An Explanation of Me

Some things I have determined that make me seem to not assimilate. And, this is and has been my major work life problem. My greatest success in work life is when I am in charge, by myself to direct and reward in a way I choose without supervision of corporate ninny s, for lack of a better term. In both situations I fixed major work process problems, that several other managers were unable to solve. I knew of my capabilities through these accomplishments. In these situations I was left alone, judged on results, rather than process. Mostly because no one was there to see the process, or in one case, managers and district managers did not understand the process, so they could only leave me alone and judge by results. One other running theme was efficiency. All through my working years I seemed to do a job more efficiently than others. This seemed to bother fellow associates and clearly separated me in their eyes. Training, and teaching were limited opportunities, but I truly excelled here. One store manager did a survey after the class, unbeknownst to us, so we could not prepare for it, and I was judged unanimously the best. On a separate occasion I chose to teach a class. A onetime class, that I prepared my own material for. The class loved the material, as it was mostly new to them even they were long time associates. Several asked if I could be available for questions afterwards at my home store. The store manager at the training store called back to my store with the kindest, most appreciative comments. It took my store manager aback. What was my secret? I gave personally of my experience as stories to support the ideas and training material. James Madison said, through much trial and error he discovered the secret to winning cases as a lawyer was to tell the best story. There is implied interest in them, and that is a supreme motivator for interest and attention and most of all appreciation. As an aside, I believe our society deliberately uses the 40 hour work week as a social control mechanism. Couple work time, church (another social construct), sports ( also another social construct..dating to Roman times which they specifically constructed to distract the people from political involvment), entertainment and all the familial duties and what time is left for development? Now regarding assimilation, I was once told I was not a team player. I did not understand this comment at the time. I always did my part and more from a business aspect. But, they meant on a personal level. Be one of the slackers with them .work little when you could get away with it, cut out early when the opportunity was there, hide in the office as much as possible. Whatever I did lack, principals of work ethic was not one. Besides the fact that most people connect on a shallow level of sports-figures conversation, which I had no interest in, and the fact that I was shallow on so many levels due to my unread nature. I was like Himmler who was described as a man who had facts and opinions but lacked critical powers his mind had

not been allowed to grow. I remember being very interested in many things in a library one time during a research paper on Linus Pauling. I just looked at all the books and felt overwhelmed like why try, I am interested in so many things and I will never be able to read all these books .just give up and float. I was told by people what are you doing here several times across my retail career . Another comment was who are you ? I see now that my speech and education drew a picture that did not fit. For as little literature as I read, I did read periodical type literature and snippets on the internet. It is shocking how what little I did know seemed like a fountain of knowledge to others. People saw this and saw something wrong. It made them feel uncomfortable it seems. Possibly crossed some insecurity boundary even among managers. I was teaching department heads GMROI, and when a district manager found out, he chastised me, and said they don t need to know that. For the uninformed, in retail, that is the key figure that needs attention and observation to effectively run a business. Anyway, if you don t fit you don t assimilate. You are not like them. I used to read aphorisms at the morning meetings as a pick me up, something to think about during the routine of the day. Only later did I discover that there were some who did not understand them. A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will, or against his will, he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word. Emerson

A further concept by Ayn Rand is listed below, which explains quite a lot about what I have stated above: Notice how they ll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once. ... There s a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They ve got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them because they don t exist within him and that s the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man. ...

But as soon as there is any departure from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my neighbour feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; there is war between us; there is hate in him and fear in me. Emerson

Falseness is a real problem for me.

My childhood was filled with an example of a mother who was a fake, and I was an observant person who saw a lot the sham of her life and grew to hate this type of behavior. I remember the pride in her explaining how her children could shop/clean clothes etc. at such a young age, but I knew it was more a manipulation to allow her to avoid the work herself. I hated this lie. Praise for her and us under false pretense. I was young, six or so. I today still can t stand this deception in people toward people. I always related to people at work best who were in lower positions, that did not put on airs, and political behavior. They were real and did not need to ply and higgle for the attention of others to advance the cause on politics rather than performance. The sycophant is a real problem for me and they are rampant and abundant. What to do? School for me, lacked this component. I performed the work, was judged on clear qualities defined beforehand, and delivered. The work world was defined on performance to a degree but on a sliding scale that favored what are you going to do for me . Clearly, my disrespect for authority was an impediment.

Anger

I also saw my father s great disappointment with who he was. Always talking about how bad things were. My parents were frequently angry with each other. I, having a room next to them, saw/heard more of the anger than my brother. Outright fighting with physical violence was evidenced. On vacations the violence was insane and we had to endure it in such a confined space of a car. It was a thick, visceral, palpable negative energy. I can remember it as clear as it was yesterday. Screaming, red-faced yelling, storming off, wondering when she would come back, if she would come back. The tension when we were all back in the car. Hours of quite anger. I remember the touch of my father, and this was only to direct or make me do something, as a burning sensation even before the hand reached my body. I would learn to shift

my body to escape this horrible feeling. My mother made my brother and me fight till our pajamas were torn from each other to get the fight out of us . We had apparently been fighting and picking at each other and she had enough and did not mange us otherwise. No doubt due to the wonderful role models we had. So we learned discipline by hating and hitting each other. I remember a terrible summer when my mother was teaching my brother how to swim. I caught on to physical things quicker than my brother. Swimming was fairly easy for me to learn. My brother had a hell of a time and my mother was so angry at teaching him it was what I now know resembling concentration camp mentality. Yelling, forcing, punishing till coughing up water, from exhaustion, and swallowing water while trying to catch his breath over and over and over. It was embarrassing for him and me for other strangers saw this spectacle. When I was bad I was put in a corner. I can still smell the paint combined with my breath. It was pretty often. I was told until I behaved I was going to stay in the corner. I learned to swallow the problem so I could have control of my life and do the things I wanted. So, I told myself that I would get revenge later, turn on the smile and get released. I did later get revenge stole her precious watch. She never found it. Kids don t behave badly for no reason in my opinion get to the bottom of it what behaviors are affecting this behavior seems logical. This method was a destructive one in my opinion. On one occasion, I was cleaning the toilet. I was 8 or 9 years old. My father came to check it s cleanliness and saw a drop on the back side of the seat on the porcelain between where the toilet meets the tank. He told me it was not cleaned. I replied to him it was. He said then you are going to lick that drop up. If it is clean then it should not matter. I told him it was a drop from the brush, but I would not lick it up. He tried to force me. I escaped and my mother intervened. There was a separation between us for a while. Another occasion to image destruction was when I got a new shirt. It was yellow. My father saw it on me and told me that only girls wore yellow and pink. I was now somehow not a male because I liked yellow and wanted to wear it. What was sure was that I was less because of my choice in my father s eyes. It may seem like something little and inconsequential, but I still remember it well to this day with distaste. More anger was visible in the relationship between my paternal grandmother and my mother. It was clearly hate. Tension again on the vacation travels. One particularly bad one was the visit to the Mt. Rushmore. There were raised voices, huffing, gritting teeth, clenched jaws. Then there was the hate for my aunt by my father. So much and so bad was this hate that he would not come on vacations here with us. Under protest he would come for a day or so and then continue for the rest of the vacation if it did not involve my aunt. The message between them was clear, and glowing like neon. This lasted even to this day as far as I know. Then there was the hate my father had for my maternal grandfather. He could be a pill at restaurants, as he treated waitresses like less than human beings. Yelling, and demanding royal treatment while he demeaned them. In private he was full of fire, but I saw respect for people in the house for the most part. To put it in summary, there was a lot of anger and hatred among the adults

closest in my life. My paternal grandparents also had a strained and distant relationship. On one occasion, my mother told me that because of the power my grandfather held over his wife, she retaliated by refusing physical relations for years on end. What a terrible existence for both. You could see in both of them a sadness and hardness. They both were not seen with smiles or laughing on a regular basis. A more accurate description would be to say it was a rare occasion. I did not see them much, except a few summer vacations, but that is what I saw. Despite this environment, my brother saw it as a refuge from our family and spent part of the summer here. I seemed to help. He seemed more at peace when we picked him up. Money was and is always a representation of something else. It s never about the money itself. Money is important only in what it represents. For the most part, it represents choice. What drives your choice is the problem. Your makeup (innate temperament, environmental influence) are the root of the success or failure with money and all else. When I was 10 years old I learned something. I thought we were ok financially, but some things did not fit. It seemed like we were scraping by in some respects, but evidence of enough money was visible in other ways. My Mom seemed to have to really shop for food carefully, but some other purchases were freely made. I learned at 10 that my parents had property. They had sold it and made a good amount on it because we were moving to a much bigger house. One of my first inkling s that things were not as they seemed. I learned later that my father put my mother on a severe budget. Held her hostage to his whims of generosity . Christmas was an example of how tight he could be. Very light from him, generous from other family members. There was an agreement later that I would be paid for the lawn since he would pay someone else and it would be my allowance. Ordinarily a good system. An early introduction to the labor-for-money lesson about how the world worked. The only problem was he would not pay. It was not the money per se but the lesson I learned was his word was worthless, that he played with me, and ignored my requests. Lack of respect immediately comes to mind. Of course now I know, he did not respect himself. But, then, since I only related to things from my perspective, I figured it was something about me. Did I not deserve the respect for some reason? Why would he treat me this way? I learned later that my mother, in order to have some independence and a sense of her own control of her life, took from the budget for groceries and stashed an amount from the grocery budget to a secret account for herself. Quite an environment to live in. I, after reading What is Man, understand a lot more about peoples motivations. He clearly did not feel good about himself visible by sleeping all day on days off, angry on the day off he spent awake in the house, taking lozenges all the time, vocalizing how bad things were. If you treat people badly it is clear that you have a problem with yourself. It is how you see the world, so it is how you relate to it. The observation is so clear to me when I look at people now. If only more people knew to look at the actions of people from this perspective and this knowledge, I think a great deal of misery would be avoided and possibly a few people could get right with themselves. Toward the end of my existence in the house, one evening I was in the kitchen and my brother

was also standing there. It was on this occasion that my mother started in on my brother. She did it frequently. He had less fight back in him than I did. She was demeaning, harassing, and hassling. I had enough of the badgering and lit into her verbally to stop. She resisted. I finally exploded. She got incensed and stormed back to her bedroom. I managed to restrain her by using one hand to immobilize her arms and the other to immobilize her legs. She was in effect straight jacketed till she calmed down. My brother told me she never did talk to him that way again. A minor success .but I did not know until 20+ years later. The last outrage was one evening when I was being hassled by my father. The exact topic I do not know. I finally grabbed his arms, did a backwards somersault, and used my feet on his torso to throw him over me. Then I grabbed a knife from the kitchen drawer and told him to stay away from me. There are few times in my life that this much anger came to a head. But I sure needed to get a message through. It did work. But, like my brother told me recently, he said to my father, why does everything have to get to a crisis situation for him to react . It paints a picture of what being a partner must have been like. I can only imagine it must have been like Dante s ninth circle of hell. I also noticed disturbed (maybe OCD ) behavior during his time between work when he was calling on the phone for stock/financial trading on a regular if not daily basis. He would always reach down to his foot with his right hand as if to pull up his sock or touch this pants leg right before a call. It was a weird behavior that I noticed. I had never heard of OCD then. More recently his girlfriend has described similar tendencies of repetitive unusual behavior regarding hand washing and dry towels. Seems like an obsession with cleanliness to some degree. To look at something that is you, and deny that it is you seems like a ludicrous position. But, in fact it happens all the time. We are just not aware of who we are until we visit with others and connect with them. Another unusual behavior is breaking for green lights under the expectation that it could turn yellow at any minute and he would be prepared. Some might say, well, safety first . I respond, the system has safety built in, that is why you don t need to break for every green light. There must be some irrational reasoning for this behavior.

