Essay - Self Deception

 Marcus Alden Meredith

January 2, 2024

Disappointment

Staying Clear of Human Anchors and Your Own Myopathy

It’s a bit of both kismit and insane timing that on the second day of the New Year here I am in my favorite writing haunt thinking about…. disappointment. And not just the disappointment that comes from circumstances, but the disappointment that comes with being around people and being human yourself.  The human condition, being what it is and how it is, is the result of a myriad of forces both natural and man-made; this is obvious. This is the stuff of sages and philosophers trying to raise our awareness and get us to some stage of Enlightenment that we had previously just skipped or were oblivious to. And yet, in an almost inevitable, semi-predeterminate fashion, I seem to almost always put myself in a place or state of mind that leads to this feeling of disappointment. Why?

Now comes the meditative, analytical, self examination that should bring about change… not just the typical, New Year’s resolution, gonna break this promise in a week, kinda change. No, the long lasting, life affirming, make me a better person type of change which upon reflection leads to the question, “What the hell was I thinking back then?” and the proverbial head slap. Yeah… and that’s when the emotional and mental pain and anguish gets its turn too. My conclusion from this harsh but honest self analysis is that it’s really hard to keep a constant state of heightened self awareness on a 24/7 basis. This means that, sometimes, we slip and the daemon of old habits worms its way back into our lives. We catch it happening, then we throw self recriminations around, we reflect, and then we start fresh… for the most part. 

“Whoa, friend! What brought this up and why today?” Valid and pointed question…And, as is probably not surprising to many, it has to do with relationships. For some of us in the membership roles of the human race, we are attracted to people who we really shouldn’t be around much if at all. But we focus on appearance , sexual prowess, being funny, liking things you like, and a whole myriad of other attributes that we decide to focus on instead of looking at the whole package… like we should. Yeah, you’ve probably guessed it, I’m struggling with a potential paramour or paramours who I really shouldn’t put any time or much effort into. Some of this is because of my tendency to idealize what I want to have happen between us. But, if I were clearly viewing the situation and not “through a glass and darkly,” I would realize that putting too much more time and effort into this relationship has murky future outcomes and should really be treated like anyone putting money into a hedge-fund on Wall Street! Yup… I like the pretty girls who are sexy and all different shades of screwed up whose future prospects with you are not really very high but who are great to look at, have great sex with, but use up time, money, and other resources for very little personal return. [Damn… that was deep and to the bone.]

As part of the analysis, this is really a reflection of a part of my own personality that goes back a long way and is a bit Freudian in its ramifications. My kryptonite is a pretty face that I hope will like me for who I am. So, what is the potential remedy? I suppose, first and foremost, I have to realize that I’ll be spending a lot of time around people but very rarely, if ever, will they have personal, physical relationships with you. I am an extraordinary person who is very hard to match up with mentally and personality wise… and I don’t make friends easily… and I’m just ordinary in the physical looks department, plus I’m getting older. So, like an archeologist sifting through tons of sand and debris, only rarely will I find that one artifact that I feel is priceless. Sifting through the mass of humanity is what I’m doing again as I’ve been single for half a decade now, lived through a pandemic, lost friends and colleagues and need a new start. I’ve made moves to remedy that situation but it’s a long term project and may take years to bear fruit. And a point comes in my “archeological digs in modern humanity” where the hope that something/someone I’ve found is much more detritus and a human anchoring than is worth my time and effort… that keeping at the project, of spending more time with them, and “trying to know them better” is really just a symptom of my own myopic POV. The struggle becomes self-defeating and benefits me not one iota.  

So what about all that time and all those “friends” on social media platforms? If I am dispassionate and skeptically honest then the conclusion is that it’s “time to trim the verge” and just get rid of all types of people, perhaps abandon some platforms all together. In the spirit of a New Year, the examination of “follows” and “likes” needs to be done ruthlessly and dispassionately with a metric in mind of who/what makes my life better… and cut, cut, cut… Teaching myself to say “no” more often or even “no way” and putting in the time and effort to develop a better entry into the “den of friends” is going to be absolutely a necessity. So… time to take the big mental knife and get busy making this shrub of a life into a priceless bonsai for me to admire and pass on to the future.