…but I think I just had an epiphany. Check me: if my conscious goal is to satisfy/please/make content my Ego (the me-ness of me) but it is the nature of the Ego to never be satisfied/pleased/content, by definition my goal is unattainable.
I need a different goal - or to lose the idea of goal-oriented-ness. But how do I thank my Ego for sharing and send it on its way?
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I just heard the rerun of the Bobby Dunbar story on This American Life. It resonated with me, maybe for the same reason it resonated with you.
After a tumultuous childhood which included many family secrets (some of which I only learned as an adult), I became an adult with serious problems with Major Depression. I have been in therapy for many years and I am on medication to keep the depression at bay.
I have two adult children. My father died when I was 14 and my mother remarried when I was 27. My "step-father" recently died at 92 and I have been calling my mother more often and trying to be of some support to her.
When my mother remarried, she moved to another state, over 500 miles from where I live. I have visited with my children many times. It was often a strained time when we visited.
Because my stepfather died I recently went to visit my mother alone. And I found out many things about her, myself, and my childhood from that visit.
The most useful and frightening thing I found out is that she really has no idea who I really am and she never has. She has a concept of me that has very few similarities to whom I ever was. She believes things about me and how I think that were never true. She thinks that she loves me but she doesn't really love even the person she calls me who is almost completely a construction of her own mind. And probably always was.
I actually found objective proof that she did not understand things about me when I was a child, that she was unable to love the baby she gave birth to when she was 22.
Since I can now see how completely differently she has always seen me from whom I have always been, I have a completely different outlook on my childhood and my haunting feelings of unreality.
Somehow I thought that this abbreviated life story might be something like yours. I wanted to write to you because I thought that my revelation might resonate with something in your life...in your struggle to figure out who you are or be who you want to be.
Of course I could be completely mistake and this would not be helpful to you in any way. In that event, please pardon me for drawing conclusions about yo and your life when I really don't know anything about you. It can be very frustrating when someone does that and I do not wish to be that frustrating person. You can totally ignore me as some kook who made a crazy comment on your blog!
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