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

--

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.

The Truth Puts Its Boots On

Nothing takes away from the gravity of a triple murder like watching its aftermath transpire on CNN.

Watching Vernon Keenan, chairman of the GBI (Georgia Bureau of Investigation), causes great fear if one imagines him as the chairman of the Federal B.I.

PRESS:        Are you confident that he's out of the area?

GBI:                No, I'm not confident... We don't know where he's at.

He says photo-graphs like it's two words, heavy on the O's. Sure, he looks like a gumshoe, with the checkered suit and the loosened tie, and the wide-brimmed, half-cocked hat. But this is reality, and this gumshoe appears more clueless than most.

The news has just broken that the green Honda Accord that Nichols was believed to be in for the past fifteen hours since "carjacking" (never have I heard it so much) it from an Atlanta newspaper reporter was, in fact, in a parking garage.

It is the same garage from which it was carjacked. It never left the building.

The broadcast cuts to a picture of the reporter who got jacked and goes to audio voiceover. In a still picture, the reporter grimly, proudly displays the facial wounds from his pistol whipping.

For the past fifteen hours, Law Enforcement (throughout this broadcast it's been verily personified) has spearheaded the manhunt via the resources of the media, notifying all Atlantans to keep their eyes peeled for Nichols... in a green Honda Accord.

Introducing a segment, the anchor--his first name is Miles--introduces the fact that the car has been found as "the good news" before turning and soliciting an expert with hypothyroid eyes who is wearing an orange button down shirt.

CNN anchor [to expert]: "Give us Manhunt 101."

The CNN anchor is a pandering, blathering fool, and even at 2:30 AM, it's an embarrassment to CNN to put him in front of the camera in any capacity.

"He's going to go where he can get what he needs. He needs to get out of there."

"Henry Schuster," says the anchor, "who has covered many a manhunt for us, back with us tonight. Stay close, Henry."

The anchor keeps mentioning Nichols' appearance in court the day before with two home-made knives shoved into his boots, and seems to take great pleasure in using what he believes is jailhouse slang, and defining it for the general public; he doesn't seem to have much to add.

CNN Anchor [to expert]: "So he came to the jailhouse with these homemade knives, these shivs... Correct?"

He wears his hair combed straight back, revealing a receding hairline he considers dignified, and his shirt and tie are solid blues of slightly different hues.

Their legal expert wears his hair combed forward.

The anchor ignores the expert's gentle attempts to correct "shiv" with "shank".

After repeatedly emphasizing with contempt that "one, single, [cough] female deppity" was all that the Department of Corrections assigned to Nichols--"even after this shiv incident"--the anchor's own words provoke him to muse:

"That borders on outrage right there." All the while thinking this is a special night for my career.

During the commercial break he rolls up his shirtsleeves.

Nancy Grace, a lady with large blond hair whose program, recorded earlier, reappears now, calls him the defen-DANT.

In six consecutive hours of round-the-clock coverage, Brian Nichols' is the only black face shown anywhere on the broadcast.