I can recall an exchange, with whom I’m not quite sure, maybe a date or an acquaintance who also happened to be a therapist, in which I said, “sometimes, I worry that I’m a narcissist.” Her response (I’m pretty sure it was a woman and probably a date) was, “narcissists don’t worry about being narcissists, you’re fine.” I probably, responded with something along the lines of, “ok, if you say so, I’ll take your word for it.” I might have even added in an ambiguously funny, “you’re the expert, you would know.” But in my head I was thinking, “wouldn’t that be the ideal cover for a narcissist? An oversized projection of self-awareness?”
Sadly (or amusingly or annoyingly), these are the things I think about. This how I try to bite my own teeth. This is how I make myself dizzy. These are the circles I walk, run, and limp through. This is what I think about in the shower when I forget whether or not I’ve already washed my hair.
I live alone. I’m single and unemployed. I sometimes go an entire day without speaking to another human being. It’s why I go out as often as I do. In the absence of some of those deeper connections (partner, co-workers, friends), I’ve developed strategies to build loose connections that keep me afloat. But when I’m not engaged with those loose connections, I do a lot of mental role playing: for job interviews, for dates, for random encounters with strangers on the street. I have a very active inner voice. It might be why I’m sympathetic to the people screaming at lampposts or talking to garbage cans. I just happen to have a computer and a blog.
Yesterday, while walking down Market Street, I imagined buying a burger for a homeless man who had averted his kind and sorrowful eyes as though he were experiencing a heartbreakingly immense sense of shame. In the role-playing in my head, I handed him the burger and said in as earnest and soft a voice as possible, “take care of yourself,” because I can imagine that he doesn’t hear that very often or that his parents might say the same thing if they knew the shape he was in. Thankfully, I was wearing my sunglasses as my eyes watered thinking about this man and how this isn’t what he or his parents ever hoped for. Maybe he was going to be a baseball player, or work on muscle cars, or be an astronaut.
A few weeks ago I saw a guy steal someone else’s bag. I alerted the bag owner who chased him down, wagged his finger, and got his bag back. Later, I mentally played out several scenarios in which I was the hero and issued commands like “Stop!” and “don’t make me whoop you’re ass – because I will.” In one scenario, I’m a stern matriarch waving a wooden spoon or rolling pin. In another scenario, I’m peeling off my flannel to show that these scrawny, literary-tattooed arms mean business. If you know me personally, you know how laughable that second scenario is. I look more intimidating than I am, and I don’t look very intimidating.
Before heading out for a city walk, yesterday’s shower contemplation, yesterday’s spin on mental merry-go-round, was about savior complexes and hero fantasies. Maybe I have one or several? I wasn’t thinking about heroes in the sense of stopping the felons skulking around corners in burglar masks or rushing into burning buildings to save a litter of puppies and nursery of chubby and cute babies. My delicate sensibilities and lackluster physical prowess are far too modest for those types of fantasies. But I was thinking about the work I do and the small risks I take as my own version of emotional and mental daredevil-ism. Do I seek out situations (relationships, jobs, friendships, arguments, conversations) where I can prove myself as a wise and emotionally astute person, a thoughtful person concerned and dedicated to the well-being of others? Do I flirt with minor dangers (saying hello to people who are homeless, providing counsel when I know it might suck me into drama, trying to talk to exes who don’t like me, starting a debate with a father who can be a bully)… do I flirt with these things so that I can test and prove my emotional fortitude and valor? Is this all just a way of testing and reinforcing my self-image as a “good guy”?
I can remember listening to an interview with a psychologist who was talking about the type of people who, in work settings, will introduce chaos so that they have a problem to solve and can be seen as a problem solver. They procrastinate, partially, for the rush of beating the clock and being the hero. There are plenty of real-world examples of firefighters who are also arsonists. Bored children tend to act out because, in some ways, it alleviates the boredom and sometimes they’re rewarded for stopping the bad behavior. If they give us rush or a sign of affirmation, we can become addicted to these types of behaviors. In what ways do I behave like a bored child? When am I the arsonist of my own desires?
I genuinely (or at least I think it’s genuine) want to see people do well and heal and overcome and thrive. I like seeing people happy. One of the reasons I walk through the touristy part of town is because I like seeing the expressions on people’s faces as they see the water and the sea lions. I like seeing them smile as the sun hits their faces. I like seeing them take it all in. I feel genuinely happy for them, which in turn makes me feel tremendously grateful that I get to experience this every day. But sometimes I wonder if wanting others to be happy is just a selfish way of meeting my own happiness quota? Do I help people because I want them to be better off, or do I help people because it makes me feel good? I could easily substitute the word “and” for “or,” and not only is the mental debate over, but I probably have a more accurate statement. I help people because I want them to be in a better place AND because it makes me feel good. But it seems like motivation matters. If you deal with imposter syndrome, you know all too well that you worry that you might not have earned your position – which for me is my good-guy merit badge. If I help people for my own selfish reasons, then maybe I’m a fraud?
The circus song playing in the background when I got on this mental tilt-a-whirl was an extension of the self-interrogation I had been doing this past week. During that interrogation I had returned to Erich Fromm’s definition of love of which I’m so fond, “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”
More specifically, I was contemplating the audacity of trying to take someone else’s well-being seriously – especially in personal relationships where we’re not being paid to be the doctor, therapist, personal trainer, nutritionist, or case manager. This is, in a sense, the essence of parenting: doing for someone else what we think is good or helpful or in their own interest (eat your vegetables, get a good night’s sleep, don’t sit too close to the television). But egalitarian relationships between adults stripped of power dynamics can make nurturing another’s spiritual growth seem paternalistic. We can’t say, “because I said so.” And when we’re clumsy or get it wrong, understanding and grace can be found in what Thich Nhat Hanh said, “to love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love.” Who hasn’t been guilty of that type of love? Who hasn’t felt the pinch of that wound?
Those two complimentary thoughts, Fromm’s and Hanh’s, paint a pretty complex picture of love. If we use a basic principle of algebra as though we’re testing our answer through substitution – in which we substitute Fromm’s definition for love (which I’ll shorten to “extend oneself…”) whenever we see the word love in Hanh’s quote, we get: To extend oneself… without knowing how to extend oneself… wounds the people we extend oneself towards.
As so often happens when I have these shower thoughts (do I seek out as a form of validation), I tend to turn them over and over and over in my mind. I spin this coin as I do the chores around the house. I put my head on the baseball bat and play dizzy bat running around in circles ten times as I write. Eventually, I just get dizzy and tired. At which point I stumble out in to the bright sunshine of another glorious day or the dark recesses of a bar in the sultry shadow of a city night, where I gather new stimulus over which I can pace my circles on some other day.
And because I like Soul Coughing: