Of all the world’s contradictions, our own actions confuse us most

By David McElroy · November 4, 2018

I like to think that I’m boldly in charge of my own life — but I often watch what I’ve done and wonder how in the world I did the opposite of what I said I wanted.

Am I crazy? Or am I human?

Almost two years ago, I got myself into a situation which made me very unhappy. I told myself it was only temporary and I even set a deadline — six months — by which I was going to change things.

In private, I ranted endlessly to someone I trusted about how unhappy I was and why things had to change.

But the six-month deadline came and went with no change. Almost 18 more months later, I still haven’t changed it. I honestly can’t tell you why. My conscious brain would tell you that I simply haven’t found the right alternative, but the more honest part of me would admit I haven’t tried — and that’s the part I find most confusing.

In his letter to the Romans in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul wrote, “I do not understand what I do; for I don’t do what I would like to do, but instead I do what I hate.”

Paul was talking about sin — about his ability and willingness to obey the differences he understood about right and wrong — but the same principles apply to the more mundane decisions of our lives.

How often have you found yourself turning away from what you really wanted? How many times have you found yourself accepting situations you hate instead? How many times have you invented excuses for yourself to explain the contradictions — or just ignored the contradictions so you didn’t have to explain anything to anybody at all?

In an interview I heard a few nights ago, I heard a therapist say that we have unconscious reasons for doing what we don’t want and avoiding what we want. He said clients often come to therapy because they know what they want (and they’re doing it) or they know what they don’t want (and they’re doing it anyway). The question for most of them is, “Why am I doing this when I don’t want to?”

He said we have secondary motivations which we’re not even conscious of. He said humans don’t continue doing a thing unless it’s satisfying some internal driver. Even if we don’t consciously want a thing (or if we don’t consciously want to turn a thing down), we often do the opposite of our conscious desires — because we don’t think we deserve what we want or just because the miserable relationship or situation we’re accepting feels normal based on our dysfunctional personal histories.

If you unconsciously don’t believe you deserve happiness or if you are simply so accustomed to being unhappy, you might not be comfortable making the changes that might make you happy. (This was a two-part interview and I might link to it after the second part is released later this week.)

When I was younger, I recklessly went after the things I wanted — and I often got more than I thought was possible. Today, I’ve become cautious and seemingly unwilling to take some of the chances I need to take. Why? It’s hard to say, because I’m not especially afraid of the chances I need to take. I’m not truly afraid of failing. (I think I would succeed.) More than anything, I suspect that I might be afraid of being too successful.

When I first encountered this idea in psychology — fear of success — it sounded crazy, but it makes sense now. My strong suspicion is that I don’t believe I am worthy of the success I want — that I can’t allow myself to do the things I’d like to do if my purpose is just to make myself happy. I trust that I’m good enough, talented enough, smart enough — but I’m scared I’m not worthy of what I want if I’m doing it for myself.

Your secondary reasons for the things you do (and don’t do) might be completely different from mine. They probably are. You might think you owe things to parents or someone else in your life. You might be afraid of what others might think. You might feel like such a terrible person — unconsciously — that you’re punishing yourself in these excruciating ways.

There could be hundreds of different reasons. We all have our own — and we mostly hide them from ourselves. We do these contradictory things and then we invent excuses to “rationally” explain what makes no sense otherwise. (I’m really, really good at this one.)

A friend of mine is locked in a horrible relationship and she’s known for years that she wanted out. If you asked her why she hasn’t left, she would give you reasons. There would be some truth to some of them, but there would be things she would leave out of her explanations — and there are yet other parts that she can’t let herself see.

“I’m disgusted with myself for staying here,” she told me today.

She’s miserable with her situation and she’s down on herself for not doing something about a situation that is crushing her spirit. She knows she should leave, but she doesn’t. Why? Ultimately, she doesn’t think she’s worth the short-term pain of making the change. Nothing I tell her can change that. Until she thinks she’s worth the cost, she will continue to live in an absolutely horrific situation.

I can’t lecture you for not doing what you know you ought to do — what you want to do — because I’m not making the changes I need to make, either.

We all have programming that’s running deep in our brains. We’re not even aware of most of it that’s there. But if you find yourself staying with things you don’t want and turning down things you want, there’s a reason — and it’s not going to be the weak excuses you’ve given yourself and others.

You’re going to find the truth is more horrific. You’re going to discover that you have some deeper issue that needs to change — and you’re going to eventually see that it will be easy to take the actions you want once you’ve changed the dysfunctional inner programming.

But until we change that programming, we’re going to continue to confuse ourselves and those who want to love us.

The world has enough contradictions. Don’t spend your entire life denying what you want and need simply because you’re too stubborn to figure out why you refuse to pursue what you need.

Share on Social Networks

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

Related Posts