A more recent example of behavior employed to reduce you is the following. We were sitting in a restaurant. My brother and he were engaged in a discussion which progressed into an argument. My brother started getting emphatic. His eyebrows were arched, his eyes were enlarged, his arm raised with a pointed finger extending from his clenched hand striking out upon points made. My father sat calmly, with the smile of a villain. He talked calmly, and though neither point seemed to disqualify the other, my father, with his smile, that says, you fool, look at you, losing your composure, you clearly have no standing as I am superior to you, and since you look like you are losing control, you are not a winner in this discussion. I watched

the defeat in my brother, as he retreated and the argument ended. Winners of wars are perceived to be right. But, in fact, it only represents a more effective skill or achievement in beating the other down. Correctness of position is not necessarily articulated by war or argument. It is often a measure of something else entirely.

Authority needs to have trust with it to be an authority, otherwise it is something else. So, I would entertain a mistrust and cautious observation of authority figures from very early on. True to my parents, many authority figures do indeed manifest a clear disregard for trust in my experience. In grade school I had a subscription to Discover magazine. I enjoyed the biology sections most of all. I would read and absorb as much as I could. I became more informed than my teacher. I found myself correcting and adding to her lessons. I remember her face. It was puzzled hurt. She allowed me of course, to add, and the class was impressed, but she was made to feel embarrassed. Today, I see the challenge to authority, and the need for self lift in the action. She was a nice teacher and I knew she would not do anything about it. I sadly took advantage. Eventually, the material left Discover Magazine behind and she regained her position. Did this behavior change as I matured . NO. In fact, if I saw stupidity, indifference, posturing, I let you know ..in, for the most part, non direct ways you could not clearly define as the target, or protected by company policy, but clearly an attack. The price was paid in a similar manner.

While I am on the subject of authority, I would like to relay a story about dumb it down 101 . At my first retail big box job this was not evident in the early years. Later down the road it was clearly present. Dumb it down was a class taught to district and regional managers to offer polite niceties to management and associates below the store manager to elicit a show of care and concern. Then, they were trained to distance themselves from you to avoid conversation that might offer opportunities to call into question operational issues or any issues you might have, as this would delay company initiatives. I can tell you this is true. It was the Steppford wives of retail management. A greeting that was exactly the same each visit from both parties. Then a brush off and distance. It is clever, because you don t really know what is going on. You are greeted, as if there is concern and care, but really, there is no concern. In fact, the concern is to avoid you on any level but a supremely superficial level. The reason it is called dumb it down is because they think that all these people are dumb and that the concerns are nothing but complaining and whining and if you do this they will not even know what hit them and they are so dumb you can control them with this simple deflection. Most people don t clearly identify it, but people don t need to intellectualize to know something is up. So who is really the dumb character in the role playing?

Distance

Seeing how they were both miserable people, and not comfortable with who they were, it is not surprising that they were distant with their children. The Law of Attraction can be a cruel thing. As an aside, Pretty Woman and Failure to Launch are great representations of this law. This distance did not allow, also, for friends in their lives. I can hardly remember an instance when they had friends over. This distance translates to children as disinterest and allows for a great disability in socialization skills for the kids. They don t learn the skills of understanding themselves by weaning away from the father/mother approval of things toward the learning of many ideas from other people and books. Neither of us matured in this way to a healthy degree. I fortunately had a soft side that women identify with and had girl friends that helped me socialize more effectively than my brother. One girl in high school called me on my shyness, believing it to be cockiness, and I learned how my behavior was understood. I did not learn boundaries of social skills as clearly or as definitely as I should have. I was also lonely. I remember in 5th grade staring at pretty girls, hoping for a connection, being thought of as a little weird. Still, I did it. Later, girlfriends were very important for me. More of a need for connection to make up for distance I think now. I put an extraordinary amount of energy into the relationships. To the exclusion of my friends to a large degree. This was not appreciated I would find out later. At the time I had no clue that I had abandoned them. All I knew was the fulfillment I felt from closeness with women.

Extreme behavior My mother showed it numerous times. Playing the piano till her fingers bled was just one example. This was week after week after week. I did not know different per say, but somewhere I knew this is a problem. She bought diet soda s by the 25 case load. What was that about?

Inferiority I am sure part of me shut down due to the anger. I never had quite the memory for vacation events as my father and brother. So, because I did not I was made to feel inferior as they would regale each other with events and stories. I have a good memory for many things so I believe there was a subconscious cleansing for me. Or, just a difference in makeup. Vacations were

hellish due to the thick tension of hostility. Not less .different would have been a good thing for me to hear, absorb and believe. I also did not have a chess mind or interest. My father and brother did. So, for all the distance, at least in later years they could connect in this one way. I did not. More distance.

Shame

My mother was overweight most of her life as I knew her. 250-300 pounds plus and only 5 3 or so. You could not go down the hall at the same time. She was too wide. Of course she had a lot of shame. I did too from neighborhood kids. We were cloistered as children, I am sure due to this to some degree. She exuded more extreme behavior when loosing this weight, being a spectacle again, running around the neighborhood .actually speed walking but it looked ridiculous. More embarrassment.

Having seen how wrong all this was, I again have a tremendous distaste and sensitivity for when I see something being done incorrectly, which seems so obvious to me. There were a few successful mangers I clicked with, they ran good store operations, were connected with their people, and friendly. Just the things I needed ..and respected. Seems like they are a minority though. Seemed like store managers often were in the position for reasons other than good managerial skills. Seemed like Texaco had the same or worse system.

I graduated with honors from College, but had no real interest in the chosen degree. I did not pursue work for a while and could use the downturn in the oil patch as an excuse. I was holed up in my room for some time. Lost, isolated as much as possible. Finally, I submitted resume s and pretty easily got jobs. But I did not fit. Reasons listed above. Disappointment.

So, what happened. I was constantly disappointed. I thought it was me as a failure and started to hate myself like my parents did. I lost confidence. I became angry as my parents. I swallowed it several times throughout the years. I remember not being able to put a finger on why. But, I had no direction..no passion was ever developed. I had no one to show me or care enough to point out the interests or expose me to enough to see what sparked me and guide me that direction. I could do just about anything, woodwork, mechanic, weld, fix appliances, work with

computers, teach myself just about anything I was interested in. But, these were just skills, not meaningful things.

Years later I learned from intercepting emails from my mother to an old high school boyfriend that she felt very alone all her marriage, that my father was distant, cruel to her in emotional ways, that she never showed herself without clothes to him, that sex was a horrible duty and dirty to her because love was absent, that her children were duties at most in her mind and she did not even mention our names in correspondence. The overriding theme in the emails was an extreme loneliness and desire for some kind loving connection. It is a heartbreaking reveal. I learned of her distant relationship with her father especially, but also her mother. She saw a close relationship with her sister and mother and was hurt by it. She spent many lonely years married and the first years in Utah were brutally spent with lots of anger between them. She finally had a nervous breakdown at my cousins graduation. Embarrassing the whole family as she barked like a dog in at the ceremony. This was the beginning of a tremendous spiral down through meningitis, going walkabout across the country without notice or information, possibly having a girlfriend, finally becoming diagnosed with bipolar disorder, trying to self correct, becoming diabetic, and finally after refusing treatment, getting in accidents from blackouts during driving, and being institutionalized. Now if this is not enough to cause SHAME in a child and not want to think about anything I don t know what is. Could this happen to me? Is this genetic? I have come to believe the severely harsh lonely years with my father drove her to desperate measures for affection and meaning. She searched many mystical solutions: crystals, pyramids, Transendental Meditation, colonics, Chi Kuhn etc, etc. All to no avail. She broke..pure and simple. She is a twin, and while there are similarities, her sister is far more stable and normal.

My last visit to see my mother was revealing. I hardly recognized her. The most shocking observation was her eyes. They had lost the sparkle. They looked dead. She was still the severely-consumed-with-hatred-and-misery-person she was before though. She always tried to control people and even now, from a bed, she made my brother and father squirm by analyzing body language. She said how my father was hiding something and uncomfortable by having his arms crossed on his stomach, and he quickly squirmed and adjusted ( just like she wanted him to). My brother was supporting his weight on both arms on the end of the bed and his face looked strained. She pointed out his discomfort and he squirmed. I had a kind of peace at seeing and hearing again what I had remembered as the cold , manipulative, hurtful person she was. All my reason for coming back had been justified. The behavior was real, and as bad as imagined . She made comments as to my value being very low since I was not earning money.

She commented that I was not a success because I had not earned much money. There were other demeaning comments. Top it all with my father s interpretation: well she s still sharp, her mind has not gone . Totally oblivious to the nature of the behavior and the intended hurt. My brother did catch on though. He could see it.

So, back to the career, I entered the workforce at Texaco, and earned good money, but discovered the job had changed from the degree, and I was not that enchanted any way. Now it was worse, just a paper shuffle. Some creativity, in contract negotiation and preparation, but generally non fulfilling. Scouting was good, but it was temporary and being phased out. So I got great performance evaluations, but I was miserable. Long hours, commuting 1+ hours each way to avoid the crime-ridden neighborhoods, we lived far out in civilized neighborhoods. What time is left to develop yourself? None. On top of that you see your friends get pushed out through layoffs. You watch the humiliation. People pack up in front of their friends and coworkers and get shuffled out like some piece of trash in a hallway. During the process of these several forced attritions you see people so afraid..talking to each other trying so desperately to determine if they will be hit this time. Some contemplating leaving just to avoid the embarrassment, should they be selected. It s a grueling process and it stays with you. It also does not get easier with each process, like sometimes happens with experience to hard things. It s probably a good place to note here that some repulsion to education would result from seeing the kind of people my parents were, and make the connection they were educated. Proudly educated as well. If this was what education was responsible for, I surely would not like this. Education was touted as producing better people. An education turnoff was probably initiated very early on. Child s World preschool, punished me early on by making me take soap into my mouth and hold it until my saliva combined enough for it to leak out of my mouth with the soap dissolved and a little foamy. All this because I wanted to talk and communicate, rather than listen to the teacher and stop talking, or I just enjoyed talking to other kids. Further repulsion toward books was the view I had of my brother who was always holed up in his room. He read, but that did not seem like a good way to live. So removed from everything. I enjoyed the outdoors, biking, walking in the woods, playing with our dog. A balance would have been the answer. At the time it seemed like a really bad thing. Then top this off with a school system that consistently ranked at the lowest end of the scale for many years on end.

