November 29, 2006
Sobriety
A story, true:
A very inebriated woman staggered across the back yard of a suburban residence one balmy afternoon and caught the attention of the older couple who lived there. She looked quite helpless and disoriented. The yard backed up to a steep bluff overlooking the edge of a deep lake. Fearing for her safety, the couple went out to see if they could help.
The woman resisted forcefully and said she wanted to kill herself by jumping off the cliff into the lake. They were able to distract her long enough to phone their priest and to ask him to come and help.
“Why did you frighten these people?” the priest asked the woman. “Why didn’t you go ahead and jump?”
“Because,” said the woman, “I’d have to walk through all that underbrush by the bluff. There may be snakes. I’m afraid of snakes.”
And an opinion:
Neurosis has nothing to do with how one behaves or how one suffers. It has nothing to do with the fact that the psyche, the self, is infused with contradictions. Rather is it primarily the failure of the capacity to attend to the truth about oneself, whatever it may be, with an awareness free of emotionalism, a capacity that the great spiritual masters called sobriety.