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Aug. 15, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:27:25
843 The Velvet Mirror
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Time Text
Hello? Hello?
Hey, how's it going? Oh, hey.
It's okay. Quiet.
Yeah, we can chat for a little bit now.
I wanted to know sort of how you're feeling, because...
You certainly seem to be a little bit down.
And I guess, I mean, I've always enjoyed your participation on the boards, but you remain to me as sort of an enigma, if that makes any sense.
What do you mean? I know that you've obviously been involved in this conversation for quite some time, but I've never really got a very clear sense what it's doing for you, if that makes any sense.
Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm still figuring it out, I guess.
Can you hear me okay? I can hear you just fine.
Okay, I've got a fan on in the background.
As I said in one of the threads that I was talking on, August isn't a great month for Georgia.
Right, right, right.
I just wanted to make sure the fan wasn't going to...
We'll start comparing it with Toronto in February and we'll see who loses in the geography wars.
Yeah. So you've been listening for, I mean, pretty close to the beginning, is that right?
Yeah, I think I found it...
Like around, right around between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I think right when you first started doing it.
Right, right. I listened to the first few and was kind of blown away by it.
Right. Now, have you continued to listen sort of all the way through?
Or have you been taking breaks, sort of washing breaks and cleanliness and so on?
Things which I had to do, but...
I've basically listened to all of them the whole way through.
I had a lot of time when I was in school because I'd walk to classes every day and so I was kind of wanting more and more.
Lately I haven't been listening to them as much.
I've been trying to catch up when I could just because I've had to work and hadn't really been able to I haven't listened to my iPod that much at work, but I've basically caught up.
I haven't listened to too many of the recent Sunday shows.
A few of them, what with the one guy from Europe with the racial slurs and some of the other people on there, and sometimes the sound quality kind of drives me nuts, so I haven't listened to too many of those.
Right. Yeah, so I mean, I just wanted to get a sort of idea of what the benefits or the drawbacks or sort of where you're at, because I've just sort of, I mean, you've talked a little bit about, just sort of on the side, I mean, I haven't been complaining or anything, but just about loneliness or isolation or that kind of stuff.
Yeah, it's... I guess it's been that...
I graduated from college, I guess, not this past May, but the May before that.
And then I went back and moved in with my parents.
And no one else was...
I didn't really have many friends at that point anyway.
But the few friends that I did have were...
Still back where I went to school or just other places and so I don't really have anybody there so for about a year and a half well almost a year and a half I guess I've just been kind of doing the solo thing right um so yeah I don't know uh I mean,
it's impacted me, the conversation in the forums and podcasts and stuff.
But I guess, I don't know, I haven't done a lot with it.
I mean, I've brought it into some conversations, but things haven't gone too far beyond that.
And now, do you mean that in terms of your social life or in terms of your personal life?
Personal and social, I guess.
Like I said in a little note to you, I've had some conversations with my roommates that haven't really gone anywhere.
I guess that could be considered social.
I've talked to my parents a little bit about some things, but I don't know.
I think I talked about it on the board.
A while ago, talking about the stuff with my dad.
He gets it, but he can't seem to make the connection, I guess.
Right, right, right.
I've been trying to...
You probably know I moved out in the beginning of June.
I've been on my own, I guess, since then.
But I've been back a few times and have talked a little bit with them, but things are kind of crazy.
Back home for some other things.
Things that you don't want to talk about, or...?
Well, I can talk about them.
It might not be able to be gotten into fully here, but my parents have recently gotten custody of my nieces from my half-brother.
And so there's a lot of stress and stuff at home because my parents are, they were older than anyone else's parents that I knew when I was younger.
And now they have a 12 and 13 year old at home with them and my dad's almost 70 so.
Wow. So things are kind of crazy and And their home life was really screwed up.
And so they're living with my parents now, and so they're bringing the...
I don't know if you can call it baggage with 12- and 13-year-olds, but I guess you could.
Yeah, that'd be some baggage.
So they're bringing that in, and things are kind of crazy.
So yeah, the last few times I've been back...
Hasn't been too much talking, really.
Everyone's kind of trying to put out the fires, I guess.
Right, right. And of course, that kind of situation is kind of far from the, I guess in a sense, from the philosophy that we talk about and so on, right?
So that's also a challenge, right?
Because you're sort of trying to sort your way through some higher ideal challenges and people are just sort of trying to get by, right?
Trying to survive these kinds of things.
Yeah, and I've contemplated posting some stuff on the board about it, but I didn't really know what to write, and I don't know, it's all pretty crazy.
Things have been going on with my half-brother for a while, and it just recently all exploded.
But yeah, I guess it's kind of I'm sad to say this, but I don't really have much of a personal life to practice this stuff.
I do with my parents to some degree, but even that lately hasn't been very involved.
I've talked about that too on the board.
Things have always been pretty distant.
A few months ago, I was talking to my mom on the phone and one of my friend's parents just recently got a divorce and they were married for like, I don't know, 30 years or close to that, something like that. And she's about my age and my mom was like, well, is she close to her dad?
I just kind of sat there for a little while and I was like, I don't know.
I guess that depends on what you mean by close.
And she kind of sat there for a while on the phone and now she was thinking about it.
And then just out of the blue, she's like, do you think you would be considered close to your father?
And I was like, no, probably not.
If you have to ask, I mean, nobody says, gee, I wonder if Steph feels close to Christina, right?
Yeah, so that was interesting.
That's not really something that she would normally ask me.
And I was like, no, I guess not.
Would you say so? And she said no.
So, I mean, your family is a group of people who deal with a lot of problems but don't have a whole lot of conversation, right, about anything that...
Yeah, that's a pretty...
I wouldn't say a constant thing with my family, but it's pretty...
It's a pretty big problem, communication, I guess.
And do you love them?
I guess with the way that the conversation's been going lately...
I mean, I would have said so before I started hearing all this stuff.
I have good feelings about them, but the love question, I don't know.
I could say it, but it's the whole, is your heart in it thing?
Well, look, I mean, I have to be blunt.
You do know. I'm saying that simply because if you don't know...
How old are you? 23.
23, right? If you don't know whether you love people after you've spent 23 years in close proximity to them, you know, I guess 18 or 20 living under the same roof, right?
Yeah. Then love is impossible, right?
Knowledge of love then becomes impossible.
If you don't know about love within 23 years, then...
Love is an illusion, right?
Yeah, and...
And I'm not saying that you have to do anything, right?
I don't know if you sort of feel, well, if I say the words, I don't love my parents, then I have to march over and fling my inheritance in their face and storm out.
There's nothing you have to do.
There's nothing you have to do.
Oh, yeah, yeah. But there's something that you don't like about even the question, right?
Do you love your parents?
Yeah, it's not so much that I don't like the question.
It's just... It's weird to...
It's just weird to think about.
It's not like I'm...
You know, you've talked to people in the past and they've gotten really upset and angry.
It's not that it evokes that kind of feeling in me.
I'm just... I don't know.
It just feels weird.
Okay. Well, tell me a little bit more about the emotion that goes on when I asked you.
like when I said do you love them what was the emotion that you felt let's see I don't know Lately when I've thought about that question, my mind kind of blanks.
