Every morning I face the debris of the life I allowed Reeducation to destroy. Some days it is more difficult than others and today is a difficult day. I have some points to make for this reason.
1. This is not a fully new insight but it is freshly said. Reeducation’s values involved “accepting” unacceptable situations and learning better coping strategies so as to survive in these. Growth and blossoming were not part of the program. Those were granted to perfect people. We, the Reeducands, were not merely imperfect. We were also defective. We had to be content with coping and survival, and needed to relinquish the illusion that we might touch the sun. Looking back I understand perfectly how shocking and sad this news was.
2. Once again, the central problems with Reeducation were its insistence on constant, exaggerated self criticism, on the importance of being in pain as much and as deeply as possible, and on believing there was no escape, no way out, no end. Reeducation was classically abusive in that it announced one was permanently flawed and needed permanent, paternalistic guidance. It had other abusive features including insisting that one take patently bad advice.
3. Reeducation was concerned about my non religiosity. I remember saying, But you yourself are working against religion. Your fixation upon passing emotion and your focus on personal suffering block life and hope. They are barriers toward looking inward, beyond the craggy surface and toward the inviolate, or outward, to the mountains and the Divine. This hurt Reeducation’s feelings, so I rescinded it. I am sure now more than ever that I was right.
4. In Reeducation to be sure one is right about anything was anathema, as we know. The key words in Reeducation are self doubt, resignation, and suffering. In Reeducation one is not worthy of more. That is ridiculous. Everyone is worthy of more, and I am amazed I allowed Reeducation to do what it did.
5. There is something I understood, though, about the Twelve Steps – which are related to Reeducation – yesterday, on making amends. A sincere apology – not a guilt ridden one, and not a bribe – really does or really would heal, I realized sharply in conversation with someone who deserves one. The corollary as it applies to me is that I still have not forgiven myself for all that happened because of my penchant for obedience. The only way to make amends to myself is to always follow my secret plan.
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November was a terrible month. Let me see what happened:
A. All four of the pieces I had under editorial consideration were rejected.
B. Because of the cost of hurricane repairs my budget for next year is entirely out of control. I cannot see how or what to plan. Anything other than selling up to get a good corporate job in town seems pointless.
C. As has happened before, my secret plan to publish in sociology and ace the LSAT was derailed by a person with very seductive siren arguments for why I should do what I would have done in literature twenty years ago … did do twenty years ago … tried again several times at the urging of others … and really do NOT want to try one more time.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
This is when we have to change.
I am sorry for your troubles and hope they are temporary.
Not telling you anything you don’t know,but you absolutely must follow your bliss. Now or never. This old lady knows this for sure.
The end of the semester is always littered with debris. Please be kind to yourself as you mediate on what Hattie says. I think that there was a major planetary shift. Didn’t Pluto just move into another sign for the next fifteen years? or is it Saturn? anyway, in the last few weeks, a lot of things have been lost and found, broken and repaired, and I am observing an unusually high number of deeply troubled students. I think that this solstice we are marking a prolonged transition through the dark as we prepare the ground for what we hope will flower after the inauguration.
Yes but I am tired of always saying it was because it was the end of the semester … the beginning of the semester … because this semester was particularly hard … because this was a rough summer … because this was a rough winter … because because because … because the planets shifted (they often shift) … because because because … always a because other than the real because.
P.S. Real = I need a different job and town, maybe a different career, and I constantly feel inadequate because it is so hard to limit myself to what I have.