The Process
I go lie down in bed. If there’s something on my mind that’s a little deeper, it will tend to bubble up. I’ll get emotional about it.
I might be able to tell that it is really meaningful.
If it seems really meaningful I’ll get up and write about it or do something about it.
This has happened two or three times already this evening.
This isn’t normal. It’s my current process for handling an extra heavy emotional load.
If this in TMI for you, you are welcome to just skip it.
Old Issues
Tonight I recognized some old issues that I was sort of pushing off on my friend but that – surprise! – I had never really handled myself.
Decide what you want to do!
A situation comes up. It was probably an unexpected situation. And now you’ve got to decide what to do about it. And maybe you work it out all by yourself or maybe you talk to someone close (or not so close?) about it. And the result is supposed to be that you decide what to do. If you don’t decide someone else will decide for you, right? Wouldn’t you rather stay in control of your life and make your own decisions?
And this process is supposed to result in a goal and a plan of action. I’ve done this lots of times for more minor actions. Like moving back to California (twice). Like finding a job. Like getting products at work.
But to decide this for all aspects of your life over a short space of time? That’s more of a challenge.
Aren’t you supposed to help me with this?
When you are young and still trying to cope with your current life and all the changes that have happened since the last time you were a kid (particularly because you probably can’t even remember the last time) you kind of expect that maybe an adult (like your parent?) would sit down with you and help you to sort stuff out.
How many of you out there have gone through such a process with a parent? Or maybe a teacher or a mentor or even a counselor? I’d like to hear from you all about your experiences!
I’m fond of saying that my parents weren’t exactly there for me, but they aren’t here to defend themselves now, so suffice it to say that I never really did this with either my dad or my mom while I was growing up with them, but a little more with my mom after I left home.
When you are older, who replaces your parents when you need to get an exterior look at something that is making you feel very weak and little? The most obvious answer is your spouse. But these days, approximately half of all U.S. adults live as singles. Who do those people turn to when they need to get some perspective on their lives?
Why won’t you let me help you?
A friend of mine who I should probably consider a dear friend even though we don’t know each other that well was willing to help me with this recently. She’s my age, but more learned and more emotionally mature. She came up with the observation that this all centers around the subject of help. She suggested that I review some materials on the subject, which I fortunately have copies of. I have been reviewing those materials.

Help is a very interesting subject! It’s a very emotional subject because it is very very basic in this world. When the worms reproduce in the soil underneath a lawn, then a robin comes along one day and spots one and pulls it out and eats it, was that not a case of the worm helping the robin? Might it even be true that in some way the robin helped the worm by allowing it to fulfill its purpose of being food for higher life forms? The argument could be made. So help isn’t necessarily all sweetness and light, is it?
Way back when we were all bodyless spiritual beings – I’m talking way way back – we really didn’t need that much help from each other. But, we wanted to play together (the analogy with children at play only stretches so far). One being might make some creation and throw it in the direction of another being to see how they would react. Now, if the second being just ignored the “pass” (seeing a sexual connection here? That’s OK…) the first being would not consider that helpful. He might get pissed off at the second being and try to entrap him with flaming plasma or something (I just made that up). On the other hand, if the second being responded by sending a creation of his back in the direction of the first being, that might be considered helpful. They might even get together and have a relationship!
Other responses might also be considered helpful. The second being could blow up the first being’s creation. Or he could change its color and throw it back. You can see how eventually some sort of game could develop with “rules” about responses that were helpful versus ones that weren’t. It would all be totally subjective, but it would be a game. They are a couple of immortal spiritual beings! They don’t really need any “help.”
Fast forward billions of years, closer to present time. We’ve all become involved with biology. The rules of the “game” (if you can still call it that) are a little more obvious. And the actions involved are a little more…graphic, I guess you could say. Feeding someone is considered helpful. So a farmer helps others by feeding them. And they help him by buying the food instead of stealing it, so he can afford to replant each year and also feed his own family. A mother feeds her baby my nursing him and so on. Pretty obvious.
