learned to suppress their emotions and rely only on Logic.  Their philosophies disdained all emotions.  They lived their lives based solely on what their enlightened intellects told them.  Or did they?

The original Star Trek series was soon cancelled due to poor ratings.  But the show and its characters lived on in the imaginations of us Trekkers, and it was eventually revived in the form of movies and a new show, Star Trek: The Next Generation.  This show took place 100 years  after the original series.  It featured better acting (think Patrick Stewart), better special effects, and an even more enlightened bunch of Humans and aliens.  (Lingering sexism still present in the 22nd century apparently ended for good in the 23rd century.  The TNG crew's mission was "to boldly go where no one had gone before.")  And this show introduced ship's counselor D'Ann Troi, who was a Betazoid, and therefore an empath, or one with the ability to sense others' emotions.   So clearly, Troi is the antithesis of Spock.  While he was all Logic, Logic, Logic, Troi was all about Feelings.  Not only was she into her own emotional adventures, she was the ultimate busy-body, going around the ship sampling what emotions other members of the crew were feeling.  This served her well in her role as ship's counselor, and her psycho-babble was often sprinkled with her impressions of what others were feeling.   I don't remember her relying much on Logic.

The dichotomy between Spock and Troi, and between their respective alien races, is made more interesting by the fact that they are both half Human.  So, Spock's devotion to Logic and Troi's emphasis on Feelings are watered-down, sort of, by that pesky Human DNA.  If only each didn't have that unruly Human half, they could be completely devoted to a more enlightened path, one of pure Logic, or pure Emotion, depending on their inclination.  (Could the writers of these shows have been more subtle?)  Especially with Spock,  many stories dealt with his struggle with the feelings from his Human side, the part of him of which he is ashamed.  Troi is hampered by her Human half in that she can only read others' emotions, not their thoughts, as full-blooded Betazoids can do.

I have often dealt with similar struggles in my own life, although perhaps not to such a degree as Spock and Troi.  My wife Dana  tells me that I am much more logical than she is, and I agree with her.  She is definitely more emotional than I am.  I am sometimes too logical and she is sometimes too emotional.  I guess that in our marriage, I am Spock and she is Troi.  As you can imagine, conflicts have arisen because of these differences.  But as our daughter has said so eloquently, about her own marriage, what is wrong with Dana is good for what is wrong with me, and what is wrong with me is good for what is wrong with Dana.

But to say that either of us is more one thing than the other is not to deny that other part of ourselves.  I am often struck with how well thought-out some of Dana's opinions are.  She has taught me important things that she has determined through her own use of logic.  I usually prefer to rely on rational thought, but sometimes I am most sure of things that I just intuit, things that I just feel.

I have often told Dana, and she has not objected, that motherhood is a form of insanity.  Is it logical to love someone, even your own child, so much that logic and reason concerning that person are only minor considerations?  I would say no.  However, I am loved that way by my own mother, and I am thankful that Dana loves our children and grandchildren that way too. I don't believe, however, that a mother's way of loving a child diminishes the importance of a the usually more logical love a father extends.  A kid needs to be seen more dispassionately by a parent, perhaps to prepare him for the way the world will see him.   I also recognize that not all mothers and fathers love their children according the emotional/logical patterns that Dana and I tend to follow.   

This post didn't exactly go where I thought it would, but it is a start.  I expect that I will deal with this topic again later.  The important idea for me in all this, is that I often face a Spock-like struggle regarding the things that I feel and the the things that I think.  I think that others probably face a similar struggle.  I tend to mistrust or deny my feelings in favor of a more logical viewpoint.  My wife and others approach things in the opposite way.  They tend to believe what they feel more strongly that what they think.  Why do we have some different approaches?  Which is more valid, logic or emotions?  If the answer varies with each situation, then how do I know, how do I decide?  Do my answers to such questions only apply to me, or are some of them universal?

I don't know, but, it is clear that as Spock and Troi and all the other aliens and Humans in Star Trek zoomed around the universe at speeds exceeding that of light (despite the objections of Mr. Einstein), they learned as much about their own inner space as they did the galaxy. That inner journey is one we can all boldly take.  And, as Spock would say, it will be .. Fascinating.

Prophet of Doom...But Only Kinda

This morning I have realized once again that I have a great talent for making things worse than they are, for imagining the worst possible outcome in many situations.  I do this even when logic tells me that a more favorable outcome is likely.

As I begin this blog entry, I am sitting at my dining room table, looking out the patio doors and watching the culmination of events which reminded me of this Prophet-of-Doom bent of mine.  The man from the natural gas utility is out back repairing the leak in my gas meter.  This is the best possible outcome for me, both financially and  in terms of convenience.  I know this from experience.

