something obvious, something alalogous, and someting strangely comfortable...

first...
the obvious thing i'm going to say is that nothing is inherently evil, nor is anything inherently good. an object, a skill, a theory, a concept, these things are incapable of their own morality, their own corruption or salvation. it is only through our own interractions, regards, beliefs, judgments, that we give power to the benign, that we lend our own morality to those things bereft of such taint.
today, the subject to which i'm applying this knowledge is dissociation. because, i'll admit, i have been guilty of judging the talent in a completely negative light. it seemed to me that it was cheating, somehow, an open deception, a denial of "who i am". after all, if we're to make any progress in the world, so we're often told, we must "face ourselves" and "be real" and "honest" about "who we are".
that's bunk. we decide who we are. we are not, despite prevailing oppinion, capable of deceiving ourselves, because we create ourselves daily. we are who we believe we are, who we allow ourselves to be, who we let society or friends or family or religion or industry tell us we are.
and so, the skill of dissociation is no different... it's just another facet of decision. i'm not "denying myself", i'm creating myself, or recreating, anyway. the self i have now, after all, was shaped by the things i allowed to be shaped by, and odds are i accepted at least a few thigns that i didn't have to take onto my shoulders. so by recreating my identity, i can chose the pieces i want, leave the ones that are undesireable, and strike out from there.
the only factor that is of any consequence, as usual, is perception. because people simply do not believe in change. if i were to walk into my former church right now, for instance, they would naturally assume i was still the same person i have always been (ignoring the fact that, before they loathed me, they loved me like a brother). if i were to take up with a shrink (don't do this, ever, it's a terrible thing to make yourself endure), he'd most likely tell me that problems can't be dealt with this way, that it's "repression", or "escapism", or some other meaningless word that carries a negative connotation only because we allow it to. you don't have to spend years slogging through your past just to "get over it". burn it. leave the ashes in a barrel. you have the power to decide what parts of your life will affect you most, which lessons you'll carry and which you'll discard, what pieces of yourself are fit for redemption and which are best cut off and left for the fire.

secondly,
the anlaogy that i'm going to paint involves an idiot.
perhaps that's unfair, and judgmental, so let me just say rather that it involves someone who, without my knowing him well, strikes me as being selfish, indifferent, a little ignorant, and too sure of himself to be of any real use to others.
his name, just for interest's sake, is mersad.
he was supposed to put a new engine in my car.
we TOLD him to put a new engine in the car. after a long explanation, of course, involving fluids having leaked into the crank shaft, that the head gasket was the original culprit, but that it was beyond repair, and that it would cost about 1500 dollars to have it done where we were planning to get it fixed.
he quoted me abotu 800-1000, for the same thing.
fast-forward, now, to a few days later... he calls, says the car is ready... my mother goes to pick it up, only to find him pulling up to the house in it... and it's, SHOCK!!!, overheating, badly. the same thing it was doing before it was "fixed".
the reason, you ask? well, turns out that, instead of putting a new engine in there, he decided, after his own few tests, that it would be fine to simply replace the head gasket, fix the sparkplugs, do a couple other things and call it the job we paid him for. now asking, still, the same 800 dollars, for a job we could have got done at an actual garage for the same price, had they not already told us that it would be completely unprofitable, and would fix nothing.
which, clearly, is what it did. "this comes as as much of a surprise to me as it does to you" he says to my mother. who, i'm very certain, was not surprised in the slightest, having known that the car needed a new engine.
i'm concerned that, had she not seen the overheating, had he not driven it, he might have just handed it over to us, taken our money, and left us to discover on our own that he didn't do what he was asked to do at all, but instead did whatever he felt he wanted to.
so.
mersad still has the car. he says he found a couple of engines, but that there's no way to know how many km are on it, and he "doesn't trust that". instead, deciding he would rather trust himself against the experienced advice of two auto-repair shops and try to fix something unfixable.
fascinating to me.
is this what we do to God? he calls us up, says "if you really want to fix your life, you need a new engine, just put one in and it'll be fine", and we, instead, secure in our own knowledge and understanding, run a few tests, decide it's salvageable, take the easy way out, and slap on a bunch of superficial repairs that won't fix a damned thing, and then give it back to God, saying it's fixed, telling him that what we did was better, somehow, than what he wanted us to do, like he doesn't know better, like he's just going to say "okay", hand us a wad of bills, and thank us for saving him from his requirements of us.
we're so slow, sometimes, to grasp these things.
either way, if you ever come across a mechanic (and i use the term loosely) named mersad, don't give him your car.

and...
for something strangely comfortable, i ask the question, when does comfort outweigh functionality?
i have two bicycles.
one of them is relatively new, even if i bought it used. it's steering is incredibly responsive. the disc brakes it has can stop on a fraction of a dime. it cost more used than my other bike did new. and i don't trust it. at all.
my other bike, i've had forever. it's sturdy, comfortable, and i feel completely at home on it, i feel alive riding it, i feel like i'm in a place where i belong.
it's not as good, probably... it can't stop as quickly, it no longer changes gears properly, and it's heavy. but i believe in it, i trust it, i know it, i love it.
so. what's more important? my marriage had so much amazing potential. as one unit, we had an assortment of skills and strengths that would have been the envy of most people, of most couples. but there was no trust, not at the end. and that's about all that mattered. the potential evaporated under the weight of our simple lack of comfort, lack of belief in each other, in the trust of our strength.
it's something to think about, anyway.
comfortable shoes are nice. new shoes are not comfortable, but look shiny and impress people. but in the end, do you want sore feet, and at what price?

that's it for me.