Now that I did graduate, and made some direction to move on, my father directed me toward Texaco. A place he was clearly miserable, not present as a father except for one day, and often those days were filled with chores directed by an angry, overriding, uncommunicative,

dictatorial, task master. The screwed up eyebrows with furrows above, the clenched jaw with the lower jaw jutting out and a tightly closed mouth and the glare in his eyes. That was the face we saw one day a week. Could this be the action and wish for a child of your own?

So, why direct your child to Texaco. To repeat your misery? What kind of parent wishes, and pushes that direction? I can presume one that is stupid. I hope it is one who is misguided, or lacks vision. Or is it one who rather delights in watching the pain he went through manifest in his son as well. That would be the ultimate punishment and lack of care for his child. Being uncommunicative, my father offered little in the way of advice or guidance. One line was offered: Do a good job and they will pay you what you are worth. Clearly an aphorism worth less than the torrid breath used to speak it. It is enough to say that this is not even 5 % of the equation that I saw. Think about it. Most job duties are not so complex they can t be performed reasonably well by most anyone. So, what separates most people, in the eyes of a supervisor? It is the personal attention you provide the supervisor. The suck up. Occasionally there are opportunities to shine on performance alone but too many supervisors respond to the personal attention as the differentiation come review time. Having been on the awarding end of increases, I can tell you that outstanding performance gets a 1% to a maximum of 2% increase above the average performance increase. That s not commensurate with outstanding performance. Fortunately, I ran across, for a short while a corporate CEO and local manager that bucked this trend.. But I digress. So you jump on the treadmill with all the other rats and watch those around you sacrifice their life for the company, put up the false self, posture, and sellout. You could tell the few originals, very few, but there were some. You were friends with them. But they were stagnant because they did not suck up. It appears that many are not shown the right way to live. Part culture, part parents. Maybe the parental part is a large part culture. I never liked hearing I love you from my parents. It did not happen often. Living away I heard it on the phone more. I felt really uncomfortable with it. It seemed fake. It seemed like something was expected in return. It seemed like it s meaning was not what it was intended to be from my experience with those words. It came from a totally horrible place, so how could they understand the words in the best way, the right way, the proper way. I submit they could not. They did not live it.

There are at least 3 laws that people operate by from what I can determine: Law of Suggestion, Law of Compensation, Law of Attraction. Through looking back at my life and observation of my own and that of others, I can say they are true and proven by empirical evidence.

Suggestion: we are more like lemmings than we ever care to admit. Look at the influence of parents, friends, media on your behavior. Good, kind, caring parents produce good kind caring children for the most part. Angry, abusive, unkind parents produce the same kind of children. Often the exceptions are from other childhood influences of a good nature or bad nature. In conjunction with suggestion is Consensus. This is acceptance of a trusted person/entity in their appraisal of you in some way. One person can represent consensus and form in you an opinion of yourself or your actions that can last a lifetime.

Consensus: If we look around, we determine the correctness of an action or observation, based on others much of the time. Look at the true innovators and forward thinkers of our history and we see the fallacy of this. They prove time and again that trust in yourself (confidence) is the key. Confidence in being wrong as being just a stepping stone to success seems also a prevailing attitude. If it is an attitude, that can be controlled by you. Nevertheless, law of consensus rules most peoples lives and whenever we are ruled, the least of us is available, not the most.

Compensation: this is a complex one that Emerson wrote and is must reading for everyone in my opinion. It is about how things work in the human relations world.

Attraction: we attract people like ourselves and what we think about. Plain and simple.

I survived the law of attraction with reason. I have a strong self preservation instinct (no doubt from all the anger I saw) so I rationalized my mate attraction and luckily came across a gem. This is not to say she was not physically attractive. She was/is. Attraction has a lot more to do with other non physical and some indefinable things. I knew what I liked, what was good for me, and what was not good for me now that I had dated a few women and a couple were for a term of years. I found a woman who is a strong nurturer, with immense patience, a strong sense of balance and self, with a great mother influence and an intelligence and curiosity that was similar to mine. Key to her is her strong self respect evidenced by hardly any moments of anger in her life despite trials of immense proportion. So, I was able to break the cycle. I found someone attractive, who is committed to growing, and capable of lasting love and commitment, and strong in her own right. This was different from previous relationships. A true life success.

So, to return to the work treadmill, my brother and I were lost without direction. We floated along, getting raises, moving along, but feeling unfulfilled. I made a move to retail. At first it was definitely a good move. It allowed more choice in where to live. I could get out of Louisiana. My children could get a better exposure to education, environment, and family that was balanced, and normal. My parents were the exact opposite of what I wanted them exposed to. The retail I chose had good management and the leader of the company understood the reward for respecting your people and showing it in many ways. Intelligent management was the key to my success. I had a smart, people oriented, kind, and teaching kind of manager. It was 9 months of bliss. I flourished under him. He hired smart people, driven to succeed and paid them very well. The store worked better than a Swiss watch. Because I was happy, and I had the autonomy to run the department as I saw fit, people were drawn to me. Mostly women. Kind soft spirit I guess. Several of the women came to offer their help when there was down time for them. The store manager called it a Love Fest that I had going on over there. This just meant that they all wanted to help me. I was happy there, pleasant, and appreciative and people were drawn to that. There was a stress in other department managers. It was a perfect storm of the good kind for me. All things worked properly. I was promoted from that store, as were every other department head in the store eventually. This is a remarkable feat. It was entirely due to leadership, belief, and good support from management. This store manager was an independent, rule breaking, kind of person. The current CEO provided fertile ground for this kind of person. He encouraged independence and few rules to go by. After being promoted to a problem store, which the management team fixed, we heard that the CEO was retiring and a new CEO was being sought. This was the beginning of the end. He changed so much so quickly and for his pocket, it just destroyed the morale, the profit, the future, and your dreams. One side note. It was well known and observed that many store managers were terminated within a couple of years of becoming a store manager. The ones that did last longer, often, showed the stress in illness, graying hair, and body injuries. They had to answer calls on their days off, come in on days off, and it seemed like they never really had a break. This did not appeal. The closer you got the worse it looked. It is important to note that the store manager that promoted me soon thereafter, upon this new CEO s reign, became displaced. He no longer fit. He left a short time later, but not without some fireworks. This company was his savior from a life of hard times. It was also uncommon, as in corporate America, conformity and compliance was the rule. He was a bit disenfranchised. Skip to employment at a small hardware store. I met, after a year, a head cashier who transferred in to our store. I liked her, she was friendly, but sensed some problems. No particulars here. The point is that we clashed hard at one time over a presumed allowance of

theft, then through my efforts, tried to reconcile. It was determined that theft was occurring and company policy changed. She had a short career so far, but there were serious bumps already. Later I was directed to her Facebook/MySpace site by a coworker shortly after this effort. I learned there was a quite different person from who was at work. This person did not seem so angry. She had an interesting personality. She was involved in life and had passions. As I got to know her and tried to offer her help with her socialization problems with men ( offering how men saw the world and women), I soon discovered that she was actually helping me! There were many conversations where I just listened to what she wanted to talk about. It seemed to be something she really needed. I knew something about this girl could help me, but it was really low level. I knew she was sharp and misplaced. I knew she was hiding something. Like me. Law of attraction. I see this now but operated on instinct then. Turns out we have some uncanny background and mental material. I learned her parents both had low opinions of themselves. She had an abysmal opinion of herself. Her parents separated for a while and it sounded like the mother needed religion for a personal soothing reason, and the father drank, and considered himself at best the level of a dog but not in a good way. Her siblings had image problems as well, but seemed less serious. Her father s greatest and most forefront thought on his mind when I had the occasion to talk to him for just a few minutes was ..concern for his daughter s anger. He cared deeply for her and did not want to see her so angry. I so fervently agree. It has been posited that marriage is a dead institution because of a failure rate of 50% or greater. I propose that it is not the institution that is at fault but the happiness of the individual. If one reads the Meaning of Sex, by Ayn Rand, they will have the clearest view of happiness (self esteem) and how it relates to relationships and their success. If you look at much literature, news worthy life, television shows, and movies, the pattern is clear. The person who is unhappy with themselves cheats to get a short fix of feel-good from a desperate need. He cannot get it from the one he loves because he hates himself so much he feels like he is not worthy of the relationship or closeness from the loving one. It is an answer to the behavior you see all around you in such a clear and self evident, self proving description I think it should be taught to all people for consideration. Forewarned is forearmed. Now, to make it clear, I did not succumb to this action as I am sure some readers may interpret. However, it was a question brought up, and I could not support an answer. One interesting side note. I have found it a curious thing through life when asked how many medications I am on, that following my none response, is a what, none, that is really unusual . This is quite a statement to the general population condition. Many are medicated.

