I can’t go on, I’ll go on…

A chimpanzee brain at the Science Museum London

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“I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” ― Samuel Beckett

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That quote sums up my tactic for living my life, or at least not ending it prematurely due to extenuating circumstances beyond my control which make me want to just stop. Stop the world I want to get off, but the whoever or whatever that keeps this world spinning isn’t going to stop it for me, so either I just jump off while it is still moving or I stay on and see what happens with eyes open or closed.

I have a mental or otherwise illness, disorder, dis-ease, flaw, imperfection, known as being human. Maybe you’ve heard of it. I won’t try to explain it as others suffering from it might take umbrage – that’s a symptom of it.

Being human is for the most part is just a physical thing which does what it does, efficiently, inefficiently, a bit of both which fall into a sort of whateverness-ently, but it also has a thinky part to it which causes disruption to the rest of the system. There’s also a feely part, but that’s natural until the thinky part gets involved and starts messing with it.

I feel sad – says the feely part. The feely part sees that as normal.

This is not normal! – says the thinky part to the feely part, which makes the feely part now feel odd about feeling a normal sad.

The feely part is quite sensitive, it is a sensory experience. It doesn’t have the gamut of language, the lexicon, of the thinky part, and so sometimes… it allows the thinky part to intimidate it.

The thinky part is a narcissist. Often driven by fear of all sorts which thinky parts create and then make real. It can’t help itself, it thinks it can, but it can’t. It needs cooperation from the other parts to do that, but… it doesn’t like cooperating with those other parts. It wants to rule the inner roost, and it has so many rules that even it can’t list them, let alone follow them to the letter.

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The thinky part gets very upset (in a thinky way, not a feely way) when the rest of it, the other parts of the human of which it is a part (but wishes it was the whole), aren’t being normal according to its rules of normal. However it also gets upset when things are normal, because normal isn’t always a desired state of being for the thinky part. There’s normal and then there’s normal. And the thinky part expects the rest to know which is which. But the parameters keep changing because ol’ thinky part is changeable, yet also rather stiff and stuck.

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“Unfortunately, some family members are so psychotic that no matter how hard you try to forge a healthy relationship, nothing will help. Now that you’re an adult, take refuge in the fact that some things are beyond your control. You owe it to yourself to steer clear of people who are harmful to your health.” ― Andrea Lavinthal

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All the parts of you are a family. Uh oh!

Sometimes they get along, and sometimes they don’t get along… because they can’t agree on what getting along requires of them and of the other parts of them.

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“Happiness is but a mere episode in the general drama of pain.” ― Thomas Hardy

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The other day, while perusing the blogs I follow (not just on WordPress), I saw a couple of dramas unfold before my eyes.

These dramas were familiar, in as much as I’ve experienced something similar in offline life, in my life, childhood, adolescent, and adult, in the lives of those whom I know, and who consider me a part of their lives and therefore a member of the audience of their dramas.

Some people expect their audience members to also participate in their drama.

Whether the drama is a tragedy, comedy or a bit of both… and other things.

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“There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.” ― Mark Twain

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This drama isn’t just for them, or for them and whoever else has a starring role, it’s for all of us. The more the merrier or miserable-ier. Misery sometimes loves company more than merry does, perhaps because merry is wiser… or is misery wiser?

I don’t know – my go-to default setting, answer-question, excuse, explanation, and opt-out clause. Do I really not know or am I just saying that? I don’t know… even when I do or think I do. Or some such thing.

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“All the world’s a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.” ― Seán O’Casey

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These dramas which I watched from a safe (or seemingly safe) distance which lurking online offers (or does it?), were fascinating. What would happen? Would they go on forever or get sorted out? Which one gave those involved in them the most mileage, online and perhaps also offline, personal or the grey areas beyond that which also include that factor?

There is just so much more to whatever we see, to what we are shown.

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 “You can’t save others from themselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of their lives don’t appreciate your interfering with the drama they’ve created. They want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but they don’t want to change.” ― Sue Grafton

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The surface may appear simple even with its complications, but beneath the surface there is a deep pit of complexity.

So something like change… is difficult even when it may seem easy, even when everything around it is favouring and supporting a change.

Whatever the change is, whatever its status is, whatever its level of ease or difficulty, it involves all of us, not just the thinky part, the feely part, the physical part, and the other parts, it is a cooperative process between all those parts inside… and often the parts which are outside.

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“I told myself, ‘All I want is a normal life’. But was that true? I wasn’t so sure. Because there was a part of me that enjoyed hating school, and the drama of not going, the potential consequences whatever they were. I was intrigued by the unknown. I was even slightly thrilled that my mother was such a mess. Had I become addicted to crisis? I traced my finger along the windowsill. ‘Want something normal, want something normal, want something normal’, I told myself.” ― Augusten Burroughs

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An addict of whatever addiction can drop an addiction when they are taken out of the situation, the environment, which may have influenced and instigated it in the first place… but what if they have to go back to that situation and environment…?

Put my thinky part in a place where it is constantly kept busy and it won’t need to think… about other things, particularly about how bored it is and how can it alleviate that boredom… and it will behave differently from when it is in its natural environment whose nature it does not like because… because of the things it does or doesn’t do to or for it.

If we lived today as many of our ancestors did, especially our earliest ones, most of us would understand our ancestors better and have little time for who we are today.

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“A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.” ― Bill Watterson

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So much of who we are today is based on how we experience our life right here and now.

Life here and now for a lot of us is cushy compared to how it used to be.

Sure we all have our pain and sorrow, our terrors and so much more. But at least we don’t have to wash our laundry or dishes down by the creek and worry about wolves or crocodiles eating us while we scrub. We can go to the toilet (indoors with central heating… the seat may even be heated during Winter thanks to technological gadgetry advances) and peruse a magazine or surf online without a thought of what our body is doing, how exposed we are in that scenario (to predators) or what happens once we’re done and flush.

Our thinky part has time to think… so much time, maybe, that it may get bored and suffer from thinky-brain-pain. It doesn’t like that.

There are organics, those who have deliberately chosen to shun the modern in favour of a modern version of ye olde lifestyle. But… the thinky part of them, which probably talked the rest of them into doing that for noble-global-saving reasons, knows it can forsake the idea and ideal pretty quickly should it change its mind.

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“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” ― Erich Segal

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Sorry, thinky part, but sometimes the other parts have more control over the whole human being than you do. It was a nice idea, in theory, but in practice… hmmmm…

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