Have You Fired Your Tour Guide???

I pray that I will have the strength to keep the light alive in my heart so that I can see and point to the promising shadows appearing on the walls of our world

Henri Nouwen

It would not be advantageous to a group of Mammoth Cave tourists somewhere in a dark passageway if the guide that got them there suddenly dropped dead. Some of the routes through the cave system are trickier than others, however. Life is trickier still. Sometimes we lose faith all of a sudden in someone who has been a role model. The faith can come back, it may even come back and disappear again time after time like a yo-yo--I think this happens with most of us in regard to our all-too-human parents or other adult figures we have known since early childhood. There are the epiphanies like "Oh wow, my dad sure is a pathetic angry fool, I wouldn't want to be like him in a million years." But then he'll do or say something impressive and he'll go back on the pedestal.

When I remember to, I pray that I can be of use to someone other than the four cats I live with. Granted, it feels good to be needed by them, to be the one who goes out and reels in the fish and scales them and filets them and sautees them and cuts them up into cat-size chunks, to be the one who keeps the toilet paper dispenser by their litter box loaded with Charmin. But my relationships with these cats are not always completely emotionally and intellectually satisfying.
We all want to be of use; we want someone to appreciate us, we want to feel we are worthy of the space we take up in this world; if no one needs us, appreciates us, considers us worthy, it is too easy to start daydreaming about the 2nd St. Bridge.

The bridge is neither here nor there, perhaps I mention it because a friend spoke of temptation to jump earlier today. How can I help a friend feel needed when she is so busy needing--she needs people to need her, but she's not strong enough now to give anything.

I think we have to need people just to be themselves sometimes. Why do we "have to" do this?
If we only want or need people if and when they can be helpful to us in some obvious way, there is something to look at in ourselves. Are we too caught up in our own interests? Are we living only for our own career, our own prestige, our own health and happiness???

I worry that I sometimes am overly concerned about these matters myself. Sometimes I have a hard time "being there" for people who do not have much to give. I worked for eight years in the mental health field, longer than I've worked in a any field but writing (I've always been a writer). The trick is, when you work in mental health you get paid for helping people, so it's no real indicator of character. Yeah, you can be a counselor or advocate for the mentally ill AND care about the people you work with, or you can have the worst attitude imaginable, and in the latter case your job is hell.

An attitude of openness toward one's fellow humans is to be avoided if one is afraid of getting involved. An attitude of neediness it to be avoided if one wants friends. Factually speaking, most of us are simply caught up in survival much of the time and feel we have little to give. I can give time and money up to a point because I love and care about someone. If the person keeps asking for more, pretty soon my back is up against the wall and I have to start saying NO. Can I continue to love and deeply accept the needy person when I've begun to feel threatened?

I've asked for too much from some friends, and sometimes this has meant the end of the friendship. Apologies don't always suffice. Promises to return the favors such friends have done are not always trusted.

I don't consider myself subhuman because I'm Bipolar. The episodes of illness are journies to a strange country; I can report on the journies like a tourist, what I see and hear and imagine. Many feel too threatened to listen to such reports. Some are too caught up in astonishment at the intensity of the experiences, and can't resist judging me because I get so caught up in my
stories I'm not aware at the time they are "only stories." Others judge me for the things I say of do, holding me fully responsible despite the fact that when I'm sick I do have poor judgment.

A tour guide can take people through danger giving them all through it a feeling that they are safe and protected. The guide may not mention every danger as his group safely passes it by.
The worst danger I myself have negotiated as I have been writing this blog entry is the stiffness
of my posture at the computer which has caused pain in my shoulder and slight numbness in my neck. I should give this blogging up for what remains of Lent.

---Harriet.