Powerful emotions come and go, so it’s worth noting if one stays

By David McElroy · December 17, 2018

Some feelings are here today and gone tomorrow. For someone who feels as much as I do — and who can easily have great waves of emotion wash over me without warning — one of the most important lessons of life is not to get too attached to any fleeting emotion.

I can fall in love with a new idea and then get cold on it a few days later. I can hate something I’ve made and then decide two weeks later that it was actually quite good. I’ve learned not to get upset as those feelings come and go.

The only thing my mind seems to take too seriously to allow feelings to come and go is romantic love. I’ve certainly had a couple of mild infatuations which I tried to talk myself into being love, but I always really know the difference. The real proof is when my stubborn heart refuses to let go of love which isn’t convenient.

Let me tell you about a dream I had awhile back.

Wherever I was in the dream, it didn’t seem like a real place. It was more like a vast blackness with no end in any direction, and it was as though I was floating in this space. I was very aware of a painful tugging on my chest. I could feel that it was coming from what looked like a silver thread or cord that was physically attached to me near the center of my chest.

Something was pulling hard on the other end of this cord. Every pull yanked at me and seriously damaged me, so I was scared and in a lot of pain. I didn’t know what it was, but I just wanted to break the cord so it would quit hurting. It seemed quite small, so it seemed reasonable that I could just snap it easily, as you might a piece of sewing thread. But when I tried to break it, I found that it was made of something so strong that it didn’t even stretch or bend or show any effect from my efforts.

A voice from behind me said, “You can’t break that thread. It’s an unbreakable philotic cord. You will have to live with that connection in place.”

Since I know that a “philotic connection” is a fictional concept — from the science fiction novels of Orson Scott Card — I know that it had to be a metaphor, but in the dream it seemed very real. I wanted to turn and look at the place where the voice was coming from, but I knew that I wasn’t allowed to turn, because I would see God’s face if I did. I suddenly understood what the cord was.

It tied me to a woman. The voice which I identified as God was firm but kind and loving. He knew it hurt, but it wasn’t going to go away.

That sounds miserable. (It is miserable.) But I have to celebrate it anyway, as strange as that sounds.

Since I know feelings can come and go, it’s comforting that my heart is committed to some few things whether they’re convenient or not. Why do I celebrate this? Because it’s my way of knowing what’s real and what’s just passing fancy.

I don’t like hurting. I don’t like longing for love I can’t have. I don’t enjoy obsessing about what might have been. But at least I can be certain this love is real — and that’s something no one can take away from me.

I’ve never gotten over real love easily when I could no longer have it. The only thing that’s ever allowed me to get over love is finding a new love which is even greater. That’s hard to imagine now, but I have to believe there is someone out there who I can love even more — who can finally break this bond which I haven’t been able to kill on my own.

For tonight, though, I quietly celebrate something which I know is real and true and genuine. Romantic love in this world is often based on sexual attraction or social prestige or mere habit. None of those will last. None of those mean anything in the long run.

I know I have something — for now, at least — that’s as real as love can get. It might be painful. It might be inconvenient. It might leave me lonely. But it’s the kind of genuine love and connection with another heart which poets and painters and sculptors and movie characters all long for.

I can say I’ve genuinely loved with my whole heart — and I don’t think many people have experienced that. So I celebrate a warm and open and imperfect heart that’s full of love for an imperfect woman, even if it hurts for now.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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