Progress report; fairy tales; folk tales
Wednesday January 16, 2008
• I’m seeing how far I can go with this on my own. Things flying into place about my family, and others. Memories coming back.
• In a self-appreciation phase. I thought I could derive and absorb appreciation only from another, say, my future wife or girlfriend, but I see that when certain things are in place, you can give it to yourself. Oh, is it delightful. And I assume it will tranform on its own into I don’t know what. I’m not worried I’ll become an egomaniac.
• I’m actually witnessing, while not fleeing the pain and humiliation, the repitition compulsion as it happens:”Oh, this is it.”
• My isolation in my awareness is not worse than the lifelong isolation I have felt; it’s just that it’s in my mental foreground now.
What you say makes sense of so much human behavior. No need to take it on faith.
~~
• When my first girlfriend, a social worker, met my mother, she said to me, in private, “Mirror, mirror on the wall.” I’d never seen it before (now I know why not), and Bingo!
• Two days ago, I apprehended that I was dragooned into the role of Ugly Duckilng.
~~
Being taken seriously:
A hasidic story. The protagonists are grandfather and grandson, the third and future fifth Lubavitcher Rabbis. The grandfather, having just completed his daily private consultations (how intense they must have been), enters his private office, where his grandson awaits. The old zaydeh sighs.
Zayde,why did you just sigh? [Perfect opportunity for Grandpa to shoot down inquisitiveness, and be spared revealing weakness.]
You know what all those people out there want from me? [Asking, rather than needlessly teaching.]
Your help.
And just now, it was too much for me to carry.
Yes, but God sees more people than you and He doesn’t sigh! [This boy hadn’t been squelched.]
Yes, but God has the Torah. [Takes the boy seriously.]
And you have the Torah! [Understandably aggrandizes grandfather.]
I don’t have the Torah. [I am not Santa; i.e. there is no Santa.]
Then tell them that and they’ll leave you alone! [Presumes integrity to be only natural.].
~~
R. B.
AM: Thank you for your letter and for saying that I don’t need to be taken at faith. It is important to me that everybody can check with the help of his or her own history what I am writing.