the trouble with us

first let's be clear who that us is. it is you and me, it is us or how we relate to each other as humans. the trouble is that we are animals, and we are the kind of animal that does not want to be one. in short, the human condition is about being an animal, and wanting to escape it.

what leads me to such brash, rash and abrupt conclusions?

in the absence of some form of relating there may be you and i, but there is no us. so it was that a week ago i sat next to a man and he proceeded to behave in a way that i would call oscillatory. he went from deep personal confessions to bad jokes within a short period of time, and then back to the deeply personal and intimate, and so on. now this man is wonderful in my eyes exactly because he exhibits such behaviour that makes his doubts palpable and his fragility evident. other than oscillatory, he behaves like the prototype macho. he seems very real to me, and he feels very far from the idealized utopic view of what a man ought to be; and he struggles with his ego and whatever will and drive he has. he remains animal and he keeps on censoring the animal as though that animal had no right to exist. this is how i chose to describe this man's fragility.

take for instance his smoking. he says that smoking is not a good habit, yet he confesses to not being able to stop. i get that, i certainly get that he feels like he can not stop smoking. i also sense that he is making some progress in coming to terms with his own limitations, he has stopped counting how many cigarettes he smokes in a day. this knowing and not acting according to the knowledge is the kind of behaviour that i find in many around me, and certainly one that i know well enough from my own experience. i know what i ought to do, i feel a craving, ignore the good intentions, and do give in to the craving that the animal whom i am commands upon my rational illusions. but not always, not on all of life's little issues. the animal is simple, and the animal is not linear.

last night my son gave me the key for what i was looking for. i had been thinking about self-confidence, however he pointed me to self-esteem. yes, they are not the same. one being can have loads of self-confidence and zero self-esteem and the result is the animal being out of control. the animal me that is, not necessarly the man. that man from last week is one whom i admire and one that has me being grateful that he ever showed up in my life. he showed up at the right time, with the right attitude. it has taken me years to see him a bit better for who he is. my delay residing in the fact that he seems so much like me, that i end up hardly ever being able to distinguish between what is his and what is mine.

i remember that when i first became aware of his interest in me, i could only feel the attraction that admiration catalyses. i felt that and i felt my own confusion about being attracted to the man and at the same time seeing a father figure in him. at that time when this had happened i had not yet gone through deep psychothereapy and i had a few unresolved conflicts floating around in my mind gnawing at the very essence of my being and paralyzing any expression of what is mine. the idea of engaging in sexual interplay with a man whom i saw as the father that mine was not, was at best disconcerting, it was incest. impossible was the overwhelming feeling of the whole encounter and our interactions that followed, totally impossible. my immediate reaction was to send him a letter in which the tenor was that he was to keep away from me. imagine desiring him, and imagine not being able to imagine anything more than to be held in his arms as though we were both asexual. for months, years, i censored my desire for him, i wanted him to be my missing father. the psyche had censored the animal, and reason was beyond hope then.

then we fast forward to last week and his admissions of his own daughter's sexual advances towards him. at that point i felt like i had fallen victim to my own fiction, and that my madness was the only reality keeping me sane. within seconds i had a whole tempest of feelings back on my lap, and i had invited none of it. we were sitting next to each other, and my immediate thought was how very much i did desire him, and how good it would be to forget all social convention, pierce through all the barriers, and experience the complete sexual beings that we are with all our weaknesses and strengths. yet, i did nothing and said even less. i offered good, reasonable, sound counseling. the coward whom i am, retreated, my animal's cravings for his body were censored and discarded.

the day after this rather intimate and personal exchange there were a few moments when we could have met, we both were in the same building, however between the many floors and the crowds, neither made much of an effort. the next day we exchanged emails and i returned to being my very intellectual mask, a real mask as effective as a man's macho mask, and once more the animal got to take a back seat to that very much in command intellect.

it could be that one of these days one of us will be foolish enough to grab the other, and just let the natural animal satisfy its cravings away from psychology and concepts of propriety. it could also be that nothing ever happens, and that we are left with the assurance of the knowledge that nothing outside ourselves can cause any trouble.