DID & Me.
It’s a subject ‘I’ find myself pulling ‘my’ (or our) collective hair out about, wondering about something I’ve done or learned, or am doing. Often I don’t find out the reason for things for weeks, sometimes years. It’s like there’s something greater than myself deep down, reflecting, experimenting, mucking with me – playing with ‘us’ like a violin – without me knowing it. Some might say it’s ‘god’, but I rather suspect it is a deep down buried part pondering & planning, performing actions which over the span of years, have proven to be more for my benefit than not.
Here lately I’ve taken on reading a bit about the Middle East. Realize that for me reading a ‘little bit’ usually encompasses a few hundred thousand words a week for months on end, studying a something without knowing it; knowing it, but not understanding why I wanted to. It just seems entertainment to ‘me’. Then there comes a revelation of ‘why’ I’m doing it. Here I’ve discovered the revelation is I want to solve a problem. What that problem is – I don’t know. I certainly cannot straighten out the Middle East problem. But it . . . I dunno. Puzzles me? Makes me want to understand the situation there. Why those people won’t get along.
I don’t know. Maybe I can’t be happy if I don’t understand them some.
I was raised to understand culture, breath them, become ‘one’ of ‘them’. To be tolerant by looking from the inside, understanding ‘their’ reasons. Adopting their motivations, morals and means. Become so like them I as was one of them if at least in my head. If you think about it, it’s a logical reason for my child self to develop multiple personalities, and part of the ‘plan’ as I understand it. Blend with ‘societies’ in every definition of the word, each to meet some goal. Mostly it was to ‘get along’ with whoever the outside world was at the moment, recognizing that moment could change in a moment.
But here lately I’ve been reading news & novels, reading T.E. Lawrence’s “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom“, magazine articles; studying Wikipedia and reading the Qu’ran (Koran – still incomplete) – trying to understand this ‘culture’ and what their problem is.
Now I won’t go into what I’ve come to realize – that’s for a later post perhaps, but after 3 months I found myself wondering last week: what am I reading all this for? Why am I digging into the Arab/Middle East culture all of a sudden? There is a definite leaning towards the psychology, society, and culture of the folks there – and I could ‘feel’ like another part of ‘me’ applying everything I know and throwing out answers sometimes; “we” automatically throwing out anything that looks like biased bullshit – e.g. Lawrence‘s feelings of so-called English superiority, and instead concentrating on the behavior of his Arabs of that generation, with his notes as a guide, and questioning the generality of his feelings in prejudice and perhaps discontent – and not knowing why I’m all of a sudden “into it”, digging and researching their past. I felt like it was just entertainment, something to do to expand my mind.
Then, slowly perhaps, it sank in.
I was problem solving, trying to understand a problem which is/was un-understandible . You can’t solve a cultural or social problem without understanding the people, so here I am: understanding the people, or trying to. But why? Something to do? “Me” and mine ‘studying’ it? I found myself asking “why”?
Well, it’s slowly coming to me, slowly and in fits. ‘I’ can’t be happy until I do. I guess some part of ‘me’ wants to know what side of the issues I should be getting on. Again: I don’t know why. Maybe some part wants to be able to accept what is going on over there (as well as some other parts of the world – but one at a time here!). I ‘get’ it: I can’t ‘get behind’ a thing until I get in it. In a way it was what I was built for, all that crap in my youth; all that ‘division’ which led to the development of ‘others’ (alters in my mind), and those other things. I don’t always know why I’m doing what I’m doing, or saying what I say, but generally it pays off. I come away happier sometime, sometimes ‘wiser’, or at least more learned of a situation or thing. Why ‘I’ want to understand, I don’t know, I just know I’m “doing it again” – working on a problem for no apparent reason, but I’m starting to get a glimmer of the end.
There’s been a lot of times l and things in my ‘life’ like that. Reasons for doing things sometimes escape me and I do them anyway. Sometimes I’ll find myself helping myself solve a problem without knowing the problem was there to begin with. Or the problem arises later. I’ll sometimes buy something, put something somewhere out of place – and then a problem will erupt and I’ll find what I need right there, ready for use, whether it be a piece of knowledge or a tool. It’s like some part of me knew it was coming – but I was unaware.
And sometimes I find myself studying a subject, a person, or a culture (or all in one) – and coming away wiser, or more learned, or more something . . ..
And I don’t know why. Just that it solves some problems while creating puzzles in my life. The ones that leave you head scratching and wondering why you went there . . . and then find out.
A Song of Life: Being DID 