enter into thy closet

Really, I was thinking of a different post. And really, I hope someone doesn’t mind me using this real story but this is the deepest thing.

See, there is a psychologist I know, dignified, professional, credentialed, experienced, who is going to this mandatory week-long government training session. Who could blame the psychologists that a lot of them like to leave these “training sessions” a bit early to get on home (have you ever been to something so boring you’d rather go to get your wisdom teeth out? that’s what those things are like) . So this time they’ve all received a memo that the very last thing that they all have to stay for is a test! “There will be a quiz!”

Why the h*ll do people do this? Who would allow themselves to be treated like that? Degraded rabble? Evidently dignified, professional, credentialed, experienced psychologists would. Every day on facebook folks comment bluely, “oh gosh darn, another Monday”, or more cheerfully, “TGIF.” School starts teaching that in pre-school and so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that well-schooled psychologists have been trained to be that docile, that obedient, that subservient to the system which sucks them dry.

Maybe it’s a character fault in me but I never could do that. Try as I might, I could not put up with the slow death. In high school we got a new principal who decided that we needed a dress code to include no spaghetti strap tops. Me? I wore one, then called him a dirty old man to be so distracted by high school girls in spaghetti strap tops. I got sent home anyway but I still just have that you aren’t going to tell me what to do, not without some reason anyway, attitude. I learned the futility of trying to “change” the system. The system serves its real purposes quite well, despite what they say.

I learned to live largely outside the system. I touch the system in various places, I use it to my own ends often enough, but neither my well-being nor my self-image depends upon it. It is a really nice thing because I am not diminished by other people. I am, in fact, brightened by other people shining. A rising tide and all that.

The truth of the matter is, when you figure this out, it will be like praying in your closet instead of for show. What is for show ends with the show; what is real reverberates, grows, changes, effects for years and lifetimes and outside of time itself.

(thanks Matthew 6:5-6 -- the title should link you to this chapter)