I am definitely prone to being all or nothing. One extreme or the other. This week I find myself trying my hardest to please, to be a good boy, a perfect fellow. I don’t even know I am making perfection my goal, but I am. It is a goal wracked with risks. One of the chief ones seems to be my own shame trip when I see a flaw in my efforts. Also, I end up drawn to others of like extremeness. Maybe that explains the prior blog’s reference to idle, pleasant repartee and its seeming uselessness. Who needs a conversation when it sticks to the sane, centered ground of everyday life? This propensity to primarily engage with extremists only exacerbates the imbalance within myself, and it makes a way out harder to locate from the mire.
I do appear to be somewhat obsessed with karma, again without my knowing it. It is probably a great way to widen those extremes I so love. I seek good karma (a habit apparently ingrained in me from God knows where). For instance, I imagine if I can play Mozart beautifully, I will go to Heaven (have good karma). Then I fear that if I disobey someone I respect or care about (or am intimidated by), I will have bad karma (go to Hell, I suppose). What’s in between these two options, I ask? I can’t say. Sadly, what is in between might be the stuff which makes up a life. Is that like hearing between the notes?

These extremes of ideology, emotion or obsession which I and others run to are facades, but they certainly seem convincing in the moment. I would like to be able to differentiate between fantasy and some semblance of reality. Then I will know when I am simply taking a temporary flight of the imagination (either alone or with someone else) from which I can exit at my leisure.

originally published on 5/19/07