But the problem of failed help can come up. The farmer’s crop fails. The mother’s milk dries up. Oh no! Everyone has their stable data upset! How will they react? The situation suddenly becomes new and confusing. The baby could cry. The little boy, hungry, could get angry at not being fed and run away from home. The people who depended on the farmer could riot and burn down the farmer’s house. Failed help, then, can result in the person who expected that he could help finding himself resenting those he hoped to help. He failed to help so now he hates the objects of his help? Sounds nutty, but that’s life for you.
And so, all sorts of strange attitudes towards help can pop up and cripple individuals and their groups. A person can reject help even though he obviously needs some. A person could refuse to help another even though he could obviously provide some. Oh my goodness what a sad situation!
My family and my relationships…
And so it was that, though I expected help from my parents, it seldom arrived. They provided the most basic help: food, clothing, shelter, health care. That might be good enough for a farm animal, but that’s not quite going to cut it for a human boy trying to grow up into a man. There were obvious attempts to provide educational opportunities and fun family activities. The help landscape was not a desert, but more like a savanna when I had hoped for a forest.
And so I learned to not ask for help, and to figure out my issues by myself. This could be considered laudable in some respects, but it is missing at least one important ingredient: Without a second terminal in the picture, it becomes extremely difficult to have enough space to be truly sane and inventive. Solutions created in a space that’s too small and cramped will result in solutions that, frankly, are a bit half-assed. This, unfortunately, characterized many of my solutions to many of the situations I ran into growing up. The first big one being the loss of my friends, including my dear girlfriend Linda, when my family moved from California to Michigan.
What am I supposed to do?
When I was nine and living in the Bay Area, my answer would have been: Grow up, go to college, marry Linda, raise a family and live a “normal” life.
By the time I was about 15 the plan looked more like this: Don’t grow up – be an irresponsible playboy for the rest of my life, don’t go to college, follow my passions instead of putting common sense first and live an “abnormal” life.
By the time I was 25, I had finally found someone (Suzy, a child psychologist) who was willing to be a second terminal for me so I could straighten some of this shit out. With her help, I learned to:
- Dress like an adult.
- Find enjoyable play activities with other adults.
- Have adult girlfriends.
However, we never worked out college, my passions, or my determination to swim against the prevailing current. Perhaps this was just as well. I ended up learning a lot from “growing up” but I also learned a lot from “being different.”
However, there was a crucial skill and awareness I did not acquire: How to provide myself with one or more stable terminals who I could work with to create my future. This was especially critical because I no longer envisioned a mainstream future for myself. Some would argue this was a mistake. It meant that people, particularly women, who could fill this need would be few and far between. And that my friends, is an understatement in describing what I experienced!
But wait – so, what is it that I’m really supposed to do?
In a nutshell, I walked into adult life with a fragmented and incomplete vision of my own future, largely manufactured by myself without any direct consultation with another person.
Would I eventually work in the arts, as I had envisioned when I was 15? Would I create a space for children to learn in a more hands-on, trial-and-error (sometimes known as “heuristic”) fashion, the way I had learned so many things? Could I create an organization that would promote group dancing as an ideal way to attain physical (and mental) health? Could I come up to the level where I would be able to train and organize musicians, technicians, and other personnel to put on dance-exercise events and create some sort of enterprise that could be economically viable?
The above was one version of what I hoped to be doing for the rest of my life. It didn’t exactly turn out that way, but that’s not the point of this article.
Can I help her master a situation that I would have been unable to master when I was her age?
I find myself associated with a woman who is about as old as I was then. Her situation is in some ways much more complex and brutal than anything I ever experienced. It, in fact, comes very close to being overwhelming for both of us. It is a situation the likes of which I never imagined getting this close to in my lifetime. This kind of thing never happened to “nice college-educated people.” Yet it is happening to her, and similar things are happening to many other women (and men) in her age group.
