Bitterness and Jetpacks

"Jetpacks are the ultimate dream of every scientist! Skies filled with ordinary citizens strapped to rockets. "-Phil
"Flying through the air at sixty miles an hour in any direction!"'-Lem
"A lot of people are going to die.."-Lem
-From "Better off Ted" episode "Goodbye, Mr. Chips"

I've always wondered how our spatial perception would change if we were allowed to navigate fully in three dimensions. I also think that it would change the perspective of the generation born with the technology in existence if the technology were created, much like how people born in the age of computers generally have an easier time using them.

People have this weird love-hate relationship with my handwriting. I have gotten comments from "it looks like Arabic script" to "what is this? It's unreadable!". The interesting thing is that I may be ambidextrous, as there are specific tasks that are easier to do with my left than my right hand, and I can write with my left hand like a fifth grader. Now, remember how much training it takes to get a dominant hand to write correctly. Even accounting for the better motor control as an adult, that's pretty good evidence that if I trained my left hand I could use both hands interchangeably.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS NOT DIRECTED AT ANYBODY. THESE ARE PERSONAL MUSINGS, NOT AN ATTACK. I MEAN, I HONESTLY DON'T SEE ANYTHING I WOULD ATTRIBUTE TO ANYBODY READING, BUT JUST IN CASE.
CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPS!!!!

I ensconsed myself in the recovery community for about a year after rehab. But the dreary, depressing AA meetings in smoky church basements made me realize these people lived their lives in the past. They carried their history of addictions around with them like a dead hamster in their pocket. And the hamster was really beginning to smell.

Recovery was a daytime talk show on a grander stage, with particpants shouting back and forth their survival stories of so many years ago. Stories of addiction were no longer stories, but rather they became a means of competition of who had been more addicted. People fabricated ridiculous stories to garner more sympathy from the crowd, and I noticed people even changed their stories over time.

“I lost everything,” a particpant would say. “I went from being a litigation attorney to sharing iceberg lettuce out of a dumpster with a dog.”

Not to be outdone, the next person would offer something like “I sold my daughter to a porn company for two fifths of Jim Beam and a packet of sherm. I got on a moped and crashed into a tree, knocking my girlfriends two front teeth out. Now every time she talks, dogs flock to her.”

With pity filling the room like vodka into a bowl of prom punch, the stories would escalate. “I abandoned my children with a molestor in the Target appliance department, prostituted my own grandmother, and killed a family of migrant workers having a picnic.” It wasn’t sharing, it was gloating.
I confided in a friend that I was leaving the recovery community. He looked at me like I was something he had just picked out of this teeth, but kindly offered a final mantra as I skipped out the door.

“Just remember, you only have to change one thing. Everything.”

That was the only mantra I ever took to heart.

-The Weasel

"The Weasel" shared part of his story about recovering from alcohol and cocaine abuse in his blog. I don't agree with some of his points. For example, the man does not realize what the cycle of abuse is, and I have had a couple people try to use the "giving me a kick in the ass" method to get rid of my depression. It didn't work, and, in fact, scarred me a bit, though the depression was not a life choice I made but rather a biological time-bomb that was triggered by my environment. However, some people may consider it as falling into the same category, which is why I include it as such.

I've been thinking about this quote from Weasel's blog combined with my previous post on post-traumatic embitterment disorder. I used to be very sympathetic to bitter people. Hey, I carried a lot of bitterness myself in the past, though most of it has evaporated, at least regarding events that relate to me personally. I can't stop being bitter for the children in Rwanda, or the endangered iguana that got beaten to death by a drunk, for instance. But I always related my ability to move on, to blame actions on myself and not on my past, to not being through enough pain.
And it's true, I have been extremely lucky. I have been through some bad bad things, but I have had a lot of great things happen to me and great luck in my life. Being monetarily supported through college is something many people could never have.
But at what point does personal responsibility come into play? When do you say that "you're supposed to be an emotionally mature adult, start acting like one"? Sometimes people simply can't move on, and it would be unfair to ask them to do so without help. That's not weakness of character, that's events overwhelming the individual ability to cope with a situation. But other times..how can we, as people separate from the situation, make the distinction?
And there are people who use their stories to negate other's pain. Not that I think anyone living in the lower middle class and up in first-world countries usually have stories that would compare to a Rwandan refuge; that's not the point here. I don't know, I think that people who have suffered pain, real pain, all can sympathize with each other, and a common goal: wipe that pain off the face of the earth. I personally hope that nobody ever has to go through the things which I have, and there are far worse lives than the one I have lived.
I think many people go through at least a phase where want their pain to be special. It required so much effort to go through, and there is a myth in popular culture that the more pain you have suffered, the deeper a person you are. Yes, being touched by a truly traumatic event changes a person and gives them new perspective on life. Perhaps this phenomenon also stems from archetypal spiritual purification, such from the libations of the Hindus to the many interesting inventions of Christians. But I think Buddha had a point when, after starving and whipping and starving and whipping himself, he realized this was madness and sat underneath the Boddha tree. A deep life full of meaning does not mean a life full of pain.