It's kind of like the cartoons when they do the little thought bubble and there's just a big question mark and there's nothing else there.
Right. At least you have a question mark.
That's good, right? Some people don't even have that.
Yeah, yeah. Right, but your mind blanks out because of an emotion, right?
Right. Or rather a contradiction of emotion, right?
Like if you try and flex your tricep and your bicep simultaneously, your arm freezes, right?
Yeah. So, the reason that we end up with blankness or with paralysis is we have a feeling and a counterfeeling at an unconscious level, which we find stressful to examine or scary to examine or makes us angry to examine, so we avoid it, right?
And that's a sort of learned response.
So what is the emotion that's behind that blankness?
At this point, I guess I'm just really confused because, like I said, it's always been a fairly distant, I don't it's always been a fairly distant, I don't know, Well, distance is probably a good word.
I don't know if that's a normal thing with older parents.
But both my parents were married before they got married.
My dad has two other kids that are about twice my age.
But my mom doesn't have other kids.
And I don't know.
I think that The age and the fact that they kind of went through the kid thing before when my parents first got married.
My dad's kids from his other marriage lived with them and all this other stuff.
So things have always been distant.
My mom and I, and my mom and my sister, the I love you was not said a lot, but it was said, and it wasn't really ever said with my dad.
He was, I forgot what I said on the board, what I called him, Mr.
Military, or something like that.
He was in the army for a long time, and I guess kind of Has some of the stereotypical characteristics.
Not a lot of them, but as far as the emotional distance, I guess that's one of them.
And one of the weird things is, I think two weekends ago, I went back, and I think for the first time that I can remember, I was talking to him on the phone, and he actually said that...
He wanted me to come back. He wanted to see me, which was strange for me because he'd never really done that before.
He's asked me before, like, so are you coming back?
But he's never said, yeah, why don't you come home?
I want to see you and stuff like that.
My mom does that a lot.
She always wants me to come back.
But my dad never really expresses an interest in me coming back.
He's just like, oh, so are you coming back?
Okay, well, we'll see when you get here.
That kind of stuff. I don't know, it's always been kind of the...
I've always had this view of my family being like the 50s family.
Love is kind of like support and not a lot is talked about.
Things just kind of go along.
Right, so you're doing an excellent, excellent job of avoiding the question.
I mean, I've got to hand it to you. This is good stuff.
This is great.
I mean, this is like excellent learned family stuff, right?
I don't mean that to be critical.
No, I know. I'm just kind of confused if I'm dancing around it then.
Yeah, no, listen. I mean, that's perfectly understandable, right?
I mean, you're not supposed to ask this question, right?
I mean, that's the question that all too many families, like a sort of...
Are sort of, you know, this way, right?
That you're not allowed to ask these questions.
Because, I mean, just from the outside, right?
It's all foggy from the inside, but it's usually pretty clear from the outside.
Not because I'm so smart, but just because it's always easier from the outside.
But, you know, when it's asked you what the feeling was, the first thing that you went to was you made excuses for your parents, right?
Like, they're older, they had kids before, they this, you know, my dad's in the army and so on, right?
And that, to me, probably has something to do with the paralysis that you're feeling in your life, right?
Because this is not just with regards to your family, right?
This is a life issue for you, if I understand this correctly, right?
Because you say, spend time in your room, you have coffee alone, like, there's a loneliness.
You're in deep space, brother, right?
I mean, that's sort of what I get from where you are, right?
And you posted the poem, which, you know, it's not going to pass unnoticed in a psychologically sophisticated community, right?
That was a good thing to do, in my humble opinion.
I think that was a wise thing to do.
But you have these feelings, right?
And we'll get to them in a sec.
When I ask you about your feelings, and this isn't like you don't owe me any kind of explanation at all, but this is probably how you relate to yourself, right?
So you have a feeling or an emotion that comes up, and then you start making excuses for other people, which buries your natural and energetic emotions under a sort of dutiful weight of understanding and, you know, well, they were old and they had lots of kids before me and so on, right? Yeah. And that's going to make you feel like you're carrying about 10,000 bricks every time you go around, right?
Mm-hmm. Because there's a feeling, and then you talk yourself out of it by making excuses for other people, right?
Yeah. And like I said, when you first asked the question, it's about the confusion...
Whenever I do go back, it's not so much of the carrying everything.
I just, you know, I think about it.
I'm sitting there. If we're eating dinner or whatever, I'm just sitting there and kind of wondering.
And I guess it's like the words are there.
They just don't come. Which words?
Uh... I guess bringing up what I'm feeling about my parents or with my family or whatever.
And what are you feeling? It's like what you said.
I feel that there's no communication or anything.
Nothing is talked about.
Right. And when I have talked about things recently, it's been me talking and my parents agreeing, but it kind of seems, I don't know, it seems to...
Dissolve. Right.
So there's no engaging, right?
So you're saying, I think the Earth is banana-shaped, and that's very interesting.
Yeah, basically.
I've talked to them before.
I think I talked about it in the The ask a therapist question that I sent a while ago.
I've been to therapy and stuff like that before.
I've done all that.
I've talked to them about that.
They haven't been so much unavailable for me talking to them, but I never seem to get any response.
It's like I'm talking in a dead room.
It's like I'm just talking and the sound just dies.
Yeah, that's a very chilling image.
Like seriously, that is a really chilling image, you know, like a family of corpses.
It's... I don't know. Yeah, it's kind of like I said, just, you know, talking and getting, you know...
And it's not like I'm being, well...
I'm not being outright ignored, I guess you could say.
They're not just not listening.
It's a soft kind of absorption, right?
Like you're yelling into velvet.
I mean, I think you're yelling, but it's that sort of feeling, right?
Yeah. Both my parents know about my religious beliefs or lack thereof or whatever.
And they have known since I was probably, I don't know, 14 or 15 and have...
Really dropped it since then.
Not that it was ever really a big thing, but...
You know, I've talked about this kind of stuff and it's just kind of...
Ended there.
Right, right, right.
So there's no mirroring, right?
It's like, I mean, one of the things, and we don't know how far, at least I don't know how far back this goes, but one of the things that parents are supposed to do is to mirror the child, right?
So if the child is laughing, the parents are supposed to smile back at the child, right?
And if the child is crying...
Then the parents are supposed to be sad and concerned, right?
So that the child's emotions have an impact on the people around him, and they mirror back.
It's not like a mirror, but it's a way of responding appropriately to a child's emotional state.
And it doesn't sound like that was much of what went on when you were a kid.
Well, when I was a kid...
I guess the things you were just describing were there because that's kind of...
I wouldn't say survival, but it's not really meaty, I guess.
You know, the kid falls, you do your thing.
If the kid's crying, you...
But I know, I'm not talking about picking him up and patting him and saying they're...
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm talking about the feelings that the child is having.
Yeah, yeah. Ever since...
I don't know, I kind of went into a rut once I hit about 13, but I guess that's not a new phenomenon.
Went into a rut, what does that mean?
I started getting depressed and hanging with the wrong crowd and started doing drugs when I was fairly young.
But I'm not sure what you mean when you say you...
I was about to say that ever since that point, there was no reciprocation, I guess, in the feelings like you were talking about.
Well, but that can't be the case.
I mean, that's simply...
