There it is again: that feeling like my skin is the only thing keeping me from bursting, in a messy explosion, my guts splattering on the walls like some kind of Sydney Pollack painting…
(eew)
Where does this feeling come from? Usually it comes with a powerful desire to help humanity, to change something, to exist, to be important, to love, to be loved, to realize my potential. But the borders of reality–the real world–close around me, and I am powerless.
I quote John Mayer (1977 ~)
“I’m bigger than my body gives me credit for.”
(Did you know he was dating Jessica Simpson?
Is it okay if I lose all respect for John?)
Anyway. I’m reading this book “The Road Less Traveled” (by M. Scott Peck M.D.) and it’s like, amazing, man. It doesn’t have the answer to everything, of course, but it touches on some truths.
(I plan on posting the major insights on here.)
Have you heard of Maslow’s heirarchy: self-actualization?
So I was reading that book yesterday, and feeling all tingly and enlightened, and then my friend Farida comes over and asks me about it, and I tell her,
“Well, it’s about life, I guess. And how to love people.”
“But you have lot of love,” she says in her thick Russian accent. “You are one of nicest people I know.”
“Oh.” I blush.
“I’m still working on it. I mean, like in high school, I was so afraid of taking chances, I didn’t really talk to people, and then I’d go home and not talk to my family, you know, I wasn’t really living.”
She laughs and points to herself. “That is like me. I am on computer all day. You see.”
I’ve always thought, for such a cool person, who wants to experience America and learn English, she’s in her room way too much.
We talk about how sometimes people avoid life and relationships because they are afraid of the pain.
“I am afraid be in relationship with boy,” she says. “I don’t want get hurt.”
I wanted to be a psychotherapist and ask more questions, but by this point I was pretty zonked out because I’d gone cross-country skiing earlier that day and my entire body was dead.
(It was my first time. So fun! # of times fell down: 18…)
