Curse/blessing

My mind is a variable thing.

I suppose everyone's mind is. But at a certain point in my life, I wilfully took up the practice of observing myself, even to the point of observing my changing perceptions as they shift with the currents of my life. I have not been able to establish any greater stability by doing that, but at least I can watch myself wobble all over the place.

Right now I'm in a clarity phase. I've eliminated a lot of bad habits and stepped up some good ones, and the result has been to feel like I'm seeing a lot of things really clearly. It's a treat.
Except for one thing: seeing life really clearly isn't exactly cheery most of the time. To look squarely at things as I understand them is to look deep into a terrifying abyss. And that's the trouble.

Based on the facts, there's really only one way out of the human condition: to believe in something. If you believe in something, then it's not the facts, but the story that matters. But the fact is, you can never prove that believing in something works - except by going ahead and believing in it.

The curse/blessing of the post-modern man is to have too many things to believe in, and too many reasons not to believe at all.

Me, myself and I

I'll start this post by saying I'm aware of Freud's theory of the Ego, the Superego and the Id, but it's been a really long time since I've read it and I'm not drawing on it consciously here.

But I have been spending a lot of time figuring out me, myself and I. Lately I've come to believe that these are separate, if overlapping and interdependent parts of the person I am. It's a semantic challenge to talk about, but it goes like this:

Me is the plain human male, seeking the plain human things of this world - food, sex, warmth, heat, gasoline, Blue Rodeo albums, a digital camera, and something from Ikea to keep my shoes tidy. Me is dumb, but decent enough, mostly, and his motivations are clear. Yes, he thinks about women all the time. Yes, he barbeques inordinately often. Yes , he builds stuff compulsively and drives all over the place marking territory. But that's me.

Myself, on the other hand, is completely interior. I don't think anyone but me knows him, and me mostly hates him. Myself is like a dark echo, some kind of ghost in the machine that was generated when me became aware of me. That's typical of me, to go and invent a bogeyman and then not be able to get away from the little bastard. Stupid me for doing that; I get the sense it's my own fault myself is a jerk.

Then there's I. I can see me, watch me and even love me, for all my shortcomings. I can stay calm and silent in the face of all that distresses me. I even can give a stern lecture to myself, and it's occasionally pretty effective. I'm eternal. I'm at peace. I'm in tune.

Now, if only me and myself could quit the endless questing and questioning, I could get on with my life.