Me and Gordon

The Gordian Knot is a legend associated with Alexander the Great. It is often used as a metaphor for an intractable problem (disentangling an "impossible" knot) solved easily by finding a loophole or thinking creatively ( I.e., Alexander using his sword to cut the Gordian knot as opposed to untiring it).

My psyche is a Gordian knot. The tangled ball  is equal parts guilt, lust, insecurity, self aggrandizing, religion and drive for achievement.  That last bit and the second bit have both been tamped down some over the decades.  When they rip your prostate from you, lust may mentally remain but the physical issues the absence of the organ raises temper the raw sexual urge.  Nearing retirement the desire to receive attaboys also fades.  I still want to be good, I still want to be relied on, but I really don’t care for the hassle that would come with a promotion.

Guilt and religion, those two take the primacy. The fear of nothingness if religion is wrong looms large at the edge of the precipice.  And there are the things that I did that were wrong, really wrong.  Do these hang out in some fabric of human experience for all eternity out in space?  Religion says once forgiven always forgiven.  Alcoholics Anonymous says make amends.  Existentialism says it does not matter.  Buddhism urges being in the now, not really forgetting the past but applying loving kindness to one’s self and to all those in the world including those so horribly harmed in the years gone by.  Ah, for some clarifying event or sign as to what is the right path.

Perhaps if I keep reading poetry from the 15th century and essays by Nobel laureates I will catch a flash of the light of truth.  Maybe I will do this clumsy dance of life just a tad better.

I can’t go back and relive the moments of my past, not in any real meaningful sense.  I can however act with compassion as atonement for the wrongs done. The concepts set forth above are so bound up it seems like I need a sword to slice through the tangled mess that they are.