photo credit: macieklew

Do Our Brains Crave Acknowledgment?

Watched the movie, “He’s Just Not That Into You” about a week ago.  My partner-in-crime and I liked it, thought it was a “cute” movie.  Her 22 year-old daughter hated it.

Boys and girls, men and women – most of us – have been in the position of being dumped or being dumped on, sometimes obsessing over the dumper, maybe waiting impatiently for the phone call that never comes.  It seems like the natural thing to do; we get attached, and getting unattached is never quite as easy.

My curiosity starts not with the crap sandwiches life is bound to hand us all, but what our inner circle tells us about it – and what we want to hear.

The movie is about people, relationships, and finding the “one.”  And then of course about their not calling us back, whether the callee is man or woman.  The politically impolite thing to say here is that it was a “chick” movie, and yet, life is no different for men.  One of the main characters, a young lady in hot pursuit of “Eric” from “Entourage.”  Eric doesn’t call here back, and as a matter of fact, leaves their first date and within seconds is on the phone with the woman he is pursuing.

When the hot pursuer sees her friends after a period of not getting that coveted return phone call, they seek to console her.  They tell her that he just isn’t good enough for her; that she is just too intense for him, that he probably wants to call her, but can’t work up the courage.  The gist of what they are saying is that she is too powerful or he is too weak.  When she hears these things, she pursues harder.

And of course, she fails.

Wired for Support

Some of you know about my situation. It ain’t a pretty picture, but that’s neither here nor there (I’ve waited so long to use that phrase!). It connects to what I am getting at here. Don Imus – you remember him – used to say he judged events and situations in the world by how they affected or related to him.  I am not much different.  Actually, I don’t think any of us are.  It’s how we have somehow wired our brains.

Friends, family and others want to know what’s going on with me.  How am I doing?  That sort of thing.  So I tell them in the shortest version I can, “Blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, cancer, yada, blah.”

The response is usually some version of how sorry they are to hear that and then, “There are things they can do about it; they’ll figure it out and you’ll probably be fine.” And then something about a stiff upper lip or keep your head up.

About the same thing I would say when someone told me a similar story.

How Could This Happen to ME?

It’s hard not to do, especially when it is ourselves we are talking about.  When all this first started about 5-6 weeks ago, the first thing someone said to me while doing an ultrasound was, “Well, we see something in there and we can’t tell if it’s solid or some kind of fluid.”  What do you think my brain said?

“Well, shit, it has to be some fluid.” Self soothing, self delusion. “What else could it be.  Something bad wouldn’t be one of those things that happen to me.”

Deep down, the voice I heard was, “You’re screwed.”

Even several weeks later, when the docs nipped a little bit of liver out for a biopsy, when I talked to one of them later, I said, “It could just be something simple, right? It doesn’t have to be (that scary word).”

Honestly, at least, he said, “Could be simple, but probably not.”

We all, I think, want to get that ‘he’s not into you’ assurance that, it’s not our fault, there must be something wrong with them.  Or, it can’t be that bad.  You’re gonna be fine.

When… in reality, nobody really knows what the outcome, any outcome, is going to be.

The Big Zen Question

We are all left with, at any time in our lives, the profound Zen question -

“Today I am alive. And I know that someday I will die. What do I do in the mean time?”

So, I am talking to this guy on the phone today, who knows more or less what is happening.  He asks some questions.  I tell him the nutshell version of the story, and he says, “Well, don’t worry, you’re gonna be okay….”

It was somehow reassuring. Somehow, these absurdities of life are comforting.