I Feel Like I’m Changing

SHOW NOTES ▬

I’m changing partly because I am trying to tell the truth all the time ▬ 

Source

→ Jordan B. Peterson. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos. Random House Canada, 2018. || ▬

Transcript

Hi, I’m Wayne Jones. Welcome to Newfoundland Boy, a podcast about me and the Canadian province of Newfoundland. This is episode 26: “I Feel Like I’m Changing.”

There’s something happening to me that I haven’t quite figured out yet. I spent most of last week in Corner Brook, the city I was born in but where I don’t live any more, helping my brother and my mother clear out her townhouse and possessions in preparation for her moving into a seniors care home later this year. My mother had decided to keep some of her possessions (some for necessity, some for sentiment) but to either give away or to discard everything else. It’s a small house but it was a big job, still yet to be completed when we head back there in a couple of weeks.

It was emotional for her at times but mostly she was practical and pragmatic about it. For me there was the added factor of being an introvert, very used to and comfortable with a quiet life solo in my spare condo, suddenly being in the midst of people for several days, my routines upended, my solitude gone. But I was glad to be there and needed to be there, and the physical labour and end goal of it all were good distractions.

I’m not sure how changes in yourself—your self—manifest themselves or get noticed, but for me it’s a process of examination, rumination, discovery, and an attempt at an answer. An answer to the question, What is going on with me? I imagine there are lots of people who don’t do much or any self-examination. They roil in their emotions and fears, and either refuse to look beyond the surface of their actions, or perhaps don’t even think of that as a solution, or have much practice with it.

When I was on the way from my car to the entrance to the drugstore last night, I heard a man shouting and cursing, and as it turned out, headed for that same entrance. This is a bit of an overstatement perhaps, but I don’t have any fear any more. I speak up without fear. When I looked over in his direction to see what the fuss was about, he shouted, “What the fuck are you looking at?” I had no interest in any confrontation, but neither do I take insults and challenges any more and simply try to make my shy and demure way through them without causing further notice. I was not angry like he was. I was as calm as I am when I sit quietly in my favourite chair. But the words, “Go fuck yourself,” were out of me quickly and pretty naturally. This was not my purpose, but it was then that I discovered that this was not a dangerous man who was going to escalate this exchange into a physical confrontation. He continued to rant but his voice got lower and he made no attempt to approach me. I consider myself an intuitive person, nothing psychic or anything stupid like that, but in an instant I could sense the hurt boy in him (he was probably in his 20s or 30s). He had no idea beyond the most surface reason why he was so mad. He didn’t know how to deal with it beyond shouting. He was feeling things that he just did not have the skill and insight and experience to process, things well beyond or much deeper than whatever that surface irritant was.

I don’t mean this in a way that implies that I’m any better than this guy (he probably needs good therapy just as I had several years ago now), but I am an analytical, self-examining person, who understands at least to some extent (or at least tries to) the effects of messy emotions and the influence of my past trauma on my present actions and reactions. I used to be a person who was calm on the outside but ragingly nervous and tense and anxious on the inside. Now the inside and outside match, and almost all the time I am calm, and almost all the time I also appear to be calm. I am forever grateful to that psychiatrist who “fixed” me. He by no means made me perfect nor did he equip me with special powers. But he was such an expert that he added on to my natural tendency toward analysis. The ancient Greeks have given a lot to Western culture and perhaps the “To be or not to be,” or one of the most famous quotations from that civilization, is Gnōthi seauton or Know yourself (Γνῶθι σαυτόν). But the truth is that many people don’t know themselves at all, and of course consequently are not able to know anything much about other people either. I’m not talking about the externals of course. I know that I like the colour blue and that my friend Oscar likes finance, but we both also know ourselves and each other very deeply due to the truthful and open friendship we have had for about 35 years.

So the changes I am experiencing in myself don’t have to do with that solid bond, but with something that has to do with my adoption of a practice recommended by a writer that is so simple but which has engendered and caused many changes, some of them significant, in my life and in my attitude. I have alluded to it before in other episodes of this podcast, and some listeners will groan when they hear whom I am talking about: Jordan Peterson. He’s a controversial writer and speaker and general public intellectual, but if you can make your way through the woke indignance about him, you will find articulate and forthright and intelligent commentary. Rule 8 in his first book is: “Tell the truth—or, at least, don’t lie.” In that chapter, he elaborates:

If you bend everything totally, blindfully and willfully towards the attainment of a goal, and only that goal, you will never be able to discover if another goal would serve you, and the world, better. It is this that you sacrifice if you do not tell the truth. If, instead, you tell the truth, your values transform as you progress. If you allow yourself to be informed by the reality manifesting itself, as you struggle forward, your notions of what is important will change. You will reorient yourself, sometimes gradually, and sometimes suddenly and radically.

I think this is a description of what is happening to me. The confusion and puzzlement and even concern that I have right now, when I am caught up in the swirl of change, are that I am not sure how to characterize the changes I feel in myself. I wonder if I am becoming categorical. Here’s an example. I have a very difficult time now being around people who lie or who live a pretense, put on a good show and are intentionally or ignorantly delusional about themselves. I felt such a whoosh of satisfaction during the move of my mother because we dealt with some relatives who were absolutely suffused with integrity and a lack of pretension. They were in themselves exactly as they appeared to me. My experience is that this is a very rare phenomenon.

Here’s a food metaphor that also happens to be something going on in my life that might or might not be related. During the visit of my friend Dave a couple of weeks ago, we explored various parts of the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland. Of course, that included sampling different restaurants. Two of the meals we had were absolutely outstanding, one a pizzeria that specializes in Neapolitan pizza, and the other a Bangladeshi restaurant. The other places we went to were fine, but they were not great. Now I find myself starting to be unable to have just average food.

More importantly, of course, is my attitude toward people. It’s impossible to avoid all people who don’t tell the truth—how would I keep up with world politics?—and in my personal life it will likely mean an avoidance of some people or a scaling back of the intimacy with them. Friends tell each other the truth, and the other friend understands because they know that the telling of that truth is not meant to hurt. If you have a friendship or other relationship with a person, and either or both of you are telling white lies (or even darker shades of lies) to each other, are keeping secrets, are lying to yourself as much as to your friend or partner, then I cannot see but that that relationship is either doomed to end, or, maybe even worse, never realize its potential as it sails along being hopelessly average.

So this is where I am. In a kind of transition, confusing and exciting at the same time. If I may, it takes a little courage to follow through on your principles. And it takes a lot of analysis and being steely honest with yourself in order to find out exactly what is going on.

And that’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. And please join me again next Tuesday.