Again, I'm not trying to be omniscient about your family, but it's not possible for a 13-year-old child to become depressed and start taking drugs if the child is being loved and mirrored.
Right, yeah, yeah. I'm just saying that the time when I can remember having these feelings...
I mean, before that, I don't really remember...
Really having a lot of issues that I would come to my parents about.
I mean, I'm not saying that I didn't.
I'm just saying that I don't remember.
Do you remember having conversations with your parents when you were a child about what you were thinking and feeling?
Um... I don't have a memory of it, no.
So I'm assuming that there was none.
I mean, it hasn't happened, so, you know.
I mean, that's a lot of time, right?
I mean, from zero to 13 to not having meaningful conversation about your thoughts and feelings, that's a lot of isolation right there.
Yeah. And that's a...
I mean, that's a lot of pain.
That's a lot of being ignored.
That's a lot of feeling lost in space, right?
Mm-hmm. And, of course, that's a kind of under-stimulation for a child, especially if it's that kind of soft velvet of being ignored, where people nod and smile and say they love you from time to time, but there's just zero connection, right?
So, I mean, it seems to me that it's kind of logical that, you know, you'd be depressed after this kind of family interaction or non-interaction for many, many years.
You'd be depressed, right?
And it also seems to me quite likely that because of the end of stimulation and the depression, you would be more prone to use drugs, right?
Both to stimulate and to self-medicate, right?
So, just what you said, I think you said you went off the rails or something like that.
Like it was just sort of your personal choice, right?
Oh, I was just...
I referred to it as a rut.
Yeah, you fell into a rut, right?
But you weren't. You were pushed into a rut.
If my parents don't feed me and then I say, I developed, I don't know, hypoglycemia or whatever, I don't know what happens when you don't get fed, right?
But I wouldn't just say, I just developed hypoglycemia on my own or I decided to diet or whatever.
I mean, the key thing is that you were...
Ignored, right? I mean, that's the key thing, right?
So you turn to drugs as a means of trying to survive, right?
That's the best you could do.
Or maybe a better way of putting it is, if my parents don't feed me and I have to go and steal food, and the way that I report that is I say, I decided to become a thief, then I don't know that that's a very true or accurate, right?
Say, I was forced to become a thief to survive because my parents didn't feed me.
Right. So let's go back to what you felt, like the emotion that you felt when I asked if you loved your parents, before the justifications for their behavior, before the excuses.
Um... Well, I guess it's...
Well, it's not really so much of an I guess.
It's... The answer's no.
But it's kind of like, no.
But, I don't know, it's...
Well, no, but that's the answer.
Right, yeah, the answer's no.
The feeling is... I don't know how much this says about it, but it also is...
When I say no, it bothers me because that doesn't bother me that much.
Alright, so when you say, no, I don't love these people who've ignored me for most of my life, which of course is perfectly logical, right?
As you know, I mean, love is not magic, love is not alchemy, and love is certainly not inherited or genetic or biological or familial or anything.
Love is... You know, your parents have to be virtuous.
They have to be good people. They have to be curious.
They have to be compassionate. They have to be empathetic.
They have to be joyful. They have to be stimulating.
I mean, they have to be good parents, right, for you to love them.
I mean, that's not voodoo.
That's not magic, right? But of course, that's not what we're told.
We're told that we owe...
Our parents love just because they had sex and they gave us food and water, right?
Like a cow is supposed to love the farmer.
Cows get the same thing as most kids.
So you have a feeling which is that you don't love them, right?
Or that you don't particularly love them, right?
You may feel grateful for certain material things that they've provided in the past, but you don't love them.
And then you feel troubled by that.
You judge that as a bad thing.
Is that what I understand?
Well, it's not so much that I judge that as a bad thing.
It just... It feels weird saying that and not being really upset about it, you know?
Why? I don't know.
It just seems like something that would elicit a more...
More emotion, I guess.
But I guess that could be something that's being covered up, too.
Well, certainly, if the first thing that you do is judge your emotional reaction in a negative light, you're not going to get more emotion.
Right? The same way, like, if you're the teacher and I put my hand up in class and you ridicule me, I'm not going to put my hand up again, right?
Right. Right, so if you feel something and then you judge it, right?
Right. Well, that's weird, or that's bad, or I shouldn't be feeling this, or, you know, only bad people feel that.
I'm not saying you're going that far.
Or, in a sense, if you're indifferent to your feelings, right, the same way that your parents, in some kind of fundamental way, it sounds like we're indifferent to you.
If the first thing that you do is negatively judge your emotion, then you're just not going to get more emotion.
Now, you're going to end up with depression, right?
Because kids who are humiliated in class who don't put their hand up anymore aren't happy, right?
They're just not participating.
But if the first thing that you do when you feel an emotion like, you know, I don't really love my parents, then you're not going to get more of that emotion, if that makes sense.
Yeah, it does. It's not so much that I think it's negative.
I guess it's just kind of weird, I guess.
You know, because that's not something that's supposed to be said.
I don't know. I guess it's kind of a...
Well, that's kind of a negative judgment, isn't it?
Well, I think that's why I feel that way.
I'm not saying that it is negative that I do feel that way.
It's just... It feels weird saying it and...
Not having a real deep feeling about it.
It's kind of like what I said earlier about the big empty thought bubble.
Right, right, right. Well, let me ask you a question then, right?
So if we sort of look at, do you love your parents?
And the answer is, eh, you know, no, right?
Then the other question is, do you dislike your parents?
I don't dislike them, right?
I mean, I've had some teenage moments where things were rough, but at this point, I'm not really upset or they don't really get on my nerves or anything.
It's always pleasant at this point, last few weeks aside, when things have been kind of crazy.
Okay, well tell me what you mean by pleasant.
Like you take pleasure in it?
Well, I have, yeah, on a kind of superficial level, I guess.
I don't know what that means. What do you mean by a superficial level?
Like your mom makes nice pie?
I'm not sure what you mean by that.
Well... I guess, yeah, in that kind of way.
Not exactly that way, but you know how some people on the boards have talked about socializing versus having real friends and stuff like that.
I view it kind of like that in that it's pleasurable kind of like hanging out with people that you can kind of shoot the breeze with.
You know, everyone's nice to each other, that kind of stuff.
It's pleasant in a superficial kind of way.
You know, there's a hole underneath, but...
Yeah.
Okay, and...
I don't know if that answered the question. Well, sure, to some degree.
But... When you talk about the pleasure of doing a mild interaction with your family, I have a tough time understanding how you, as an obviously very intelligent fellow, who's very interested in philosophy and wisdom and truth and virtue and curiosity and psychology and so on...
I'm not saying that every time we philosophers get together with people, we must always speak about the nature of the universe.
But it's got to be part, right?
It's got to be part of what we talk about.
I mean, I have some goofy podcasts and I have jokes and silly jokes and podcasts.
But, you know, the majority of the core is sort of about stuff that is...
I mean, it's very important.
It's sort of the core of what makes us valuable or critical as human beings.
So, if I sort of look at the relationship that I know that you have, which is to truth and philosophy and so on...
And then I look at the relationship that you have with your parents, like I see a lot of you that I know of, right, the you that I know of, I see a lot of you in the relationship with philosophy, but I don't see any of that you in your relationship with your parents.
