Our abnormal psychology professor admitted to the most dreadful thing to our class. “As a psychiatrist in the 60’s I told parents of schizophrenic children that their parenting caused the illness. I feel horrible still for having said it, but that was the understanding then. The theory was based on the science at the time. The science advanced then the disease became chemical with environmental stress being an agonist.” The good in this evolution of understanding is the realization that the social environment of a child in not likely to create physiological brain dysfunction - the thought processes will be created and shaped, and volumes of information will be stored but the brain is developing according to the genetic plan.

Childhood does not change the brain, it shapes the processes that run. It helps to create an understanding of the world that allows the brain to plan and coordinate the body’s interactions with the external environment. This internal representations of the world is based on an interpretation of all of the information known and assumed about the world. When there isn’t enough information, the brain generates possible reasons, and one of them eventually fills in the missing info. What gets rendered into ones world view is a mixed stew of real and make-believe. Needed are answers to the “why” of what happened so we can move on to the next experience and we’re willing to make-up stuff not provided.

This is how most development gets sprained - incorrect reasons attributed to why things happen.

The biggest offender is sexual abuse. Young person gets molested by a family member, friend, or coach. It’s new to them so they have no idea what to make of the whole thing. It feels wrong but it’s so far from the norm that there’s no reconciling it with real information. The assumptions begin and the underlying thought processes start to morph. “My care givers don’t love me because they let that happen” is a common assumption to make as it answers the why question instantly. The children don’t talk about it either out of fear or because they are now sure that their parents don’t love them. The parents don’t talk about it because they don’t know anything about it. They’ll ask the child about any change in behavior (the withdrawal that occurs when your parents don’t love you enough to protect you from bad things). When the parents continue to expose the child to the abuser it serves to reinforce the assumption and can change the narrative from neglect to enabling. These assumptions can get traction and write themselves into interesting areas of their future.

Personal relationships can become a mine field as one advances with incorrect assumptions about cause and effect, particularly ones involving feelings of love. In some cases the person never allows themselves to get close to anyone and lives a fairly isolated life full of efforts to avoid receiving love from others as that ultimately means suffering because people who love you let bad things happen. In other cases the person will begin to experience what most would call true love with someone and they will begin to do things that will make the other person change their view of them. There is an element of what seems like sabotage but it is simply the persons desire to be unlovable so that they can be the way they believed they are supposed to be; an assumption made in the past to help manage the experience of being abused.

Love hurts more than anything else in the world because there is a need to feel it, but it has become associated with so much suffering, cognitive-dissonance and a mis-pairing of cause and effect. For those who are willing to try romantic relationships as an adult, they will often leave a sea of damaged and bitter people in their wake as the recovering party recreates the relationship dynamic of the past. Without the knowledge and acceptance of what happened, the past becomes the future and the emotional pain rolls on.

Sometimes life, like your computer, can just lock-up and stop almost dead in its tracks. I’ve asked some computer guys why this happens and while they didn’t say for sure they said it’s usually because some process gets stuck in a loop and all of the resources are being feed into it. I think that’s kind of what happens with life sometimes; you get caught in a thought process and over time it begins to sap away the energy needed to do anything else. The brain is a computer so of course this will happen.

With a computer it’s easy to fix, you just reach forward and push the reset button. The computer reboots. There’s a good chance things will be fine when the computer starts-up again, but you know you’ve lost any unsaved recent data. Pressing reset is rarely the end of your computer or its operating system.

Pressing reset on life is a lot like that. You are going to lose a lot of recent information and what remains after the reboot is often just a little bit more than was there after the last reboot. The body and the brain are fine, running more smoothly for having stopped and restarted. Some recent stuff is sticky and will be there when you walk back after pressing reset on life. A lot of things won’t be and these are likely the things that didn’t need to be there in the first place. Life is simpler and you may be slightly wiser if you don’t ever think about it again.

But the wisdom lies in realizing that the things that were not working for you were just symptom of a problem that likely still resides within you. You need to be fair with yourself here and admit that the brain does a ton of stuff that we know nothing about; if we did know something about it we might actually be able to change our behavior when we need to.