Here is Ayn Rands excerpt for The Meaning of Sex: Do you remember what I said about money and about the men who seek to reverse the law of cause and effect? The men who try to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind? Well, the man who despises himself tries to gain self-esteem from sexual adventures which can t be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man s sense of his own value. ... The men who think that wealth comes from material resources and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think for the same reason that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of one s mind, choice or code of values. They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he s taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body,

and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience or to fake a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut. ... He does not seek to gain his value, he seeks to express it. There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body. But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns him. Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. One proceeds from the other. Love is our response to our highest values and can be nothing else. Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not selfenjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws and he will have cut himself in two. His body will not obey him, it will not respond, it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find. His body will

always follow the ultimate logic of his deepest convictions; if he believes that flaws are values, he has damned existence as evil and only the evil will attract him. He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure. Then he will scream that his body has vicious desires of its own which his mind cannot conquer, that sex is sin, that true love is a pure emotion of the spirit. And then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex nothing but shame. ... You d never accept any part of their vicious creed. You wouldn t be able to force it upon yourself. If you tried to damn sex as evil, you d still find yourself, against your will, acting on the proper moral premise. You d be attracted to the highest woman you met. You d always want a heroine. You d be incapable of self-contempt. You d be unable to believe that existence is evil and that you re a helpless creature caught in an impossible universe. You re the man who s spent his life shaping matter to the purpose of his mind. You re the man who would know that just as an idea unexpressed in physical action is contemptible hypocrisy, so is platonic love and just as physical action unguided by an idea is a fool s self-fraud, so is sex when cut off from one s code of values. It s the same issue, and you would know it Your inviolate sense of self-esteem would know it. You would be incapable of desire for a woman you despised. Only the man who extols the purity of a love devoid of desire, is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love. But observe that most people are creatures cut in half who keep swinging desperately to one side or to the other. One kind of half

is the man who despises money, factories, skyscrapers and his own body. He holds undefined emotions about non-conceivable subjects as the meaning of life and as his claim to virtue. And he cries with despair, because he can feel nothing for the women he respects, but finds himself in bondage to an irresistible passion for a slut from the gutter. He is the man whom people call an idealist. The other kind of half is the man whom people call practical, the man who despises principles, abstractions, art, philosophy and his own mind. He regards the acquisition of material objects as the only goal of existence and he laughs at the need to consider their purpose or their source. He expects them to give him pleasure and he wonders why the more he gets, the less he feels. He is the man who spends his time chasing women. Observe the triple fraud which he perpetrates upon himself. He will not acknowledge his need of self-esteem, since he scoffs at such a concept as moral values; yet he feels the profound self-contempt which comes from believing that he is a piece of meat. He will not acknowledge, but he knows that sex is the physical expression of a tribute to personal values. So he tries, by going through the motions of the effect, to acquire that which should have been the cause. He tries to gain a sense of his own value from the women who surrender to him and he forgets that the women he picks have neither character nor judgment nor standard of value. He tells himself that all he s after is physical pleasure but observe that he tires of his women in a week or a night, that he despises professional whores and that he loves to imagine he is seducing virtuous girls who make a great exception for his sake. It is the feeling of achievement that he seeks and never finds. What

glory can there be in the conquest of a mindless body?

Anyway, she opened me up to books, ones that taught about people and behavior. Shop Girl by Steve Martin, and Malcom Gladwell s books. She was interested in Greek God Mythology, and poetry. She identified so much with some literature it became part of her DNA. It was available at an instant, and word for word. I saw how she used the Socratic method in questioning me, and others, played like she was asking what if questions, in a non serious manner, but really in search for deep meaning and getting into the lives of others to form her opinion of herself and them. She really intrigued me. She could be the one who opens up the world for me. And she did. She was a little too power hungry and used information to act as an informant to bolster her position with the store manager. She was very insecure. Me too, just in a different way. She was a master manipulator. I could learn from her though .. the positive things. One occasion of manipulation on me was after an effort I made to allow me to help her move as it sounded like she was in a bind for time and people to help. I tried the kindness route, the irritate route, the help-me-help you route. She would not budge and could not define for me why she would not let me help her. She in fact said I don t know why. So I left it at that. I went out to the sales floor and finished some duties and she came out a few minutes later and offered a friendly reminder of a task I was going to do. Operating on the selfish principal I figured that it was not the kind gesture it appeared to be. I was just beginning to read people better, having read Blink and other articles on body language. She was in fact just trying to misdirect me away from her as she went to the store manager to ask for his help moving. Nevertheless, even through all the manipulative motions, we grew as people as she put it one time when there was a mutual apology. I knew she was sharing information about me that I told her in confidence. She was too insecure not too. And, I could read people pretty well and watched their behavior. I could not take her exposing me as I gave her information about me. I kept much information secret. She told me much about her but refused questions that were not of her free flowing choosing. I respected her privacy on all matters she relayed. She was hurt by my holding back and dug and picked and observed. Quid Pro Quo was ordered. Now that we were friends she could point out my various faults in angry or mean behavior more freely. There were a few to be sure. I was an angry person. The assaults became too many, so I had to leave when combined with my other disappointments. Here I was helping her, and there was some resentment of me in some way, or maybe just power positioning, or just destructive behavior. Who knows? It may have been that I did not share that much about my family or me for that matter. It did not seem to be an interest with her, but later it became a high interest. Of course, I could not share much. I was not proud of much and did not feel I could or should. I surely would not want it spread and she told me clearly she did not keep secrets well. All this was on top of many problems with leadership in the company, in the store, and above the store.

The overriding issue concerning the company was the forced sale of ESP s and memberships. For this you had to use your charm and relationship with customers to sell a product that was to no advantage except the company in nearly all cases. This was, to me, in direct conflict with my sense of morality to people I had a relationship with. I still have regret about those sales. I feel like I used my best for the worst. However one defines sin surely this would be the case. Further motivation to leave was that at this point, I was on the right road as I had made some behavioral changes at home and could see progress. Shortly before I left she vented about her bulimia, and people being mean to her ( name calling about personal appearance) and about her shame in school about them (her siblings too) smelling like smoke because they heated with wood, etc. The anger during this episode was like Oscar Wilde s Picture of Dorian Grey. You could see the damage to her come through her face. I hurt so bad for her. She told me of her life, so much like Kerry Cohen in Loose Girl. I watched her behavior in pursuing men. I hurt for her so much I could barely take it. The anger over another head cashier, her equal in another store that she replaced in our store .so much like her. Retail, as I look at it in my mind now, has a preponderance of low self esteem people. The big box paid more, especially under good leadership, and as a consequence, we hired a better, more secure, stationed person. Although, as I look back there were plenty examples of low self worth people here as well, even in the better environment. Studs Terkel wrote a book containing interviews with employees of many walks of life. In particular he talked to manufacturing employees. One glaring standout was that management had a different opinion (higher) of the work environment than the floor worker. There was a clear disconnect. I find the modern retail environment has a lot of parallels to the factory environment. The small box did not have this advantage of higher pay for workers. But ironically, it allowed less anonymity. Propinquity, attraction by closeness, worked here to my ultimate advantage. This was the start of getting past my faade and finding out what my possibilities were.

It s a curious thing, confidence. It does not affect your entire persona. It s compartmentalized. She had great confidence in her job duties, but when in university, where structure was absent, no confidence and a meltdown. In line with details elsewhere in this text, she operated in mimicry behavior when she entered the retail workforce and copied her friends behavior and ran up lots of debt since her income did not match her friends. The law of attraction led her to lots of other people who found comfort , or relief from sexual exploitation. She copied them. She has a lot of confidence in manipulating men. I watched her work one manager through sexual discussion. At one time he was making her feel bad about her appearance in several ways. She was distraught by it. I offered that it was to get attention. She made a childhood observation you mean like pulling pig tails, I said yes .like that. She often reduced behaviors

to childhood instances. Smart girl more than she knows maybe. If someone is giving you negative attention, it is still attention. For an insecure person this is a great way to operate. If you show positive attention and get shot down it hurts. If you use negative attention you most likely will fire him up and get attention back. If not, you save face and consider it a victory. Also, negative attention, if you don t like yourself, can be a victory, as it supports your view. If you truly don t like someone, you don t give them any attention at all. This may seem counterintuitive but it stands to reason to evidence.This to me is an example of the hate and love being two sides of the same coin. At this point she worked him with sexual discussion putting him in a place to be advising and he rolled over like a pup and smoothed out. Before this, she was trying to get my buy in to make him stop and worked me on an intellectual level, ( I had not responded in the same way to sexual discussion) and asked my opinion about a paperwork issue. I offered a solution but you could tell she clearly did not need or really want my idea. It was just to get support the way she thought I would respond. When she thought one manager had given me information about a ploy she had planned to try against me, she immediately confused him and knew just how to do it by shaking him with his confidence in his memory. On one occasion she tried to see if I would take more cash during a register payout. She had heard erroneously that I had done this to a cashier, and her method was spectacular. An actress in full immersion in the role. She flipped her hair and acted with abandon to indicate she was not paying attention, but fully aware all the time. I suspected she was up to something and immediately put the $10.00 extra dollars she slipped me back in the drawer. So confident in some ways, her ability to manipulate, her intellect at conjuring, her structured work, but so little in other ways. It s a puzzle. Speaking of intellect, this young lady also asked the deepest questions. She was a thinker, clearly. Although she would explain away her interest as a way to pass the time during thoughtless activity, she clearly was thinking about things. Here is a list of some topics discussed: Religion and/or God s existence, sex and all that goes with it ( power, pleasure, sado masochism, interracial, prostitution, immorality diseases), determinism, socialism, communism, social ideology, theory of selfishness vs. altruism, self preservation vs. the moral imperative of your actions, women s rights, judgementalism vs. observation/communication, and the ego s of men.

She had connection with books and all the comfort they allow, without the sincerest people connection. I had the sincerest people connection without the book awareness that allows you to define who you are, others are, and the interrelation of everything else. One without the other seems to me is a disconnected existence. The value of both is enhanced by the other in ways that are not possible to clearly explain satisfactorily. You just have to experience it. I make an analogy: it s like having tools, but nothing to work with, or having something to work with but no tools.

A further examination of confidence follows. Now let's talk about the importance and reality of confidence. Look at what the college kids did with the Brazillian economy. They propped up the currency based on impression in the minds of the people. Confidence is all they created. The people bought in ( we are highly suggestive...remember) and the economy took off. The people believed the money and their purchasing power was stable, that they could rely on it. On the subject of illusion or just unawareness I would like to include a couple of examples. I feel like from what I observe that this is a real condition which many of us live in. I made the conclusion to first look into this under the assumption that when Einstein said reality is an illusion albeit a persistent one that his observations were for a material world and since we are part of that world we must behave in accordance with this observation as well to some degree. So, when the head cashier came into a situation that required her to move back home for a while to reorganize finances, she noticed how her parents behavior was at times disconcerting, possibly disrespectful, and there were other uncomfortable behaviors. She commented to the effect that she wondered if they were always this way, and that moving out and back gave her a fresh perspective. I submit they behaved the same way, but she was always around it and too close to the trees to see the forest. I feel like this behavior was a problem then, that she could not fully realize or address. I would like to point out another incident that furthers the idea of illusion. My son received a ticket, and I was informed through and attorney s letter, so it was not certain until I talked to him. He confirmed it. I wrote the following:
Two guys were sitting talking about the way they approach life. One says he is run by his emotions for his decisions for the most part. The other says he is run by reason for most of his decisions. So they decide to talk about an incident. The emotional one complains that he speeds a lot and gets tickets because he likes the thrill, feels good about taking chances, feels bad getting tickets, is challenged by trying his skill at making up lies to get out of the ticket that he got himself into....a circular challenge that gives him a thrill...like he can get himself in trouble and be clever enough to get himself out. The rational one says I really don't have that problem. I reason that money is hard earned and I like it to go where I get the most pleasure. I plan my trips to avoid being late and I don't need the thrill or the waste of energy toward concocting stories to satisfy myself how clever I am. I enjoy that I am clever in watching others spend their energy and money and time while I pursue the actions with true reward, like time with friends, loving my girlfriend, spending money where there is a good return (food, gifts, books, investments)and learning new things that suit me. It seems like the rational approach is a more suitable one to a happy existence. Sometimes the view of a situation outside oneself offers a perspective not otherwise available or without impact. Some may say there is still no impact. I hope otherwise.

