Some simple rules.

I'm coming up on one year as a mental health counselor (it will be this August 19, precisely) and I have made up my mind to write down a few simple rules that I've discovered make almost every aspect of life much easier.

Part of this is, of course, because I've discovered a lot of people end up in my office precisely because they don’t know the rules and don’t follow them. Furthermore, I’ve found that many of my friends don’t follow my rules, much to my exasperation. It’s not like I feel that I can demand that they do; my exasperation is much the one of someone who sees a simpler way to do things and sees a good friend struggling to do it the hard way.

Here are the rules.

1. Say what you mean, mean what you say.
2. Other people should inform you, but not form you.
3. Emotions are messages, not commands.
4. You are responsible for your own feelings; no one can make you feel anything.
5. You are not responsible for other people’s actions; you are responsible for your response to them.
6. Your obligations to other people are what you decide they are or have made yourself committed to by your words or actions.
7. You can’t give what you don’t have.
8. You can’t give if you don’t get (any rest, peace, support, etc.).
9. Don’t try to fix what you can’t change.
10. Forgive, but don't forget; or forgive, and then forget 'em!
11. Only plan ahead as far as you must.
12. Worrying is a useless emotion – just do what you can and what will be, will be.
13. No one can demand better than your best.
14. If you fail, you either do better next time or you find another solution.
15. Arguing with an idiot makes you a bigger idiot.
16. If you act like a fool, you give others permission to treat you like one.
17. You can either warn people , give them chances, or save them over and over, or let them suffer the consequences of their own actions once.
18. There is no written rule book for how you must feel about something.
19. Relaxing and enjoying yourself is really just recharging your ability to work.
20. The words of family and friends can become our inner voice.
21. No matter how many times a falsehood is spoken, it will not make it true.
22. A good attitude and cheerful spirit can be all you need to succeed.
23. Ask more questions.
24. Listen more than you talk.
25. We belong with other people – no one can make it through life alone.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream that guides me through.

The world has moved on.

"The world has moved on. Bad times are on horseback."

I am re-reading the Dark Tower, Stephen King's magnum opus of an adventure about Roland Deschain, gunslinger, last of his kind in a world that is dying, and about his last ditch attempt to save it and all of existence itself from eternal darkness.

Epic.

There is a saying that reappears in every book (there are seven) and multiple times in every book. It's "The world has moved on." The first time I read the book, years ago, I never really understood the phrase. I thought I did...I took it to mean "times have changed." But that's not it at all. I get it now. I get it now because I'm a little older and I've lived it.

"We say the world has moved on; maybe we really mean that it has begun to dry up."

When I think back to the time when college was new, and I had all the time in the world?

The world has moved on, gunslinger.

When I think about the times I always had someone else to consider if things didn't work out?

The world has moved on, gunslinger.

When I think back to when I didn't need to worry about whether I was doing things right?

The world has moved on, gunslinger.

When I think back to the times I could choose among almost any club, school, community, etc. activity as a place to have fun and meet new people?

The world has moved on since then.

I get it. What an interesting phrase - it doesn't mean a change in time, because time is really only a figment of our imagination...it means an entire change in the world. My world has utterly changed, and I'm still adjusting. I keep wanting things to be how they once were, but everything around me reminds me it's different now.

In the interest of not sounding so depressed to the point of self-absorption, I know I have other things to look forward to. But true to my fashion, I'm not as interested in them as I am to the things that I've "passed by." I need not repeat them. After all, I understand as well as anyone else reading this blog how I must sound. Still, allow me this guilty pleasure.

I guess I am just frustrated that at my sixth year of leaving home, other than a degree under my belt and another on the way, and a little maturity, I'm really no better off than I was before. I think at one point I actually thought I would be married by now. What a riot that is to think. The world has moved on.

Something positive (because I really am trying, I promise): I think I would be very happy, even if I was moving on from this community alone, if I got a job where I intern at. And moved to this nice little town with a Catholic church the size of a cathedral. I'd cry...that would be lovely. We'll see...we'll see exactly how much the world has moved on.

There was a dream that I dream, a dream for a world that has not yet moved on.

What is owed.

Nobody really owes me anything.

These days I am a very angry person. The anger is my own fault. It comes from my sense of entitlement - people ought to treat me this way. People ought to give me this or that consideration. People ought to do this or that. But I find myself inevitably and totally disappointed.

I know that I complain a lot. If you disagree, fine. I complain a lot in my head, then. My head is a mess of accusations. How dare she! How dare he! How dare they! They know better! Well, that is my standard. I can't control anyone but myself.

It is so difficult for people to put themselves in other people's shoes. This is the root of many interpersonal problems. People just don't get what it's like. At the same time as I do something I feel justified, someone does the same thing to me, and I feel it categorically unjust. But yet, if I am honest, I know they must have some justification known only to themselves.

