Certainty

Mindy, whose moral speculations help me to understand, says “I honor and sometimes envy your certainty”. It comes from where I am in my life. It is an intellectual rather than an emotional certainty, and I want to encourage my own emotional being to make it an emotional certainty. I want to turn it into the courage to act.

I met a man who had drunk so much alcohol that periodically he could not keep any food down. So he did not eat for three or four days, and sipped water. When he could keep water down, he resumed drinking. Withdrawal symptoms on stopping drinking after that long are unpleasant, and he was nervous on his own, but became confident on drinking. There are advantages in drinking, and still that is seriously self-destructive behaviour. He was burning muscle to survive after not eating for four days. He knew he was killing himself, and is probably dead by now.

How am I with my own self-destructive behaviour? I do not want to look for work. I cannot go on like that. I think it comes from a deep sense of my own worthlessness and wrongness.

I read, As it relates to society in general, I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage. I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we would have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is all about. Then I read of two mayors saying they would like to ban Dan Cathy’s company from their cities, which they do not have the power to do, and of Mick Huckabee’s response.

The “Chick fil a appreciation day” has nothing to do with free speech. I support Dan Cathy’s right to express his odious and disgusting opinions. But there is no possible sanction against his free speech except disgust and derision. Those stuffing themselves for hate at his caffs are supporting the words he said, not his right to say them. Thank God, in Britain the similar cranks are not both so powerful and so vocal: the protests here would be far stronger than the support, and so for a man in a comparable position it is a business decision not to express himself in that way.

These people hate who I am. I disgust them. I have taken that into myself. The disgust for my own responses which matters most is my own: it affects my every interaction, every response, every moment. It is a disgust I need to liberate myself from. This is a survival issue.

So consciously I express my own value, and when I come across a case like Dan Cathy’s I express my loathing and derision, my certainty that he is wrong. I associate with people who share my opinion, and when I come across dissenting groups I contradict them. Along with my meditation, my self-reiki, and other self-nurturing behaviour, this is my attempt to gain the self-respect I need to survive.