Two years ago this month, we noticed a strong smell of gas in  the back yard.  The source of that smell, we soon learned,  was a broken gas line from the gas meter to the house, which we had to replace at our expense. This project was both expensive and excruciatingly slow, and it involved the plumbers tearing up our back yard and endangering the lives of our mature trees.  We were without natural gas --  heat and hot water -- for at least a week.  So, when we smelled gas out there again recently, I immediately remembered that bad experience and wondered if we were in for a recurrence.  After all, we had survived the Great Oklahoma Quake of 2011, so maybe the line was broken again.  As I sniffed around out back, I didn't really think so, though, because the smell really seemed to emanate from the gas meter, instead of being all over the yard as it was in 2009. It was probably just a leak in the meter,  which would be Centerpoint Energy's responsibility, not mind.  Still,  bad things do happen....

Once when a friend at work confided in me that she was dreading a family dinner she was going to attend that night because of some drama she anticipated, I attempted to comfort her by saying, "Things are always worse than you expect them to be.... Wait, no...."  I had meant to try to comfort her with the a statement of the exact opposite, that things are never as bad as you expect them to be.  I did comfort her because she laughed loudly at my parapraxis, and, as it happened, the dinner turned out fine.  But my slip really did echo the ambivalence in me about whether future events will be wonderful...or horrible.  I am always willing to allow for the possibility that the Sword of Damocles may be hanging over my head.


This fact about myself is not one that I like to admit, even to myself.  I really want to believe that the glass is half-full and I try very hard to believe it.   I tend to be optimistic when given a choice, but the real truth is that for the me, the glass is half-full, but it is also half-empty.  It could be either, who knows?

I have tried to analyze why I am so often willing to fear negative outcomes.   One part of the answer, I think, is that we are conditioned by the news media to fear things that might happen, for example their annual story about the impending End of Mankind from the Flu strain of the year.  The media loves bad news, and is not above making things seem worse than they for the sake of ratings.  Another reason for my healthy fear of the future is that I like to be in control.  If I can imagine bad things before they happen, I can be prepared, and maybe begin formulating a solution for whatever I might face.  Also, I hate surprises. 

I believe that people in general fear the future, and they use various intellectual gyrations to attempt to control it.  One example is the idea of Karma, common among Eastern philosophies.  This is the same idea expressed commonly as What Goes Around Comes Around-- you do good stuff, you get good stuff in return; you do bad stuff, you get bad stuff in return.  My favorite anecdotal evidence for the reality of Karma happened once in traffic while I was driving to work.  I made a perfectly safe, legal lane change into the lane in which a black pickup with darkly tinted windows was traveling.  This enraged the driver of the Demon Truck so much that he changed lanes himself to come along side me, hung his head out the window, blared his horned, and vehemently shot me the bird.  Of  course, he was too busy with these important activities to attend to his driving, so he slammed into the car waiting at the stoplight in front of him.  Instant Karma!  However,  the idea of Karma breaks down when you consider the driver who was rear-ended.  What did he do to deserve what he got? Nothing that I could see.  

Another way that people try to manipulate what may be coming their way is called the Law of Attraction.  This is the idea that your life events are governed by the way you think.  If you think, "I need more money," you will continue to be in need.  If, on the other hand, you think, "I will get more money," then you will focus on making that happen, and therefore, it will happen.  I think there is some truth to this.  In my own experience, if I decide that I'm having going to have a good day, my day will at least be better than if I have told myself that this was an awful day.  I just don't think that positive thinking can always change everything.  Some things are out of our hands.

That fact leads many of us to prayer, another way that people attempt to control the future. Sometimes people pray that God will prevent whatever bad thing they fear from happening.  Sometimes they attempt to manipulate Him by telling him they know he won't let that happen, that He promised good things for us.  Although it is true that we have all kinds of wonderful promises from God, there is no promise that bad things will never come our way.  To me, those kinds of prayers exhibit a lack of faith, rather than being expressions of trust in God.  I believe that prayer changes things, but often it is not the future that it changes.  Rather, it changes me to be able to accept what I believe to be unacceptable, and to be willing to follow God through things I would prevent if I could.  Things that I wish I could avoid. 

When I  was a kid, I heard that sometime in the far-distant future, in billions of years, the sun will become a supernova, and will expand in size past the orbit of the Earth.  This was scary news, and a little disturbing, but not overly so, because I knew I would not be around to experience it.  But I was never tempted to deny that it would happen.  Ideally, I wish I could adopt a similar attitude about scary circumstances I may face in the future.  While I generally believe that I have a positive future to look forward to, I do not choose to deny that bad things will also happen, or that a negative outcome may face me with the next problem I encounter.  I cannot always be a glass-is-half-full guy.  For me, that would be intellectually dishonest, and somewhat irresponsible.  So, the next time I smell gas in my back yard, I will likely wonder if the line is bad again.  But, I will also remember that this time, the glass really was half-full.