Now, this creation of mine was sent within an hour of texting about his recent ticket. I did not hear back any response to this email. So, the next day he did respond to my inquiry at my

prompting. He did not think this related to him. He frequently professes to be a rationally driven person. This specifically addresses tickets and rational mindedness. Yet, in his mind there was simply no connection to how this related to him. I do not think this is unusual. I think others see us differently than we see ourselves. And, I think, depending on the person, the other vision, is bound to some accuracy we care not to admit. Further exacerbating the issue is the reluctance of others to say something. This in my opinion is a great tragedy. I think a lot of behaviors could be addressed and remedied if more people allowed themselves to talk to people about behaviors they see that are missing the mark. The delicate approach must be used though. If it comes across as judgmental it possibly becomes worse than nothing said at all. I am certainly not the only one to arrive at this conclusion. I particularly like Walt Whitman. This is a partial reprint of a poem he wrote that is particularly relevant. Poem of You, Whoever you are:
You have not known what you areyou have slumbered upon yourself all your life, Your eye-lids have been as much as closed most of the time, What you have done returns already in mockeries, Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return? The mockeries are not you, Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk,

One of the most valuable things to me has been hearing conversations not meant for my ears, but specifically about me. It is here that the truth is spoken. Since you are not there, you are hearing it as an observer, and it sifts into the mind a little differently. You don t get defensive, or interrupt. You just think .is this true, are the comments accurate, why do I do this behavior, is it motivated by aggression from another person, what prejudices does the other person have, is this something I can change, and, should I change. The reality check this provides is eye opening. People in my experience don t speak the truth, business or personal. It is a constant protectionist attitude, that eliminates authenticity. Politics for power, money, treatment, and attention rule the actions of adults misguided by a society that favors the image these things represent. It s a false image. When they get there the atmosphere darkens. But the treadmill keeps going, if not a little faster. Unfortunately, the information that is kept quite is both

negative and positive. There is a similar parallel in families, at least my family. It turns out from attending a school meeting that other parents have this same issue. One parent commented that she did not find out information from her child, and that she had to talk to teachers to find out what was going on. I find in correspondence, like emails, and school assignments that the real condition of the soul is expressed. Here the relationship is held forever in a state of discontent, rather than allowed to proceed from a mutual understanding. What pain is endured for no other reason than not communicating I cannot even fathom. I can surmise it is great by my own estimation of the looks, the lack of looks, and the lack of conversation. On a philosophical note there is a statement that is appropriate here: The notion of secrecy is central to western literature. You may say, the whole idea of character is defined by people holding specific information which for various reasons, sometimes perverse, sometimes noble, they are determined not to disclose.

Loose Girl and other resources point out a useful tool. If you hate someone, take a close look. It is probably something in yourself you do not like about yourself. I have found this to be true. I identified with her, enjoyed her brain, (for she challenged me to think about the things we do every day and just accept it), and how much she was helping me understand myself. I could not take seeing myself in her, and her damage herself .on purpose, yet without in her mind, alternative recourse. What a pathetic set of circumstances. The key moment for me was after I had exchanged some tidbits about smoking marijuana and 13 car accidents, (most very minor, obviously I m still here and undeformed of body) she said so you had a bad childhood, huh ? I of course immediately said what, no, I had a good childhood . I believed then that I did. I had none of the news worthy poverty, or physical abuse. I lived in the suburbs, had a car in high school, dated, had success in school, regular meals, money and a job in high school. I did not know then the effect of my experiences. I was also as the saying goes too close to the forest to see the trees . I have since learned through the glimpse of this young lady and many books later that behavior we received was in fact detrimental to development. I was always blamed for bad behavior as I was growing up. It was my fault somehow that I was angry, got in accidents. The consensus of a parental statement is powerful. I was screaming nonverbally about the messed up environment. I later screamed verbally and physically. I think people really do behave according to the law of every action has an equal and opposite reaction, with emotions as well. This is why kindness breeds kindness and anger breads anger. I think maybe some magnification does happen though depending on the personalities (sensitivities) involved. One note of interest was when I pulled out onto a road about halfway .when I saw a motorcycle rider coming toward me. It was too late to move, and he hit the front part of the car and flew across the hood and landed some 30 to 40 feet in the

grass. He turned out to be relatively unscathed. Now, I knew I should feel bad for this. And, I played the part. Moping, staying in the room as if depressed. But, I really had no connection to this other than an observer. I did not feel bad. I still don t and wonder why? It seems sociopathic, but I do have extreme sensitivity to seeing pain in my wife and kids like cleaning wounds, or minor physical therapy for my wife to aid in her recovery from an injury. I think this is enough to offer evidence against sociopathy.

This is the tip of the iceberg really. There are many other incidents. To the party that says, tell me more, which is nothing more than a veiled interest, but rather a way to discredit should more anecdote be unavailable, I respond with this parallel. The iceberg is made up of many days of inconsequential little layers of daily snow and ice. It builds quietly and uneventfully into a massive object of immense weight and size which is as oppressive and as immovable as most anything on earth. This is the effect of daily life on the person. He can hardly distinguish all that oppresses him and the immensity of it all for its slow but consistent growth upon him. But here is the really tricky abuse. They are intelligent people, my parents, so mind games happened as well. These are the things you can t point to exactly, so you are defenseless in a way at a young age. You just know you are being screwed with and all you can do is get angrier and angrier. It is a cruel kind of torture when your mind is being manipulated and you can t see a direct path to fight it or express and point to it directly. This really eats at you because now you feel helpless at even fighting the hate and anger coming your way. Once you do, you appear as the instigator of the assault, so now you are definitely the problem. Kind of like being put in jail when you are innocent I think. All the evidence points to you, you know you did not do it, and you have no defense against it, and you know you are going down for something you did not do. Without going into much detail, I stole candy and deep fried apple pies at around 6 years old. I was caught after a while. The punishment was to be fed out of a bottle like a baby and restriction, yelling, and, spanking. I also played with fire, literally. I nearly burned down a club house in the back yard. Both these actions speak to severe behavioral treatment and a poor adjustment to it. It is not a puzzle now. I don t think it was then, but this is really not a matter for now. It is just another piece to the explanation of me. There have been enough autobiographies written that line the library shelves now that clearly indicate, without the need of psychologists, that poor parental involvement leads to this behavior and it is almost a guarantee if both parents are at issue. Usually, if one parent is involved to a healthy degree the children manage well though with some effort.

At 10 years old, I was in class in the morning period. I was sitting quietly as the children filtered in. All of the sudden, there was a commotion at the front of the class. The children started gathering around. I went carefully up as well. At this time there was pushing and shoving. Soon it grew into fist throwing and finally one kid went down. Then, the kid standing took the hair of the kid on the ground and with a swift motion jammed his knee into his face about three times. The kid was out. The only feeling I can remember is one of awe, and the consequent wish of boy, I wish I could do that . The absolute power and victory was impressive. The problem was he was suspended, maybe expelled. I better not do that after all.

One last anecdote of my behavior was in my teen years. I was 16 or 17. My friends and I were pulling into a shopping center to listen to stereos at a high end stereo store. We pulled into a spot and were immediately approached by an angry person in an old faded gold/brown station wagon. He was wild looking, with hair slightly electrified, unshaven and a rough appearance overall. I couldn t swear to it, but a damaged Vietnam vet would be a good guess. We had taken his spot. I immediately refuted him. He escalated to vulgarities. I intensely threw expletives back and he was now going to his station wagon in a fast angry arms- flailing walk. He was getting his car jack. The big ones used in the 70 s. He started to raise it as if he was going to come at me with it. I, in my angry youth, finally having a chance to release, threatened him with his own action. I told him, go ahead, do it, you may hit me, but you will go to jail, I m under 18!. Go ahead! You ll go to jail! Reasoning with this man was a 1 in a million chance. But, somehow, he did reason it was not worth it. My friends thought it was an amazing display after wards. But, now, I have a different view. I am on a path to recovery. If it was not for meeting this outspoken head cashier with similar background and personal makeup I probably would never have changed. This would have been a travesty for my entire family, including extended. The effects this lady has had are truly hard to measure. It s enormous and probably (hopefully) will affect generations. My brother is much better now that he has a handle on why he was behaving the way he was. He was told several times by his partner, but it did not sink in. The source and the way the words are put in context matter beyond measure. It s the difference between acceptance and not .pure and simple. I am trying to explain a way directly to rectifying the self image. I am studying the famous people like Oprah who have self image problems. They all still have self image problems, but get some boost from fans. This is not a solution. I think it is a band aid not available, nor desirable to many people. I am hopeful that intellectualizing the three laws and primarily the law of suggestion will be an answer. I hope it is an answer for Kerry Cohen and others like her or anyone with self esteem issue resulting from behavior that demeans. I must say at this point I understand why House Speaker Boehner cries, while it seems a mystery to most people. I find

myself tearing up or getting a tight throat and a strained voice when I see a sweet kindness that is touching, especially toward children.

