Attempting to follow an inner still-whisper last summer, I committed to withdrawing from public forums, aka social media. I did this after seeing how I was only polluting the swamp of our collective psychological river despite what I believed were my good intentions at the time. My experiment seems to have born the fruit I had hoped (at least for me), so I will likely continue the restraint indefinitely—except right now of course. I couldn’t resist sharing an insight from a recent experience. Maybe this sharing will somehow counterbalance my prior words as a kind of chlorine for the pool of thought I had previously only peed in. Plus, I’d like to continue my (mostly) silence by leaving something positive in the pool. As is my custom, I get to my point at the very end, after extensive navel-gazing. But here goes.

Part of the grand mystery of life seems to be the truth that attitude determines everything, including individual reality and destiny. Someone once taught me that the numeric value of the word attitude (i.e., if you consider A=1, B=2 etc.) equals 100. Sure enough. Add it up, it’s true. Despite this silly coincidence, it seems true that our approach to anything determines our reality reflected to us from it. This is particularly true when it comes to trauma, tragedy, and even the trivial. The approach we take to each determines our lived reality.

If they can recall them, most people consider dreams trivial. In fact, the inability to recall dreams is itself a reflection of one’s attitude toward them. They are not recalled (i.e., dismissed from awareness) because they are unimportant, trivial. That’s okay. This attitude works for most of humanity.

By some stroke of fate, the supposedly trivial began gripping my attention three years ago this month. For nearly a decade before that, my psyche had been transfixed in a terrible struggle to understand how to hold the tension of opposing truths in my life. Without disclosing the depths of my personal struggle (recall I’m trying to learn my lesson about pollution), I can say it was very unsettling for a very long time as it related to existential issues of meaning and purpose. I suppose in some ways this very struggle is just what my existence as a person means. I am gaining deeper insight from it though, thankfully.

Because I am overly serious, I take my challenges seriously. I am not particularly lazy, which meant I had spent a decade studying and searching for understanding. That last word is important to the conclusion I ultimately try to draw at the end of this. I believe the word means to truly stand _under_ the thing at issue, to truly hold or feel its “weight”—its metaphorical or literal burden. Just as my pursuit toward understanding seemed to flatten toward an apparent mediocrity of meaning, a kind of crescendo occurred when I experienced a personal tragedy in late 2018. This is where trauma ultimately met the seemingly trivial. What I had felt before my brother’s death was existential anxiety arising from personal experiences of cognitive dissonance I seemed somewhat in control of. But the horrible reality and circumstances of Paul’s death introduced me to a realm of feeling I did not want to enter and could not control. Of course, I had no choice in either.

With my will and spirit sufficiently broken, I had no other choice but to pay attention. Those two words are heavy. Pay. Attention. I have done a lot of personal writing about these words, and they have cost me more than I wanted to give. But the remuneration has transformed me. When messages come to me at night that would cost me my prior perspective, I tenaciously resist. Who wouldn’t? Despite my efforts at avoidance, grace continues to beckon, “for mercy claimeth all which is her own.”

If taken seriously, dreams can ultimately be understood. In my opinion, once understood dreams are profoundly compensatory. (Science has actually proven they can also be compensatory even without awareness or understanding.) Life begins to claim its telos. A small example of this came to me recently and I hope to connect the dots here by explaining the experience.

Several months ago, I had a series of dreams with extremely vivid recurring imagery and emotion. I’ve been trying to approach an understanding of them ever since. One image includes, strangely enough (which is how dreams work), a shower that becomes inaccessible by a green woolen shroud. Another includes a small, frail kitten at the base of a tower; the cat then grows into a numinous form through a certain process. My work with these (and related) images and symbols brought insight to me about my attitude in life, including how to approach suffering from specific life experiences. What is to be learned through my approach and attitude? What do I want reflected back to me? What answers? Understanding how to hold irreconcilable opposites: Power versus Love; Control versus Surrender. Once I think I know, how is it obtained? An approach to understanding came from the seemingly trivial images of unconscious night. Then, very recently, a conscious (not dream) experience brought a powerful synchronicity to confirm the truthfulness of the message I was receiving.

I was walking with Lyric through an art gallery when I came upon an unusual painting by Ted Geisel. He titled his work, “Cat in Obsolete Shower Bath.” For deep reasons, the image alone stopped me in my tracks. I saw in it a depiction of imagery from my dreams months ago. When I read the title, I was further intrigued. Then I did some research. (I can’t help it, it’s just what I do.) The artist held this painting in his personal portfolio and never published it while he was alive because it was a private piece he made in an effort to express how he felt as a young man in pursuit of life.

Experts on the piece have since written:

“[A]s if to look back on his life and recognize that without his early struggles–the dingy apartments, crazy landlords, and community shower-baths–the Cat and perhaps the entirety of [Geisel’s] career, may never have materialized. It is hard to know how life will unfold as one is living it. Moments that seem insignificant can only be understood as formidable upon later reflection. Ted’s early New York days … likely had a more profound effect on him than could have possibly been imagined at the time.”

For those who don’t know, Ted Geisel was known as Dr. Seuss. It seems only in the often-painful struggles of life is where purpose, meaning, and true vocation itself are found. No, there is no causal connection between my life and Dr. Seuss. But seeing that image depicted outside the work I had already done with related symbols was confirmation of the meaning of its truth to me, arising from the seeming trivial. “The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner.”

Joseph Campbell supposedly said, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” A true paradox, which brings me to my ultimate point in writing any of this, the seeming paradox of attitude. It’s a lesson I’m beginning to learn as I enter the middle passage of my life. As always, the Prince of paradox said it best: “whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. … When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy family, nor thy rich neighbours; … But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee.”

For they cannot return the favor! Such sayings are “formidable upon reflection.”

If love, acceptance, and understanding are what I want, I must develop them first and then give them away. But not to just anyone, the point is to give them particularly to those who cannot give them back. Easy to read or to write. Difficult to approach if it means I must possess and project them first. The price of paying that kind of attention is often far too high for me. I know this because my attitude reflects everything back to me as my approach to it.

The ultimate attitude is love. But as paradox goes, to love is to lever. I have been deeply moved in my study of Simone Weil’s work. She wrote, “A lever. We lower when we want to lift.” The profundity of those nine words is astounding.

Human love works only as a lever. But what a herculean task to descend below and then hold the weight of another’s life. To love is to understand—to truly stand under and hold another’s suffering. The price of paying that kind of attention is formidable upon reflection. Reflect on the metaphor of the act of Simon the Cyrene, “on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus.” Attitude is everything because it is reflection. We lower when we want to lift.

Can you imagine what a world of such lowering would be like? Significantly less rage and pee in the pool! Thanks for reading.