A newly-wedded friend recently traveled to his bride’s out-of-town family christening, a conclave that he couldn’t have been dragged to in any of his pre-wedded years had the combination of free money and easy nubility been offered.  In other words, the guy had proven himself capable of compromise and emotional growth.

Another friend, on the other hand, remained stunted beneath a thick layer of emotional silt.  So when his girlfriend asked him to join her at a family wedding, he parried, “you don’t want me to go, you want who you want me to be to go.”

See, that’s how it works.  So there’s a lot to dredge up from that fetid moat of childhood angst when searching for the cause of our myriad maledictions, malfeasances, and misalignments.  Of course, speaking for myself, I’m now wearing orthotics, so I’ve got that alignment thing on the right track.

But it has become vogue, this cathartic hip-wade through the fetid pools of formative experience in search of any and all trauma – real and imagined – with which to absolve our adult transgressions and their teared-stained consequences.  Yeah, it can’t possibly be me, could it?  Had to be someone else who caused my gibbery-assed condition.  Why be master of my own domain – in the non-Seinfeldian sense – when I can put the blame on somebody else?

(“Cough, cough.  Mommy?  Daddy?  I can’t see you.  Are you there?  It’s dark.”)

This superego search for release has not only stirred up the indelicacies once interred beneath the open-air temple of free will but also caused a brackish light to be cast through our rectory of subsequent responsibility. Continue reading →