In fact, I see that that you is specifically rejected, right, that you're not allowed to talk about And look, this soft ignoring is just as bad, if not worse, as telling you to shut the hell up.
Because if somebody tells you to shut the hell up, at least they're being honest with you.
But if somebody just says, oh, that's interesting.
You know, the Henderson's cow had a new calf.
They could just go off in something else.
That's more elegant but more destructive, right?
Because you just feel vaguely rejected.
Or at least if somebody says, you know, shut up, kid, you bother me, or something like that, then you have some clearer facts to work with.
But when people have this kind of soft rejection, it's much harder to work with.
So I don't see, like, the philosophy guy and then the family guy seem to me to be two completely different people.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, yeah, it does.
Yeah. I guess I'll clarify what I was saying earlier when you were talking about pleasurable.
I wouldn't say that it's pleasurable to the extent that, say, me playing my music or talking to certain people on the boards or being with a few of my friends, it's not that pleasurable, I guess.
But it's pleasurable for your parents, right?
I would assume so.
That's part of the non-mirroring or whatever.
I don't really care much in either regard.
My concern, frankly, is that...
And again, this is just, you know, take it for what it's worth.
It's just sort of my thoughts. But my concern is that you're experiencing your parents' pleasure and not your own displeasure.
Okay. It's a possibility, right?
You sort of mull it over and you can think about it, but...
Yeah, yeah. You like philosophy, right?
You like psychology.
You like truth and depth and curiosity and argument and debate.
You love all those things, right?
Your parents don't like, in fact, they actively dislike all of those things, but they're too nice to say it, right?
It's just kind of a nice way of putting it, but...
Your parents would take pleasure in the kind of shallow, nonsensical...
The endlessly trivial interactions that you have with them, right?
That's their thing. That's their bag, so to speak, right?
That's their pleasure center.
That's not your pleasure center, at least not solely your pleasure center, right?
Because otherwise, you've got more than one personality, and I'd like to talk to a philosophical guy.
But my concern is that it's their pleasure that you're serving, not your own.
Right, yeah. That makes sense.
I hadn't thought about feeling other people's pleasure.
Well, it's conform, right?
I mean, it's like, well, we are relentlessly going to do this, and children just say, okay, well, I guess I'll learn to enjoy it, right?
As best I can, right?
But it's not your pleasure, right?
Because, you know, it's rude for somebody who's interested in philosophy to spend 100% of their time talking about philosophy, right?
Right, yeah. Because, you know, other people have interests too, and we should, you know, we at least pretend to be interested in those things.
Yeah, that's the balance I had trouble with.
Oh, we all do.
I spent 10 years boring people to tears with philosophy before realizing that I also had to throw some other things in from time to time.
A man cannot live by meat alone, no matter how meaty it is.
Yeah, my girlfriend at the time was like, okay, okay!
Right, right. But at the same time, the degree to which we are willing to suspend what we find pleasurable In conversation with people, we have a right to expect that they will also make the same accommodation for us, right? So, with my friends, I don't expect to talk about philosophy.
Like, we went out with Christina and some friends.
She's friends with the woman, and her friend is dating some guy.
He's been listening to some podcasts, right?
So, the only reason we're there is because Christina is friends with this woman, and she's a very nice woman.
But... Her boyfriend started asking me all of these questions about politics and philosophy.
We started, and of course, we're all sitting at the same table.
Of course, you don't need to ask me twice.
So, I'm all over this conversation, going into anarchic theory and logical proofs and so on, right?
But I became sort of pretty acutely aware, and not because anybody was saying anything, but it's like that Christina is here to see her friend.
I'm not here to talk philosophy with her friend's boyfriend, right?
So, I had to sort of put that aside...
And let the women talk, right?
And that was, you know...
So that accommodation is made, for sure, right?
I mean, and we can all make those accommodations, and that's a reasonable thing to do.
But at the same time...
Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And I guess I'm still kind of having that...
Well, it's not your problem, though, right?
Right, right, right. It's something that was inflicted upon you because there's no balance, at least as far as you have reported.
There's no balance in the give and take of your family situation, right?
So it's like the people on the board who say, you know, when I started talking about this with my friends, this philosophy stuff, they'd all start rolling their eyes, right?
Oh, here he goes again, right?
But that's really rude.
I mean, that's just rude, right?
And your parents not getting engaged in something that is really important to you, that's rude.
That is bad behavior.
That is disrespectful to you as an individual, right?
To just relentlessly only talk about the weather or problems or whatever, right?
And I'm probably overgeneralizing here, but whatever it is that they talk about.
And to not devote even 5% or 10% of the time to something that is really of interest to you, That's selfish.
I mean, that's pretty rude. Right, yeah.
So, that's sort of why a lot of people who get into philosophy have challenges, because they're not taught, and I wasn't, right?
I had to spend a long time learning this kind of stuff.
The sort of give and take of like, you know, if I have something to talk about to do with free-domain radio, when Christina has something to talk about that's important to her, that maybe it's not the same, then we'll trade back and forth, right?
But it's not all my stuff, and it's not all her stuff.
It's a mingle, right? Right.
And so, if you're not allowed to talk about the things that are of interest to you, and you can't remember a single time in your 22 or 23 years where you have been allowed to talk about things that are of interest to you, and by allowed, I don't mean people sit back and give you vague smiles or whatever, but listen and ask questions and get engaged and get involved.
Right. And I don't know, it's really weird because what you said about asking questions, like they'll ask questions and everything.
I'm assuming that it's...
I mean, judging by what happens afterwards, which is nothing.
Yeah, yeah. You're just shouting down a well, right?
You get some echoes, like, oh, that's interesting.
It's like you're discussing some politician's campaign, right?
And they say, oh, that's interesting, so he's taking this strategy.
And you're like, yeah! But nobody ever votes for anyone.
It doesn't change anyone's behavior, right?
Yeah. And does it feel sort of like every time you're starting from scratch, like there's no reference to previous conversations?
Right, right. So they're just being polite, right?
Like you're the crazy guy who has a matchbook collection and everyone who comes to your house, you cook great food, but they have to sit through half an hour of you talking about your matchbooks collection and taking them all out.
So you just nod and smile and you don't really care, but you just want to get to the food.
Well, you know, it's kind of exploitive, right?
I mean, it's kind of rude.
Yeah. And it's not, I tell you, it's not because they're old.
There are some old people who are incredibly engaged in conversations, right?
I mean, Socrates lived to be 80.
He was philosophizing to his deathbed, actually 70 or so, because he was tried when he was 70, I think.
Plato lived to be 80.
These are people who were incredibly engaged and positive human beings.
All the way to their deathbed.
There's nothing about getting old that makes you depressed and inert, right?
That's not a function of your parents' age.
Right. I just don't know.
The experience that I've had with friends' parents and like that who have been, I guess, younger, they've always been...
I guess more involved or receptive to communication.
I don't know. I was just...
That's always been a question of mine, but I don't really have any answers as to why.
Well, you do. I mean, again, you have excuses, which are the...
I mean, every time you make excuses, it's because you know the truth, but you don't like it.
You know, with more than two decades of up-close and personal knowledge of your parents, there's nothing about your parents that you don't know.
