There's Something About Bob

There is a man, I will call him Bob, he is a star football player in the NFL. Super Bowl winning quarterback. Every American guy’s dream right? Grabs the headlines every week. Plays at a high level in the extremely competitive world of professional football. Takes hit after hit weekly from 300 lb. defensive ends and bounces right back up to throw a 50 yard touchdown pass on the very next play. A real star and the envy of every high school and college football player in the nation and every couch-potato, internet sports-site trolling wannabe who never realized his dreams of athletic stardom. He epitomizes what they had hoped to be.

Lately Bob has hit some rough patches. Turns out that he apparently thinks that his status of Super Bowl winning quarterback brings with it certain entitlements not available to the average person on the street, you and me for example.

He likes to party, he likes to spend money, he likes the attention from the young ladies who like professional athletes. Of course he does, he’s a young guy, 28 years old, at the height of his athletic ability, at the height of his stardom, everybody wants to be with him and get a chance to share in his good fortune.

He likes to party, he likes to spend money, he likes the attention from the young ladies and, as it turns out (allegedly I would specify) he likes to sexually assault the young ladies. Being a football star comes with its entitlements does it not?

Well the newspapers can only report on the alleged ‘facts’ of the assaults and they're running out of new material and facts are still under investigation, nothing has yet been proven and it's time that the story expanded a little.  Gotta fill up the empty space on the page, gotta keep the advertisers coming and spending their money.  So eventually the sportswriters they turn to something else, a new angle on the story. So they turn to his college and high school and boyhood friends. “Tell me what Bob was like ten, fifteen, twenty years ago” they say. “Well… Bob was a really athletically gifted person and exceptionally driven to succeed.”. We find out that Bob was always in the weight room, first one in and the last one leave. Bob tirelessly and relentlessly worked on his football skills. A real committed guy, even at such a young age. It was all about making the NFL for Bob and he deserves his success. Nobody has worked harder than Bob to get where he is today.

Driven, single-minded, strong-willed, focused. That’s Bob.

We find out a little about Bob’s family. Parents divorced and Dad remarried - nothing new there.  Half the kids in the country have divorced parents. Nice home in a regular community. Money wasn’t abundant but it wasn’t scarce either. Basically Bob grew up with all the creature comforts a small-town boy could want or need.  We find out that Bob’s mother was killed in a car accident when he was just eight years old. She was on her way to see him.

There's something about Bob that nobody can quite put their finger on.  He was such a great kid, so much talent, such a nice guy, generous.  What the hell is going on with Bob these days?  We just don't get it, why this is all happening.

I wonder if it's possible that maybe Bob doesn't bounce back quite so easily from every hit he's ever taken.

The Story of Our Lives Part II

There is a woman who likes to drive fast. She likes fast cars that handle the curves, she likes fast cars that go from 0 to 60 in 4.5 seconds.  She likes cars that respond instantly when she hits that gas pedal... and she hits that gas pedal hard and frequent. When she drives on the highway she hits speeds upwards of eighty-five mph. On this day she is heading home on the highway, as usual she is driving way too fast. But there is a certain kind of thrill in speed for her. A feeling of freedom? A little sense of danger perhaps? Hard to say.

On this day driving home she is lost in thought as she flies down the highway and she snaps back to attention just as she realizes she is about to pass right by her exit. So she veers right, never dropping her speed and gets on the exit ramp that leads to another highway that will eventually bring her home. But the second she hits this exit ramp she is in the middle of a crazy snowstorm. From sunny, dry conditions to blizzard conditions in the span of twenty yards. Road is covered in snow and she likes fast cars and she is driving fast and she hits that snow-covered road and realizes in an instant that she is driving way too fast for the road conditions. Problem is that her love of fast cars means that her tires do not grip well in slippery conditions and the second she hits the breaks she’s going into spin. The second she tries to slow down it’s over. She’ll lose control and God knows where she’ll end up.

She wants to slow down, she knows she has to slow down but she also knows that the instant that she tries to slow down control of that car is no longer hers.

The Story of Our Lives

Is not this...

Or even this...

And it ain't this as I had once suggested...

It's this...

Therapists and Friendship

So I'm reading this blog post about friendship and professional boundaries in the therapist/client relationship and basically the question is would I want to be friends with my therapist after the therapy has ended.  In the myriad books about therapy that I've read I've seen this question raised many times both among therapists and patients.  Seems that while there are rules which appear to be 'not until two years after the therapy has ended' there is much debate over the question.  Whatever and not for me to decide since I'm not a therapist and I would not be the one breaching any ethical boundaries.

However I gave it some thought and here's what I think;  I like my therapist.  I like her a lot.  She's smart and she's funny and I can tell her patients matter to her and I can tell that her job matters to her and I have never once felt like she wasn't completely focused and in that room with me. I like my therapist as my therapist.  I like that she is my therapist.  I like that I have a therapist that I can count on to be there every week, week in and week out.  I like that I have a person that I can go to every week, week in and week out and talk about what's on my mind.

I'm totally good with the fact that she's my therapist.  Could we be friends in a different time and place?  I have no idea but we're not in a different time and place and I feel very fortunate to have found somebody that it seems I can count on to do her job.  She is just what I need in a therapist and if we became friends I'd lose that.  I have lots of friends and frankly there aren't a lot of them that I can talk to without them getting their own s**t in the way (and vice versa no doubt)  so why would I trade my therapist in for a friend and take on her s**t?

No thanks.  I like her right where she is.


