(Diary)
I’ve finally decided to use Instagram as a public profile of my personal life so that the only online version of me isn’t the academic and controversial one – my philosophical, behavioral, and political work is only a fraction of my existence, and the judicial personality I display there of necessity is not one that’s representative of the rest.
And in perusing many thousands of photos over the past few decades, selecting those that were of meaning to me, I learned a few things. So I thought I’d capture them for future review while in this state of mind:
1) How grateful I am to the women in my life. In general, everything good that has made me happy has been a product of the women in my life. My other achievements have effectively just paid for the luxury of having those amazing women in my life. Other than that all my achievements serve only to demonstrate I can excel in whatever I put my mind to. And sure, this gives me a kind of legitimacy. Both from others and myself. But none of it made me happy. At best it relieved me from working for others – which I found impossibly tiresome.
2) How I see my life as chapters consisting of the woman in my life, the company I’m building, and the car I’m driving. And that’s an ‘odd’ index but it’s the index I use to understand the chapters of my life history.
3) How, while in general, women change more than men, I have changed much much more than the women in my life – causing stress to those relationships. This is despite their efforts to keep up.
4) How, every relationship with those amazing women that has failed – every single one – has been the product of overworking to the point of exhaustion such that I disconnect from everything including my relationships. I go emotionally numb. (Autistic disassociation.) And it takes me a year or more to recover. More like four if it’s serious. Relationships with women cannot bear it.
5) How, while I refused to play the ‘game’ of ‘beggary’ that is the academy, it was the only forum in which I could experience a life of peers. And so I spent the vast majority of my life with the wrong people – good people – just people I could not share common frame with except at the upper ranks of companies. And even then as an executive it meant dragging people along and training them once I learned how. But it was still a life mostly ‘alone’ and lacking peers who shared the same intellectual frames of reference.
6) How, even though I have known this for a while, the reason for my intellectual work is in no small part to sedate the anxiety of lacking that peerage, as much as explaining to others how I think, and how they can think if they put in the effort.
7) How I have been either overcoming the effects of my mild Aspergers, or overcoming my immune system issues, or my subsequent cancer issues, for most of my life – and how the combination of those issues and the pervasive alienation of lacking peers compounded it. But more importantly how the women in my life made it possible for me to tolerate it all. And to produce those achievements that granted me the luxury of their affections. Love works. It does.
8) There is a certain value to setting our a life’s mission by the time you’re twelve. I did. There is a certain cost to one’s life and happiness by choosing that mission – particularly if it is a difficult one (and I chose a difficult one). Because, at least in my case, that mission was the frame around which I constructed my life. And I gave that mission priority. That priority came at the expense of my health, relationships, children, and more. The only good I can claim, is that I have been able to produce my intellectual work because of those experiences.
9) In some ways I wish I was more ordinary. So that I could enjoy family and friends more than intellectual and economic achievements. But I am not. And I cannot. And so I appreciate the ordinary men who are, and who can. The truth is people at the margin rarely die happy. We understand too much, and cannot bear our powerlessness in moving the world for the betterment of those who only stumble through it in the dark – and as such suffer the consequences of their doing so. Even if only psychological.
10) But again, in retrospect, those things I value in my personal life – not my intellectual or business life – have been the women that I have been lucky enough to share that life, and those experiences with. Despite our differences. They will always be angels. And in part, because I claim responsibility for the fall of those relationships. I put too much before them. And expected too much of my body, mind, and soul in doing so.
Cheers
CD