Like, deep down.
You know your parents more than you will know anybody ever in your life.
There's no single shred of knowledge that exists about your parents that could be encompassed within a human mind that you don't have perfect access to, right?
Right. So you know it's not a function of age that makes them distant or makes them foggy or, you know, whatever it is, like this sort of non-responsive or not great communicators or whatever, right?
It's not a function of age.
I mean, that's an excuse. It's not a function of a generational gap.
It's not a function of the fact that they had kids before, right?
Mm-hmm. Right, yeah.
And I know that...
One thing I do know is that, you know, they're...
Or at least my mom's parents were pretty much the same way from what I can tell.
I've never really been that close to my...
Extended family, grandparents and stuff like that.
I mean, we saw each other, but never really got that involved.
But, you know, you keep saying, and I'm going to keep bugging you about this, and I do apologize if I'm being too blunt, but you keep saying, I fell off the rails.
I wasn't too close to them and this and that and the other, right?
There seems to me that this is an enormous burden on you, right?
That... The fact is it's not children's job.
I'm not saying you're saying it's a job, and I'll try and make this make some sense as best I can, but it's not your job to be close to your grandparents, right?
It's not your job to be close to your parents.
It's your parents' and grandparents' job to be close to you, right?
So you keep saying, I was never close to these people or whatever, but the truth of the matter is they were never close to you.
It's a very important distinction, right?
Yeah, I understand. I guess it's...
I don't know.
I guess I'm just not thinking in that way.
But yeah, that does make sense.
Well, you're not thinking, look, these people didn't measure up.
Right. They weren't close to me.
Even the way your mom said it, right?
Your mom said, are you close to your dad?
Like it's your job or your responsibility or your thing or whatever, right?
As opposed to, has your dad achieved closeness to you?
Right. We can't learn intimacy.
As children, we can't learn intimacy in a vacuum.
We can't learn to be close to people in a vacuum.
Right. You don't say to an eight-year-old kid who grows up in a Caucasian household, is he stupid?
He can't speak Mandarin.
Yeah. Because if the kid hasn't been taught Mandarin, he sure as hell isn't going to be able to invent it.
Right.
And the same thing is true of communication, of intimacy, and so on.
Right?
If your parents don't feed you, you don't say, "I failed to eat." Right. But you, at least from what I'm getting, the way that you process it is, I failed to eat.
When I say the words, it's not so much that I'm I'm processing it as I failed.
It's just...
Up until recently, it's never been part of my language, and it still isn't to reverse things like that.
Not to say that I wasn't close to my father, but that my father wasn't close to me.
And it's tough to do.
I mean, I agree with you. It's tough to do.
This is not intuitive.
Nothing that I'm saying is intuitive, right?
So when I say that I was never close to my grandparents or that I was never close to my parents, it's not so much that I'm saying that I wasn't and I somehow failed.
It's kind of... I don't know.
I guess buried under that is that we weren't close.
But... I know when I say these things that they didn't make the effort.
Right. I'm not trying to pick up on any phrase in isolation.
I'm just looking at the phrases that you have used, right?
Yeah. Which is, you know, I went off the rails, I got depressed, I took drugs, I wasn't close to my father.
There's a lot of you in isolation statements here.
Right. Without any sort of sense that you were not taught any of these things, and you should have been.
Right. So, and of course, the other reason that I sort of mentioned this is that when I asked you whether you left your parents, the first thing that you started to do, and again, this is not criticism, it's just important things to know, right? That the first thing you started to do was to make excuses for them, right?
But the more excuses you make for them, the more it's your fault.
Someone's to blame, right?
I mean, if you have not achieved a satisfying level of intimacy with your parents, someone's to blame.
Right. Right, and if you stop making excuses for themselves, you're building a doghouse around you.
Right. And that's just not reasonable.
You were the kid.
Right, yeah.
Sorry, I'm just trying to soak everything in.
No, look, I'm recording.
You can listen to this later, so you don't have to get it all at once, right?
And of course, I'm not going to release this or anything unless you want to, right?
We'll talk about that another time, but don't worry about it.
It's totally sealed unless you think that other people might find it of use.
I don't think you're alone in any of this, right?
And the reason that I'm coming down hard on your parents is not because I expect them to be some combination of Leo Buscaglia and Dr.
Phil, but it's simply because I bet you dollars to donuts that if your parents were asked by a stranger in a survey, do you think that it's important to listen to your children, what would they say?
Yes. Of course they would, right?
They would say yes. They wouldn't say, ah, goddamn little gutter snipes, they should be seen and not heard, and where the hell's my bourbon, right?
I mean, they would say it's important to be close to your children, it's important to listen to what they say, it's important to let them express their feelings.
They would say all of those things, right?
Right. So it's not that they don't know, right?
It's not that they don't know.
Like, if I genuinely believed that giving my children stogies is really good for their lungs, then I'm just insane.
But if I genuinely believe that, right?
But if I say, if somebody asks me, should you give your children stogies, and I say, good God, no, it's terrible for their lungs, and then I go home and give my kids stogies, that's a different matter, right?
Right. And if your parents were to say to people, yes, we know what love is, and love is, you know, yes, you have to be there for your kids, but you have to take an interest in what they're interested in.
You have to, you know, get involved in their life.
They would say yes to all of that, right?
Right. So they're not unaware of what they should be doing.
They're completely and totally and unambiguously aware of what they should be doing.
So, I'm not...
I think I'm picking up on the psychology stuff okay.
It's still a little foreign to me, but I do have a question.
If I go talk to my parents, and I've talked to them about things, and I've come to them with problems I've had and stuff, and they've talked to me about it and listened and all that, why is it that You know,
this whole time, I guess, and I think this is what you're talking about with the problem, is the lack of mirroring, is that I never heard anything, I guess.
You never heard what?
Well, like, I could come talk to them about stuff, but they wouldn't talk to me about things with them.
Well, there's a difference between problem solving and intimacy, right?
And a lot of people get confused about that because so much of what goes on in families is problem solving.
Right. But intimacy is not just problem solving, right?
I mean, that's sort of one component of it, right?
Like, having a car involves maintenance, but you don't buy a car in order to maintain it, right?
So it's just a necessary evil, right?
So in all relationships, there are times when you have problems that you have to solve.
But problem solving is not the essence of any relationship any more than, you know, getting your car's oil changed is the essence of car ownership.
It's just something you have to do to get around, right?
Yeah. And so when you put your parents into a situation that is defined, right?
So you put your parents into a situation where you say, I'm having this problem at work.
What should I do? Well then, this is a defined situation.
It's a problem-solving situation, right?
And I bet your dad came alive in these kinds of situations, right?
Because he's an army guy, right?
So what does he do? If it moves, move it.
If it doesn't move, paint it, right?
I mean, this is the army, right?
What you do is you solve problems in terms of logistics and so on.
You have plans and you execute and projects.
So when you come with a defined problem, then your parents can listen and get involved.
And a lot of people mistake that for intimacy.
But it's not, right?
It's not. I can go and get advice on how to build my deck from the guy at the hardware store.
But that's not intimacy.
Right. Okay.
That's just problem solving.
Okay. I guess that's the question then.
Okay. Intimacy is when they can fill out a questionnaire 50 pages long about what you like and don't like.