I take today as an example. Rejection is something I find difficult to justify in almost any situation - utter rejection, without consideration. It angers me. In movies I will cheer on the most rejected character of the story. I can't help but love them and want to see them do well. That is my empathy.

So, today, I was rejected. That is the only detail necessary in telling this story for the purposes of my moral. I was rejected in the same way that I know I will someday soon reject someone else. I know that I have my justifications for it, and feel them good enough. But, were I to explain it to the rejectee they would likely consider it a very weak excuse. So the same in reverse. Today, I was rejected, and the reasoning I heard was utter tripe, in my personal opinion. Bah, I thought. Utter bull. Their excuse is not at all consideration as they say. But I must put this on myself. I know. Hypocrite.

I am not owed consideration. I am not owed consideration from the person who I spoke to today. I am not owed consideration by my friends. I am not owed anything. No one ought to do anything for me or with me. That is not the same as should, in the moral sense. Of course I have been maltreated, just as I have maltreated others.

Everything I have given as a friend has been a gift, not an obligation. I have given time, tears, and energy. I do not believe I have been given the same. That makes me somewhat angry - but what makes me even angrier is knowing that I am not really owed what I am demanding, and that the person I should really be angry at is myself, for demanding it.

Damn it!

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for release from obligation.

The pay-off.

In human action and interaction, there is rarely, if ever, any sort of arbitrariness. There is always a "point" to it...something I am trying to "get" or "achieve."

It is a dangerous business to always go through life without examining what kind of pay-off I am trying to get from my actions. "What is the point of what I'm doing?" I must ask if I truly wish to be a person of virtue.

I have become aware, recently, of how lax I have been in checking myself for these pay-offs. I thank God that I know I'm being an arrogant fool sometimes. It comes out in a few of these posts. While it may be true I feel like a Jedi when I counsel people, I think it is true I tell people so not for any reason other than because I want their approval, which is a very silly reason. If I am to be someone who only cares how God judges me, that's not really the way to go about it.

Even while I am being more vigilant in my awareness of why I am doing what I'm doing I know that I must have blind spots. This is why I have decided I need to make sure I am getting plenty of virtuous friendships. The path to righteousness was never intended, I believe, to be taken alone. This is why I am very grateful for the friendship of a man I will refer to as G.

G and I only met this year, and I must say at first I was a bit annoyed at him. Not because I didn't appreciate his sense of humor and found him a bore, but because I was so unused to not having to work to make friends with someone that I found it almost irritating. But I am grateful I decided to throw this aside and give it a shot. G is a great Catholic man, and even though he seems awkward and timid to the unobservant, in reality he is definitely not afraid to ask me the tough questions. "Do you think you're reading too much into it?" He asked the other day as I told him a guy-to-guy story. I thought briefly and answered "yes" because of course I was.

I appreciated this probably more than I let on to G, because I need friends like him to alert me to my blind spots. Someone to sharpen my iron, to use the Pauline phrase. I know I can count on G to help me grow in virtue, because I can tell that even more than he likes to have fun with me, I know he wants to grow closer to Christ, and help me in that, too.

G is, of course, not the only virtuous friendship I have. I could mention a few others, some of whom are probably my readers (I believe there are about 8 people who regularly keep up with this blog in any regular fashion, and I have perhaps indulgently assumed these are my closest associates). However, G is a great example of what I hope to have more of. I find I am increasingly less interested in idle amusement in my friendships, and more and more interested in learning something from them. This is what attracts me most to a person: their wisdom that I so desperately need!

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for a virtuous pay-off.

Catharsis marathon.

I'm really tired, but I need to write this before I forget again.

Catharsis...The process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions. I've been having a lot of that. Closure type stuff. Over and over and over. My life is bipolar.

Really there is a downfall to knowing lots of people. Your life becomes a little unpredictable especially where love is involved. Mostly I have learned that reciprocated feelings are rarer than unreciprocated, and there is a lot of that going on around here.

A recent rash of honesty with people lately has gotten me into trouble more than once, but at least on one occasion recently it did me a lot of good. Case in point: Something I've been touching on a bit here and there in my last few posts...what I was doing that I knew might in the end really hurt me. And I was right. I finally confessed my full intentions in a certain friendship. And in the end, it was met with an honest rejection. It was good. I handled it really well, I believe, and I'm a wiser person.

I also know that years ago, I never could have handled that situation as I did...and be able to say confidently as I type this that I am doing really well. Just trying to do the right thing and letting go of my desires in this situation helped a lot. That trust has taken a long time to build...the act of surrendering my future to the Lord, as it belongs to Him alone anyway. I know that this doesn't own me.

Catharsis.

Still, I'm tired now and I'm ready for life to be a little more boring for a while...A little less emotional, a little less tense. But that's for God to decide.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for eternal catharsis.