As an aside I have also heard it said numerous times that people get a bit freaked out when they hear of (or see) their therapist at a party or some other public place and the therapist has somehow decided to be themselves, let their hair down, act like a regular person, and I don't get it.  Do people think their therapists aren't real people?  I'd crack up if I saw my therapist in say the grocery store and overheard her telling someone about a party she went to and had one too many and started telling off-color jokes.

I don't know... something about me wanting my therapist to be a real person I guess.  Who can say?

I've Got Nuthin Part Deux

I am in a place right now, a little frustration, a little confusion. I sense a movement towards a place of greater understanding or rather a place of being able to formulate a bit more competently some kind of cohesive theory of human existence and our relation to God. Or at least I hope so because this inability to gather my half-thoughts into some kind of cohesiveness is pretty darn frustrating.


I have times, right now for example where I feel on the verge of a break-through… but of what? New knowledge? New understanding? I cannot even find a word for what ‘it’ is so I use the word ‘it’. A word about as nondescript as one can get but I have nothing better. I am forced to use the word ‘it’ a lot because I don’t know another word to use to describe something that is circulating in my mind but is not yet even close to being in full view and so I cannot make out what ‘it’ is. ‘It’ is just a blob right now, not even a blob, no form, no color, no properties of which to be spoken. Very frustrating.

Take for example the whole religion thing. I will speak specifically of the Christian theology or let me be slightly more general and use the Bible as my example. Here’s the thing; I know these writings point to the ‘truth’, I’ll call it ‘reality’. I like that word better. The biblical writings point to something that really is, I just cannot come up with an organized and cohesive theory of what that something, or what that story is. Jesus for example; real or myth? Actual person as God in the flesh, living model, living archetype of what really is, sent so we could actually see and speak to the actual THING of which we all have built-in knowledge, living proof of our pre-existing knowledge or was Jesus simply a man turned into a myth that represents the reality of the knowledge implanted by God. Our projection of innate knowledge.

How’s that for convoluted?

Interesting that Carl Jung indicated that one of the errors of human beings is in our habit of looking to ourselves in an effort to get some kind of picture of God when in fact I think that the very place we should be starting in our efforts to gain an understanding of God is ourselves. Of course I suspect that he was referring to behavior and I am referring to construct.

The best I can do right now is to merely define that at which I am grasping; a cohesive theory of the basic structure of human life and it’s relation to God.

That’s all I’ve got.

Ignorance of Choice

The choices we make are made in ignorance (and we’re ignorant of even that much), and as a result of our choices made in ignorance things happen, some that we never expected, some for which we are completely unprepared. And when they happen we’re lost, we flounder around looking for answers and we expend all of our energy trying to find the solution only to ultimately come to the conclusion that there is no solution, or rather no solution over which we ourselves have any control.

Unfortunately we oftentimes empty our tank in the process of trying to find solutions to problems that presented themselves in response to our choices made in ignorance and so we’re left to somehow make it through the rest of our lives running on empty.

What a dilemma.

Checks and Balances

We have been given free will however we do not generally exercise that free will. The concept of free will dictates that everything we do is a conscious decision, a conscious choice to act in a certain manner given the situation at hand. We fool ourselves into believing that the actions we take upon that situation are fully powered by our own free will.

Not so.

Most of us do not at any given moment exercise nearly the full power of our own free will because our actions are motivated by forces in our psyches of which we are completely unaware. And the really sad part is that we are unaware that we are unaware. Talk about your sticky wickets huh?

Carl Jung set forth the idea that our dreams act in a compensatory manner to our waking or conscious lives. If my conscious self is behaving in a particular manner, for example I fancy myself a strong and intelligent individual, a real Type A, driven, determined, a perfectionist, always in control chances are pretty good that my dreams will present images to the contrary.

I would have to agree with that assessment although I do not believe that our dreams serve ONLY as compensatory. I think there’s a whole lot more to them but that’s not what this post is about.

I believe that our whole being is compensatory. That the whole human machine has innately a system of checks and balances that are there and if we’re paying attention (and sometimes even if we’re not) we will know when we’re stepping outside of our own healthy zone. If after many years of living in a manner that is inconsistent with what and who I truly am, with what and whom I am truly meant to be than my systems will inevitably start to break down; physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually to the point – if I ignore it long enough – that I will be brought to a screeching halt. It has to happen.

My built-in system of checks and balances kicks in and if I ignorantly insist on pushing back against it year after year I will ultimately lose the battle. I cannot win, I am constructed in such a way that my defeat is inevitable… it is only a matter of time.

Checks and balances.

Another interesting thought occurs to me.  This system of checks and balances is something that we, 'we' being society use 'out there' in the external world.  For example our government here in the good old U.S of A has in place a form of government that is made of the three branches; the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial branches.  And these three branches were put in place this way so that there would be a system of checks and balances.  In other words our founding fathers were quite aware of certain human frailties and had the foresight to do their best to ensure that one guy didn't grab the all the power.  While the system is clearly not perfect it does manage to 'work' to a degree.

What I am getting at here is that every idea, every concept, every system that is put in place 'out there' in the world at large is an expression of something that is already a part of our human machine.  These ideas are an external manifestation of knowledge that we already possess within ourselves.

I am becoming quite convinced that every human being knows a hell of a lot more than we think we know.  In fact I am coming to believe that we already know EVERYTHING we need to know, which is a hell of a lot.

We just don't we know it and we haven't got the first clue how to get to it.

And so the key becomes about getting to what we already know in it's purest form possible and learning how to make use of it.

Checks and balances.

Somebody tell me that God does not exist.