Out of Balance

For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.  Nathaniel Brandon

At the core of many of our troubles is the unconscious quest for the one decision that can be made once and for all. The one that will yield all benefits and no prices. 

They lived happily ever after. The perfect job. The perfect mate. The perfect children. The perfect house. The perfect body. The perfect person.

Of course, the perfect job runs into some snags. The exact qualities that attracted you to the perfect mate now drive you crazy. The perfect children rebel. The perfect house gets termites.  The perfect body breaks down. The perfect person lives in denial of reality.

“Denial? Not me. Why, I am standing up to all of my responsibilities and am diligently tackling each and every one of them to make them right. I shoulder my responsibilities.”

This is the ‘life is hard and then you die’ model of perfection. Life is a problem to be solved and you are going to do it, single-handedly, and make everyone else tow the line also. 

When I was a pre-teenager, my father, who was raised in an orphanage during the depression, took great pleasure in interviewing any of my friends that came to play on Saturday mornings. The ritual went like this.

My mother and father would be having breakfast, reading the paper and visiting. I would bring my friend in to introduce her to my parents. This was a manner’s requirement in my household. My father would look over his newspaper, take great pains to fold it neatly, cross his legs, light his pipe, all the while looking at my friend while she squirmed under his penetrating gaze. Then he would say: “Well, Nancy, it is very nice to meet you.”

Pause, pause. “Now tell me Nancy, what kind of work did you do today?”

Nancy would stutter and stammer through a litany of ‘I made my bed, cleaned my room, helped my mother, etc.’ Another long pause and my father would deliver his punch line. “So Nancy, you actually call that work?”

By this time, I would be rolling my eyes and dragging my stunned, humiliated friend by the arm and out the door, trying to explain that the third degree treatment was my father’s idea of fun.

My father, the most responsible person I have ever known, died at fifty-nine just at the point when he was starting to give himself permission to enjoy some of the privileges earned from all his hard work. His responsibility/privilege ratio was severely out of balance. 

Another perfection model goes something like this: “What, me worry? I just take life as it comes. I take the path of least resistance. I take whatever I can get. I am deserving because I am_____. Fill in the blank with beautiful, intelligent, handsome, charismatic, funny, from the right family, the right race, the right religion, the right neighborhood, the right college, etc. and therefore, the world owes me. Who I am is enough to qualify me for special privileges.”

This is the type of person that is never satisfied, has an insatiable need for attention, and is prone towards jealousy and resentment of other’s good fortune; stuck in the never-ending cycle of never being as good as they think they are, nor as bad as they think they are.

Sometimes it is difficult to uncover the underlying privileged premise when it comes packaged as a person who seems to be chronically victimized.

The key is consistency.

Consistent anything takes discipline and effort. No one is destined to have only bad breaks. It takes real brilliance to be a 100% loser/victim 100% of the time.

The total victim is a powerhouse of one. Superior in their inferiority.

This person refuses to take any responsibility for creating a happy, interesting, or worthwhile life. The ‘I am tired, sad, mad, depressed, broke, bothered, unhappy, irritated’ litany never ends. A special case. Privileged to wallow in pain and suffering and to side step true responsibility. After all, what can you expect from such a miserable, downtrodden person?

Every responsibility brings privileges. Every privilege brings responsibilities. 

Take some time to review your present life situations from the privilege/responsibility perspective. Balance this equation and you are on your way to creating a balanced and fulfilling life.