In wars past, even in surprise attacks by neighboring hordes, there was at least the possibility of an escape.
The enemy now is pervasive and always present with us. We are utterly powerless before the face of terrorism.
And when it is presented to us by the pharmaceutical, banking, and insurance companies, we can only feel safe if we buy what they're selling.
An Addiction to Longing
This state of mind is the result of our culture's delusion that nothing is ever enough. Relationships always fail, marriages almost always end. But no matter, with People Magazine to help us adjust our radar, there's always something else to want.
An overwhelming number of the people I've worked with professionally and known personally have had a common problem: they pick people to partner with who are either unavailable emotionally or incompatible with them.
Over the years, I've been curious about this. It isn't all traced to relationships with Mom or Dad, though some of it surely is. Some of it has to do with an inability to be still. If they get what they want what will they do with it? Does that mean they'll have to settle for one person?
Many times, what has been revealed (after much gentle scraping away) has been an interior reluctance to intimacy, not just a fear of it. They don't really want to be with one person. They're more hooked on wanting someone. The wanting, the longing, the fantasizing, the thinking about them long into the night when they don't call--all these things are what they're really having the relationship with. Not the person.
How Do I Look?
Hilton Paris once said something to the effect that without the camera filming her she felt like she wasn't really there.
Our culture is a culture of image. We are what we wear. We are what we drive. We are what we have in our homes. Advertisers know this and utilize it to maximum effect.
We present ourselves with a calling card of material.
The result of that psychically is that we don't know who we are. I'm not me, I'm only what YOU see. I exist if you see me in a particular way. I pose for the camera and I come to life. Otherwise I'm nothing if no one is looking.
To the producers then, here's the upshot in our house: We're done watching. And if we're not looking, then I guess you really are nothing.
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