Obsession

It’s Sunday and I am doing my weekly plotting and scheming. It occurs to me that I am in a transition, perhaps one that I recognized before and am now recognizing it again, between times when mom was a lot less dependent than now. I find myself falling into a ditch, a rut, a trough, wherein I’ve become aware of a need for me to take action to get out of same. It is easy to fall into accepting life as the job of taking care of mom and doing little or anything else. It is the same as any other situation in which we find ourselves.

There is a Parkinson’s Law that says work will expand to fill the amount of time available for it; and so it goes with the situation in which we are. Unless I/we take the initiative and think and do, we will be sitting around doing only what mom needs. Thankfully I’ve seen the situation and being aware of it am able to take action to avoid falling into the ditch, rut, or trough. In retrospect we have been avoiding the fall for a few weeks. I said to Carola that it is important for us to have a life as well, to go on with whatever we are/were doing and make accommodations for mom within the framework of our life.

On a larger scale this is one of the lessons of life. We can get so absorbed in something that we give up thinking about the bigger picture. That absorption can become obsessive, as in writing all the time, painting all the time, cooking all the time, doing crafts all the time, doing business all the time; you get the picture. By all the time, that is what I mean, to the exclusion of any and all other activities and people.

There is something to be said for such obsession; it has caused great works of art to be accomplished, it allows one to defer his development on any and all other fronts to concentrate on the one and only obsession. I think about my dad; he was able to function in the most squalid of shops, I mean they were dirty, aged, awful, and cluttered. The toilet in one was so dirty, and I don’t mean with feces but with dust that formed a hard coating on the porcelain. Yet he was able to create some works of art in sheet metal; the genius was his being able to take a flat sheet of thin metal and measure it this way and that, cut it this way and that, and fold it up to make a whatever. His shops were like an artist’s atelier. Aside: This was a man who felt that he was not intelligent; no amount of evidence to the contrary could make him see just how smart he was. Somewhere back in his lifetime the right person/people didn’t give him the encouragement, didn’t tell him how smart he was, didn’t share with him the fact that he was exceptional, so he carried a stigma, not realizing how smart he was.

The Sunday exercise helps me to keep from getting into obsession. It is an extension of my annual planning method where I look at where I am in each of several Planning Categories, each of several Life Categories, and Traits in order to advance in the development of personae. In so doing, I (* and I’m not sure which I this is) can only hope that the master function is getting whatever he needs for his development. Bless his heart he is mute and I (*) never know for sure what he wants so I (*) default to doing whatever is necessary for personae development and wait to see if he objects very much.

The parallel of taking care of mom is so evident to me. An example is to give her a morsel of food on a fork and see her recoil. “Is it too hot?” She nods, which is more than Master does, and I know that it isn’t acceptable. So it is with Master; I see an opportunity to err and all sorts of physical and mental anguish sets in; and I know that was unacceptable. Now there is the question of whether that is some arbitrary conscience or Master sending a message; it could be one, or the other, or both.

There are times when concentrated effort is necessary; learning lines, preparing for an audition, setting up accounts, writing this blog and other activities evident for the successful pursuit of many endeavors. Seeing what is necessary is the key; until what has to be done becomes evident, a lot of time passes with little or no progress. This is where the Sunday plotting and scheming session comes into play. Often there are large gaps in the process because what has to/ should be/ could be done is often not evident. And I’ll get sidetracked into a Sudoku game or other diversion that disallows thinking about what needs doing.

I have found, however, that by doing this or that diversion my mind is freed up to imagine what could be done in an endeavor. Then it is a matter of remembering same and doing it. I’ve found that the item is accomplished by stopping the diversion immediately and doing whatever right then and there. It is times like now that I have to avoid same because I am not in a diversion but pursuing an endeavor; a fine point but necessary to point out. Not that a mental note can’t be made to remember to do whatever; this allows for getting it done later. It is a bit like what others might consider to be clutter but you see it as a set of reminders to do this or that. I’m referring here to desks, work benches, junk drawers, stacked boxes, files, etc.

There is a conclusion to all of this and it is choice. One can chose to become involved with something or obsessed with it; where obsession is complete immersion to the exclusion of all else for extended periods of lifetime. Obsession is a form of identification; one of the deadly sins.