From: mbr2@quads.uchicago.edu (Curious Of All Natures)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: All mind and no heart?
Date: 9 Apr 92 11:37:32 GMT
Reply-To: mbr2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago

Curious Of All Natures, having decided to stay up all night to pursue
new thoughts, pushes through the door of Callahan's.  COAN's step is
unhurried, undriven by clear purpose.  He narrowly aviods no mishaps
as he walks over to the bar; there are no glimpses of his feline
aspect.  "Just something that will keep me awake, Mike.  Thanks."  A
dollar is exchanged.

COAN trustingly takes the mug with him to the chalk line.  It's a
soothing and cosy beverage, whatever it is.  Mike takes care of his
patrons.  The line is is in heavy use.  He is in no rush.

Eventually there is a pause.  Curious Of All Natures has this to offer:


A close friend of mine, also named Matt, has been dating and in fact
living with his girlfriend Laura for two years- three times as long as
I've known Judie my own love.  We, our girlfriends, and our
relationships with them are very much alike.  Matt and I are
arch-thinkers and arch-communicators, always trying to help and to
have a good influence as a fundamental part of our love.  Sometimes
this is tough, as our girlfriends are both people with a poor
self-image, shy, and often depressed.  Both possessed of a precious
energy and intelligence, however.  But there is much to be helped.
Their romance has been the paradigm of stability for Judie and I.

Laura left Matt the other day.  She'd come to the realization that she
wasn't happy, that living with Matt wasn't helping her grow.  She
moved out and seems to be enjoying her freedom.  Matt talked recently
to ANOTHER Matt, also an arch-thinker, but a reformed one who had
through crisis and pain chosen to leave the road of the lonely mind
and follow a path more emotionally aware and expressive.  The
broken-up Matt found a frightening amount in common with the reformed
Matt, and is now in a state of self-questioning and quest.  He seems
well on the road of his own reformation now.  He told me tonight that
his thinking mind loves to throw dirt on emotions so they don't hurt
or require dealing-with.  When he confronted losing Laura all sorts of
other long-buried pains came out...

All of the pre-existing similarities make me fear for my own
relationship with Judie now.  There are warning signs.  I see problems
and disagreements as opportunities for growth and imporvement.
Whenever we talk about such things she gets unhappy and hurt.  Having
talked about a difficult topic once she doesn't want to talk about it
again.  Negative feedback despairs her.  I am a pro, in this
relationship now, at saying all of the specific things I DON'T mean
whenever I say something important.  Otherwise she always interprets
things self-deflatingly.  Now I search for the causes of Matt's
break-up in my own romance and fear I see them.  I try very hard to
help Judie overcome her fears and depressions, yet I seem to be the
most well-adjusted and understanding of people.  Unhelpable.  Has she
asked for help?  No.  Would she ask if she needed it desperately?  No.

All signs tell me that I really need to undergo the emotional
reformation myself.  And of course Judie is the one to help me through
it.  I'll bring it up tomorrow.  But I don't have the benefit of
crisis/pain to bring stuff to the surface.  I'm faced with the
familiarity of my own mind and the following problem:

Where is my heart?  I'm not an automaton- I feel love, frustration,
panic, and joy.  But in my adult life I've never experienced anger
(but once), missing people, impatience, jealousy, hate... the list
goes on of things I don't know what it's like to feel.  Nothing fazes
me.  It's not that I proclaim of myself, as a resolution, that I am
unfazable.  It's that I seem to go on though life without faze.  A
friend of mine once asked "Matt, you're very good at the being-
shared-with of pain.  But don't you have any pain of your own to
share?"  I replied that no, I have no hidden resevoirs of tragedy, no
scars of my heart that would make me vulnerable to others just as they
make themselves vulnerable to me.  Truly, all of the people I've ever
known well are still alive.  Have you guessed that I'm an only child?
No sibling fights of enviousnesses here.  No oppression nor injury.

When I do experience emotions directly it's fleeting, soon a memory.
Am I really just an unusually emotionless person, or, as I suspect, is
it that my emotions are so well-knit into the fabric of my own
experience of life that I don't consciously grasp their weave?  How
then am I to get out of the trap of the lonely mind?  How can I think I
can help other people if I don't understand 90% of their own raw
experience?

Should I just try to assert the true me as I experience it in my
relationship with Judie, on the theory that if things go awry then
that's as it should be, because it wouldn't be at all good for the
relationship to work in virtue of self-supression?  I really want to
take the stand that I will not accept certain self-destructive
features of her as aspects of a long-term relationship.

Intuition (I have a great supply of this) tells me I should do this.

Or rather should I, on the realization that I can't possibly be of
constructive help to a feeling-person (not by tring at least) let go
my helpingness and just live and love with her?  Weather and accept
her black depressions and minimal self-esteem?  I'm told you can't
ever fight others' battles for them, that they can't learn their
lesson through relying on an outside force.

My intuition also tells me to do this.

I think she chould benefit greatly from professional help.  She
doesn't NEED it because she's able to live the kind of life she wants
to lead in spite of everything.  It's just a painful life with little
security.  She can live with that.  The idea of suggesting it to her
very strongly, as an opportunity for growth rather than for fixing
what's broken, was the culmination of my thought before talking to
Matt tonight.  I now distrust the idea very strongly for just that reason. 

Shared pain lessened, shared joy increased...  but I have nothing to
share but confusion.  Confusion and a calm familiar inner quiet where
I'd rather be rage and storm.


Curious Of All Natures looks at the bottom of his mug, at the
undissolved specks of Mike's concoction.  As he steps back from the
line he decides to hold onto it for awhile.  He has yet, within
himself, to find a toast.

Please include questions, any variety suggestive or curious, in
replies.  Questions are my food and drink.  It is in answering
questions that I get the best inspirations.

Curious Of All Natures               Matt Ryan, mb-ryan@uchicago.edu
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If I am dreaming, never let me wake. You'll never see the end of the road
If I'm awake, never let me sleep.    when you're traveling with me.
                -old Chinese fellow                        -Crowded House
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