If we are ever to do any good it is necessary to permit some evil.
Sometimes when I walk into the UW counseling center an overweight middle-aged receptionist hands me a clipboard and points to a cup of pens. She says, “We’re asking all our clients to fill this out today.”
It’s a list of questions:
Would you say your family is generally a happy one? -0- 1 2 3 4 5
Do you like yourself? 0 1 -2- 3 4 5
Is it hard for you to control your temper? 0 -1- 2 3 4 5
Do you feel you are out of control when you drink? -0- 1 2 3 4 5
Do you feel like no on understands you? 0 1 2 -3- 4 5
They go on and on, it’s double-sided.
Next to each question lies a numbered scale, 0-5. Zero being nothing like how one feels and five being extremely like how one feels. A single question haunts me with unrivaled horror. For the most part, I’m aware that I’m merely the subject of some scholarly study on the quality of life of university students or something. But this question manages to come off the page and take residence in my mind. Since the last time I took this survey, I’ve thought about this question daily; multiple times.
Do you feel disconnected from reality? 0 1 2 3 4 -5-
I mark the five. Every time.
When I walk from the car to class, or to the grocery store, along the beach; my eyes catch a seagull in the sky or a squirrel in the grass; my ears, the sneeze echoing through the hall or the persistent hum of a drinking fountain. My consciousness is completely absorbed by the irrelevance of these stimulations to my life. I relish in events and beings unrelated to me or my existence. It’s as if I’m merely a vehicle for a movie camera that’s recording a life-long film. Much of the reel is inconsequential but I manage to derive symbolism from most anything: climbing a stationary train car to feel a train blow by on the tracks beside. A tree in autumn with a single leaf still hanging on, barely. Somehow I bring these objects to the forefront of my brain; storing them amongst such valuables as childhood memories. The last surviving leaf of autumn is as important as one of my childhood memories? Perhaps more important.
I find myself, rather than enjoying it, considering whether the action or relation I’m pursuing is worth my pursuit. At times it feels as though my life is less a journey of experience and more a moral battle of right vs. wrong. The peculiar thing is that if I had to put this philosophy, this natural disposition, up against its own scrutiny, it would fail. I’d declare it wrong.
And yet, my mind tries, it fights. The task now becomes, shoot down my “is this worth the time I’m investing in it?” cyclical method of thinking and replace it with productive thought. In short, I need to realize that absolutely everything is valuable.
Sometimes I think, keep me away from myself, please. Then, of course I realize, I need me.