If, as Mark Twain posits, in his What is Man book, is true, and it seems to hold water based on my observations of life, this is an answer. Therefore, as young people, (and older as well) we are highly suggestible machines, and we are programmed as it were for behaviors by behaviors seen. Furthermore, people operate in self mode all the time. All actions are from a self perspective. Therefore, all actions toward you need to be considered before you believe it is actually any real reflection of you. Take for instance a bully who picks on others. The person being picked on is just a release for the anger in the other. We take it as a fault in ourselves because we only think in terms of self. But, clearly the bully is just releasing his anger and that is no reflection in any way of your value. The same is true of good deeds. This makes actions toward us confusing. We see good actions toward us as a boost about us. So, we see bad actions toward us as a detriment. In fact, good actions frequently are really about how the other person feels about themselves. If you feel great about yourself you release that to others. If you have self- esteem, ( again it is about the self and if you rely on outsiders, you will never get the self defined) these comments are mere comments and should be appreciated for what they are .comments, not directions to how you feel about yourself. So, how do you get self esteem. Seems to me the best answer is something like this. Read, read , read and get an identity about how you feel about the important questions in life to you. To quote: the chief importance of knowledge by description is that it enables us to pass beyond the limits of our own private experience. I think parents can help, but this is the source of the problem in this diatribe so I don t approach this angle here. Spirituality has been defined as your relation to the universe. I like this definition. Become an intellectual on what drives you. Get clear definitions of marriage, morality, purpose, meaning, selfishness, human rights, and politics to name several. It seems hard to imagine an intellectual with self esteem issues. This information also allows connection to others in deeply meaningful ways that construct memories. This certainly adds meaning and depth to the self. The Latin phrase says it all to me: I carry all my things with me. That is a secure mindset, but it requires a lot of intellectual pursuit. This concept is the essence of confidence, clearly defined ideas and definitions of the important things to them and no need of others approval for self evaluation. This is not to say that it is not appreciated, but rather their image is theirs and not an evaluation of them from someone else in the form of compliment or derogatory comment. If we rely on others for our image then obviously it will vary by the others we are in contact with who project their own image on to us since we only see in others what we identify with. This is no way to have an image and would be very confusing to adjust to since it will always vary from

day to day and person to person. Think about a compliment.....you are a kind person.....I assure you that person thinks they are kind at the moment and sees that in you. Meet an angry person ( anger has been defined as it is all about me...attention attention) and they will project that on you. One outstanding feature of the great people of this earth was the well read nature and often their documentation of their ideas in the form of a journal. The documentation cements and confirms your ideas and thoughts and direction. Reference the neural/synaptic thickening that occurs with repetition and the working in the mind of an idea. Put another way is the following: Definitions - it has become a running theme through reading that a clear problem for people is definitions. If you don't have a really good idea of a definition of some ideas ( love, politics, passion) you will assume the influence others have over you and accept their definition rather than search it out for yourself and get comfortable with it. Reading is one way. This is talking to people, working their view to what works for you. I saw an interview with Tim McGraw who had as a definition of himself a father who was an alcoholic. You are defined by your parents as a young person. We are mimickers. But in this case he saw his real father and chose at that moment to redefine himself in those terms. He immediately got confidence. Definitions are crucial to happiness or at least having a choice in the path you take. You have to have clear definitions of who you are to be confident. Think about what makes you feel good.....it's when you do something you are confident with.

Now, on motivation I have this to say. The motivation for any action toward you is never about you. It is always about the other person. This is why it can never work to base your opinion on others...it is impossible for it to be about you....although you think it is. Think about hateful statement, practical jokes, mean behaviors, favors, kindnesses. They all stem from the other persons motivations. Two great movie examples are The Reader, and Ordinary People. The child in both assumes the blame for the parents distant, difficult behavior. Of course in both cases as in life, it is not the case, but the condition of the adult from traumatic treatment. It can be a vicious cycle. This is monumental to know and internalize in order to understand that your value can only come from the comfort you get for yourself in gaining knowledge about the things you think about that matter to you.

In Dr. OZ s book, there is stated the ever increasing evidence of mimicry as the primary tool of learning and the most effective in brain formation. A truly convincing show of the sublime power of suggestion is laid out in the brown-eyed blue-eyed experiment performed in 1968 by a school teacher where she turned students against each other in a matter of minutes and a

few years later did the same thing with adults who were friends and well acquainted with each other. In minutes, she had the adults hate their friends and the hated group was defenseless against her accusations and belittling remarks. It is truly astounding .and scary. The Miligram experiment offers additional insight and support. It seems like this knowledge gives one the ammunition to be considerate of the suggestions you hear and weigh them carefully against other information. Most importantly, use the guide of morality, defined as well-being, as the final referee in the decision of what to adopt for your belief. There is also epigenetics that account for turning genes off and on based on environmental factors like stress as well as pollutants, and chemicals. In short, relieve yourself of the blame. This is not a copout as some would have you believe. This (meaning all the explanation listed above) is a clear, believable explanation to the it s not your fault line in the movie with Robin Williams movie Good Will Hunting. I felt like I understood the words and intent , but they did not have meat behind them. I personally feel like this gives the words meat. It is my hope that Kerry Cohen will get the relief she needs when in her book she stated a book worth reading would be one that would help her recover her self worth after the lifetime of degrading behavior. Shame seems to me, for the most part, if not all, an outside invention from others as to how you should feel. I once talked to an older gentleman who grew up poor, as he was told years later. But, he said as a child he did not feel poor nor consider themselves poor. They had food, love, and sticks in the yard to play with. People to play games with and pets. He did not feel shame about the way he lived until someone told him so. How can a person desperately wanting connection, love, and attention, because this person knows no other way (in her mind) to get it, be made to feel shame for the most basic needs that this person could not find or get instruction on how to find, from their family. But we do it, and suggestion works to make it so. A better way, is to recognize it and see it as a call for some direction. What it is, is a way of life that leads to lack of real connections and sharing, and memories that give us daily meaning. That is what we, most of us, truly want I think. I don t know the answer to removing shame, but this sure gives me a surer footing and I think it stands to reason as well. I think it requires repetition and investigation of the these theories and the consequent behaviors to yourself. Just like the thickening of the neural pathways that have been used so many times and are the easiest pathways now, you will have to grow the new pathways to automatically think the new way. One thing I know for sure, is that this self esteem thing is an epidemic and it needs to be addressed. Our culture rewards a few who use the low self esteem to rise to the top, and lots of money is gained, and we see that as some measure of success. This is still an extreme way to live and people are not generally meant to live with extremes. Hence the burnouts, drug deaths, sex addicts, and the list goes on. It s an imbalance that does not lead to proper social development. Since many of the stars of this world, and hence the money they represent, is from these personality types, I don t think it is a

leap to suggest there is monetary motive to let it be. Especially, since there is a great many people that don t make this jump and stay in subservient, low wage, low intellect jobs that the service industry ( our economy) is made up of. In effect, there is monetary reason to suggest that we are perpetuating this behavior if not outright supporting it.

The following is from New Yorker Magazine. It addresses in a fresh manner many of the topics I bring up here: suggestibility, education, consensus, law of attraction, and certainly the law of compensation.

Occasionally, you meet a young, rising member of this class at the gelato store, as he hovers indecisively over the cloudberry and ginger-pomegranate selections, and you notice that his superhuman equilibrium is marred by an anxiety. Many members of this class, like many Americans generally, have a vague sense that their lives have been distorted by a giant cultural bias. They live in a society that prizes the development of career skills but is inarticulate when it comes to the things that matter most. The young achievers are tutored in every soccer technique and calculus problem, but when it comes to their most important decisionswhom to marry and whom to befriend, what to love and what to despisethey are on their own. Nor, for all their striving, do they understand the qualities that lead to the highest achievement. Intelligence, academic performance, and prestigious schools dont correlate well with fulfillment, or even with outstanding accomplishment. The traits that do make a difference are poorly understood, and cant be taught in a classroom, no matter what the tuition: the ability to understand and inspire people; to read situations and discern the underlying patterns; to build trusting relationships; to recognize and correct ones shortcomings; to imagine alternate futures. In short, these achievers have a sense that they are shallower than they need to be.

Help comes from the strangest places. We are living in the middle of a revolution in consciousness. Over the past few decades, geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and others have made great strides in understanding the inner working of the human mind. Far from being dryly materialistic, their work illuminates the rich underwater world where character is formed and wisdom grows. They are giving us a better grasp of emotions, intuitions, biases, longings, predispositions, character traits, and social bonding, precisely those things about which our culture has least to say. Brain science helps fill the hole left by the atrophy of theology and philosophy. A core finding of this work is that we are not primarily the products of our conscious thinking. The conscious mind gives us one way of making sense of our environment. But the unconscious mind gives us other, more supple ways. The cognitive revolution of the past thirty years provides a different perspective on our lives, one that emphasizes the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, moral intuition over abstract logic,

perceptiveness over I.Q. It allows us to tell a different sort of success story, an inner story to go along with the conventional surface one.

To give a sense of how this inner story goes, lets consider a young member of the Composure Class, though of course the lessons apply to members of all classes. Ill call him Harold. His inner-mind training began before birth. Even when he was in the womb, Harold was listening for his mothers voice, and being molded by it. French babies cry differently from babies whove heard German in the womb, because theyve absorbed French intonations before birth. Fetuses who have been read The Cat in the Hat while in the womb suck rhythmically when they hear it again after birth, because they recognize the rhythm of the poetry. As a newborn, Harold, like all babies, was connecting with his mother. He gazed at her. He mimicked. His brain was wired by her love (the more a rat pup is licked and groomed by its mother, the more synaptic connections it has). Harolds mother, in return, read his moods. A conversation developed between them, based on touch, gaze, smell, rhythm, and imitation. When Harold was about eleven months old, his mother realized that she knew him better than shed ever known anybody, even though theyd never exchanged a word.
ILLUSTRATION: PHILIPPE PETIT-ROULET

Harold soon developed models in his head of how to communicate with people and how to use others as tools for his own learning. Thanks to his moms attunement, he became confident that if he sent a signal it would be received. Later in life, his sense of security enabled him to go out and explore the world. Researchers at the University of Minnesota can look at attachment patterns of children at forty-two months, and predict with seventy-seven-per-cent accuracy who will graduate from high school. People who were securely attached as infants tend to have more friends at school and at summer camp. They tend to be more truthful through life, feeling less need to puff themselves up in others eyes. According to work by Pascal Vrticka, of the University of Geneva, people with what scientists call avoidant attachment patterns show less activation in the reward areas of the brain during social interaction. Men who had unhappy childhoods are three times as likely to be solitary at age seventy. Early experiences dont determine a life, but they set pathways, which can be changed or reinforced by later experiences. For several months when he was four, Harold insisted that he was a tiger who had been born on the sun. His parents tried to get him to concede that he was a little boy born in a hospital, but he would become grave and refuse. This formulation, Im a tiger, may seem like an easy thing, but no computer could blend the complicated concept I with the complicated concept tiger into a single entity. As Harold grew, he was able to use his imagination to blend disparate ideas, in the same sort of way that Picasso, at the height of his creative powers, could combine the concept Western portraiture with the concept African masks. Throughout his life, Harold had a superior ability to feel what others were feeling. He didnt dazzle his teachers with academic brilliance, but, even in kindergarten, he could tell you who in his class was friends with whom; he was aware of social networks. Scientists used to think that

we understand each other by observing each other and building hypotheses from the accumulated data. Now it seems more likely that we are, essentially, method actors who understand others by simulating the responses we see in them. When Harold was in high school, he could walk around the cafeteria and fall in with the unique social patterns that prevailed in each clique. He could tell which clique tolerated drug use or country-music listening and which didnt. He could tell how many guys a girl could hook up with and not be stigmatized. In some groups, the number was three; in others seven. Most people assume that the groups they dont belong to are more homogeneous than the groups they do belong to. Harold could see groups from the inside. When he sat down with, say, the Model U.N. kids, he could guess which one of them wanted to migrate from the Geeks and join the Honors/Athletes. He could sense who was the leader of any group, who was the jester, who played the role of peacemaker, daredevil, organizer, or self-effacing audience member.

