Blog 89 The Argument (Gary)
The Argument (Gary)
I awoke this morning facing my little kid who is disappointed and always waiting for a better day, and realized how often it happens. I need to negotiate something different or I will forever be in that state of being. I cannot afford to live my life this way any longer. I find my fantasies are less active, but now more in the shadows, yet still very much there. So what is it? What is my movie?
My movie is my hot wife (Sue, not someone else) greeting me in the early morning wearing a nice wrap. She is lovely with her makeup on and wearing a smile. The backyard is large, and includes quiet, a pool, and my Cedar (dog) and Spunky (the cat). The air is fresh and clean. My Porsche is in the garage, we have two or three million in the bank (investments), our children are happy and engaged in good things in the world, I work two days a week.
Wait, I am starting to feel something is missing.
It’s the play. I want to travel to fun places and do fun things with my wife, and adventure travel with my buddies. I want to do road trips, backpack, and roam the planet.
So let’s redefine this.
“Are you looking for something beyond fun? Is this longing again for belonging?”
“I know I belong in Nature, and I miss it. I want the cabin at Lake Tahoe, as well as the home in Carmel Valley, and my wife hot and sexy, travel where and when I want, have friends all over the world, serve the Air Rescue Teams, be a hero, serve my country, serve my patients, write books, invest well, be physically fit and attractive, well dressed and groomed. Once a year I would do an adventure trip with my buddies. Sue and I would be traveling for a month in August, my brother and I for ten days in March, Sue and I for two weeks in December/January, I would backpack or road travel for three days a month in July, August, September and October. I would cross-country ski and snowshoe in the months of January through April.”
This is what my little kid wants, as well as my adult. (Oh wait, don’t forget dancing to rock and roll once a month.)
The problem is my little kid keeps waiting and wanting, and feeling cheated. He is not sitting by the window waiting but resentfully tolerating in his head (room) for it all to come together. That is the truth. So now I am HOME but part of me (my little kid) continues to wait for something to complete me, to make me whole.
My wife is tired and frustrated with this “forever unhappy kid.” She wants and deserves an adult partner. I need to negotiate a plan based on reality. I don’t like that. I don’t like the reality. My kid says, “Me and Mark have to make a million dollars on this book!” I will wait, then I will be happy. I can’t be happy now. My little kid says he is deprived, cheated, and “Look what everyone else has.”
Laugh: How many people do I know have the lifestyle I just described? Hello—no one. Is it possible? Yes, but no. This could happen in a movie (where my kid grew up), but not here. So here is the negotiation:
“I can’t give you a replacement for the large happy family that you created in your mind. I can’t be in Carmel Valley and here, too. I don’t have the wealth you saw and idealized in Playboy. You made life up based on movies, catalogs, comics, and magazines. That is all you had. You picked the best pictures. Only the best. You picked perfection. Those pictures are possibilities, but you cannot have it all.”
“So what can I have?”
I have started to feel cheated here. Those were fantasy caricatures of reality that were not reality.
“Get over it. Create a new reality. Let it go. Quit drugging yourself!”
I feel part of me being anxious and resentful.
“Are you telling me I can’t ever have all that?”
“That is right. It helped you survive as an emotionally hungry child, a starving (that is a better word) child, but the best was having a lover—my wife, and playing together: Together, fun, friends, the outdoors, sex, and a little money. That was exciting, fun, and happy. That was a reality that was achievable, and low budget.”
As soon as I clouded it with the movie background of desire I blew it up. In the movie version I had to have more and more and more and more rather than delivering my passion and playing.
“Does that mean moving back to a small apartment?”
“No, but it means being in relationship. Being present.”
“What about having excitement?”
“That can be good or it can mean being addicted to a drug.”
So let’s put something together here that works so the little kid is off my back and in my lap. No fits of the sullen child please.
“So here is the deal. I will give you fun and excitement in exchange for you giving up your illusions through pictures and movies that were your source of security, safety, and comfort. This won’t be a movie or pictures outside of you. It will be real and NOW, and you will feel it emotionally and physically.”
I will do it by slowing down, planning, scheduling.
“I will give you a world without illusion where we play every day, explore, feel our freedom, spirit, and creativity. Breathe it in. I will no longer have shoulder, gall bladder, liver, and muscle problems because I will breathe. No longer pursue more perfection of fantasy but the freedom and exploration of a free spirit playing in everything he does. It will require responsibilities, jobs, and work.”
I am a little anxious but I know this can be done. Be here; play now. I no longer choose the past; rather I play here and now. The dreams that held me together no longer serve me. I am here. I am home. I am me. Illusions be gone and I belong.
“What can I do today that makes this real, to ask this of every day? I have an unyielding need to prove the fantasy is not worth its effort.”
“It is an exchange of energy. You are already here. You have manifested most of your desires. Now, to give back, to generate for others, not by giving up the dreams, but by putting the energy out, and trusting that I will get all I desire.”
The rules have simply changed.
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