Dark Night of the Soul

Recently one of my Facebook friends posted that a friend of hers had attempted suicide the previous night.   The person who attempted suicide tried to reach my friend before her suicide attempt because she knew that my friend has once attempted suicide herself.  My friend, who is the queen of provocative Facebook questions, asked if anyone else had ever experienced a dark night of the soul, and, if so, would they share about it.  Lots of people had had similar experiences that they shared.   Later I spoke to my friend on the phone and she shared more about her friend who had tried to kill herself.

Today I started thinking about those posts and that conversation again.  I have often heard the term "Dark Night of the Soul,"  but I didn't know until today that it is the title of a poem by Saint John of the Cross.  According to Wikipedia, the  "main idea of the poem can be seen as the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God."   That sounds like a pretty good definition of a Dark Night of the Soul.  For me, the definition would be "painful experiences that have the potential to teach us about ourselves and about God."  That sure describes my own Dark Night of the Soul experience.  More about that later.

I starting thinking about my friend and her suicidal friend today because of a seemingly unrelated blog published today by my son, Steven.  In his blog today, which I encourage you to read and follow, Steven questions exactly what the Good News that Jesus brought is.  He concludes with his own ideas:  "the good news, is a simple concept that can be spoken many ways:

God loves you.

You can approach God directly.

The only thing keeping you from God is you.

The gods aren't angry.

You are free from religious obligation.

There is nothing you need to do to be right with God.

You are good."

Steven's blog relates to my own Dark Night of the Soul because of what that experience taught me.  In 2005, I began to exhibit several symptoms that I did not understand.  I began to lose my appetite for food.  Indeed, very often, I could not force myself to eat.  I began to lose a lot of weight.  I lost interest in almost everything.  I remember having extremely dark imaginings about the future, such as being sure that I would someday be left all alone by the deaths of all my loved ones.   Soon I was sleeping less and less.  All of these things kind of crept up on me, so it was easy not to realize that I was having major issues.  At about the same time, I had begun  taking a new prescription for digestive issues.  I did not know at the time, but this drug is associated with feelings of anxiety in those who take the medication.  Soon I was suffering from extreme anxiety.  "Extreme" doesn't really express it.  I remember often thinking that I would start screaming  any moment.  I understood very clearly what people who have panic attacks go through.  I remember once being in church and thinking I was going to run screaming from the building any moment.  These feeling were not unusual for me during that time.  However, I managed to keep it together and never made a spectacle of myself.

Prior to these experiences, I had long been a fan of the Ballard Street comic strip.  One of my favorites, which was a single panel, showed a mildly agitated older man sitting by himself.  The caption read, "Once again, Stewart finds himself alone with his own brain."  Funny stuff, I've always thought, and I was often reminded of it when I was experiencing that terrible anxiety.  I was literally afraid to be alone, not because I thought I would harm myself, but because those feelings were always the worst when I was alone.  There were often times when I did not know how I could endure another moment.

In those moments, I would pray, "God, please make it stop."  The answer was always the same.  "I am here."  The anxiety often didn't lessen for a while, but I always remembered after God spoke that I could endure what I was going through.  No matter how dark the experience, God was always there with me.  In those darkest moments, He seemed so close to me, not in some far-off Heaven, but right there with me as I went through my Dark Night of the Soul.  In my mind, I could cut my eyes to the left and kind of see Him there.

I eventually quit sleeping altogether, so I went to my doctor.   I quit taking the prescription that caused a lot of my anxiety.  The doctor gave me some stuff to help me sleep and something else to help with the depression.  As the former Newt from Monty Python said, I got better.  I don't know why I had to go through that.  I don't know if it was caused by God to teach me what I learned, or if it was just circumstances that converged to create a really bad time for me.  Either way, it changed me forever.


For one thing, I am much more tolerant of seemingly aberrant behavior.  How do I know what someone is going through?  A lot of people dismiss depression and other kinds of mental illness as weakness, or a lack of faith, or the result of bad choices.  Those things may sometimes contribute, but we should not blame victims of  those kinds of conditions any more than we blame people who have cancer or heart attacks.

Another way it changed me is that I now realize how really frail we all are.  Life is sometimes hard and it wears us down. Sometimes simple things like not getting enough sleep, or some weird drug side-effect can push us over, or pretty close to, the Edge.  This is not something to hide or be ashamed of.  This is part of being human.

