Posted: Jan 12, 08 5:13pm
People here on TBD think they know me. I am a regular contributor to many discussions and my answers, though often far from the safe center where the other therapists and well-meaning answerers of questions relevant and curious reside, tend to go off into the dark corners of the human psyche to explore the vast choices we have at every moment of life. Each tick of the clock presents us with the possibility of new choices if we are aware of them and able to use our inner resources to alter course, even a fraction.
Too many people (even if they are a minority) I see here live at the edge of reason, the cusp of panic and the lonely spaces between souls attempting to connect around something meaningful. They follow trends, and issue bromides and peptides that are both rationale and excuses for the state of emotional squalor they have fallen into. I also see many who are together in the most elegant sense of that word and are such a pleasure to surround myself with.
Unlike the talented and articulate woman who started this forum, I choose never to categorize myself and certainly if I am to choose a color it would be a rainbow - dazzling, ephemeral, existing with a lightness of being combined with sufficient gravitas that you can touch it and experience the colors with all five senses.
To ask if I am green, my response would be, "What time is it?" If it is 8:06.33, I probably am green.
I hope the fact that I would never take a personality test because the chances are that the well-meaning individual who created it has limitations that corrupt any possibility of any statistical relevance. I do not believe in astrology, phrenology or any of the pseudosciences. I do not pretend that psychotherapy is a science. At its finest, it is an art form based on the magic of words, verbal and nonverbal. Practiced by those who would imitate the masters in hopes of attaining the same results, give nothing that a person couldn't get by putting a quarter into one of those carnival machines with the gypsy in it that delivers a scroll of cigarette paper with your fortune on it. Psychotherapy works, so I find methods to make its precepts relevant to anyone who trusts their very being to traverse a small part of their journey with me.
I am not here to be liked. I am here to use the gifts I possess to help those who no one else seems to have been able to help. Sound conceited? TFB! I measure my life by the results I obtain, not by giving succor to those who are bottomless pits whose only aim is to deride anyone not lined up for their lemming march. Jeez, did I say that? Yeah.
Anyway, I hope that this is a place where it is not necessary to accept someone else's idea of what is acceptable and relevant. If so, I am in the wrong room. I love a person who accepts that it is possible to see around a corner without a periscope, even if he or she doesn't know how it is done. Believing in possibilities beyond what you know is often the key to quantum leaps forward.
You may possibly infer from what I've said, "My gosh, what an egotist." I like to remember the words of the old NY Yankee catcher, Larry (Yogi) Berra, "It ain't braggin' if you can do it."
Sometimes, I like to throw a shotglass through the mirror just to see what reaction I get. I live without fear of consequences because nothing I do will offend a person strong enough to hold a mirror up to himself or herself and say, "Who am I? What am I? Why am I?"
Like I said in the beginning: Words are magic. You still know nothing about me and will only find out if you engage me in discussion. Right this moment, I may be green with a tinge of antique brass. By the time, I read this post again and hit the submit button, I will probably have cycled through six dozen shades and the colors will not conform to the description you gave them. They are my colors emitting from my aura.
I accept that we are different. I cherish that we are different. If we were all the same, or even eight simple varieties, I would not remain on this planet for a single additional day. I don't want to meet me. I know me, I like me, and I need new connections to grow. Alone, I am substantial - but like an oak tree, not flexible or knowing. It is only through relationships that I grow.
I leave you with a challenge, the answer to which defines mankind and separates us into two categories: If you were up to your neck in a barrel of shit and somebody threw a brick at your head, would you duck?
Copacabana Beach; Rio De Janeiro, where I learned who and why I am.