The Aftermath.

Much has changed emotionally since my last post.

The pleasantness of slowness and my patience in general has dwindled. I'm not sure what happened, but loneliness, it seems, has finallyeasily caught up to me. I'm disappointed in myself, to be sure, as I thought that I had finally escaped many of my old tendencies. I thought I'd finally gotten emotional independence.

In one respect, at least, I am better in that I still have avoided indulging my old desires to draw attention to myself for the sake of simply feeling better. I know better now.

Still, it seems like writing this blog is really the only outlet for attention-seeking I allow anymore. That's what it must be, isn't it? I don't see any other reason to write it other than to put my thoughts were others can see it, otherwise, I would just write it in a journal and show no one. I'm not often sure who reads these blog posts, only the ones who reveal themselves, I suppose...but sometimes I post knowing I wish certain people would read it. That worries me. You see, I don't wish to allow any credence to desires that lead to me acting out again.

I've been looking over Facebook's timeline feature. It's nice in many ways, but that's not the reason I'm talking about it now. I had to go through my timeline and remember all of the times I was most lonely and depressed...and start hiding the worst of my old statuses before people could read them! It's embarrassing how obviously desperate for someone's - anyone's - attention I was...how I would target specific people sometimes...how I would "hint" at things related to love, loss...anger. Nothing I want to relive. But I did.

It's funny how you can get a sort of "link" to your past self in ways. Sometimes you can look at a certain photo and remember how you felt and what you were thinking when it was taken...or read an old journal entry, or something. That was what happened to me looking over these old writings of mine...so sad, so pathetic. I kinda lost grip on myself while I was reading/hiding those old statuses. It was too easy to remember and over-empathize. I had been wondering what it felt like to be my old 2009 self or something...well, suddenly my 2009 self possessed me for a short time! Ahhhh!

Well, once I snapped back to reality, it was so much easier to realize how imperative it is that I avoid using others to relieve my negative emotions. Especially women. It's easier when I'm tempted to, oh, text somebody something to try and initiate emotional contact to just look inside and shout "FOOL!" That's my only lifeline at this point.

Another thing I noticed about my old self is that a lot of the things I've noticed about the young folks (freshman) around here also applied to myself. I think I would totally become friends with my 2007 self - if the Facebook posts help me get an idea of what I was like, I'm pretty sure my old self was just in his own little world all of the time. I was so innocent and possessed by the geeky side of myself that I'm sure I would really enjoy meeting that person that was me - because he was so untouched by the world it's amusing. That's why I became so immature only two years later - once that mask was torn off, I looked around at my real world - and realized who I really was - and hated it. The momentary glimpses that I hid from in 2007 became ever present in 2009/2010, so since I couldn't hide from it anymore, I tried to rebuild myself...which manifested itself much of the time in depressing Facebook posts. Yikes.

Lest I say too much in this post and start getting tempted to disclose too much about what or who is on my mind, I will just say that I hope people will pray that I build more patience. Someone told me the other day that wisdom and patience go hand in hand - and I believe them! I wish to build up my relationship with God and ignore the rest of me that is demanding human companionship...it's a lot harder than I thought, even though rationally I have provided myself with many excellent reasons why I should be wholly desiring the single life for the moment.  For some reason the conflict doesn't want to go away that easily.

That's all for now.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for emotional peace.

On changing my mind.

Reflect on this: if you were perfect, you would never change your mind.

Past posts have been getting a lot of views these past few weeks, and because of the subject matter, I believe I know why.

I've expressed strong opinions about the stages of my life, but yet as I go on I find that although many of my ideas remain the same, some of them I change. I do this because I grow. I'm imperfect.

A year ago, I would have told you that I am often ruled by my emotions. These days, though, I find I've relaxed in that matter. I am in touch with my emotions...I feel them, I experience them, I know them intimately. But instead of acting on them, or letting them affect me, I can choose to let them flow through me. I've mellowed out.

In the same way, I look back on the things I've said about "where I am" and "what I'm doing" and think less seriously of my opinions at those times than I once did. I've learned since then. I am not quite so sure of myself.

Knowledge is how much you know. Wisdom, I believe, is knowing what you don't know. And I've gotten a little more wise.

I find now that I recognize more and more how little I really know and can know. Case in point: my last post about crushes. A year ago I would have never written such a post. I took crushes far too seriously to write such a thing. Now I know them for what they really are: the body's way of pointing out to you interesting women (and also, for those like me who are interested in being single for a while, at least, a damned nuisance).

People who never make assumptions and ask lots of questions are, in my opinion, the wisest people you will ever meet. If you ever make friends with such a person, don't ever take them for granted. I find they are rarer and rarer in our world these days. I hope to be one someday, and I think I'm headed in that direction.

Now, to take my own advice...

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for a wiser world.