02 Invincible Incompatibility

Continuing...2

A Fable of Invincible Incompatibility

Phil Springer

          In order to bring even a modicum of concordance to the story of invincible incompatibility we may find a path by introducing a conversation between a billygoat and a hummingbird. The billygoat could represent a "position" and the hummingbird could be a "process". 

            Billygoat said to Hummingbird, "Why do you flit about so? I don't know where you are from one second to the next."

            Hummingbird replied, " Well, I get a bunch of different views of things."

            Billygoat quickly bleated, " What things, what views. Are you trying to confuse me?"

            Hummingbird flitting about and thinking, " like a powerful goat that you are, you hold your stance in the tall grass protecting your assets from being taken over. That’s a good thing, is it not?"

             Proudly, Billygoat returned, " You can see that from where you are? I wasn't sure because the grass is so tall and thick I'm just trying to hold on to what I have. When I turn my back for an instant things (grass) go missing.” 

             Hummingbird musing, “How do you sleep at night having amassed so much grass.”

            Billy goat sadly said, “I don’t really sleep. I just doze; but every once in a while I do sleep.  I could hire someone to watch through the night, but I would just wake up thinking that the watcher should have been watched as well.”

           Sympathetically but not condescendingly Hummingbird philosophized, “And I thought I had it so bad just living each day tongue-to-mouth and not having anything to munch on through the night like you. I just feel hungry but you suffer the agony of distrust and constant vigilance.”

The conversation ended for the day as the hummingbird sensing encroaching darkness and returned to his nightly perch. His pulse rate would drop from about 600 beats per minute to 40 beats per min and his body temp would drop as well so that he could pass through the night using only a small amount of energy.  But as he dozed off he thought about the billygoat and how different their respective lives were. The goat had to guard all that grass but all he had to do was slip into his nightly torpor.  The sun would warm him in the morning and he could flap his wings and return to the freedom that only a day-laborer can experience; just need to make one day at a time. But he knew that his experience with the billygoat was going to continue. He thought there must be a way for their mutual incompatibilities to find common ground.

01 Balance

Prologue 1

     On the 24th of this month I will reach my 84^th year.  I've always been a fearful person and afraid of getting beaten up by older kids. So, to compensate I have done things which are more dangerous such as getting married, medical school, father of seven children, and prison psychiatry.  I knew my mother wanted me to be a doctor but I was afraid of that too. But one day my dad and I were going down a road we happened upon a serious traffic accident. A crowd quickly gathered but stood transfixed in horror. Blood was everywhere in a mangled car where a partially scalped child, a father and mother lay gravely injured in helpless agony. 

     Though just 16 at the time I was able be of assistance to people who were hurt. I then used that as an excuse or rationale that I could go to medical school. Now that I no longer feared the sight of blood this somehow that gave me the notion that medical school would be an easy task. Little did I know what was in store for me.

      About halfway through my undergraduate studies I began to lose faith in the whole process; I couldn't stop thinking about girls but was too fearful to approach them. So, Bill Richardson, a friend of mine arranged a blind date.  Her name was Frieda and I thought she cried on this date but she always claimed that she didn't.  I was so dumb-struck by her that I thought I could jump over tall buildings and certainly get into medical school. We had a beautifully troubled marriage of 58 years of invincible incompatibility[1]. I never really understood her but she claimed that she not only understood herself but she nailed me like a frog to a board with confident understanding. I never believed that I had a knack of self-comprehension so I marveled that my wife could manage this and thus it became a blessing. Whenever I had a moment of self-doubt I would turn to Frieda and she would say with only a glance of love and I would be reassured. And so, it goes. 

     During my youth, I discovered that my dad had a first wife who abandoned him leaving their 6-week-old daughter. Diana was ultimately raised by my dad’s folks since my own mother would not take the child in as “her own”. Occasionally I thought I saw pain in my dad’s eyes although he never spoke to anyone about the first marriage.

       I will try to explain how the word "balance” fits into my story and calls forth a rich soup.  I was told by adults in my family that my dad first noticed mom from behind a hole in a newspaper that he was supposed to be reading while sitting in the Biloxi library where she was the librarian. I suppose he was dumbstruck by the sight of her and a small hole in the newspaper allowed him to see her right-sized.  
     To digress for a moment, I always had trouble with self-examination or even an examination of another person. I was, and still am, terrible at it. In two attempts, I have failed the psychiatry oral part of the Board exams. What could've possibly caused me to continue in psychiatry. Being my parents first born there was plenty of opportunity to watch them in action. It didn't take me too long to see that they had captured the spirit of invincible incompatibility. I did not see her and I did not see him but somehow managed to see in their midst...............the love relationship. My mother was a Biloxi Catholic and my dad was a Butler University dropout agnostic nerd from Indianapolis. He came to Biloxi to fish for sharks. Neither made sense in the context of the other, but they somehow made sense within themselves.  

     From that point on Life has become a balancing act. But please allow an explanation.................. for this is crucial to understanding how one might better fathom and balance differences in the life of our politics, Life of our religions, Life of our families, and the Life within ourselves. 

