Sane Balanced People?

 When I think of sane balanced people I think of people who both allow themselves to have real feelings and also to arrive at thoughts based upon their feelings.

Often when people don't allow themselves to have feelings they become unbalanced and start to lose their sanity.

However, it is true that sometimes life is so awful (hopefully in your case or others only temporarily) that you must suppress your feelings in order to survive the present situation you are in.

I grew up mostly in a blue collar environment even though my father was valedictorian of his high school Class. Because my father graduated in 1934 from High School it was during the Great Depression when people with college degrees often starved to death alongside of uneducated people living in tents alongside of a river somewhere in the U.S. 

So, my grandfather wouldn't let his boys go to college. Since my father and his older brother especially were very good students they were angry at this. However, now as I look back I see that my grandfather was right in forcing his sons to become electricians working for him in his business. By doing this my father and both of his brothers had jobs always, were working always, always had their own cars and could afford to have girlfriends and then wives by the time my father and his brother were 21 both were married.

So, in this sense he saved my father and his older brother by making them be electricians because tradesmen always were going to be needed to fix and build the houses of wealthier people even though maybe half of the people were homeless part of the time at least during the Great Depression. And many Americans starved or froze to death because of this during the Great Depression too.

So, hard times create hard solutions like now.

Those who survive will have to be practical or at least have someone practical taking care of them.

However, my grandfather sent both his girls to college which really rankled his three sons to meet educated men to marry which worked for one of them who married a Blimp Captain which was a submarine chaser during World War II in the Navy.

Trying to get to useful thoughts is what we all have to do to survive these times.

There is a story of a female friend of mine who I dated in the 1970s and who remained my friend after we broke up. She had gone to France and married a musician supported by the government system there who was very creative. Then her father was dying and so she broke up with her French husband and moved back to the U.S. to take care of her father as he was dying. Then she came to visit my wife and family after he died. 

I asked her why she wasn't crying that her father died? She said, "I went to heaven with him and visited him there so everything is okay." Again I asked her why she wasn't crying because I felt whatever was going on wasn't psychologically healthy.

About one month later she had moved onto my friends acreage and had shaved her head and wouldn't wear clothes but only towels. To me, this is the danger of denying your true feelings and being unrealistic in your assessment of reality.

However, after a few months during the summer of doing all this she returned somewhat to normal and is still able to take care of herself all these years later.

So, the point is there is a danger in not allowing yourself to have your feelings. This is the point I'm trying to make here if you want to continue to be sane and balanced throughout your lives.