Troubled Waters

Self care is a "troubled" phrase for me. I usually suspect that when people say they need some "self care," they're usually trying to disguise self interest or selfishness as some kind of virtue. Service to others is really what we all need, and that usually requires sacrifice of time, attention, and sometimes money, a fact that is counter-intuitive to most people in my society, and often unexamined in their own personal lives. 

Still, depression can lead to "self-neglect." One stops showering, stops eating healthy, attending to necessary work, allows the quality of the tasks at a job slide, etc.

I fear I may have fallen into a self neglect trap, that in some ways, has lasted several years. Ever since the breakup of my former relationship, a relationship that was deeply meaningful to me, I have struggled to captain the ship of my life in a direction that would have had positive benefit in my life today. Some opportunities come only once, or not at all. I fear I neglected the proper stewardship of my opportunities, and sacrificed my prospects for other people's wants and needs. I wasted time by hiding, for fear of making other people angry or uncomfortable.

So, today, even as I hid from the tasks I have been dreading in a computer game that took seven hours of my time away from me, I thought about my need for true "self-care," because the opposite, "self-neglect," is getting in the way of service to others, or at least to myself--a neglect that would also have terrible impact for others, something I don't want. Strange to think that neglecting yourself leads to other people's eventually distress, but it is true.

While playing that game, collecting upgrades and finishing quests, I also watched a TV series online from the 90s. The appeal of that show, apart from nostalgia, is the easy/joking relationship between a gentle father and lackadaisical son. I think I am attracted to the idea of a gentle parent concerned about my well being, even as my own crazy life takes me in absurd directions that I can't predict, let alone prepare for. 

Of course, I know that sitcoms are not real life and that the relationships depicted in them are nothing more than fantasy. 

On the other hand, in the still and perfect waters of art, fiction gives us room to imagine little scenarios of a smooth and happy life of growth and care for others that is deeply appealing. If only one can mirror just a small facet of that appeal, life can be all the more sweet in that self-same degree.