TWO UNCONNECTED – TOO CONNECTED
Sunday, May 30, 2021
They are a duo, pair, yin/yang combo, or they can be two things that unfolded about the same time.
Neither reason nor result, no apparent connection, yet caroming around in one head simultaneously.
No easy fit, and maybe they shouldn’t fit.
Yet, there seems to be a connection worth exploring as two thought trains collided in my head the other day.
Convenient, I suppose, to view this like Frost’s poem, about a path parting into two or, conversely, reverting into one.
Meanwhile, two things have been percolating.
In the end, they may not connect for anyone else, but there seems to be something powerful at work regarding them, both independently and together, in my brain.
Their commonalities being, they happened the same day, and they happened to me – there seems something mysterious in how these play out and stay on my mind.
The first could probably be a mental health case study.
It wasn’t a big deal, really. It was simply a customer saying yes, saying it clearly and swiftly and aside from saying thank you, my next task was to send an invoice and then deliver the product. What overcame me was a series of good feelings and a series of good questions. The feeling, one-part adrenalin, euphoric rush producing heightened emotional energy and a complete distraction from other matters of importance. I recall, so many times, when I didn’t notice them so much, didn’t try to understand or harness them. It seems simple but makes me question how I’ve historically channeled that energy and emotion brew.
The second is titled ‘The Zen Diaries of Gary Shandling.’ I explored ‘the best of HBO’ on my Crave feed and saw this two-part piece about the late Gary Shandling. I’d enjoyed his comedy but didn’t know much about him. That changed profoundly. One piece of new information involved how his elder brother died of cystic fibrosis when Gary was five. His parents excluded him entirely from the death, from grieving, from the funeral. That hit me significantly because of a similar age-five event in my life which has, and still does, impact my self-understanding. My grandfather died, and I was similarly excluded from having the knowledge and experience until much later – and, together with many other things happening that year in my family, it’s an unanswerable conundrum of being a little weird and not understanding the why of it all.
Still – these two experiences happened the same day. So in the few days since, I’ve spent some time examining each one of these elements of my life anew. I’ve wondered, albeit briefly, if anyone else has had similar experiences or if anyone cares to share, but it’s my stuff, and it’s my column, so if I’m guilty of over-sharing, just hit delete, and you won’t be troubled about it any further.
On the other hand, if there is some learning here, maybe sharing that might be helpful. So you be the judge of that, and meanwhile, I’ll wrestle with and try to better harness these horses.
If one thing is not the cause, can it be the effect?
And if one is the effect, how can it be the cause?
Writing this on a page may not solve anything, but it’s cheaper than professional therapy.
Reader feedback:
Mark, as usual, I agree. For me we should default to not interrupting unless we somehow “know” the reason for the interruption is more important such as business vs personal or vice versa. Sometimes a brief interruption is okay with a continuance of the matter being interrupted soon after or after. LH, Lethbridge, AB