The reason for the life lock-up is the result of something inside of your that manifested itself as unworkable situations, behaviors, relationships or people in your life. None of those is good or bad, they simply are things. The issue is in the interaction between them and you; given  that these things do not causes problems with everyone. What are YOU doing with those things that is creating or recreating the loop that drains your energy and causes the lock-up?

“Have you pressed “F8″ after you reboot?” was one of the questions the computer guy asked me. My “no, why?” was greeted with “it’s a little safer. You don’t get all of the functionality but it’s a lot easier to figure-out what went wrong.”

When I paddled with the Mississauga Canoe Club I would see the good ones riding the wash that another canoe or kayak was creating. They’d get into the wake and keep their body weight on the down side of the wave coming off of the other boat so it would push them along. It was a skill and when it worked, it saved a lot of energy. When the wave passed you though, you were screwed. Paddling a sprint canoe through the wash of another boat is a different sport. Point the front of the boat, paddle hard and hope for the best. Most of the time they would open up water between you and you’d find matching their speed became possible only when you drift back and out of the random waves they’ve left. It was messy water if you ended-up falling behind. Washed-out is what it felt like.

I did find some comfort in the calmness of the water after the wash goes away. There was a lot of frustration there because there could be. It was easy to berate myself for falling off the wave because I wasn’t trying to hang on anymore. The choppy water was gone, as though it needed some time to regroup and consider its options before trying to tip the next person into the drink. The washed-out survivors were spared the waters torment and given the chance to think or learn from the previous few minutes. The great ones stuck by the water and became national level athletes. I moved on, replacing relationships and work for the water and trying to ride their wash. Sometimes unsuccessfully.

In the wake of destruction there is silence. There is a flattened landscape void of potential, void of anything that was how things just were. If left standing, one is lucky and slightly damaged. That’s all that’s needed. The damage means they’ll try to avoid that type of thing again. They’ll be a little wiser when it comes to the wash of life, at least in terms of how their  choices got them this time round. They’re lucky because they got washed-out and can take a rest in the calmer seas. That race is over, the lesson given. They can now look around with a shifted attitude that lets new or previously impossible thoughts bounce around. There’s a liberation in failing that you don’t get with continuing. There is a massive boost in mental resources. As the brain releases from the battle it can focus on managing the lessons and taking the most out of the experience.

In time things begin again and with enough time those things will be new.

Everyone knows who god is. To some it’s God but to the rest of us it’s god. Proper name or not, it’s the same thing, a magic man who made everything. God, the catchall for stopping rational thought. You don’t have to keep reading.

You know who “you” is. It’s the thing behind your eyes, between your ears, able to smell and taste things just below where you live. Yes, YOU, the bag of particles that is at the center of the universe.

Mr. Whatshisname is the catalyst for the introduction of the topic of divine intervention. It’s someone who is sick or in need of something.

“If you do pray just don’t tell me about it. I won’t be in the least bit grateful.”

I laughed a proud laugh when I heard my dad say this yesterday. This is what I have been waiting to hear for a long time. When you have 10 minutes of energy at a time, you really shouldn’t have to be subjected to listening to nonsense for any of it. The person he was talking to accepted the request to move on to something else, which is very rare let me tell you.

I’m an atheist. Up until about a week ago I would have considered myself a slightly confrontational atheist. Having been on the receiving end of the same prayer nonsense for Mr. Whatshisname my brain is telling me that it’s time to become a militant atheist. I have to. Reconciling the dissonance between reality and god for other people is futile and a waste of my time. Worse is their unwillingness to not use brain cancer as a way to channel their agenda into my awareness; this is a waste of my time, it’s ignorant and since it creates suffering in me, it’s immoral.

They know I don’t believe yet they tell me anyway asking me not to get offended. “I hope you don’t get offended but I’m going to remind you that your father is dying by telling you I talked to myself about him.” Okay, spend your time whispering. It doesn’t impact me. But when you drive it into my consciousness I’m now going to tell you to fuck off because you’re acting like a child both in terms of the ignorant things you believe and the savagely ignorant way you conduct yourself. When your cancer comes considering looking at it as a punishment for these types of things because you caused it with your self-righteous anti-science religious agenda.

