Total Pageviews

30 January 2011

Not Much

     I had a "less than" attack yesterday.  "Less than" attacks are kind of like anxiety attacks, except I don't feel anxious, I feel inferior to some standard (artificial or otherwise) I think I should have attained as a person.  It happened, of course, after I began comparing what I know about myself to what I know about someone I don't really know.  Almost everyone I know, including friends and relatives, falls into that category of people I don't really know.  Hell, it's hard enough to "know thyself" as the ancient Greek aphorism exhorts.  How the freak am I supposed to know you?
     So, great.  I've survived 53 estival months in the Sonoran Desert and still haven't learned to tell that lying moron that lives inside me to go pound dirt when he starts accusing me of being a slacker, of not being successful enough, of doing the things I shouldn't have done and neglecting the things I should have done.  Makes it hard to keep an inflated ego alive with that little bastard screaming in my ear.
     Fortunately, I've learned that these "less than" attacks are temporary, they are feelings and they will pass.  I've learned that it's okay to feel inferior for a little while, but I can minimize those feelings as they try to work their way into my behavior, as they inevitably do.
     Perhaps the best antidote for "less than" attacks lies in the old axiom that the best defense is a good offense.  I can take the offensive and look for someone to help, to do something for someone without looking for compensation of any sort.  Magically, my feelings of inferiority evaporate when I love another person in a practical way.
     Much of my energy in the past 17,000 or so hours  has been spent in various efforts to enhance or protect what I thought other people thought of me.  Many, if not most of these people didn't think much of me to begin with, but that truth was unknown to me and besides, it would've been too painful to accept had I known it.
     There are things I like about being middle-aged.  When I start to worry about what others think of me, I remember they don't, at least not very often.  Most of my illusion of physical attractiveness has dissipated as parts per million in a sea of younger people who look at me like I have a third eye in the middle of my forehead.
     Am I different from you?  Well, yes and no.  I don't believe all people spend so much time in amateur self-analysis or delusional introspection.  But I think many others do, and so there are those with whom I connect on that level.
     Today I'm going to spend some more time in my back yard, like I did yesterday, with the bright sun and brilliant blue sky.  The dogs play and sniff and lie in the sunshine.  I trim trees, pick up the cuttings and leaves, and try to make the yard look a little better than when I began.  That it what I will do for today, because today is all I have.