Ending Badly Because of Betrayal

Betrayers betray. Regardless of their rationalizations--"it's what I did, not who I am"--one is what one does. More betrayal is almost inevitable.

In the short time of a lifetime the new togetherness will likely end in betrayal, or if surviving, it could be pockmarked by years of betrayals, a kind of Brectian purgatory, more hell than happily-ever-after.

Eternity for the unrepentant betrayer brings inevitable justice--another bad end.

God's forgiveness is always available, but embracing that mercy seems to require admission of wrong if not actual repentance, and their rationalizations preclude either.

Of course these limits on forgiveness are constructed from logic. In the sphere of God's power, one should not be so foolish as to place conditions or limits on God's forgiveness. God's power transcends man's puny logical constructs.

Hope does endure.

The Illusion of Control

Is happiness, or the good old basic American right to pursue it, one of the eternal verities? The notion that happiness can be pursued, caught, and kept assumes one has a measure of control over one’s own life and feelings that may not exist. One of the mantras of the $160-an-hour listeners, the psychologists/psychiatrists, is: “We are responsible for our own feelings. We choose our own feelings. We control our own happiness.”

Do the paid listeners believe this mantra to be truth or do they merely pronounce it true as part of a treatment protocol? Certainly, change is less likely if the patient, sitting on the cushy couch, writing checks for the opportunity to fill listening ears, is unhappy, wants to be happy, and believes he is incapable of making himself happy. So paid listeners chant the mantra, and the check-writers receive what?--hope, perhaps even actual empowerment.

Faith listeners suggest it is self-deception to think one has that kind of control. While the context of their mantra is metaphysical/philosophical, perhaps it is more likely to be true. It carries more authority because it is untainted by self-interest. One is not required to pay them to hear their mantra: “You can control only whether you do evil or good.” The choice to do evil or good in even the smallest actions has infinite, eternal, and universal consequences, but at the personal level only a few potential emotional consequences: happiness, sadness, an emotional flatness that is neither. Possibly personal happiness ceases to be a preoccupation when one concentrates on doing the right thing. A focus on the choice between the über-values of good and evil may push the obsession for personal happiness into a more appropriate perspective.

Doing good without concern for personal happiness is one of the eternal verities. Though the phrase “doing good” seems so non-specific and subject to personal interpretation as to appear meaningless, if one assumes the possibility that “good” may exist, that it is a worthy thing, and that it may actually be done, then a view of how unselfishness raises even the least “doing good” to the level of the eternal verities becomes clearer. The taint that drags any action out of the eternal and into the finite is self-interest, selfishness. Happiness, joy, and the abundant life are not evil, but grasping them may be. At their happiest, most joyful, and most abundant they are by-products of “doing good,” and cannot be the goal.

The same writings that codify and objectify the specifics of “doing good” assert the superiority of that choice over the pursuit of happiness even as they identify the joyful abundance inevitable in a selfless life. The way to lose happiness is to pursue, catch a hold of it, and try to keep it. To gain that which is greater than happiness, one must break off the pursuit, refocus on doing good and allow all ephemeral and empty seductions to slough away from life like the excreta they are.

The Cowardly Trencher's Return

This week, motivated by the Cowardly Trencher's return, I checked a name that had come to me against the student car database. I got a hit. It turns out "the name" drives a tan 1997 Chevy Z71, matching the description of the truck I saw drive across my lawn last June.

My memory of his behavior in my class leads me to conclude he is capable of a stunt or two like the trenchings, also he was a sneak--not a kid with much honor or courage. I wouldn't have thought he had the concentration to keep it up this long.

We'll see what happens. The police knew his name from some other incidents. The question now is what to do with the knowledge. The information is probably not enough to convict him for more than the one time I saw, even though he may have been doing this for nearly a year. I think to get him the help he needs we need to gather more evidence and arrest him when we can prove this is a long term pattern of behavior.

Dos Tipos de Ciudado

Watched the whole thing on Turner Classic Movies this evening. It was made in the early 50's, I believe. It seemed liked a Hispanic Hope/Crosby road movie written by Moliere, almost as interesting for the core plot elements it didn't talk about as it was for those it dealt with openly.

"Honor" was one of plot engines that drove the story. Found one of the verities embeded in the dialogue:

“You two are together because of a betrayal. It will end badly.” Jorge Negrete in Dos Tipos de Ciudado

Sleep Is a Brief Visitor

It's 9:30 P. M. and I'm sitting at my computer writing in between sleeping. I would drop off, head bowed, otherwise sitting upright in my chair. Phillip is studying. Suddenly I hear him say, "Dad, Dad." I wake and look over at him. "Maybe you better go to bed."

So I begin a sloth-like move toward bed. As soon as I lay down, I'm more awake. I read, get sleepy, turn off the light about 10:00 P. M.

One-thirty A. M. I wake. I lay in bed forty-five minutes. I get up, come here, turn on the TV, and begin to drift aimlessly on the internet. I read through the most recent blog posts of my students, and drift to writing here again.

Sleep. Please come back. Sleeeeep, perchance to dream . . . Again.

The Cowardly Trencher Returned Today

I have no words for my feelings about that.

Vocabulary Based Dialect Identification

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English

20% Yankee

15% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

Part 3: I Don't Think I Can Do That.

So, six months into the tragedy I am enduring Connie and Bruce seeing each other for hours every week. By then, Connie has agreed to go to a counselor with me, saying, “It won’t make any difference.” She is still my wife, but she won’t work with me with the counselor on our marriage. Her apparent purpose in attending is to try to convince the counselor that our marriage is over and to get the counselor to convince me to—I don’t know what—leave her and the kids maybe? I am in a crazy state of despair. I can’t figure out why she hasn’t left and yet won’t stop seeing Bruce. I keep hoping she is staying because she hasn’t really made up her mind to leave.

I know Bruce’s former boss, I guess he’s the person who held the title director of intellectual properties out at Dow before Bruce. He had retired and moved away from our town. I had always known him to be an honorable man with high moral convictions. I had also heard Connie tell me how much Bruce respected him. In a fit of despair, I called this man one evening and told him about Connie and Bruce. I asked him if he would consider calling Bruce and asking him to consider not seeing Connie for six months so we can look at our marriage without the distraction of him standing outside of it and inviting Connie to leave. Sound familiar?

This man of integrity, former elder of a Church of Christ, told me how sorry he was that “this thing had happened.” However, in response to my plea he said, “I don’t think I can do that.”