Idiots, all of them, throughout time and now still.

In the event you don’t understand why you are stupid or immoral for telling me about your prayers simply because someone I know has a brain tumor I’m explain.

My dad has a brain tumor. It happens to people as they get older because the body slows down the fight, recovery and repair of all the stuff that goes wrong or happens to the it. The science here is very sounds. There’s nothing they can really do to fix it, that is clear from the MRI.

We’re all kind of sad about it because we all like each other a lot. We’re a tight family and we’ve been able to get to know and really like each other.

The tumor doesn’t believe in god, the family doesn’t believe in god. Most of the family friends do not believe in god. We are aware enough of the world around us, the science that explains most of the mysteries of the world to realize that we were not created and that life, while special, is a natural bi-product of the certain particles and a lot of time to stew. We are friends with atheists because we like hanging around normal people.

We’re godlessly content in our understanding of the world, the universe and death.

What the self-chatter has to say about cancer, my health, etc… doesn’t have any impact on the situation and since me and the family don’t believe in god or religion, telling us about it is being disrespectful. As an atheist I know the moral wrong of boring people with bullshit they do not want to listen to during their dying days. Prayer-tellers don’t understand it because they have no internal morality. They cannot feel the wrong they are doing because god is their proxy for the moral decision making process. When the locus of control falls outside ones body a clear distinction needs to be made between them and us. We make our luck through hard work, by trying to honor the lessons of our parents and to try to prevent that horrible feeling we get when we treat someone poorly. They make their luck by breathy whispering to a magic man in the sky with no regard to the horrible things they do to the people on the planet. My side will get things done, the other side just needs to get out of our way.

Seeing life slip away can be beautiful. It has a big impact on the willingness for honesty and there’s a dramatic shift towards being authentic. Why pretend anymore? There’s a big difference between having 6 and believing you have 500 and knowing you have 6. When you know you have 6 you’ll enjoy them fully and you’ll not let anyone take any from you.

And I suppose that we all think we have 500 so we float along enjoying some, sharing others, and allowing some to be stolen from us.

Cancer is greedy. It takes more than it’s fair share of the 500. It takes more than what we let others steal. But it gives something in return those who steal do not, it illuminates the end of the timeline. The flash of the terminal diagnosis shines brightly on what you have left so following the path to the end is very easy. You clear your schedule of the stuff that steals any of the time that remains.

You call in your troops and they shield you from the nonsense. The family pick to block obnoxious one on ones, musical chairs to maintain the wall of one between the cancer and the cancer, it’s a play book being written with each visit from someone who never mattered to us and always seemed to cost us energy.

It’s a sad sort of dream team simply because it is needed.

I’ve been left wondering after a well played game why I’m in this situation and what other things have I been letting into my life that share the same root cause.

I really want to be liked by other people. At least I used to want this. I’m not sure it’s worth the cost anymore; not to assume it ever was. I’ve normalized this habit though. I’m more aware of the interactions with people that leave me feeling unsettled than I am about the ones that leave me feeling nothing. In the last 3 years I’ve started to tread away from these types of interactions in favor of ones that leave me feeling good but I still have a tough time telling people to get away from me or just ending “friendships” that never worked.

The new awareness that death comes sooner and that time becomes more valuable as you near the end is forcing the issue about the pointlessness of wanting to be liked by other people. Almost everyone I know now will not be there when I die. The people I am choosing to generate mental friction about are not even aware of it and none of them will be there in the end. Wanting to be liked isn’t working for me anymore so I’m giving up on that habit. It hasn’t been authentic for a long time.

How Doctors Die: It’s Not Like the Rest of Us, But It Should Be by Ken Murray is a very interesting article about how doctors respond to the news that they are terminally ill. It goes into the costs associated with keeping someone alive when their bodies can no longer keep the disease in check - financial, social and suffering costs.

One of my patients was a man named Jack, a 78-year-old who had been ill for years and undergone about 15 major surgical procedures. He explained to me that he never, under any circumstances, wanted to be placed on life support machines again. One Saturday, however, Jack suffered a massive stroke and got admitted to the emergency room unconscious, without his wife. Doctors did everything possible to resuscitate him and put him on life support in the ICU. This was Jack’s worst nightmare. When I arrived at the hospital and took over Jack’s care, I spoke to his wife and to hospital staff, bringing in my office notes with his care preferences. Then I turned off the life support machines and sat with him. He died two hours later.

