Dr. Phil likes to say that “You can’t serve two masters.”
Most of the time he says that, it’s bulldonkey, of course. These aren’t people serving a master, these are people trying to meet multiple expectations and requirements, to manage some sort of course as a modern human. They have the requirement to deal with conflicting and contradictory obligations, to live in a world full of tension & ambiguity, which is nowhere near as satisfying to viewers as just doing the right thing.
This potential trip, well, it feels to me like a microcosm of my bigger challenges in the world, obligation to family & propriety versus obligation to self & calling. I suspect that it is needless to say that as such a microcosm it feels particularly bad.
I have the sense that my parents not only depend on me in ways they don’t fully understand, but that they take me for granted. As they get older their tunnel vision increases, and for different reasons neither of them had a particularly wide, integrated or compassionate view in their younger days.
This alone is a good reason to go, so they again value how much I do around here. When we were in Toronto, one of my mother’s friends asked if I worked out. I suspect it was because she (and others) saw the kind of muscle moves it takes to manage an 1/8 ton woman in a tiny transport chair. How would my father handle that? Remember, it’s my perception that I am helping my father take care of my mother, not that I am taking care of my mother.
It’s only a week and a half or so, I really need it, TBB could use me, lots of good reasons to go.
But trying to get it all together in hiding, without support & feedback, well, that’s dammed hard. Yet if I am open, I have to deal with their fears and prejudices too, and I fear that is more than I can bear.
I am torn and shattered, hopeful and hopeless, and all under wicked time pressure.
Microcosm, but Macropain.
Callan 