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from the issue cartoon bank e-mail this

One of Harolds key skills in school was his ability to bond with teachers. Weve spent a generation trying to reorganize schools to make them better, but the truth is that people learn from the people they love. In eleventh grade, Harold developed a crush on his history teacher, Ms. Taylor. What mattered most was not the substance of the course so much as the way she thought, the style of learning she fostered. For instance, Ms. Taylor constantly told the class how little she knew. Human beings are overconfidence machines. Paul J. H. Schoemaker and J. Edward Russo gave questionnaires to more than two thousand executives in order to measure how much they knew about their industries. Managers in the advertising industry gave answers that they were ninety-per-cent confident were correct. In fact, their answers were wrong sixtyone per cent of the time. People in the computer industry gave answers they thought had a ninety-five per cent chance of being right; in fact, eighty per cent of them were wrong. Ninetynine per cent of the respondents overestimated their success.

Ms. Taylor was always reminding the class of how limited her grasp of any situation was. Sorry, I get distracted easily, shed say, or, Sorry, sometimes I jump to conclusions too quickly. In this way, she communicated the distinction between mental strength (the processing power of the brain) and mental character (the mental virtues that lead to practical wisdom). She stressed the importance of collecting conflicting information before making up ones mind, of calibrating ones certainty level to the strength of the evidence, of enduring uncertainty for long stretches as an answer became clear, of correcting for ones biases. As Keith E. Stanovich, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, writes in his book What Intelligence Tests Miss (2009), these thinking dispositions correlate weakly or not at all with I.Q. But, because Ms. Taylor put such emphasis on these virtues and because Harold admired her so much, he absorbed and copied her way of being. By the time Harold was in his mid-twenties, he was well on his way toward a happy and fulfilling life, and the building blocks of his happiness had little to do with the lines on his rsum. Theres a debate in our culture about what really makes us happy, which is summarized by, on the one hand, the book On the Road and, on the other, the movie Its a Wonderful Life. The former celebrates the life of freedom and adventure. The latter celebrates roots and connections. Research over the past thirty years makes it clear that what the inner mind really wants is connection. Its a Wonderful Life was right. Joining a group that meets just once a month produces the same increase in happiness as doubling your income. According to research by Daniel Kahneman, Alan B. Krueger, and others, the daily activities most closely associated with happiness are socialhaving sex, socializing after work, and having dinner with friends. Many of the professions that correlate most closely with happiness are also sociala corporate manager, a hairdresser.

Young American men are not exactly famous for being in touch with their emotions. But Harold sensed that he was a social animal, not a laboring animal or a rational animal, and one day he went on a blind date with the womanlets call her Ericawho would someday be his wife. Given the stakes, we might pause over this incident, to show in slightly more detail how the inner processes of the mind interact with the conscious ones. Harold and Erica got their first glimpse of each other in front of a Barnes & Noble. They smiled broadly as they approached, and a deep, primeval process kicked in. Harold liked what he saw, from the waist-to-hip ratio to the clear skin, all indicative of health and fertility. He enjoyed the smile that spread across Ericas face, and unconsciously noted that the end of her eyebrows dipped down. The orbicularis-oculi muscle, which controls this part of the eyebrow, cannot be consciously controlled, so, when the tip of the eyebrow dips, that means the smile is genuine, not fake. Erica was impressed by him: women everywhere tend to prefer men who have symmetrical features and are slightly older, taller, and stronger than they are. But she was more guarded and slower to trust than Harold was. Thats in part because, while Pleistocene men could pick their mates on the basis of fertility cues discernible at a glance, Pleistocene women faced a more vexing problem. Human babies require years to become self-sufficient, and a single woman in

that environment could not gather enough calories to provide for a family. She was compelled to choose a man not only for insemination but for continued support. Thats why men leap into bed more quickly than women. Various research teams have conducted a simple study. They hire a woman to go up to college men and ask them to sleep with her. More than half the men say yes. Then they have a man approach college women with the same offer. Virtually zero per cent say yes. So Erica was subconsciously looking for signs of trustworthiness. Marion Eals and Irwin Silverman, of York University, have conducted research suggesting that women are sixty to seventy per cent more proficient than men at remembering details from a scene. In the previous few years, Erica had used her powers of observation to discard entire categories of men as potential partners, and some of her choices were idiosyncratic. She rejected men who wore Burberry, because she couldnt see herself looking at the same pattern on scarves and raincoats for the rest of her life. She viewed fragranced men the way Churchill viewed the Germansthey were either at your feet or at your throat. She would have nothing to do with men who wore sports-related jewelry, because her boyfriend should not love Derek Jeter more than her. She looked furtively at Harold as he approached. Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov, of Princeton, have found that we make judgments about a persons trustworthiness, competence, aggressiveness, and likability within the first tenth of a second. These sorts of first glimpses are astonishingly reliable in predicting how people will feel about each other months later. Erica noticed that Harold was good-looking but not one of those men who are so good-looking that they dont need to be interesting. He was tall, which tends to inspire confidence; one study estimated that each inch of height corresponds to six thousand dollars of annual salary in contemporary America. Then he walked up and said hello. Despite the saying about opposites attracting, people usually fall in love with people like themselves. Theres even some evidence that people tend to pick partners with noses of similar breadth to their own and eyes about the same distance apart. At lunch, Harold and Erica quickly discovered that they had a lot in common. They both affected connoisseurship regarding prosaic things such as muffins, hamburgers, and iced tea. They both exaggerated their popularity in high school, and had the same opinions about the characters in Mad Men. People generally overestimate how distinct their own lives are, so the commonalities seemed to them a series of miracles. The coincidences gave their relationship an aura of destiny. The server came to their table and took their orders. The restaurant seemed to specialize in hardto-eat salads. Erica, anticipating this, chose an appetizer that could be easily forked and a main dish that didnt require cutlery expertise. But Harold went for a salad, composed of splayed green tentacles that could not be shoved into his mouth without brushing salad dressing on both of his cheeks. None of it mattered, because Harold and Erica clicked. Most emotional communication is nonverbal. Gestures are a language that we use not only to express our feelings but to constitute them. By making a gesture, people help produce an internal state. Harold and Erica licked their lips, leaned forward in their chairs, glanced at each other out of the corners of their eyes, and performed all the other tricks of unconscious choreography that people do while flirting. Erica did the head cant women do to signal romantic interest, a slight tilt of the head that exposes the neck. Then, there was the hair flip: she raised her arms to adjust her hair and heaved

her chest into view. She would have been appalled if she had seen herself in a mirror at that moment. And through it all the conversation flowed. Youd think, if you listened to cultural stereotypes, that women are the more romantic of the sexes. In fact, theres evidence that men fall in love faster and are more likely to believe that true love lasts forever. Though men normally spend twice as much time talking about themselves as women do, in this conversation Harold was actually talking about Ericas problems. Surveys by the evolutionary psychologist David Buss suggest that, for both men and women, kindness is one of the most important qualities desired in a sexual partner. Courtship consists largely of sympathy displays, in which potential partners try to prove how compassionate they can be, as anybody who has seen dating couples around children and dogs can attest. Of course, there are less noble calculations going on as people choose their mates. Like veteran stock-market traders, people respond in predictable, if unconscious, ways to the valuations of the social marketplace. The richer the man, the younger the woman he is likely to mate with. A mans job status is an outstanding predictor of his wifes attractiveness. Without being aware of it, Harold and Erica were doing these sorts of calculationsweighing earnings-to-looks ratios, calculating social-capital balances. Every signal suggested that they had found a match. + ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++The greatest happiness love can offer is the first pressure of hands between you and your beloved, Stendhal observed. Harold and Erica left the restaurant and walked down the sidewalk past a high-end stationery store unaware that they were already doing the lovers walkbodies close to each other, smiles beaming out at the space in front of them. Harold actually shivered as he escorted Erica back to her car. He felt that he had been extraordinarily witty over lunch, encouraged by her flashing eyes. As Erica and Harold semi-embraced, they took in each others pheromones. Smell is a surprisingly powerful sense in these situations. People who lose their sense of smell eventually suffer greater emotional deterioration than people who lose their vision. In one experiment conducted at the Monell Center, in Philadelphia, researchers asked men and women to tape gauze pads under their arms and then watch either a horror movie or a comedy. Research subjects, presumably well compensated, then sniffed the pads. They could somehow tell, at rates higher than chance, which pads had the smell of laughter and which pads had the smell of fear, and women were much better at this test than men. Harold and Erica both sensed that this had been one of the most important interviews of their lives. In fact, it turned out to be the most important two hours of their lives, for there is no decision more important to lifelong happiness than the decision about whom to marry. During that early afternoon, they had begun to make a decision. The meal was delightful, but it was also a rigorous intellectual exam that made the S.A.T. seem like tic-tac-toe. Both of them had spent a hundred and twenty minutes performing delicate social tasks. They had demonstrated wit, complaisance, empathy, tact, and timing. They had measured their emotional responses with

discriminations so fine that no gauge could quantify them. Every few minutes, each had admitted the other one step closer toward his or her heart. This is how life works. Deciding whom to love is not an alien form of decision-making, a romantic interlude in the midst of normal life. Instead, decisions about whom to love are more intense versions of the sorts of decisions we make throughout the course of our existence, from what kind of gelato to order to what career to pursue. Living is an inherently emotional business. Harold and Erica were never more alive than in the first weeks of being in love. If Harold was walking down the street alone, he kept thinking that he saw her face in the crowd. Things that used to bore him he now found charming. When he was out running, he would concoct elaborate fantasies in which he heroically saved her from harm. (Something about the act of running, and the chemicals it releases in the brain, brought out these Walter Mitty imaginings.) According to research by Faby Gagn, of Yorkville University, and John Lydon, of McGill, ninety-five per cent of people in relationships believe that their partner is above average in looks, intelligence, warmth, and sense of humor. (Other research shows that people describe former lovers as closedminded, emotionally unstable, and generally unpleasant.) Harold now understood why the pagans had conceived of love as a god. It really felt as if some supernatural entity had entered his mind, reorganizing everything and lifting him to some higher realm. But, in the first few months of their relationship, Harold and Erica were also engaged, as new couples must be, in a sort of map-meld. Each of them had come into the relationship with a mental map of how day-to-day life worked. Once their lives were permanently joined, they discovered that their maps did not entirely cohere. It was not the big differences they noticed but the little patterns of existence that they had never even considered. Erica thought that dishes should be rinsed and put in the dishwasher right after they were used. Harold left them in the sink for the day and then put all of them in the dishwasher in the evening. For Harold, reading the morning paper was a solitary activity done in silence by two people who happened to be sitting together. For Erica, the morning paper was an occasion for conversation and observations about the state of the world. When Harold went to the grocery store, he bought meal productsa package of tortellini, a frozen pizza, a quiche. Erica bought ingredientseggs, sugar, flour. Harold was amazed that she could spend two hundred dollars and there was still nothing for dinner. Gradually, they entered the second stage of map-melding: pre-campaign planning. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Both Harold and Erica subliminally understood that the quirks that seemed charming and lovable in the early stages of loveEricas tendency to fire up the laptop in bed at 6 A.M., Harolds feigned helplessness in the face of any domestic chore would eventually cause the other to harbor homicidal urges. And so they began to make mental checklists of Things That Would Have to Change. Harold considered himself a neat man, but neatness consisted of taking things that were cluttering the countertops and shoving them into the nearest available drawers. He was apparently smarter than every football coach he had ever watched, but he lacked the foresight to see why you might not want to leave your shoes in the path that leads from the bed to the bathroom.