Even with all his wishes documented, Jack hadn’t died as he’d hoped. The system had intervened. One of the nurses, I later found out, even reported my unplugging of Jack to the authorities as a possible homicide. Nothing came of it, of course; Jack’s wishes had been spelled out explicitly, and he’d left the paperwork to prove it. But the prospect of a police investigation is terrifying for any physician. I could far more easily have left Jack on life support against his stated wishes, prolonging his life, and his suffering, a few more weeks. I would even have made a little more money, and Medicare would have ended up with an additional $500,000 bill. It’s no wonder many doctors err on the side of overtreatment.

But doctors still don’t over-treat themselves. They see the consequences of this constantly. Almost anyone can find a way to die in peace at home, and pain can be managed better than ever. Hospice care, which focuses on providing terminally ill patients with comfort and dignity rather than on futile cures, provides most people with much better final days. Amazingly, studies have found that people placed in hospice care often live longer than people with the same disease who are seeking active cures. I was struck to hear on the radio recently that the famous reporter Tom Wicker had “died peacefully at home, surrounded by his family.” Such stories are, thankfully, increasingly common.

The author recaps a number of stories about doctors who get the news and simply stop working and spend their remaining time doing things they like that make them happy. He feels that for many of them, having seen the suffering caused by futile care for years, the choice to just say “no thanks” is not just easy but the only choice they can make and still do no harm to their patients (in this case themselves).

The article reminded me of doctor Mark Greene in the TV show E.R. He had ended up getting cancer and having a new wife and a young child he fought it and beat it into remission. It did however come back and he made the choice to not fight anymore. It had been hard and he didn’t want to do it again. Dr. Greene spend his dying days in Hawaii with his family and died peaceful in bed.

When I watched the show I remember thinking that it was odd that a doctor would choose not to fight again given that he had been successful the first time. But there was also something that resonated with me that sometimes the distinction that you have a battle to win is simply not true. Even if you are not sick, you will never be new again. Your body has been falling apart since you were born. If you are sick, you will never be cured, even if they cut it out, zap it with radiation and stop the bad cells from dividing. Getting cancer is a one way street and no matter what they do, it can come back. You can fight the toughest battle, but without a new body, the old one has that weakness and the cancer has time on its hands.

There isn’t anything wrong with fighting, there isn’t anything wrong with wanting more time for yourself or your loved ones. There isn’t anything wrong with being grateful for the warning and having the time of your life as it winds down. That’s what a lot of doctors do and I get the feeling it’s what most of my dad’s doctors would do.

I wondered for a long time why so many seemingly normal and highly functional people constantly find themselves at the source of all of the bad things that happen in their world yet take responsibility for few of their own actions. It was disturbing until Des told me that believing you’re are a piece of unlovable crap is a sure fire way to ensure that you seek out the social situations to validate your lack of value. Initially it struck me as odd until I saw Donald Trump talking on TV and it hit me that there is a man who doesn’t really care what anyone thinks of him. He’s not narcissistic, he’s confidence because he knows he has a lot of value and this prevents him from needing other people’s approval. He’ll settle for their money and he’s just right for that.

If you are able to consider the inverse - that you are unlovable - you’ll see how seeking out this type of validation is a much bigger a social motivator than KNOWING you are the best. People who know what they bring to the table do not seek out proof of this from others because knowing it is all that is needed. I had an old girlfriend who would talk about things she knew nothing about but when it came time to debate about the things she knew, there was no debate. No need, I didn’t know what I was talking about. She’d correct me and then move on if I continued to disagree. What’s funny is that she would debate endlessly when she was full of crap.

