Deepak Chopra on The Wisdom of Insecurity.

Deepak Chopra writes the introduction to Alan Watts’ The Wisdom of Insecurity. In it, he speaks highly of the book, and has a few descriptions I've found helpful and would like to reference here.

"The ego-self constantly pushes reality away. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories." (2)

This has been a major issue for me. Specifically regretful memories. I have such a way of getting stuck on moments I'm ashamed or embarrassed about. As if these times cannot be excused or explained - but instead hold me to be permanently shameful.

I have dreams about these past people, these past experiences, and I wake up feeling like shit about it. Why do I still dream about these people? Why do I still dream about the way they gave me pleasure or caused me pain? Logically I could explain to myself that they are points of reference for my ego - but this does not wash away the same that I continue to feel, amplified by the time it’s been since these original sins.

I can go further, and extrapolate that because these are the original sins, and because I've had little to no sin since then, that these devils remain my only points of reference. They are my only memories.

I’ll gladly call myself out on using the term “sin.” I don’t mean it in a religious sense - nor do I affix judgement to these experiences logically. I just feel haunted by them, and feel that my shame creates a mythic ghost of these people and situations.

I use this language poetically. I also use it instead of specifically addressing the details of it all.

It’s now what I did that bothers me so much. It’s that it bothers me. It’s these regretful memories, and the ghosts that quite literally haunt my dreams.

"... words can point in the right direction; they can highlight overlooked flashes of insight; they can ignite the flame of discontent." (6)

I still don’t know what role this blog is taking in my life. I try to write when I can, especially when there’s something on my mind - but it’s difficult to get in front of a computer when I'm in the middle of a moment. I try and give myself notes or sources I can refer to later - expand on when the time and clarity of mind is there.

I absolutely do appreciate the power of language and the written word. I always have. But lately as I've been reading several books a month, and leaning towards memoirs and essays, I see the way in which personal experience and narrative can touch someone. I've felt this. Initially while reading The Chronology of Water and recently reading Nobody Is Ever Missing, Not That Kind of Girl and Men Explain Things to Me.

I hope I can keep exploring writing as a new creative tool, and maybe more so as a tool in working through my issues and expressing myself. Putting things down on paper, getting things out and away from me. This could be a way to externalize what’s so tightly wound around my insides.

What I love about this Deepak quote is his pin-pointing “overlooked flashes of insight” which happens daily. These moments of brilliance we’re too late to grab hold of or dismiss prematurely. I’d like to try and stay in these moments and expand on them here.

Forward!

Nobody is Ever Missing.

I just finished reading Nobody is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey.

The book is a really successful representation of living with depression and having a mind that is distracted and even removed from your life. What I mean by removed is that it’s this out-of-body feeling of distance and of detachment that sometimes flirts with disinterest.

If you've never felt this, your reading this is the equivalent of having taken a wrong turn, and this isn't a great place for tourists. You’re welcome to visit, but don’t complain about not speaking the language or not understanding the customs. The come from a very specific context.

This isn't really a book review. I enjoyed the book, but I mainly was impressed by how accurately it depicted the internal monologue of someone who is living through something alienating. It’s also more than that. It’s a dissociation that is similar to a lack of focus, to a blurred vision. You can see shapes and fuzz, you can deduce what you should be feeling, but you can’t quite get there. It isn't a choice either, it isn't trying to touch something and failing, it’s seeing it next to you, maybe recognizing it (maybe not) and it not being something you’re familiar with at that moment. It’s an alien sentiment at the moment. A foreign tongue.

Lacey does a great job of creating moments where we’re following a thread of thought. She accurately embodies what it’s like to always be spinning that thread, but not necessarily in the manner most do. It’s being irrelevant or ridiculous is of no value. Nothing is of value. It just happens. The thread links things together in a web that maybe she or I can identify, but maybe we can’t. We aren't always privy to the oddity of it. The constant spinning of it, is often against your will. All you want is quiet. But even the desire for solitude is in itself a social faux pas. There seems to be a great distrust of the anti-social. 

I just thought it was nice reading about someone’s experience of (what I read to be) mental illness. The main character is clearly going through something, and is actively trying to get away from something that just keeps following her. For her, it’s other people.For me, it would be my place in the world. The space I occupy. My role. I often think about how I’d love to go out to the middle of nowhere and rest and “do nothing.” Erase whatever it is I officially am. But nothing would change, really. I’d still be with myself. It would only be a temporary distraction from whatever it is I deal with on a daily basis.

Nobody is Ever Missing.