Open to suggestion

Minor among the reasons I am not a doctor (though the idea of becoming one has occasionally dogged me for quite a while now) is fear of learning about various diseases and imagining that I have the symptoms of something new and gruesome after every class. This morning's Intro Psych podcast got into mental disorders, focusing on depression and bipolar disorder, and at first it was just like listening to previous lectures about language acquisition or the evolutionary underpinnings of sexual attraction, and perhaps it was just the seriousness of the topic, or of the guest lecturer, but after a while I started ticking off the various DSM-listed symptoms of depression and thinking, "I've never actually experienced these, but I can imagine it." It was a little eerie, not just thinking about being manic or depressive, but seeing myself as open to the suggestion, made only by my own imagination, that I could become so.

It made me wonder how open to suggestion I really am, of my environment, of the ideas I read and talk about, of chance passings on the street and serious conversation with friends and family. The lecture on psychological disorders followed a few on social psychology and the impact that interacting with other people, and thinking about what other people are thinking about you, has on a psyche. I feel more unmoored than usual these past few months with the various and substantial changes of locale, employment, social setting, and the newly balanced relationship with those closest to me that comes of those changes, more open to new ideas and to changes in how I present myself to and think about the world around me. I have had a few similar seemingly important periods scattered through my past in which I have felt conscious of an ability to change who I am and particularly who I am to others, most notably the first couple weeks of my freshman year of college, but those pivot points in my personal development have all felt like unalloyed growth.

This one seems a little more ambiguous, perhaps because I was quite satisfied with who I was before this move and this change, and very much rooted in stable relationship to others. To change now affects not only me but those I love and who love me. Perhaps because the transition has been unexpectedly difficult and drawn out, taking advantage of the reshuffling of moving to effect a leap of personal growth is more frightening than previous changes.

I feel more confident in my ability to care for and sustain the world around me, but also more fragile and shallowly rooted than ever before. Maybe it is moving across the country. Maybe it is switching from full time office work to full time childcare. Maybe it is turning 30. Maybe it is whatever epiphenomenon generated all those other changes. (The inevitable passage of time?) Maybe my knowledge of the complexities of the world has raced ahead of my ability to understand it, to manipulate it. Manipulate isn't the right word. To make it anew.

There is a greek word, techne, that I'm trying to dredge out of my once encyclopedic knowledge of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Wrapped up in its meaning is that to understand something is to be able to make it, or unmake it, that merely having knowledge of a thing, true deep knowledge of it, is identical to being able to create and control it. That was certainly true for the 15 year old me reading and rereading that book. I think the 30 year old me is starting to separate knowledge from understanding, creation from control. It is a more awesome world I inhabit now, and I am but a speck upon its surface.

Yesterday's run destination: Montana Ave.

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: miniwheats
lunch: peanut butter and jelly, and chocolate cake
dinner: roast chicken and cheesy potatoes