Wednesday, November 20, 2024

 Wednesday, November 20, 2024 

     I got in touch with a historical aspect of my psyche I thought was resolved: the maniac messiah. I’m terrified of this impulse.  As a child, I remember feeling I had a mission to save humanity from itself.  I have no idea how much of this was self-generated and how much came from my father. Part of it definitely came from him.  

   My father was a survivor of Nazi Germany.  Like me, he thought in abstract terms of the human condition.  As a Jew, he was familiar with the concept of the messiah, or a single redeemer sent by God to establish justice and peace in the world, which dates back to the 8th and 6th centuries B.C.  Orthodox Jews include reference to such a redeemer in their daily prayers.

    While my father wasn’t a religious Jew, no less an orthodox one, he was culturally Jewish.  His parents maintained a kosher house.  While I don’t see any trace of the messianic concept in my Jewish friends these days, in fact, I don’t see any trace of it in the rest of my father’s family, I do believe he embraced the concepts of the last of the just and that a single human being could have such an impact on the world.  Jesus did; according to the Jews, he failed miserably in fulfilling that objective. Can’t really argue with that. The very institutions that promote the belief in Jesus as the promised redeemer have promoted behavior harmful to other humans.  Christianity’s goal was universal justice and peace. The Jews were/are more conservative. They hope for justice and peace for the Jews. I think my dad was aiming for a more expansive goal. He saw Nazi Germany not as a failure of the Germans but as a failure of human beings, a flaw in the human condition. My mother, a Lutheran by birth, saw it as a failure of the Germans. She had no such magnificent ambitions. 

    Assuming I’m right about my father’s dreams, he had anointed me as “my daughter the messiah.” What he was hoping I could accomplish is unclear.  I suspect it was nothing more than being a ‘good’ person. But all that was couched in a 10,000-year tradition of messianic belief, which he shared with me implicitly and explicitly.  Sometime in  my twenties, I  resolved to be a ‘dropout messiah.”  I didn’t want to carry such a burden; thank you anyway.

    For the most part, I’ve done a reasonably good job.  I’ve confined my ambitions to something I could reasonably accomplish to relieve the suffering of others.  The methods I’ve developed to teach reading and learning fill that bill. Of course, to promote them, I’d have to unleash that willingness to be seen, which evokes those old messianic impulses.  Thanks, but no thanks. I’d rather deal with rejection than approval at that level.  I’ve been pretty good at achieving that end. Since I believe I have developed something that would be useful in resolving reading problems and learning problems in general, it’s frustrating.  I’m in a double bind. However, given that the world is about to go to hell in a handbag and we’re about to send all of humanity back to the stone age, if not obliterate ourselves altogether, the ability to read will become irrelevant. Survival skills will be of a different caste. 

   But I recently found the remnants of that manic impulse in me.   The problem is I’m not the least bit comfortable in that role.  It feels like it possesses me. It feels like the manic state of a bipolar person.  I don’t think I’m bipolar because I never go into a depression so deep to become dysfunctional.  If I were bipolar, I couldn’t control the mood swings that easily.

   The two ends of those mood swings are deep depression and high elation. In a depressed state, people become immobile. They can do nothing but sit around feeling terrible.  In the manic state, anything is possible.  The two poles represent being grounded and freedom from all constraints.  The person inflicted with a bipolar psyche experiences the extreme ends of these two states, but we all fluctuate. Lo is the poor soul who has ambitions of creativity but wallows more in the depressed end of the spectrum instead of the manic.  If you create something original and want it recognized, appreciated, and used by a large group of people, you have to be somewhat manic regardless of the field of endeavor.  Look at Elon Musk or even Steven King, for that matter. Anyone capable of dealing with that order of rejection before acceptance. Steven King endured 80 rejection notices before anyone gave him a break.  Actors have to face that rejection in person. Ow!  What kind of a psyche does that take.

        I got into the yard by 7:30 and did weeding and trimming. It was still cool enough to warrant a sweatshirt.  I was okay and enjoyed it. Why do I put off doing the gardening?  I was going great guns, but I experienced a failure and have been reluctant ever since.  Half an hour a day would do the job.  When I do get out there and deal with what I can do without putting my life and limb in jeopardy, everything is better. 

      What is it when we don’t start something because we don’t think we can do it? I heard a story of a famous performer who was nervous before each show.  When asked why she felt that way when she knew she had consistently done well, she said, “ Yes, but I don’t know if I can do it the next time.”  We are a weird species. 

   I finished listening to another delightful murder mystery from the Audible Plus collection, The Mistletoe Murders. The ones written by Audible are radio plays. They remind me of my childhood, before television, when we were entertained by radio plays. One of my favorite activities was riding in the car on Sunday and listening to the shows with my family. Mistletoe Murders is light, in the vein of the old TV series Murder She Wrote. There are three available now. I’m looking forward to the next one.

   I planned to go to Home Depot to pick up the Milwaukee auger drill bits English Mike had recommended. They were on sale until the 20th. When I got in the car, I discovered it had never charged despite being hooked up all night. I didn’t have enough juice to safely make it to Home Depot. I plugged in the car again and went inside. When I had enough juice, I drove to Home Depot.

    I checked the tool aisle for the item. Not finding it, I approached an associate. He said, “Follow me.”  He walked out of the tool area. A massive display of Milwaukee and Diablo tools was set up for the Black Friday sale. We walked up and down the display several times, but no Milwaukee auger drill bits were to be found. I returned to the tool aisle on my own to search again. I couldn’t find anything.

    I met with fourth-grade LG. I asked him if he remembered what the odd and even numbers were. He said he didn’t remember. I drew a vertical line. Did he remember me drawing that vertical line? Yes. What did I write on either side of the line? Numbers.  Did I only write numbers?  I  reminded him that I wrote tallies and numbers. I’m teaching him to recall anything he can remember about the learning experience by recalling anything about the lesson, no matter how unrelated. Everything recalled can act as a loose thread to pull up the targeted information. Once we got beyond the I point where he recalled I wrote both tallies and numbers, he recalled the odd versus even numbers.  I wrote two and three-digit numbers ending in odd or even numbers. He identified them with ease.  Of course, I left the chart with the tallies and the identifying numbers in view. It would still be good for LG; he had to apply the information.

   I reviewed the multiplication fact families. I drew a triangle with the factors and product, two multiplication problems, ___x___=__, and two division problems _ _ _/_ _ _ =___. He filled them out flawlessly. Then, we switched to reading. 

  I was exhausted after my session with LG and desperately needed a nap. I figured I would leave at 5:30 for hula practice with the church ministry. I lay on the floor with my legs up on the sofa, the best way to get a quick rest. Then, I heard Darby at the door. She was here to walk Elsa. She does that on Wednesday nights so I can go to the Hula practice. I remembered that I was supposed to be there at 5:30, not leave at that time. 

   When I arrived half an hour late,  no one said anything except hello.  I practiced the first sequence of moves on the dance Anita taught last Wednesday.  There is no way I’m ready to perform the dance on Thursday for the 9 am Thanksgiving Day mass. The woman who videoed Judy doing the dance, so we had a model, caught me dancing in the background.  I looked like an old lady with dementia.  I was honestly confused, looking around frantically so I knew what to do.  I did a little better.

    Terry,  one of my many physical therapists, was there. I’d seen her at mass when the hula dancers performed.  She was always a surprise. When I worked with her, we both wore masks.  Her lower face was different than I expected. During a break, I spoke to her briefly about a friend she had worked with. Did Terry know she had a child? She had a complicated pregnancy, spending almost the entire nine months in bed, which made for a difficult delivery. She had no muscle tone left.