Okay. When they know what makes you tick, when they have a sense of the shape of your life and the size of your heart and the depth of your thoughts and your feelings, that's intimacy.
Not, you know, how should I deal with this jerk at work?
The intimacy is the one thing that's completely not replaceable by anybody else.
So, you know, if my dad is good at helping me fix a deck, well, I can hire someone to do that, right?
Right. If all I want to do is have sex, I can hire a prostitute for that, right?
Right. If I want to pour my heart out, I can hire a therapist for that, right?
But intimacy is the thing that can't be replaced, right?
I can't replace my wife with anyone or any combination of people.
Right. Because she knows the whole thing, the inside, the outside, the whole deal, right?
Mm-hmm. And that's something that people don't really understand about intimacy, right?
That it can't be replaced by any other conceivable people or group of people or team of professionals or anything like that.
Because it's the whole package, right?
Right, yeah. That makes a lot of sense, yeah.
Right. So with families, people get confused because they say, well, you know, we come over, we chat, we do this, we do that, and they help me solve problems from time to time.
But that's not intimacy.
Right. Because you don't feel visible, and we come alive when we feel visible.
Right. When people really know us...
And, of course, your parents do know you.
Don't get me wrong. They know more about you than anybody ever will.
Except you, right?
But the thing is that they reject it, right?
So... They know your love of philosophy, I would say, even more deeply than you.
At the moment, right?
Because they know exactly what to say no to.
If you come in real excited because you saw a giant watermelon, they'd probably be interested.
Oh, do you have a picture? Blah, blah, blah, right?
I'm totally guessing, right?
But whatever it is, right? But when you start talking about philosophy or atheism or whatever, that's when they know to turn into these soft fog people, right?
Right. Because they know exactly where that leads.
There's nothing that's unclear to anyone in this family.
Everybody knows everything.
In this family, in every family the world over.
They know everything about you.
They know the depth of your love for wisdom and truth and so on.
Because they know exactly what to fade away on.
Because if they didn't, they wouldn't be doing it, is what you're saying.
Well, they would accidentally get interested in philosophy and only later would they realize how dangerous it was.
Okay. But they absolutely, completely and totally know where it leads.
They know it from A to Z and back again.
And that's why their false self-defenses turn the fog machines on.
And you know exactly what topics to avoid in order to have, as you call it, a, quote, pleasant time with your family, right?
Right, yeah. I guess I... I was about to say that it's not avoiding, but it is.
I just never... It's not really something that pops into my mind, avoid this, but I guess it wouldn't have to because after, you know, the years of being taught that, I guess.
Right, and of course, it wouldn't be avoidance if it would pop into your mind, right?
It would be bad avoidance, right?
You'd have to get better at it. Right.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
So, I mean, the stuff to ponder, I mean, the stuff to ponder is, what are you doing there?
Well, there's two things to ponder, right?
I mean, it's up to you, whatever you want to do, right?
But it's just sort of a thought, right?
Because I really do get a sense of the isolation that you feel.
Like, you are deep in space, right?
You can barely see the world, it seems to me, from where you're hanging.
Like, out beyond Pluto, out among the comets, you know, among the dead stars, you are far out.
It feels that way to me.
And again, your experience is what matters.
I'm just telling you what I sort of sense, right?
That's accurate. Yeah, I really do get that sense.
I really do. And I don't like that.
I don't like that. I mean, you're a great guy.
You're a very smart guy.
And you have a hell of a lot to offer.
And drifting in deep orbit is not where you should be spending your precious time.
And I don't like thinking of you out there in the cold, right?
In the depths, that's no good, right?
So you've got to start doing some stuff about your family.
I mean, you just have to, because this is just a huge boulder that is keeping you at the bottom of this well.
You've just got to come to some sort of resolution.
It's terrifying, of course, but there's a fork in the road.
Obviously, you can continue doing the same thing and waste 10 years of your life being depressed and then do the same thing later.
But I would say, why bother?
You're not going to get those 10 years back later on in your life.
They'll just be 10 years down the drain.
But the fork is always the same, right?
And you know it from the podcast, but I'll just remind you.
You go talk to your parents.
You say, you know, I feel completely unsatisfied in our relationship.
I feel like we don't talk about anything.
I feel like you don't listen.
I feel like I have all these interests which I'm just not allowed to talk about.
You sit down with them and you say, you know, I'm trying to...
And people always get confused about this, and I don't think it's because I'm being unclear, but because of their defenses, and they say, well, so basically, you know, that's bad for the relationship, and it's like, no, you're trying to save a relationship.
Right, yeah. No, I understand that and really agree with it, and I really like that about the ones you've been doing lately, talking to people about it, and I... I think that's a really good message to get, especially since You know, all the emails I'm sure you get about the cultiness, leave your family and all that.
Yeah, no, I want people...
Look, I mean, if every time I said to people, go connect with your family, they were able to connect with their family, I'd be overjoyed.
Yeah, yeah. That's what I want from people.
But the fact of the matter is that, you know, just so you don't feel like there's something you can do that's going to change these odds, the odds that you will be able to succeed in this conversation are virtually nil.
Right. And you don't do it because you want to change your parents.
You do it because you want to make the core of this relationship real to yourself.
We can all die in tiny little grains of sand going through an hourglass.
We can all die in small talk.
Lives just get flushed away.
It's like a mountain getting eroded in fast forward.
We can all die a little death of, that's nice cake, and do you know so-and-so had a baby, and isn't the weather hot for this time of year?
Oh, are you getting an addition to your house, and that's a really nice deck?
Until your head explodes, this can be your life.
But unfortunately, you're not constructed for that.
Because if you were, you wouldn't feel the way that you feel.
You'd feel isolated because You are holding the isolation in you that your entire family is experiencing.
Everybody in your family feels isolated from each other.
But you're the one who has to feel it all.
So you feel alone, and you go to coffee on your own, and you sit in your room on your own, because you've got to swallow the whole loneliness and emptiness that's at the core of your family, and you've got to fight that demon of emptiness.
You've got to fight that guy. But the odds of succeeding are virtually non-existent.
I say virtually because, you know, I don't know, maybe they could get hit by lightning and have a personality change, but you go and talk to people because you need to make the truth of the relationship real.
If you are being rejected over and over and over again by people who know exactly what is the most important to you, you need to know that.
Avoiding it is just going to waste time.
Life is short. Avoiding that is just going to waste time.
And avoiding that is going to reproduce it in your own life, right?
In the future, in your family to come.
Right. I have a question about the talking thing.
And this kind of goes back to the guy who was having problems with his evil girlfriend, quote-unquote.
Oh, yeah, yeah. The one who accused him of calling her evil.
Yes. Yeah, so when you're talking to people about these things...
Because I'm sure everyone who listens to these goes through the same thing, where you don't know what to say, da-da-da-da-da.
So, if I understand, like, what you're talking about with this, the important thing isn't so much my words and the perfection of them, but it's... I guess...
How they're received or...
You know what I mean?
Well, practice, I mean, you don't want to go in blind, right?
Right, right. Practice, right?
So you want to make notes to yourself, and you can just sort of practice saying it out loud, and plus that will get you lots of room in the coffee shop, right?
