Standing in the shower this morning, feeling the comforting jet of enveloping hot water as I was waiting for inspiration to strike on today’s Duck and Cover (didn’t happen till later), inspiration struck me on an entirely different matter. The shower is always and probably always will be a great place for thought – for most people, as my discussion of same has attested, but especially for me. I made a realization that I believe cuts to the quick of why my unhappiness seems so deeply entrenched, so likely to be permanent, and so inaccessible to the acknowledgement of so many friends.
It’s best described in an analogy far older than anyone I know – Plato’s allegory of the cave. The problem that I feel I’m facing is that I’ve been living a long time outside of the cave and was recently relegated back in, never to return to the outside world of sunlight and Platonic forms. And of course my community is a group of people who all have not only never been outside the cave, but mostly who’ve never even dared to imagine that there is an outside. Or people who find the outside to be scary or daunting in some way, actually undesirable. And so we have these frustrating conversations that basically go like this:
“Why aren’t you happy? Look at that shadow of a chair.”
“It’s nothing like a real chair.”
“What’s a real chair?”
“I couldn’t possibly describe it to you. Or why we are so far short of it in just looking at its shadow on the wall.”
“Well if you can’t describe it, how could I believe it’s any better? Be happy with your shadows!”
This isn’t entirely fair to everyone who’s been trying to help me out, but it’s getting at part of the main frustration and why there’s been so much head-butting and general dissatisfaction. I think the best moments or conversations or attempts are from people who argue that I never know when I’ll randomly be transported outside the cave. That I shouldn’t blame myself for my exile caveward and that there’s no telling when one will flit in and out of the cave, so just scrunch up your eyes and cross your toes and hope the cave disappears some time and you’re back in the world of the forms. Needless to say, I don’t find this a whole lot more comforting than those who question that there are forms at all, let alone that I’ve seen them. If there’s no telling when we’ll be in or outside the cave, it’s very hard to have any concrete hope, let alone reasonable faith that while we’re outside it we’re likely to stay outside it. My own metaphor for this is pianos falling from the sky, some of which are randomly benevolent instead of crushing, but all of which are as predictable as the meteorology of large musical instruments.
I’ve recently been thinking about going in for therapy, something long recommended to me by a lot of people, but also something about which I am, I think, reasonably skeptical. I fear being committed against my will for suicidal thoughts and tendencies, though I have to admit that I’m stable enough to make this less of a concern. I dread being diagnosed or attemptedly dosed. Most people these days, medical and psychological, feel that chemicals are the only solution to anything, obviously diametric from my own worldview. I worry about being told that morality or faith in God are pathologies, obstacles to be mowed down by the pursuit of happiness above all other concerns. But more than anything, I just feel that I’ve got intractable problems that I’ve thought long and hard about in a more self-aware way than most people dare. A lot of the marginal advice I’ve been getting about the benefits of therapy have touted the ability to speak freely without fear of judgment. I think this blog alone is testament to how little I need that in addition to my daily routine. People have also discussed the ability to dredge up the past and analyze its impact on my current perspective. I could write a dissertation on that, have my patterns and the causes of my hopes and fears so well understood and rehearsed that I could offer them as a three-act play impromptu. So what is the benefit? What is a therapist going to be able to tell me that I don’t already know?
And more importantly, how is a therapist going to wrestle from the cave with the idea of forms? At best, they can get me to accept that a monochrome world of fingery visages on the blank pockmarked rock is a fair substitute for all the colors and dimensions of the greater universe. It’s almost directly reflective of how I anticipate they might try to “cure” my manic depression – spouting the virtues of moderation for the mere sake of moderation without ever having experienced the soaring highs or crushing lows of a full range of actual human experience. When one has been truly happy in life, the daily routine acceptance and resignation that most Americans confuse for happiness becomes intolerably unappealing. When one has seen the full shape of what life has to offer, the pale glow of its shadow is just window dressing. Wall dressing. Silent hushed motion, signifying only the whispers of a memory of what truly mattered.
