Pool lessons

[Zues126]

My goodness, has it really been 6 weeks since I posted? I think about you guys every day. I guess when I post I put a lot into it so sometimes it just takes a lot of gumption for me to put the words together. And it can take a while for my thoughts to start to clarify.

First off, thank you all for following and checking in. Happy holidays to all of you. Each of you is dealing with your share of pain so I am hoping you also find some moments of peace with the people you still have in your life.

I just got back from a week in Vegas for the US Bar Table Championships. I probably couldn't afford to take another week off of work but I did anyway. I'll spare the play by play and just say that I had a blast, played outstanding, had some highlight reel matches on the pay per view table (including a 5-0 victory against one of my long time pool heroes in which he didn't even get to shoot because I ran all five racks, this one's coming to youtube soon ), and overall had pretty good results in these tournaments. Not my career moment, but I rediscovered the rhythm of competition, those doubts and fears became more and more distant and it was just fighting hard and scrambling through racks of balls, which is what I love to do.

One thing I find interesting is that my road partner on this trip was a younger guy, 25 years old. He has quite different views on the world than I do and it got me thinking about some things.

To set up my new train of thought I'll recap a few of my world views that form the basis. It seems to me for most of human history we didn't have choices about what our lives would look like, we were born into a certain life and that's the life we had to live. People had to find ways to adapt to their environment, instead of adapting their environment to them. It is this hardship that forced us to develop traditions and religions, to find meaning in our suffering and make the best of what we had. Marriage in particular was a dominant model because it was a requirement for survival throughout these oppressive times.

After WWII in the 1950s we started to accumulate a surplus of economic resources, technology was developing, and for the first time people weren't forced to follow the old rules for survival. The result was inevitably, the 60s counter culture questioning all of the old beliefs and traditions. It was like a rock long disturbed was uprooted and suddenly the beetles and insects started scampering every direction.

Some of this was good. Think about barbaric traditions such as sacrificing virgins to imaginary deities so the corn crop would come in. This is a tradition that humanity can say, 'hey guys, we've learned a little bit, we don't need to keep doing this anymore'. On the other hand there are many traditions that embody the collective wisdom of thousands of generations we've discovered on how we can best exist together.

One big challenge is how we can tell which is which. And another challenge is that if each of us tries to decide on our own which traditions are positive and which need to go, the result is that we don't have any universal set of values and therefor chaos ensues, like an orchestra where everyone is trying to play their own favorite song. Yes it's freedom, but something is lost in that we aren't harmonious. And as we interpret for ourselves our morality it is too easy to modify our beliefs to match our personal desires.

I've been looking at this with a sense of loss. A loss of the institution of marriage. A loss of the model of sacrifice, servitude, lives dedicated to finding purpose in our suffering. And I used to harbor much more resentment towards XW and other WAS's who I felt had made the choice to go down a road of pursuing selfish worldly desires that was creating a pattern that would bring tremendous pain upon ourselves and destroy much of what we built over many lifetimes.

My friend feels differently. He feels that we were chained down by circumstance and that we are now free to choose our own paths. He views this as a positive. He thinks that marriage and personal sacrifice are outdated traditions that we no longer need. Like we were chained up for so long we came up with traditions on how to live while being chained, and now we're not chained so it would be foolish to stay in our cells when the door isn't locked anymore just because that's what we've always done. I find this very interesting.

There are a few things we agree on. Right or wrong, we both think this is what is happening. We also think that it was and is inevitable. Human nature is human nature. If you leave kids to themselves they'll eat cookies and watch youtube. And similarly the members of our society aren't going to remain in miserable unfulfilling marriages and sacrifice their own personal happiness when they aren't forced to by circumstance. This is clear as even the anti-divorce forum members loath the idea of remaining in an unfulfilling marriage and can easily build cases in which abuse/addiction could justify divorce. We can talk about how we don't like it, but when it's our life that's miserable and we're free to define our own morality and society agrees it's hard for us to be the ones to remain in a difficult situation perpetually because of traditions that no one else is honoring.

And since I feel this is inevitable, I have let go of much of my resentment. I no longer look at my XW or other WASs as horrible people that made selfish choices that destroyed my family and are eroding the society we have built over millennia and dooming our children. Instead I almost feel they didn't have a choice, that we are all sinners and flawed humans and are being swept away in an irresistible current. Sure, a few people can be the exception and decide individually to fight the current, but the majority are going to be pulled downstream. I am no exception to that as proven by the fact I am debating these things for myself instead of following faithfully the teachings of the a priest or a higher power. While I still recognize each person gets to make their own choices, I am finding much more compassion for those being left to navigate their own way while the majority is racing down this path.

Another area I agree on with my friend is that we don't understand partnering up with another person at this time. He doesn't because he doesn't want to make the personal sacrifice, and would rather be free to pursue his own desires in life. I don't because I think that whoever I partnered with would think like he does and ultimately divorce me when they decided that the marriage was no longer working for them. And, as I've mentioned, I have a hard enough time making the sacrifice myself as while I don't always like it, I am human too. So to make a huge sacrifice that would test my dedication so I can endure a number of painful years until my spouse labels me as abusive and leaves to pursue their own happiness again, a result which looks like a foregone conclusion, doesn't seem like a bargain to me.

Maybe this will change at some point and I'll embrace the new ways of serial monogamy as a happy medium and content myself with 3-10 year stints of companionship that expires when it's no longer mutually beneficial. Maybe this will even be a sign of growth for me, a form of embracing what is available to me instead of rejecting it because it isn't everything I wanted. I'm not sure. But I'm not there at this point, that's for sure.

Much of this is churning over old ground, but as time passes and I hear other peoples' input my views gradually evolve. It's too bad we each have to try to go through this and find our own beliefs and we have lost the harmony and much wisdom of the ages, but it does seem inevitable and has carried many benefits in terms of reduction of suffering through oppression. While some will always succumb to chasing worldly pleasures, we still have the choice to appreciate what we have and find meaning in our suffering and purpose in our servitude. I, being human, have a nice mix of both in my life.

OK. Time to play some online chess and veg out for a bit, then back to work to get caught up. Hope you guys all had a good weekend and have a happy holiday!