An aside: I should have seen it coming.
I should have expected the Big Bad Asses to pull a bait-and-switch scheme on the entire planet to sell it on slavery. I should have expected them to come up with something really scary like a “new” virus (that really isn’t much worse than all the “old” ones we’ve already been through). The evolution was choreographed quite masterfully. And we are at a point – right now – where they seem to be on the verge of success.

I should have expected this.
I knew there were a bunch of guys out there who wanted to enslave the planet and needed to cripple the United States – the planet’s biggest defender of basic human freedoms – to do it. I knew these guys had total control of the mainstream media outlets, so could orchestrate a multi-faceted propaganda campaign that would leave few stones unturned. I knew they had the doctors in their pockets. I didn’t know the new Tech companies would be so compliant, but should have guessed. And so it happened!
Duh.
Meanwhile, young adults – boys in particular – were being crippled by chemicals in their water, their food, their vaccines, and in drugs they were forced to take for their “mental illnesses.” On top of this a criminal philosophy which used to be known as Marxism, but it now known as Critical Theory, was sweeping through the humanities and being pushed in schools, businesses and the media. Its basic goal was to convince an entire generation that a criminal takeover was the only way to solve the persistent problems that we continued to create for ourselves – particularly in the “free” countries.
And so freedom itself came to have a bad name. Many of the younger generation don’t see any value in freedom. They are sold on the idea that freedom just results in crime. That it’s not something that is vital to our spiritual or mental health. And so a whole generation (almost) is fine with wearing masks that don’t work, participating in lockdowns that don’t work, and losing their jobs so they can’t work, just because the “experts” and the media insist that something really awful will happen if they don’t “follow the guidelines.” The only thing “awful” that would happen if we were much less compliant is that they would lose their power over us! Yet few see the pure evil in their actions and exhortations.
Very few people now are educated about what criminality is and what sociopathy is. A lot of people think these behaviors are just normal and that we have to live with them. If someone gets too scary, we can always send them to a psych hospital where they will be forcibly drugged and made compliant – or else. Actually, psych wards and prisons are used to identify persons who might be useful to the Big Bad Asses as terrorists, and such persons will often be released as “cured” so that they may perform this function. To keep the threat looking real, this is an important part of the plan.
Back to my friend.
This woman seems very intent on sorting out her own life. Perhaps she will find someone to help her. But as she is trained in the helping professions to assist others in situations similar to her own, perhaps she feels that she herself is the most qualified!
Yet she complains of feeling “introverted and exhausted.” Too little space! She needs another terminal to help her open up her space. Not to think for her! Just to help her find the room she needs to really think for herself.
When I was her age and in a similar but much less extreme situation, I failed to understand the true benefits that another terminal could have provided, and did not expect much from the one I did find, nor continue to look for a better replacement. And so I failed myself in many ways.
And now I offer myself to her as one who can truly help? Perhaps she has been wise to reject the offer. This is my great dilemma. Am I helping her enough, or failing her? It is indeed a great dilemma for me now.
You think I am making this all up?
This is not the time or place to sort out political theories. A girl is in trouble. Can I help her through it or can’t I? Either way, I will lose her – like successful parents lose their children – to the world of adult life. But perhaps if I continue to care about her, and am honest and real about it, and actually manage to provide her with information that will help her make better decisions, she won’t end up like I did, and will keep me a bit in her life.
Who wants to be 66, alone, and constantly emotionally needy? It is a form of torture I dearly wish now I could have avoided. Though my breadth of understanding of life somewhat makes up for the isolation, it seems now that I could have done so much better, been so much more effective.
If I had just had someone there to help me when I needed it the most.
If I had just been more willing to ask for and accept help from others.
If I had just been able to recognize when someone else needed help but didn’t know how to ask for it, and then helped them.
Well, I still have a little more time this life to get it right.
And yes, I guess I am making all this up.
It’s my life; what other choice do I have but to create it myself?