Futile
“People suck.” Dr. Onyema Price said. He shrugged too, as if the declaration was to be entirely expected. It of course, wasn’t. He was my therapist ad I expected more than a mere admission of the state of the world. I expected, well, I don’t know what I expected.
“I’m going to need more than people suck here. I’m paying good money for this time on your couch.” I said.
“Reality is what it is. Your bank account doesn’t do much to change that–at least not in ay meaningful way.”
“Jesus, Doc. You go fatalist on me all of a sudden? What happened to the stuff about my feelings and coming into orbit with the reality I am trying to create.”
“I believe all of that to be true, and I believe that the reality of the world doesn’t change our personal habits, Edward. People are always going to be awful and in particular it appears they are always going to be awful to you. Isn’t it time we stopped running away from that reality? After all, there is no place where we can run that this reality won’t be there.”
I wanted to challenge him on that. I wanted to show him examples and produce evidence from the deep well of knowledge that lived inside my phone. I wanted to reach out and slip my arms around his throat and squeeze. He was not helping. This was not helping.
“Do you want to hurt me right now, Edward?”
That gave me pause. “No, why would you–“
“We call them micro-expressions. your rage comes through clearly on your face. However, you realize that rage does nothing to alter the reality for the better, don’t you?”
“I don’t even know what you mean about rage, man. I just didn’t like what you said.”
“Take for instance if you do kill me or at least harm me in some criminal way. What do you think happens next? You slip down into a different par of our reality — among the criminals and the violent people who have lived in that space far longer than you. Now you are at the bottom of an entirely new well to climb. However, getting out doesn’t guarantee a return to the life you had prior. In fact, the guarantee is that you never return. This is the system.”