       My dad had a quiet composure that he thought was due in part to the study of Aesop's Fables. Around age 12 he was bed-bound by doctors’ orders with the sequelae of rheumatic fever. It was a year of intense reading for him but it became, for me, an experience of my father that I balanced with the experience of my mother's Catholicism. He told me the one about "The Boys and The Frogs"  

SOME BOYS, playing near a pond, saw several frogs in the

water and began to pelt them with stones.  They killed several of

them, when one of the Frogs, lifting his head out of the water,

cried out:  "Pray stop, my boys:  what is sport to you, is death to

us."

     Somehow this balanced with the Catholicism of

mom after the boys killed the frog they went to confession 

and the priest gave them 10 Our Fathers and 10 Hail Mary’s to say as penitence.

Monday May 20, 2017

---

[1] Meyer Maskin told me that his marriage was one of invincible incompatibility. He was an excellent teacher in pointing out to me that greatly different personalities could make a marriage work though seeming to be impossible at first blush.

Friendship

Please keep in mind that all the really important things come from the bottom. Even though those at the top appear to be making decisions they are actually riding a very unstable wave which we at the bottom control. It is time for we at the bottom to share our strength and our hope. Our combined consciousness controls the world. We just  have to figure a way to act in concert. It is called Consilience.

EO Wilson has recently written a book called Consilience. David Bohm wrote about fragmentation and how we needed to come together in small groups to achieve a consensus. However in the late 1930s Bill Wilson had already found consilience through listening attentively rather than intentively and there is a big difference between those two adverbs. But he was dealing with people who had reached the bottom and knew they were on the bottom. The ego button was hit and was reset. In my opinion that's the reason it all came together. Now we are struggling even in AA with talk talk talk about God. Again in my opinion God is a verb. We have all been speaking in the recent years with many many nouns and too few verbs. This nut who is now at the top found that he could speak in verbs and win us all over(I.e bomb, deport, fire, deal, and grab.......

Rabbi Cooper wrote a book a few years ago called God is a verb. Mike G  has a copy that I gave him last year.

The book that I am struggling with right now is by Peter Breggin and he contends that human evolution has been driven by shame, guilt and anxiety whether drunk or sober. Too often those who have never been drunk play with other peoples shame guilt and anxiety and drive them up a wall. But simply put…………. recovery from shame guilt and anxiety is done through the verb WORK. But cleverly disguised sides are chosen and the game is called politics. 

But what about friendship; what is friendship?  When two people meet each other in the middle as friends they essentially left their ego at home. Ordinarily in everyday life we are going about with a shield in front of us. We carry it everywhere. But friends don’t use the shield with each other. They are not afraid of harm. So friends meet each other at the bottom. It’s a very creative time. And then these two friends can join up with the others and the nectar of relationship ensues. Not so easy but oh so much a treasure.

The Boost Beyond Ego                   

I have not written in my blog since I've been here in Ormond Beach. I feel almost like a Tarpon Springs sponge. I will wring out some of that sponge and tell you what I've learned here.

One: I have really been blessed to be able to live with Michael.

Two: The Early Ducks Group is a phenomenal batch of folks who share their strength and experience in such a way that one feels gratified to be a human being.

Three: Although the fishing has been mostly fishing and not catching the scenery is so beautiful that it's hard to be disappointed.

Four: For myself at least I have discovered that it is much more important for me to be useful than to be happy (if I have to make a choice).

Five: in order to be useful I will venture back to Gainesville as often as my health allows to participate in the Double Circle Group. The accidental discovery of this configuration is well beyond me. It is certainly a method for placing people heart to heart, soul to soul and find that you can give each other the boost beyond ego. How afraid we all are of closeness but how much we yearn for intimacy without the bondage of self or sex.

Six: I will now seek the only path that I know to gain spiritual strength; and that path is so obvious; so hard for me to see...........i must simply shut my ego down and open myself to thee.

      TRANSITIONING

DS is taking care of business and I am released from the bondage of worrying about his future my attention turns toward what the bottom up is all about. I've tried to read about it but I don't find any nuggets.  I am looking for the main theme in the bottom . In spite of notable men like Trump and Napoleon the bottom keeps us glued to reality. John Irving for instance writes about outliers. In the world according to Garp he writes about a feminist mother who has no interest in sex but commits rape. I don't see how we survive as a people if we are about outliers, pundits, presidents, and popes.  When I talk to people about bottom up processing their eyes glaze over. Even one of my former colleagues didn't know what bottom up processing was. I have to find a way to get peoples eyes to light up because when we work hard  as ordinary people things get better. I have spent an entire lifetime foolishly hoping for a better leadership and failed to find it.  But I am fearful that the bottom is being poisoned by detritus sprinkling down from above. We are so depressed as a People that one in six Americans are taking A prescription drug for depression or anxiety. Another bunch are continuing to smoke cigarettes  and drink fast quantities of whiskey and another bunch is trying to find the perfect killer weed. It is called killer weed because it keeps us from worrying about anything important and laughing about everything that we see around us.

So I think in AA I have found the bottom and hope to find out how they process and how they can help us to find our way.