Indeed, I've been thinking a great deal, lately, about the notion of trust. Over the years, many people who visited me in my office suffered from a most curious illness which seemed to yield a thorough absence of trust ... a belief that I can rely on another to hold me ... to not drop me. A few not-so-brief thoughts concerning my thinking need to be repeated from postings over the past several years in order to clarify what I'm thinking. Healthy living, for me, has two major necessary component parts that join ... that tightly dovetail with each other ... to render the Good Life, or, at least, its possibility in a not-always friendly World.
The first has to do, itself, with a three-component internal-external process. To lead the Good Life, I must be aware of what it is that I want ... call these impulsive wishes to have desires, if you like. I must, then, be willing and able to scrutinize the actions that would follow acting out on these wishes and to rule them out if they on-balance are likely to cause undue pain to myself and/or to others ... more than choosing not to do them would cause. (I'm a follower of the Old Greek Aristotle on this one .... Virtue involves, in part, the recognition that one is always choosing either between two or more mutually exclusive Goods ... or two Bads -- I think it's from the Ethica Eudemia). And thirdly, I must, recognizing that this act has been reasonably scrutinized and promises the fulfillment of a wish -- however fleeting, have what it takes to act on it. Want -- Evaluate/Scrutinize -- Act.
The second component I was thinking about has to do with what I've talked of so often in these ramblings of a man trying to figure out the complexities of his Playing in the Last Quarter ... I am referring to the very rare and not-so-easy ability to recognize that, just as Others are a bit less than Subjects-in-their-own-right inside of my head, I am a bit less than a-Subject-in-my-own-right inside of their minds. I long ago concluded that it is in the acceptance of this Subjectivity of Others (recognizing that they laugh and cry, have relationships to their own theoretical and religious Gods and love others besides me) that the former middle component comes into being. By accepting that Others are complex beings -- Subjects -- just like me, it becomes all but impossible to -- say -- break into their homes and trash it, even if I might covet their Plasma TV. Aside: there were mystics who decided that for God to create a Universe which he filled with the all encompassing Beauty of his/her Kingdom, he had to pull himself back, leaving a space for his Creations to be. They called it Tzimtzum (צמצום) and what to say? to have a relationship with another requires that I/We/One is able to redact oneself to make room for that Other. Sounds so simple!
Maybe a previous leader of the United Nations went too far, but I suspect for my thinking, it was "just so:"
Do you wish to forfeit even that little to which your efforts may have entitled you? Only if your endeavors are inspired by a devotion to duty in which you forget yourself completely, can you keep your faith in their value. This being so, your endeavor to reach the goal should have taught you to rejoice when others reach it.
(Dag Hammarskjøld - 1957 in Markings, p. 153, 1964)
So, back to this illness that many people who have visited my office drag along behind them -- like their bottoms, maybe I'd add. These folk have never, perhaps, been treated as Subjects-in-their-own-right and have not had, therefore, models to copy in turning this benevolently around on others. But what's most striking is the manner in which they've turned it around on themselves. There are three weapons of torment that they use to destroy their own ability to pleasure alone and with others.
In the first place are thoughts about life that are unpleasurable and constrained and impossible to carry into action as they're uniformly two sided: I call them OADS ... Obsessive Ambivalent Dialogues. These thoughts implicitly deny the possibility of the Thought-Scrutinize-Act paradigm that I just before mentioned. Taking Aristotle's better fork in the road won't do it, as the other fork won't be taken.
"I must take both paths; I cannot take both paths."
Talking to such folk caught up in these OADS, one is likely to become thoroughly frustrated and disheartened -- bereft of any future -- for, indeed, it is impossible to satisfy the impossible.
The second and third parts, though, are the icing on the cake. A part of them demands that they do things that are UnPleasurable (Compulsions) and not do things that are Pleasurable (Injunctions and Prohibitions). By establishing such a world, these people (mostly men ... but some women, as well) reverse that paradigm of Want -- Evaluate -- Act ... or, better to say, they reverse the middle part. Actions are scrutinized not by whether they bring pleasure but, rather, by whether they either block that pleasure or cause displeasure.
I haven't counted the number of these visitors to my office over the past 40 years. And sometimes I wonder why I woud take on the task of trying to bring them into the light of choosing pleasure. Hell! Freddy Mercury said: Pain is so close to pleasure ... and the French have a notion of exquisitely painful pleasure ... jouissance. And maybe -- just maybe -- I/we all suffer from some of this disease ... not permitting pleasure.
In any case, for some reason this morning, I came to a conclusion I'll have to try to understand later that trusting and being trustworthy, both, require the knowledge that one's other -- be they kin or friend or visitor -- will choose pleasure over pain ... and not the reverse.
If you understand this connection, I'm all ears.
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