Just have an argument cup or whatever, right?
But you have to sort of get a sense of what's missing for you in this relationship, right?
And the truth, I mean, this is your words are your words, but it would be something like, you know, like I feel like I'm living this totally split life, and it's disorienting to me, like...
I love truth.
I love philosophy. I'm really interested in economics and psychology and so on.
And I feel like every time I bring this stuff up with you clearly intelligent people who could absolutely handle the conversation intellectually, everything just kind of fades away.
I say stuff, and then everything just kind of fades away.
The important thing is you have to stay present to what you're feeling as best as you can and communicate that.
Right? So, if they then say, no, no, no, we're very interested in your statements about philosophy and we really, you know, we think it's wonderful that you're interested in it and we can't follow it all, but we're certainly interested and blah, blah, blah, right?
Well, then, right, the challenge is, and this is what I mean when I say the real-time relationship, the challenge is that that's going to evoke a feeling in you.
And that feeling that it's going to evoke in you is frustration or rejection or, you know, something, right?
Because you're saying, you don't listen to me.
And they're saying, no, of course we listen to you.
Right. Right?
And say, well, look, this is an example of what I'm saying.
I'm trying to bring up something that's important to me and I'm told that I'm in the wrong.
And this happens all the time in this family.
I'm either told that I'm in the wrong, like, explicitly or sort of implicitly told that I just, you know, that I just shouldn't really talk about this kind of stuff because, you know...
No one's really that interested or whatever, right?
And so this is kind of strange for me, right?
Because I assumed, as parents, you'd sort of be interested in my stuff and all that, and I just feel that every time, right?
And you say with the I feel, right?
If you say, you people are jerks who never listen to me, that's not going to be defensible, right?
Right. But if you say, I feel that you don't listen to me, nobody can argue you out of that, right?
That's what's so powerful about the I feel statements.
At least they can't logically argue.
No! If you say, I feel that you don't listen to me, and they say, but we do listen to you, they say, well, but you're not dealing with the real issue.
The real issue is not whether you listen to me or not.
The real issue is that I feel that you don't listen to me.
And if you tell me that you do listen to me, you're just kind of confirming the diagnosis.
Right, just kind of...
Well, you're ignoring what I'm feeling and trying to argue with me out of what I'm feeling.
But the whole point, the whole problem that I have with this family is that everybody tries to argue me out of what it is that I'm feeling.
Or ignore what it is that I'm feeling, or pat me on the head and say, well, that's a nice trick, now here's a kibble or whatever, right?
I mean, it's just not, you know, and you've got to drive this through, right?
Because, you know, this is the great challenge of philosophy, right?
This is the stuff that I always warn people about when they get into it.
Your dad's a soldier.
Right.
I mean... He kind of did take money to kill people.
Right? I mean, I know we talk about soldiering or military in the abstract, but all of this stuff is, you know, quite literally deadly serious, right?
Right, yeah, yeah.
I understand that.
Yeah. Well, no, I don't think that you do.
And I don't mean this with any disrespect, because I have a huge amount of respect for your intelligence and creativity.
But when you were talking about the issues with your parents and why they may not be receptive or whatever, you talked about their age and their prior marriages and their prior children and so on.
But you never said that my dad's a hitman in costume.
Right. And again, this is an extreme way of putting it, and with all due caveats and so on, but that kind of is the core of the military life, is that you're kind of like a hitman in costume.
And if your dad was, in fact, a hitman in the mafia, that would probably be one of the things that you brought up, is to say, well, here's why he may not be that intimate with me.
Right. Do you see what I mean?
Yeah, yeah. I was just pausing for a different reason, but...
Yeah, I see what you mean.
But that's really important.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I understand what you're saying.
And that's probably nothing you can talk about.
Um, no.
Right, right.
But that's pretty important, right?
Right, yeah. Well, I've talked with him about About it, but I haven't gone to the level you were just talking about, you know, saying, you know, you took money for this.
Yeah, like help explain to me the difference between you and someone on The Sopranos, right?
Right, yeah, and I don't know, the reason that I paused earlier, and this could just be another excuse, but I'll put it out there anyway, just to see, is that From what I know about,
and yeah, this seems to be getting into excuse territory, but from what I know, it's not that he was a different kind of, not branch, but specialty, I guess you could say.
He wasn't, what is it, infantry or whatever.
Oh yeah, no, of course. I mean, and I'm perfectly aware that there's tons of people in the army who are cooks, right?
And I'm not saying he was a cook, right?
But of course, I mean, I don't even think the majority of people pull the trigger in the army.
Yeah, that's the reason I paused earlier when you were saying that.
Well, okay, but then, I mean, I know he wasn't, right?
And I'm sure he's much more educated than this.
But let's say he was a cook for the mafia.
Right. It's still the mafia.
Right. So maybe he's not the guy pulling the trigger.
Maybe he's the guy cooking the food to the guy who drives the car for the guy who pulls the trigger.
But he's hanging around the guys who pull the trigger.
Well, without him, they don't pull the trigger, right?
Right. And it's not that this makes him an evil guy, right?
I mean, that's, again, there is a state of nature that we all inhabit prior to the achievement of wisdom.
I mean, I was not an evil guy when I was pro-war, pro-military.
I was not an evil guy.
That's just in a state of nature.
I didn't know. I'm not a bad doctor if I've never heard of antibiotics, right?
And I don't prescribe them, right?
Yeah, that's another difficult thing to kind of work in to the way you think about things, is the state of nature, I guess.
Right. I mean, and that's just...
I certainly can't condemn other people for things that I have...
I mean, unless I want to just call myself evil, in which case I'm going to stop podcasting and pull it all...
I can't sort of go that far, right?
And, of course, then there could never be any progress, because everybody would be evil, right?
I mean, or whatever, right?
You have to try and struggle to achieve goodness, despite the illusions that we're all raised under.
So, I mean, it doesn't mean that he's an evil guy, right?
But it does mean that this is a pretty significant fact.
And, of course, the reality is that he knows all of this, right?
I mean, the reason that people who are in the military end up weird or go into the military because they're strange to begin with, it's because they know this, right?
Mm-hmm. But it's just another damn thing you can't talk about, right?
Right. Right.
So, yeah, I mean, I would certainly, if you feel ambiguity about this, and it sounds like you do, right?
I mean, you have to have the conversation with your parents.
You have to kind of assert your needs and figure out what you want in a relationship, right?
I mean, You want to be heard.
You want to have great conversations with people that are meaningful to you, that you add something to their life, that they add something to your life.
I mean, we all deserve that.
And that's the beauty of these kinds of relationships.
The problem is if you take the exact opposite, then you never get there, right?
Right. Right. So you have to try and generate that within your parents, and if you can't, right, and of course the odds are that you can't, but I don't say that to make you give up, I just say that to prepare you, right?
If you can't, then you need to get out.
Right. You've got your life to live, your future to live.
You can't be hanging around these people.
I got this image when you said like a dead house or whatever.
I got this image like you said, my parents are 70.
It's like, yeah, my parents are 70.
Unfortunately, they passed away at 60, but they're still sitting in the living room.
And it's kind of creepy, right?
You've got to leave these mausoleums to themselves and start with your own life, right?