If I had never faced a Dark Night of the Soul, I might not be as confident in my own resiliency.  I might not know that God is right next to me and how much He loves me.  Those are good things to know for the next time it gets dark.

I'm OK, You're OK.

Recently my friend Jim Palmer  posted the following quote on Facebook:

"If you could really accept that you weren't OK, you could stop proving you were OK. If you could stop proving that you were OK, you could get that it was OK not to be OK. If you could get that it was OK not to be OK, you could get that you were OK the way you are. You're OK, get it?  - Werner Erhard

This quote was interesting to me for several reasons.  One reason is that it convoluted as hell, and took a little concentration to discover what old Werner was trying to say.  Secondly,  I have been thinking a lot about the topic of being "OK" lately, so this quote fed into that.   Also, it reminded me of a popular self-help book I read back in the '70s,  I'm OK, You're OK  by Thomas M. Harris, MD.  It was a pop- psychology work that advanced the idea of being "OK" as having a self-image that included feelings of self-worth, competence, and, you know, OK-ness.

The book was about transactional analysis, which was a fancy way of saying figuring out what happens when two people interact.   Dr. Harris said that there are four basic models that describe the dynamics between people:

1. I'm Not OK, You're OK
2. I'm Not OK, You're Not OK
3. I'm OK, You're Not OK
4. I'm OK, You're OK

Harris said that the most common situation was number 1, meaning that when two people interact, usually they each feel the other person is a valuable, worthy person, a got-it-together member of Homo Sapiens, and that they themselves are not.  Sort of, "You are a fine, acceptable person worthy of love and respect.  I, on the other hand, am Pond Scum."

If Doc Harris was right, it's pretty sad, don't you think?

If it is true, why would it be true?   As I said, I have thinking about this issue for awhile.  I think there are lots of reasons that contribute to feelings of inadequacy in people.   The specific factors at play with a particular individual depend on his or her life experiences.

I mean, think about it.   From our earliest experiences, parents, teachers, siblings,playmates,  religious authorities, and the world in general spend a lot of time pointing out our failings.  "Do better in school.  Don't fight with you sister   Don't eat so fast.  Big boys don't cry.  If you don't behave, Santa won't bring you anything.   Don't sin or you'll go to hell.  Keep your eye on the ball or you'll strike out again."

Also, we have Madison Avenue to thank.  Who could ever live up to the images we see in advertisements, images that set up what we often perceive as the standard we should attain?  If we just looked liked them, lived their life, we could live happily ever after.  

I don't want you to think that is turning into one of those whiny recitations of how my parents damaged me, how the world doesn't understand me, and an oh, woe-is-me laying of blame.  I was blessed with good parents who did  not abuse or misuse me.   I did well in school.  I always got presents at Christmas, and I never seriously worried about going to hell.  My point is that the world is full of negative messages about our relative merit as people, and we all take our licks. 

There is an old  saying that one "Aw, Shit" undoes a thousand "Atta Boys."  I know this is true for me, and if Dr. Harris is right, it must be true for lots of people.  Maybe for most people.  Somehow it is easier for us to believe the bad messages about ourselves than the good ones. 

I have realized recently that I am often less kind to myself than I would be to my worst enemy. I don't consider myself a perfectionist, but I have often felt that somehow I just don't measure up to what I ought to be.   I know a woman who, who when she makes a mistake, often proclaims out loud,  vehemently, for all to hear, "I am so STUPID."  This woman is not stupid, but she is willing to believe the worst about herself, to generalize one mistake into a general assessment of her entire level of intelligence.  In other words, she doesn't give herself the benefit of the doubt that she would give to other people.  I do the same kind of thing, only I keep it to myself. 

Another factor in our unfairness to ourselves,  I think, is that we often consider being proud of who we are, what we have done, and our abilities, to be arrogant or overly conceited.  Part of my musings about being OK has been to figure out some of those positive things about myself.  I managed to come up with a few, which I modestly described in my previous blog.

So, getting back to that convoluted quote by Werner Erhard.  He took the long way around to say that we all have issues, we all have things we don't like about ourselves, and lots of imperfections.  Quit trying to be perfect.  No one is perfect, but everyone is OK.  All of us are children of God.  Jesus said that we should love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.  "As ourselves,"  did you get that?  There's a command, or an assumption, that we would love ourselves.  Think about that.  Think about the ways you are unkind to yourself.  How could you be nicer to yourself?  What have you got to be proud of?   I bet there are lots of things.

I'm not perfect and neither are you.  But, I'm OK.  And you're OK.   OK?