Legal Commentary

The World Is Not All About Me?

By Kevin Funnell

An acquaintence e-mailed to ask me whether recent posts about former lovers indicated that I'm "fixin' to get ready to die." The correspondent's a Texan, in case you didn't understand that fact from her use of the phrase "fixin' to." She wondered whether I was trying to put my spiritual house in order by reconciling with people from my past because I have some premonition of impeding death.

The short answer is "No." But then, the Lord will come like a thief in the night, won't he? Therefore, I guess I'd be better be "fixn' to get ready to die" at all timesand, in fact, better be ready to die right now.

I'm not ready, of course. I hope that's why I'm still alive. I'm getting a chance to get ready.

I honestly don't know why I've been thinking so much about former lovers. I've also been having recurring dreams about a former close female friend with whom I was never physically intimate, although iwe had and still have a strong emotional bond. In almost every case but the latter one, we lost contact, sometimes due to me hurting them, other times due to them hurting me. There's no apparent pattern emerging from these reminiscences or dreams, no obvious lessons to be learned, no spiritual road map of the way forward being etched out for me.

It's like my unconscious mind is taking inventory and is trying to make sense of past failures to point me in the right direction for the future. God knows, I could use the help, since my conscious mind has been of such little assistance.

I don't think it's a coincidence that in the midst of this process, I stumbled across writer Heather King's blog, which I find I love, or her recent post about Rachel Watson's wonderful e-mail that ruminates about reconciliation as a sacrament of interconnectedness. I think the primary lesson that God is trying to cram through this thick skull of mine is that my salvation is connected to the salvation of all of us, and most assuredly to the salvation of all of those I've affected, for good or ill. I've not come to grips fully with the implications of that notion, probably because those implications scare the living hell out of me. Yes, I used that last phrase ironically. Sue me. On second thought, don't.

There are so many people out there who think so much more deeply and who express themselves so much more eloquently and profoundly than I do that I think I'll just give up trying this vanity press for awhile. At least, I'll give it up until I have something that both I can make sense out of and that I think will have some value to others. When I wrote about my late brother or late sister on an earlier version of this blog, I received e-mails from people that told me that I'd struck a chord with them. Lately, I've been talking to myself, which is a classic sign of schizophrenia or narcissism. Inasmuch as another correspondent wrote me not long ago to advise me that I may be the "narcissist" whose wiseass insensitivity drove another blogger I admire to stop writing for awhile, I guess I'd better cop to the later character flaw and simply shut up.

In my parting defense, however, anyone who blogs is at least a bit of a narcissist. We bloggers all think we've got something to say that other people, some complete strangers, might find interesting and that readers can't find anywhere else. It seems to be easiest to recognize narcissism in every face except the one that stares back at you from a mirror. Therefore, I'll have to rely on the judgment of others.

Full post as published by Counseling Kevin on March 13, 2011 (boomark / email).