I suppose that I am fooling myself in what I wrote in my last entry. It is not only other people who are such a puzzle, but also myself. I'm conflicted. How is anybody supposed to figure anything out at this rate? Parts. We are a mosaic of parts, or so Pete Gerlach would have us believe, and I have plenty of reasons to believe him and this IFS stuff. This longing and loss stuff does not seem rational. My reason makes sense of what is happening. Things didn't work. Throw a kiss and say good bye, as the song goes. Clear the decks. Observe. Orient. Decide. Act. Dust yourself off and go find something better for you. Parts of me are not on board with that program. It doesn't matter, of course, as there really is no alternative available; that's the only open course of action no matter what desires and wishes would have. Children. It has to be a child part, or children parts, who grieve. How does one reason well with children? Granted, as a father, I know that it can be done, but it certainly isn't easy. Children lack the life experience and the wisdom to put things into perspective and to accept what cannot be changed.
The problem with this model though, is the question of why child-parts of one's psyche would be in any position to be aware of and to grieve the loss of adult values? What do children know of adult companionship, of sex or attraction? What does a child know of the sublime joys of having a spouse and partner in one's life, what it means to lose such a value, what it means to desire such a value again for a long time, what it means to find the possibility of having that value again and be thwarted? Children understand toys, and pets, and losing parents and friends — what do they know of adult relationships? How could a child miss or lament something outside of his own experience?
Children do know when they are sad though. They do know when they do not have and are not getting what they want. They can be pretty damned unreasonable about understanding things that cannot be changed. Wisdom, serenity, these are the supposed gifts of age and experience. I wish I had some more to spread around right now. Grief is not my forté. Frustration? No problem; I can handle that one. Anger, resentments, jealousy, envy, etc. I can deal with those. I've never been good with grief. Gerlach apparently has a lot to say about the subject, but his site takes a lot of reading, digesting, and reflecting to pull benefits out of it. I just haven't read far enough to see what he says on the topic yet. It's funny how that works out. It's really dumbfounding to think how easy it is for some people to believe in things like fate, or divine guidance. Life might be so much more less complicated or perhaps more convenient if a consciousness "shaped our ends, rough hew them how we will."
So I guess I have little with which to work, at this point, until I do some more reading. Ride it out. Time is a sovereign remedy but alas, not a speedy one. Why should she care? Why should she even be curious? Why should I, would probably be a more productive question to ask. I don't know. Intuition says "child-parts," because it doesn't seem rational to me to pine and wish for things one cannot change. How does one deal with that? Gerlach says that it is parents who teach and provide the kind of environment where children learn to grieve "effectively." Perhaps mine missed that memo. If I find it so difficult to deal with my own inner child parts I can be sure that I probably didn't do a good job with my daughters on this topic. It makes entirely too much sense.
