Posted by: thelizardlady on: February 20, 2010
Not sure the link will work, I’ll edit it if it doesn’t (I like things being easy). I am reading this book for a training I’m attending next week:
It’s fascinating reading, and shows some of what it means to be American. We’re a people overcome with our appetites (addictions) for things that we aren’t allowed to talk about or deal with in a healthy way (drugs, alcohol, sex, food, religion, and more) that we often use to mask pain that we don’t want to feel or deal with. We all either are or know someone who has used something as an obsession to keep them from feeling pain, from facing hard things that hold them back from really living.
If we could talk honestly and openly about things, instead of making people feel uncomfortable when they make us think, we’d all be healthier. I think often we’re making people feel bad not because what they’re doing is so wrong, but because it might make us see something about ourselves we’d rather pretend isn’t there. If we can condemn them, we can continue to delude ourselves into thinking that there’s nothing wrong with us.
But looking at these things can help us talk about them, and can help us understand each other better, and can maybe help us all be a little healthier and stronger. We won’t get out of this life very well if we try to do it alone.
Peace.
