is<\/em> something \u201cthere\u201d that is worth looking for, or learning how to look. Learning to see finer structures or hear greater subtleties also involves staying cool, not being overwhelmed with anxiety about not getting it, not feeling badly that you missed a cue, or worrying that the other person won\u2019t give you the time to learn it.<\/p>\nIt reminded me to give attention to my project of illustrating metaphysics and other far-reaching insights: People will need to warm up to the gestalt that there is something worth looking for, that there are patterns, what to look for in the jumble.<\/p>\n
The incident with Allee in the dream reminded me that although I\u2019m bright in some ways, in other ways I miss cues that other people half as scholarly pick up easily. There are different sensitivities. I\u2019m aware that it\u2019s not just that\u2014I\u2019m sort of half-way on this\u2014but some of those sensitivities I haven\u2019t cultured because they are emotionally loaded. Either there was too much scolding, humiliation, what\u2019s the use, and withdrawal; or I didn\u2019t see the pay-off; or I glimpsed at what I thought was the pay-off and it didn\u2019t seem worth the effort. All these lessons rose up from the dream and reminded me to slow down and remember that I\u2019m introducing lots of new stuff to people that they may well not have the mental and emotional infrastructure to absorb. The dream situations reminded me that even when I tried I couldn\u2019t see what I was supposed to see by a sheer act of will. I vaguely sensed that it would gradually appear: Oh, it\u2019s that! Those little markings are what I should look for.<\/p>\n
A third dream fragment mixed with these was that the thick lenses of my glasses had come out and I was trying to replace them. This has indeed happened in the last many years, and on reflection it reinforced the whole recognition of how much I depend on prostheses, glasses; how blind I am\u2014some, but not too much\u2014but that degree of near-sightedness\u2014more than most\u2014was a handicap I didn\u2019t know I had until the world was revealed to me as outlined more sharply than I ever knew. That experience of revelation was a revelation on another level\u2014that folks don\u2019t know what they don\u2019t know. I wasn\u2019t willfully denying my perception; I really couldn\u2019t discern what others could see clearly. This continues to be a lesson for me in compassion.<\/p>\n
Why are people so dumb? Why shouldn\u2019t I just be angry with them? It seems as if they\u2019re willfully refusing to see what\u2019s obvious to me? But I\u2019m blind myself: I don\u2019t see that they don\u2019t see. I also was foolish enough to believe them when they said that it was okay when it was not, or (reminded by a Dilbert cartoon sequence), that they understood me when they didn\u2019t. They were lying to me. From their perspective, they weren\u2019t lying, they were trying to signal to me that they weren\u2019t able to follow me, that I was rattling on too long, enough already\u2014from their perspective they were being patient and tactful and trying to give me signals! From my dense perspective, why didn\u2019t they just come out and say it? I don\u2019t pick up on indirect messages. I don\u2019t know how to read them. Or maybe I learned to screen them out because they were so common and life-depleting when I was young. <\/p>\n
This leads to the fearful recognition that I got a great big dose of mixed messages for the first four years of my life\u2014and longer\u2014the first seven\u2014maybe the first eighteen and more. My mother found me trying. She loved me in a thousand ways, doing for me, helping me. But she didn\u2019t like me and I sensed it. Like the dirt slope on the hill in the aforementioned dream, I didn\u2019t know how to parse this karmic message. How can a person love you and yet not like you? But it gave me a deep patterning: I learned to expect this from others and still at 76, after 38 years of marriage, find it a bit surprising\u2014delightfully so\u2014that Allee seems to like me.<\/p>\n
Getting past the barrier of being \u201ctrying\u201d to others has not been easy for me. There are other ways that I was trying even as I tried not to be. I withdrew when perhaps they would have liked me to be more social; I forgot to express appreciations, thank yous. I didn\u2019t make eye contact. I sometimes talked when I should have listened\u2014but this was unconsciously because what others said seemed really boring and dumb\u2014though I couldn\u2019t admit that to myself. <\/p>\n
In addition to the colon problem, there was being very bright. A second strike against me. But both conditions were also prods to thriving. The first drove me into medicine, to wanting to help people, other kids. The second\u2014well, I\u2019m still trying to figure that out, what it means, what I\u2019m supposed to do about it. I think so far the lesson is to own it, accept it, and accept that lots of others, some family, even, can hardly keep up with me. I can indeed help it a little, not a lot, by trying to make clear what I\u2019m saying; not joke about it\u2014one of the foolish ways that only made things worse, though I hoped it would make things better\u2014; keep others oriented.<\/p>\n
Indeed, figuring out how to manage that gradient (little slope in front of me in the dream?) continues to puzzle me a bit. The contemplations continue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This morning I awoke with a couple of dream fragments that felt significant enough to get me to reflect on them. 1. I had to go uptown a mile or so and somehow annoyed my wife so that she was cross with me. I couldn\u2019t figure out what I had done wrong. 2. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1395,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394\/revisions\/1395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}