This is one of my favorite topics as I age because I am uncovering more and more people who don’t understand that their motivation to see themselves as the center of the world and the cause of everything is a symptom of a sense of unlove-ability and that it is paying service to something that happened when they were growing-up. More often that not, their narcissism is a result of an incomplete developmental stage and an inaccurate pairing of cause and effect - for example, very attractive people tend to become narcissistic as they age because they were never recognized for their efforts (the things they can control) and tend to receive favor simply for being good looking. Their pathological behavioral patterns will tend to pop out any time they begin to feel overwhelmed by someone they view as better than them (a meaningless distinction) or anytime they feel the withdrawal of approval. They will often say the oddest things that you cannot reconcile in your head because they are not based on fact. To them though, they are based on fact; they are based on the interpretation of the evidence which just happens to see them as unlovable.

We tolerate this from children, movie stars and anyone we want something from because we can’t actually care that much about people who view themselves as unlovable because they tend to act in unlovable ways and alienate those who bring them kindness - they are dishonest, they create drama where it didn’t need to be, they involve others in their and other peoples business, they denigrate others in an attempt to make themselves feel or look better, they tell you who you can and cannot be friends with and they will throw you under the bus as soon as they realize that you are not treating them as unlovable as they act. Narcissism is obvious once you’ve seen it and the people it afflicts are toxic to those unfortunate to have to continue to engage them.

The prognosis is poor for these types of people because they are incapable of seeing their actions has shaping their world - I’ve yet to meet one who later said “I was creating all of my bad luck because I was acting unlovable.” Sadly for them and the people they impact, you tend to hear “look what you made me do” or “that isn’t fair” when you treat them the same way they treat you.

Chances are they are too heavily invested in keeping their delusion going to actually look at the root cause of their actions.

And it is really tough to hear anything other than “dead soon” in those words. That is the acute emotional reaction to news of a brain tumor in you or someone you love. But the symptoms of the disease are treated, they go away, the mind returns and you then get to the business of what to do about it.

You cannot predicate the future so the doctors say weeks to months. The doctors that have the tools to do something about it - radiation, chemo or surgery - have more optimistic predictions as they have some power to cut out, kill or retard the tumor cells ability to replicate. The rest of us float in a fog wanting it all to be a dream.

But the doctors can’t predict the future so they have to say weeks to months. 5 years is 60 months and there’s a 4% chance of that. They encourage you to get your affairs in order because it’s just good practice and because it forces the family to have the conversations that are easy to avoid otherwise. Being alive in 5 years is a possibility. Being alive in 1 year is a good likelihood. Feeling better than before being diagnosed is an almost certainty with treatment. But the decision to undergo treatment needs to be made and it should be made with some level of understanding of what the treatment is like.

I happened across a site by and about a guy named Ted who was diagnosed with GBM in 2006. An interesting first hand account of what it is like to get treated and to live with a non-growing tumor in your body. I particularly liked a section written by his wife:

Personality Changes:  Ted’s attitude had gotten really bad right
before he was diagnosed.  He was angry all the time and kept telling
me he had no passion for a cause anymore. Fortunately his anger wasn’t
directed at me.  He seemed to be angry at the world but at the same
time he felt numb.  He went from the energizer bunny to not wanting to
see anyone or go anywhere.  At one point, I asked him what he had
done with my real husband.

The day before he was diagnosed I actually told him I thought he had a
brain tumor.  So I wasn’t as shocked as he was when the doctor told us
that he did.

Mood swings:  After surgery the doctor predicted mood swings.  I was
really concerned.   He did have a few, but as he has healed, the mood
swings have virtually disappeared and he has gone back to pre-tumor
behavior.  I have him back.  It’s wonderful.  I will always be
grateful to the surgeon for bringing him back to me.

Having seen a lot of the passion my father had for live disappear over the last 6 months it’s reassuring to read that it is cancer. The foundation of the world shakes when one of your mentors seems to give up hope for anything. It’s nice to know that the hope and passion are still there, they’re just being blocked by a tumor.

Sharyl asked me what was the most useful thing I took out of the last year and I said “that I don’t know what my motivations are most of the time and most people have no idea why they do the things they do.” I don’t know why I’m telling you this.

It has been liberating because for most of my life I accepted that the reason why I thought I did something was the actual reason why I was doing it. In retrospect, this is ridiculous. The decision to accept that my first thoughts about a motive were accurate failed to consider that my initial thoughts about a situation tend to be emotional or reactive before they are logical and pragmatic.

