Beside the financial crisis there seem to be other bad things that just pop up in clusters. Maybe it has to do with everyone being tense, but these things don't seem related.
My father-in-law, who I have mentioned here before, is 95 and has really been a tough old bird for many years. But now his body and mind are slipping away. It is taking a long time and is tough to watch. He fell and is in the hospital, but he isn't sure if he is in jail or visiting one of his old customers. When the nurse asked him what year it was he answered 1980, which was the last year he worked.
A good friend of ours is back taking chemo-therapy for a re-occurrence of her cancer. It is very difficult to know how well she will do. Then today, my son told me that one of his friends who had moved away and started a new life in a far-off land was shot and killed in a robbery.
We don't live in Baghdad or Mumbai but there are times when it feels like the world is crumbling around me. My wife gets upset, as well she should. I think I have developed too much of a clinical detachment. I have a circle of about six people, and if anything happened to them I would be rocked to the core, but beyond that, I can feel bad, but I have learned to just kind of shrug and go on.
It could be from working with so many people, and getting to care about them, at least to a point, and still realizing that in many cases, their lives are not going to improve that much.
Or it could be that I'm just really not that nice a guy.
3 comments:
Society tends to treat "detachment" as a dirty word. I don't see anything wrong with being a nice, caring human-being, but without allowing yourself to get destroyed in the process.
Sometimes there is just too much to take in... more than a human being can take. At those times, it is necessary to detach, so that you can keep going.
Because of your job you are able to do that maybe easier than most people, but that only helps you to stay grounded. You have so much sadness to listen to hour to hour, day to day.
You seem like a very nice guy. And I am sorry for all the bad things that you and your family are dealing with right now.
perhaps it is better to feel detached than to feel helpless?
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