So, you do nothing about it. You work, you play, you sleep, you eat…the days go by. You might have a temper, be impatient, you have a tendency to be defensive, exaggerate when you’re telling a story but in general you’re a decent person, not much better or worse than most people you know. “Come on, back off”, the cops aren’t knocking at your door. So, you hook up, you’ve got friends, you’ve got a relationship happening and when things get tight your weak spots start showing. You brush criticism off. They’re just as much to blame for the same
kinds of things. Everybody’s got their hang ups. In fact there isn’t any particular place to go where you can find solid advice, or somewhere that would teach you, or a way to consistently start practicing replacing older less evolved parts of yourself with newer more refined parts. Imagine waking up one morning and deciding that you were going to start all over, clean slate, that you were determined to break out of whatever patterns and habits you’ve got and do what remains of your life with a goal of revising those least skillful, least wholesome parts. I call this the toolkit. You get your tools out and practice making things (revisions to self) with them, before you get back into a relationship, while you are between conflict or deep into a new self created crisis. This is the wisdom of small changes that create the opportunity for a fuller more
functional life with the people that love you, and you know how lovable you are now don’t you?
Highway Home The Novel
He didn’t mind losing a game of eight ball, but there was something out of proportion with the notion of losing the woman he hoped to win. He realized shooting pool wasn’t going to work. He wasn’t going to be able to play a few games and casually interact with Leslie all night. With a handicap like that, even if he ran the table, sank every ball, never lost one game, he felt that when it was time to head home he’d still feel like a loser.