My tendency to accept the first thing that popped into my mind effectively ended the search right as the more logical brain processes come on-line and the most effective problem solving takes place. Since these processes never tackled the question “why did I do this?” my initial assumption never got challenged or balanced with an alternatives. The brain assumed everything was correct and then devoted the rational thought processes to solving or engaging an erroneous assumption. This is why two people can end-up arguing passionately about something they don’t care about. It’s also why a number of people become extremely abusive during conversations or arguments.

For example, the immediate reaction to someone saying “you are asking me to do something that you didn’t do yesterday or the day before. In fact you never do what you are telling me I have to do” tends to be defensive; and sometimes aggressive.

The word “you” triggers something akin to being pointed at. Most people feel singled out when they hear it used in what they interpret as a negative situation. This feeling is automatic and unconscious, and it is chemical - it’s an emotional release in response to a match between the current situation and something stored in long term memory. The chemical make-up of the emotional release will be shaped by the earliest experiences and there is a diminishing marginal impact with further experiences - what happens later in life will have less and less impact on the automatic emotional response to similarly matched patterns REGARDLESS of increasing levels of maturity and brain development. Once the match has occurred, logical thinking will be impaired for as long as the emotion is sustained. NOTE: If ones first experiences of feeling singled out in a negative way were resolved effectively and in a way that allowed the experience to be balanced with facts, they won’t interpret “you” the same way as someone who did suffer abuse from their caregivers in response to being singled out for a negative thing.

So the statement already has them acting emotionally (illogically) and they then need to stew on being called a hypocrite (while it wasn’t said, this is what people hear). This has them become defensive and start looking for reasons why it is fair to ask you to do something that they are have not yet been willing to do.

There’s a lot of bull shit in all of that and it all has to do with trying to stop being the center of attention for negative reasons - in this case that goal is achieved when the other person is wrong in what they are saying. This is exactly WHY seemingly decent people will become raging assholes when confronted with facts about their behavior.

The next thought that springs to mind after the urge to defend (IF it is allowed to come forward) will usually be very logical. It tends to be something like “hey, I just felt the emotions float over and out of me!” then “what do I really want from this person right now and what is the request I am actually making of them?” Then maybe “yeah, I haven’t done that ever. Maybe I shouldn’t expect someone else to do it for me” or “I don’t know what I’m talking about here” and hopefully the words “I’m sorry, it isn’t fair of me to expect you to do that when I haven’t. Ultimately I’m hoping we can agree on the following….” or something like that. It’s a very different conversation.

That’s the big thing I took out of this year. My initial reaction will be defensive, as initial reactions should be. But by not taking action, I’m actual able to figure-out why I’m doing stuff because I’m not trying to dig myself out of an imaginary hole or pummel on someone to get them to say that I wasn’t wrong.

Over the last few years I have taken time to reconsider my reason for being on the planet, my purpose. I now see it as a fundamentally arbitrary thing yet of fundamental importance when considering how I should engage the world in-order to get the most of my time as I exist in my current ordered form (the bag of particles that make up my body).

Since I discovered it, it has more or less been “to create beauty through helping others actualize potential.” Time, experience and learning have moved me past this. I changed but continued to live my life with that purpose in mind. It became a drag and the almost absolute antithesis of what I thought I was doing.

It changed today to read “to help living things actualize more of their potential” for about a hour. This still isn’t right. It isn’t Bobby Kennedy enough as it still implies only my direct intervention and nothing of creating a world around me that is conducive to things getting more organized - be it thoughts, actions, fitness, attitudes, development of a business, creating art in all forms, imagining the impossible, creating something out of nothing, etc… - so it needed to change.

It became “to help generate order through the creative actualization of potential in living and nonliving things.” That sits better because the “living and nonliving things” means the inclusion of almost anything including myself; e.g. my body, brain, and mind (all of the thought processes and normalized narrative thinking) can be a part of that which gets creatively actualized, a necessary change to stop a lot of the madness that I have been toying in. The nonliving things means that it isn’t just people I’m open to now, it’s EVERYTHING on the planet.

This excites me again because I can be living a purpose driven life all of the time, not just when I was engaging others. Wow!