When I "rebooted" a year ago, I cataloged a long list of things I wanted to cultivate. The results, as I look back over the year are mixed. Some changes have taken and have been a success. I have broken or, at least, weakened my attachment to things. The need to consume, to acquire or to buy has diminished to a mere shadow of the past. It is not completely banished, there is more to be done, but, if anything, the desire for material things is continuing to shrink. Good.
As I read over my journal entries, I see noble and well considered intentions to make wholesale changes to be a better man, husband, father, friend and so on but what I don't see is any intention to put all these things to God and to give God input into what he wanted me to become. The problem is I was focused on labels, names that people can call me that point to me being a good, honorable and God fearing man. I was completely focused on externals, on how the world sees me but not how I see myself when I ask the question, God what is your will for me. My false self was still in charge even though my true self was kicking at the door to escape and grow into what I was meant to be.
The year has been both awesome and awful. The arrival of Jane marks the high point and a new leaving off place as we, Lori and I, think and marvel into our future.
It has been an awful year for my ego but I have to add the mistreatment my ego encountered has been long overdue. It is time for that miserable thorn in my side to be vanquished. I have seen in dramatic clarity the havoc the false self I mistakenly nourished has caused. A I result I have embraced an immense amount of pain, sorrow and regret but I am slowly coming to understand while the misery is real because the things damaged are not real but are simply constructs by mind of a small boy who was only attempting to frame a sense of understanding of the world and his part in it.
How curious it is that an imagined hurt suffered by an imagined belief about myself can be so persistently painful for so long and lingers on after the false self has been found to be a traitor and enemy of the true self.
As I look back over the years since I came in from the dark, it is readily clear this past year has been the most, hmm, what is the right word? Actually there might not be a word but it will take several. Much has been revealed. More has been learned. Even more has been experienced.
Let's see. I found myself experiencing a real crises of identity. After a lifetime of being willing to step to be a leader and suddenly found myself questioning why I was motivated to seek something that often ended up making me miserable because of the stress caused by a mismatch of ability and demands. When you see yourself as a leader, a manager or a motivator, it is hard to recognize who is looking back at me in the mirror now that I am no longer in that role. What's more, I found myself questioning what I what to be a part of much less being a leader in that thing whether it is at work, in the church or elsewhere.
I acquired some new labels. ADD and RSD. We now understand that things like ADD are not black and white but fall on a spectrum. I clearly have some things that fall on the spectrum but RSD also seems to be something that as a spectrum. RSD? Rejection Sympathetic Dysmorphia. In layman's terms, I am overly sensitive and "get my feelings hurt too easily." What should either be so minimal as to not register can flare me up into a major hurt and I either withdraw as far as I can get or lash out at someone, usually my wife but sometimes at co-workers or family. When it happens, it happens just a when a balloon bursts or a gunshot goes off. The lag time between trigger and response is so fast that I can't even see it coming. I don't even have a needle in my fingers or a gun in my hand when I trigger yet the force of the blast can be bewildering.
I learned some other things. I am an Enneagram type 6 which means I was born to live in fear and anxiety about virtually aspect of life. I wake up in the morning like an antelope on the prairie and within seconds I am often in full fight/flight mode so I have to wonder if it is time to start running or just put my head down and use my horns to take on whatever might be threatening me. The trouble is there is nothing real to fight or even to run from and it hard to respond to a figment of my imagination.
Also, it was revealed that I am an MBTI ISFJ. There are lots of good things about ISFJ and Type 6 but a common theme is that I am sensitive to push back, confrontation and criticism. Nothing revealed was particularly surprising even though several common areas all validate who I am and how I react to the world.
The reality, however, is that as interesting as of these discoveries might be, they really don't matter. If I have thoroughly understood the overarching message, my personality is just that, personality. What does matter is how well I can develop the skill to separate external factors which I might think impact my ego or self-esteem. The notion that what other people think of me is, bluntly, none of business. The only thing that matters is the opinion of God and the fact he loves all of us unconditionally has been pounded into my head on a daily basis for at least the year and on a frequent basis for the preceding decades back to when I reached the age of reason, whatever that is.
The hardest message for me to accept in the AA big book is the statement that if am disturbed, not matter the reason, the problem is with me but not anything or anyone else. It is not that I spend the day being vigilant for slights or insults, but there is nothing I like more than to feel entitled to good old fashioned self-righteous anger if I have been wronged. My default is to seek to always be right. After all if I am not right, I must be wrong and what use am I if I am wrong. My whole sense of worth is balanced on that narrow, wobbly rail and I tend to fall off of it more than I can stay balanced on it. One peculiar aspect of a relationship I have a with a co-worker is she gets no value out of me if I am right because being right robs her of the ability to tease me, something that we both like, as confounding a notion as that might be.
The need to be right is not good for any relationship, however, when all focus is on focus is on being right instead of being motivated to do the right thing. Being right and doing the right thing are not always lined up. In fact they can be mutually exclusive if I lose sight of the fact that the most important response to anything is to first be kind. I consider myself to be a kind person but being right can pervert that impulse as quickly as striking a match.
The thing about the reboot is that no ground once taken remains forever taken. At any minute of any day, the ground can be to slide like sand turned to slurry by a sudden storm. About the time I decide to say I am just going to sit here for a while and watch the clouds float by, I get hit but an unexpected rain that sends me scurrying for cover while cursing the heavens. This is not a good program for happiness.
Still, if I were to have to offer a definitive response to the question of whether I am better off today than I was 14 months ago my swift and unswerving answer is yes. Without the silly uproar created by a dramatic plan to reboot the reboot, I intend to keep growing. I have to. The alternative might levy a cost I can't bear to cover. No might here. The alternative would separate me from what I hold most dear.
Today was not so good. Neither was yesterday nor the day before but none of them bear resemblance to the misery of only 14 months ago. Tomorrow will be better but if not tomorrow than one day this week and we will be off in the right direction again.
