Refuge

From a craigslist.org discussion board on the job market [yes it's come to that...]

Everything happens for a reason, huh? < not_so_much > 03/12 10:22:25


Someone made this comment on a post below, and I just had to react.

OK, so my husband was laid off 2.5 years ago. No amount of kindness, asking, pushing, or begging has encouraged him to take a job beyond a very part-time thing. But I love him and have a lot of faith in him, and he takes care of me and our home while I bring home the bacon.

In spite of feeling pressured, dealing with personal issues like serious health problems, and taking care of elderly parents long distance, I have hung in there.

Then, my company goes and hires the employee from hell, whom I have to work closely with, thus bring screaming amounts of work stress into the picture, on top of financial, personal, and health issues.

So, I want to know, WHAT is the greater reason behind taking the last refuge I had - work - and destroying that on top of everything else?

Because if it's to get me to divorce my husband and run screaming to a place where I can be left alone for about 2 years to recover my sanity - I'm almost there.

--

To which:

I don't believe everything happens for a < Werewolf32 > 03/12 11:13:40


reason. To believe that, you have to believe that a) there's a god, and b) he has a personal interest in organising your life. For it to be a positive belief you also have to add c) that aforementioned god is good.

If you don't believe all of those things, which I don't, then hearing "everything happens for a reason" can be infuriating when you're in a situation like the one you described. However, you can also read it like this - in everything that happens, it's possible to learn something which you can apply to your life in a positive way.

Often it isn't possible at the time. And it's equally easy, and often easier, to apply the things you learn from your experiences in a negative way.

I'm not going to tell you all that crap you're going through is happening for a reason. But you can find something in it that's useful, either now or in the future when it's all over and you can look back calmly on it. Does that help at all?

___

Kindest thing for God is to not believe in him < norednx > 03/12 11:29:29


otherwise you have to deal with the realization of:

1. An absent landlord

2. A rather mean spirited and unfair puppet master who awards the likes of Paris Hilton multiple and punishes thousands through disease, natural disasters and any number of ugly things that happen in this world

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And...

Some more thoughts on your specific situation < Werewolf32 > 03/12 11:57:49


I'm glad to see in your other post that you're taking some steps such as therapy. I hope this is something that involves both you and your husband, because it doesn't seem to me that this is all about your own issues.

There are many couples where only one partner works outside the home. But for this to be healthy and fulfilling for both of you, it has to be what you BOTH WANT and mutually decided on. If you're not already getting some marriage counselling as a couple, you should be.

If any part of your life feels like a refuge from the other parts of it, you need serious changes to those other parts. I know I'm not telling you anything new here, just thought it might need some emphasis because you seem to be taking all the effort upon yourself to make changes. That doesn't work. It just adds one more burden to the heap.

--

Clearly, there are people who use craigslist--often--who feel very strongly a desire and an ability to help their fellow, anonymous human beings with their advice, given on this completely decentralized, egalitarian, chaotic message board, which may or may not be an adequate substitute for or appropriate complement to a rigorously applied program of mental help.

But what kind of advice are they giving?

The piece of advice that really struck me was this: "If any part of your life feels like a refuge from the other parts of it, you need serious changes to those other parts."

If this is true, does this mean that refuge itself is a concept we need to throw out of the philosophical and emotional window entirely?

I mean, isn't every refuge in every human life a refuge from something else in life? Here's what Merriam-Webster has to say about refuge:

1 : shelter or protection from danger or distress
2 : a place that provides shelter or protection
3 : something to which one has recourse in difficulty

Essentially, the existence of a refuge always points to the existence of some other dissatisfaction or danger in one's life. And yet everyone has their own version of refuge, do they not?

Some take refuge from their unhappy personal lives in their professional lives. Some people do the opposite. Some people take refuge from human society in general in well-armed, isolated compounds in the rural fringes of Texas and the Upper Midwest.

But doesn't everyone require some kind of refuge from some kind of bullshit?

Sure, it would be nice to be able eliminate every aspect of unhappiness, heartbreak, lack of success... bullshit... in every phase of one's life. But usually this isn't possible, and often not desirable, and in these situations, it really seems appropriate to thank the Lord up above (or your own damn self) for having found or provided a stable refuge.

The real problem occurs when one realizes that every part of one's life is a refuge from some other part of one's life. When one begins to take refuge in the things one originally or occasionally took refuge from. Sometimes it works the opposite way, and we take refuge from the things in which we originally took refuge in (see: failed human relationships).

If the existence of a refuge points to the need for serious changes in another aspect of life, what does an existence filled with nothing but refuges indicate, and what is the solution for this kind of a situation?

Not an unpleasant feeling, to be sure. The temptation is there to say fuck it, scrap the whole thing, move, start over, lose phone numbers, and wake up with a completely new, largely unattached life.

But then what would we do without our abandoned refuges?

Sometimes, the refuges themselves are sweeter and more necessary in the role they play than the dangers that first provoked them, such that even in the absence of danger, one feels the painful absence of a former refuge...

In situations like this, it would make sense for human beings to seek out new problems, and with them, new refuges.