Because if there is this infection of distance and alienation and not listening and subtle violence in institutions, you have to leave this infection behind in order to have a happier life yourself and not feel so isolated and so burdened.
Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And you said, whiny and self-pitying poems.
I know you were kind of joking, right?
I know you were kind of joking, but there is truth in humor as well, right?
Because when you first posted your poem, you said, well, I've just been writing these sort of whiny poems and so on since I was, you know, never any solutions and blah, blah, blah.
And then when you IM'd me, or you private messaged me back, you said, I guess it was my sort of whiny, self-pitying poem and so on, right?
But that's, I mean, that's a real wound, right?
That's a real wound. Right, yeah.
I, uh...
Um...
Yeah, I... You're right about the humor thing.
It does cover a lot of things, and especially with me, I've always done that kind of stuff.
Well, no, I bet you this is what your family does, right?
I bet you if you were to show these poems to your dad, his either explicit or implicit reaction would be whiny and self-pitying stuff, right?
Well, actually, I've...
I, at one point, shared my writing with my parents.
No, they didn't react that way.
But it was, you know, similar to the reaction to everything else.
They said they liked it a lot.
They said they liked some of it a lot, some of the darker stuff, because I still have a lot of my poems I wrote when I was 15 and 16, and it's kind of disturbing to go back and read.
But they didn't say that they liked those.
They expressed being upset by them.
I'm kind of wondering what was going on, but they never said it was whiny or whatever.
But they didn't show much curiosity, and of course, that's the way to perceive it.
But certainly, if your child shows you poems that express deep unhappiness when they're younger, I mean, it's something that you could literally spend a month talking about with your child and asking questions.
You don't just gloss over that stuff when you're supposed to be a family.
You just don't. Right.
And I was conscious of the...
I guess I didn't know exactly what would happen when I posted the poems but I knew that they wouldn't go unnoticed, I guess.
Well, sure. And just to raise the bar for you, right?
I mean, I'm a guy in Canada.
I've never met you face-to-face.
We've talked a couple of times and so on, right?
But I care enough to give you a call, right?
And see what's going on. Your parents and your family, they should be doing this a million-fold, right?
You should not be going through this on your own.
And you should have this kind of relationship in your life from everyone in your life who notices when you're down and takes the time to sort of figure out what's going on.
That's a standard that you have to start developing.
And it's going to cause you pain when you look at it in relation to your family.
But that is something that is a standard that I think you just need to really start saying that, yeah, I mean, I can provide this.
This is what is a good relationship.
I need this. And I'm not going to settle for less.
Yeah, that does make a lot of sense.
Speaking of that poem, I don't know if you saw the final draft, but some of the things that you and Greg and some other people talked about I added back in.
I thought it turned out okay.
I guess I was fairly happy with it.
But yeah, I've really been, I guess, into writing since I was really young.
And ever since I started writing poetry, I've got the, I guess, the deep messages that are in it.
Kind of like the dream analysis stuff that you do.
Those always kind of baffle me, but it's always...
It's really easy when I'm reading my own stuff, even though it can sound really crazy.
It's very easy to kind of dig in and see the hidden meanings behind it.
And I knew when I was posting them that it would be noticed.
For sure, for sure. And I mean, you have been, and honestly and bravely, I think, right?
I mean, you have been talking about isolation and solitude and so on, and, you know, people in your life should notice and care.
Yeah, I've also kind of...
I don't know, it's just really hard to...
It is. Yeah, it is.
I kind of put feelers out there with some of my other friends.
It's not, well, I don't really have a lot of friends, but two of my friends that I've kind of put it out there.
They're, well, they're concerned, but I think they're really, I guess, at a loss because when I think about it, they kind of...
At least one of them has the same kind of...
I guess, I won't say this is my problem, but the problem that I'm having now is kind of mirrored in some other people that I know.
Right, so you have to be the leader here, right?
I mean, this is the hard thing.
At least you do have resources to, I think, a fairly decent series of podcasts on this, but I think you're going to have to take the lead with regards to your friends.
I mean, you have the analytical capacity and you have the resources to To show you what you need to do, right?
And I think that you're going to have to take the lead in this.
It's not a role that I think that you were given much scope with in the past, right?
But, I mean, I think that's something that you have to...
I mean, I don't think that they're going to be able to help you.
I think you're going to have to do that yourself.
Yeah. Yeah, I understand that.
It's just... I guess it's kind of like a...
You know what you're doing.
I put the feelers out there and...
Trying to get an echo back.
Right, for sure, for sure.
And it's good to be in that conversation, but you're going to have to report to them on your progress.
I don't think that they're going to be able to help you that much.
And it's good that you'll take the steps and start to put this stuff into practice, right?
Because I think that's what I was sort of getting from your posts and so on.
And the poem was, you know, I'm stuffed full of theory, but I can't act, right?
And that's not a good place to be.
Because if philosophy remains only theory, it turns to poison, right?
It has to be acted on. Yeah, and some of the stuff you've talked about, especially the parts where you talked about boredom and stuff like that, have been, I guess, especially relevant for me. It's kind of hard looking at some of the podcasts and hearing some of the stories from some people and their families and stuff like that.
And like you talked about, it's the non-obvious stuff that can really be the problem.
For sure, yeah. I mean, you have a much more difficult situation in many, many ways than I did, and that's, you know, that's just very important to understand.
And your family is socially sanctioned, right?
They were, I mean, my family was so completely off the mark that, I mean, it wasn't that hard to figure out that something must be awry, but your family has a lot more social support and structure around it, so it's definitely tougher.
but I mean I definitely would take that approach put the stuff that you've listened to really into practice and tell a gear it's going to work yeah yeah yeah everything is is clear in my head now um yeah
Well, have a listen. I'll put this.
I'm not going to post it as a podcast.
Have a listen and let me know what you think.
I think that there are enough people who are struggling with this exact same issue that I think it would be very generous and helpful to put it out there.
But the final decision, of course, is yours.
So I'll send you a PM with the link and have a listen and let me know what you think.
Yeah, yeah. I'll do that.
Yeah, I'll get back to you.
So... Yeah, thanks a lot for talking to me.
I really appreciate it. My pleasure, bro.
I hope that it works out.
I'm sure that it will. You certainly have a lot of intellectual and creative resources at your disposal, and you've got to come in from deep space because it's cold out there, brother.
Yeah, I've definitely been feeling that the last couple of months.
It's kind of surreal, actually.
Right. That kind of dissociation, you've got to fight that with action.
That's going to jolt you back into...
Because you have the people around you, and you're kind of, I guess, lulled into thinking that things are okay, and then you remove that, and things stay the same, and you're just like, oh my god.
What do you mean I have to act?
No, I just listen to more podcasts.
That's the way to do it. Yeah, yeah.
Listen, I've got to head to bed because it's like 12.30 here.
Oh, yeah, yeah. So I'm trying to stay on a reasonable schedule because otherwise I end up riding until 4 a.m.
and then crashing until noon, which is not good.
So I'm trying to stay on a reasonable schedule.
So I'm going to slither off to bed.
But I will post this before I go to bed and send you the post so you can have a listen to it.
All right. I probably won't get it until tomorrow, but I'll get a listen and let you know.
Thanks, man. Talk to you soon. All right.
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