Writing As Therapy

All humans need therapy to stay alive even one more day. Therapy could be writing or a Bran muffin or watching the sun rise or being with someone you love. But we all need therapy of some kind to choose to stay alive another day.

When I grew up men and women were more distinct than now (at least they appeared to be) in the 1950s. For example, a man was supposed to be willing to die on a moments notice to protect his family, his country, his civilization. And boys were conditioned to be strong and tortured in this direction so they would be ready to be drafted into the Army at 18 throughout Gym Class from Grade School through High School back then. Girls were expected to sort of live in a fairy tale back then and get married and have children. And the fairy tale attitude was supposed to keep their children alive so they wouldn't kill themselves from that basic horrors of life until the boys were drafted and sent to war and the girls were all married and pregnant supposedly. Though this was supposed to be the ideal it didn't always work out that way for everyone or even for anyone. So, in order to prevent a Third world war that no one survived the world wide social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s took place. This revolution has not ended by the way. It still goes on today in regard to human rights of all kinds worldwide.

So, writing can be a way for a person to struggle to find a way to survive their life, whatever their life might be. Often there is no one to talk to about these things and writing is like having a conversation with someone about important things. So, even if you can't find someone to talk to you can write something and then later read it and it helps you grow as a person. For example, if I write something one day and I keep it often I will read what I have written a week, a month, a year or more later and think something like, "Is that what I thought then? Boy, I sure have learned a lot since then." Or I might think, "Boy. That was a really good point. I was really going in the right direction on that point." Or I might think, "Boy. I was really blowing smoke trying to get attention from that one." Or I might think, "Right on, Fred. People really need to hear that one." So, in the process of writing it isn't necessarily for right now. It is also for you and others to read in other contexts of their lives. It is a record of your happiness and pain which might be useful to you or others later. It is a record of your trying to survive even one more day here on planet earth. And most of all, by writing like this you are your own best friend teaching yourself about life because what comes out of your mouth or your fingers or your pen as you write is you. And so when you read this again you learn about yourself and all the rest of life on earth and beyond.

I want to write something because I think it might be helpful for people to better understand themselves in this way. Being a man used to mean that a man always had to be realistic to the point of wanting to kill himself or die all the time. So, often real men escaped (and still do) into dangerous pastimes in order to come close to death which was desirable for such dangerous men. This is the extreme of what I call "Terminal Macho". I too have this quality within me so I can speak to it. Luckily, I met my first wife and had a son so I stopped rock climbing with thousands of feet of exposure so my son would have a father while he grew up. I lost one friend to rock climbing and several more had near death experiences. But I still kept climbing mountains, riding off road motorcycles, flying planes, gliders, hang gliders and the like. But I did this a whole lot less once I had a son so I'm still alive unlike some of my friends who stayed single.



The opposite extreme of this is the fairy tale woman who constantly lives in a fantasy about life. Though my mother survived the 1930s and was a very practical woman she was also a person who really didn't need organized religion because she lived in her own private world where she could survive and be happy and was always giving to others and absolutely everyone loved my mother because she was just so wonderful and kind to everyone. So, even though she was a minister of a mystical Christian Church, she had a level of private truth that went way beyond any organized religion which made her very special.

My father being a very dominant male moved my mother and I and her mother to San Diego when I was 4 and away from the only home my mother had ever known and her 2 sisters and their families which was Seattle, Washington. My mom could last about 1 years time before she started crying and then got on a plane to Seattle. About 2 weeks later she would come back to us in San Diego or Los Angeles or wherever we lived in Southern California then and be just fine for another year or so. The first time this happened my father and I thought Mom was leaving us for good. But then she came back so we just got used to her leaving like this for about a week or two every year. So, even though Dad was very happy in California, Mom never completely got used to it and missed all her relatives and friends in Seattle. This went on from 1952 until my father passed on in 1985 when my mother started moving all over the place because without Dad she was a ship without a rudder. But she was financially okay even though I worried about her moving all the time from Yucca Valley to Palm Springs to San Marcos to Ashland, Oregon to Seattle to Hawaii to be with my wife and family and I and then back to San Marcos and then back to Seattle and then finally to the Greater San Francisco Bay area near where I live now before she passed away in 2008

( The context sort of got away from me because this next section I actually mean to follow the end of a paragraph 2 paragraphs before this one.)  For me, the most dangerous pastime of my life from age 15 to 25(from age 15 to 21 I started dating at age 15 and went steady with three different girls one to two years each) when I met my first wife was dating a whole lot of women between my ages 21 and 25. I consider this the most dangerous pastime of all if we are going to be serious. Being married to one person and raising kids I found a whole lot more sane than dating a whole bunch of women. What I found difficult was the little things. One person would leave the cap off the toothpaste, another would be really crazy, another might want to kill you for no good reason, another might fantasize that she couldn't live without you and  would consider killing herself, another would psychologically be so unstable that you were afraid to go to sleep around her, another might want you to move to another country or do things you didn't want to do. So, I just found having one sane person to live with and to raise kids with a whole lot more sane than trying to date a whole lot of people. However, for some men dating becomes a whole way of life. However, I consider it dangerous in the extreme but that's just me.

But there is also something to be said for dating a whole lot of people. In the process you tend to discover what you like and what you don't like, socially and sexually. And then you are much better at choosing a mate. So, it isn't just sort of buying the first thing you see with no experience at all and just being miserable the rest of your life. For example, I was really hard on my first wife because I had never lived with a woman outside of my mother and grandmother ever before in my life over about 2 weeks time or so. So, I found I was resentful about a whole lot of things I didn't fully understand. So, when I was married the second time (the second woman I lived with more than two weeks) I realized that most of what I was upset about all women have in common so I was able to let go of a whole lot of stuff that pissed me off because then I realized that there are certain really annoying things that absolutely all women do when they live with a man. Once I realized this was not just one woman but all women I could let a whole lot of resentment go. But that means I didn't learn this until I married the second time when I was 32. Many or most men likely don't ever get this evolved simply because of a lack of experience. So, at this point I can safely say, "I really like women!" Whereas most men might say, "I really want women", but they also might say, "But I don't like them". And the only real difference might be that I like women because I have taken the time to understand them. Besides, they are usually a whole lot safer than hanging out with most men. Ha ha.
 

So, writing is a way to cope with all the paradoxes of life so you or I don't just jump off a cliff in frustration or just take one too many risks and exit our lives prematurely. Keep Writing and stay alive. A lot of others depend upon you.