While they were negotiating these issues, something deeper was going on. It had to do with the familiar pleasure one feels when the internal networks of the mind and the outer patterns of reality suddenly match. Friends who are having a conversation begin to replicate each others vocal patterns. People in conversations begin to mimic the body language of the other person, and, the more closely they mimic the body language, the more perceptive they are about the other persons emotions. As the neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni notes, vicarious is not a strong enough word to describe the effect of these mental processes. The brain exists within the skull, but the mind extends outward and arises from the interactions between people or between a person and the environment. A year or so after they were married, Harold and Erica spent a week with Harolds parents at their house in Aspen. They went riding and rafting and they attended an ideas festival. They sat through panel discussions on green technology and on how to adopt a charter school, and they spent a few hours immersed in the China: Friend or Foe? debate. One morning, they attended a talk by a neuroscientist. He was a young man in black jeans and a leather jacket, and he came to the session carrying a motorcycle helmet, as if hed just escaped from a Caltech revival of Grease. He greeted a Finnish TV crew that was making a documentary about his work, mounted the stage, and gave a slide presentation that started with a series of optical illusions, like two tabletops that seem totally different but are actually the same size. Then he displayed a series of colorful brain-scan pictures and threw out some startling statistics: we have a hundred billion neurons in the brain; infants create as many as 1.8 million neural connections per second; a mere sixty neurons are capable of making ten to the eighty-first possible connections, which is a number ten times as large as the number of particles in the observable universe; the ability to distinguish between a P and a B sound involves as many as twenty-two sites across the brain; even something as simple as seeing a color in a painting involves a mind-bogglingly complex set of mental constructions. Our perceptions, the scientist said, are fantasies we construct that correlate with reality. At first, Harold found the talk a little chilling: it seemed that the revolution the scientist was describing was bound to lead to cold, mechanistic conclusions. If everything could be reduced to genes, neural wiring, and brain chemistry, what happened to the major concepts of lifegood and evil, sin and virtue, love and commitment? And what about the way Harold made sense of his life as he lived it, the everyday vocabulary of morals, moods, character, aspirations, temptations, values, ideals? The scientist described human beings as creatures driven by deep mechanisms, almost like puppets on strings, not as ensouled human beings capable of running their own lives. During the question-and-answer period, though, a woman asked the neuroscientist how his studies had changed the way he lived. He paused for a second, and then starting talking about a group he had joined called the Russian-American Folk Dance Company. It was odd, given how hard and scientific he had sounded. I guess I used to think of myself as a lone agent, who made certain choices and established certain alliances with colleagues and friends, he said. Now, though, I see things differently. I believe we inherit a great river of knowledge, a flow of patterns coming from many sources. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past we call genetics. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago we call culture. The

information passed along from decades ago we call family, and the information offered months ago we call education. But it is all information that flows through us. The brain is adapted to the river of knowledge and exists only as a creature in that river. Our thoughts are profoundly molded by this long historic flow, and none of us exists, self-made, in isolation from it. And though history has made us self-conscious in order to enhance our survival prospects, we still have deep impulses to erase the skull lines in our head and become immersed directly in the river. Ive come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks. It happens sometimes when you are lost in a hard challenge, or when an artist or a craftsman becomes one with the brush or the tool. It happens sometimes while youre playing sports, or listening to music or lost in a story, or to some people when they feel enveloped by Gods love. And it happens most when we connect with other people. Ive come to think that happiness isnt really produced by conscious accomplishments. Happiness is a measure of how thickly the unconscious parts of our minds are intertwined with other people and with activities. Happiness is determined by how much information and affection flows through us covertly every day and year. As the scientist went on to talk about the rush he got from riding his motorcycle in the mountains, Harold was gripped by the thought that, during his lifetime, the competition to succeedto get into the right schools and land the right jobshad grown stiffer. Society had responded by becoming more and more focussed. Yet somehow the things that didnt lead to happiness and flourishing had been emphasized at the expense of the things that did. The gifts he was most grateful for had been passed along to him by teachers and parents inadvertently, whereas his official education was mostly forgotten or useless. Moreover, Harold had the sense that he had been trained to react in all sorts of stupid ways. He had been trained, as a guy, to be self-contained and smart and rational, and to avoid sentimentality. Yet maybe sentiments were at the core of everything. Hed been taught to think vertically, moving ever upward, whereas maybe the most productive connections were horizontal, with peers. Hed been taught that intelligence was the most important trait. There werent even words for the traits that matter mosthaving a sense of the contours of reality, being aware of how things flow, having the ability to read situations the way a master seaman reads the rhythm of the ocean. Harold concluded that it might be time for a revolution in his own consciousness time to take the proto-conversations that had been shoved to the periphery of life and put them back in the center. Maybe it was time to use this science to cultivate an entirely different viewpoint. After the lecture, Harold joined his family and they went downtown to their favorite gelato shop, where Harold had his life-altering epiphany. Hed spent years struggling to dazzle his Mandarin tutors while excelling in obscure sports, trying (not too successfully) to impress admissions officers with S.A.T. prowess and water-purification work in Zambia, sweating to wow his bosses with not overlong PowerPoints. But maybe the real action was in this deeper layer. After all, the conscious mind chooses what we buy, but the unconscious mind chooses what we like. So resolved, he boldly surveyed the gelato selections before him and confidently chose the cloudberry.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/17/110117fa_fact_brooks#ixzz1D3KwYMZ7

If you are asking at this point what are the good points that explain you. My answer is this. I was born happy. Until the age of approximately 8 I awoke early, full of energy, ready to explore the world. Starting at about 8, I started to require more sleep. They say the subconscious uses sleep to reconcile the days activity. I can only presume that more sleep meant more time trying to reconcile unsatisfactory living conditions. It is a common thing to see a person need more sleep after a breakup of a relationship. I look around and it seems all creatures are happy going about their business in a natural state. It is only through aggression from others that this happy state becomes an aggressive or other than a happy state. So, to explain me is to show the influences that reduce the state of happiness.

This may sound like failure throughout a lot of this. I consider it a gain in humanity, mine especially. Now what would be nice, to put it infinitely more simply than I mean, would be for my children to realize you are fine people, who dont need to punish yourselves with overwork, sleep deprivation, and miserable work conditions. When you think well of yourself you will find good employment with good employers. It is not the badge of honor you think it is to punish yourselves and endure hardship. It is not necessary, mandated, or a requirement. You may even be attempting to punish me either consciously or subconsciously. If you like yourself, then you will do it naturally and without provocation or thought, if you dont, do it anyway and you will like yourself as a result. The bottom line is you are just starting out and can chart your course. Do it for yourself and those around you who you love and want love from. Otherwise the cost is more than you can imagine. I recently had a discussion with my son where he reflected on a coworker who was working 80 hours and justified it to himself as necessary. This is a self defeatist attitude. Oscar Wilde said to this effect: if everyone else is doing the same thing I am , then I must be doing something wrong. Another parallel: Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do. Everything popular is wrong. There is some mental meat here to chew on. There are many wise sayings from the centuries. People have not changed that much over time. I think most of the things we need as people have been thought about and answers have been given. I do think most people do not, or have not heard these thoughts and answers. Our system is geared to productivity of goods and services. We school people for this end. We dont as a people get to hear about this part of life. I think to hear it would enhance the whole experience. Understanding more about people and society could be a problem for those in power though. The illusions could become exposed.

Epilogue My adult son and his girlfriend were on the phone and I was reading an eBook. Their conversation was background noise. All the sudden I heard some nonsense words spoken in a louder tone. My attention was drawn to it and I broke away from my reading to say huh? Now

I find out it was a ploy to see if I was listening. They proved to themselves that I was by my response. I was in fact enjoying reading, but much like a person half asleep with the radio or TV on, gets disturbed by a station break, or static, my attention was diverted. In their minds it was a control victory, but all it does is cause a separation. It presumes sneakiness and subversion. I have always been respectful, upfront and friendly to his girlfriend. Why would this behavior occur? Then of course they removed to a private location. Its curious how often my children leave quietly to talk on the phone yet we do not. What could be so secret? What are you saying that needs privacy? What in your life are you ashamed of that prevents you from talking freely? Now, you may say that this is overly analytic. I propose I am only putting to words what our body immediately understands. Emerson bears repeating:

But as soon as there is any departure from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my neighbour feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; there is war between us; there is hate in him and fear in me. Emerson

A friend of mine in a similar situation asked Forgiveness is My response is as follows, after some thought.

My answer is this. Understand that people behave according to their own perspective. If you are angry you will be angry to others. What does this have to do with you? Generally you "think" you are responsible for the anger somehow. You often pass it on. The point is that once you understand you are not the reason for an angry father's behavior, or bully, or customer, it becomes easier to view these "forgivable" behaviors as what they are...not your fault at all.. I think a lot of people have trouble with forgiveness because they do not understand the relationship of the behavior expressed in front of you.....because you think it is to you. How can you forgive someone for behavior you really had no connection with in the first place...except to be a receptor of the action. Understanding the behavior allows acceptance without you swallowing the behavior and then having it fester and come back out to someone else. Kinda long, but maybe it will add clarity. I hope it does, rather than muddy it. I realize that is a possibility. So, flash forward approximately 30 years for a visit back hometo my roots. Was this my imagination, could I support this memory? I in fact was able too. My father acted the exact same way. Here I was an adult, visiting after quite a few years of no visits home, and he picked up just where he left off. A taskmaster, same jutting jaw, same absent positive communication, same inhospitable attitude, same angry person, driving the crew like a prison detail. Quite illuminating. Now I could deal with it. No more secrets. No more hiding.