SAVING THE PEA
AUGUST 20, 2011. This is a culture that unalterably believes in endless fairy-tale progress and the preservation of things down to the last dress of the last doll a child played with in her cradle.
Which is why the culture has spawned such an absurd and puerile version of psychology.
People take every destruction as a gross insult. EVERYTHING MUST BE SAVED.
If you want to make a good living, go into the storage-locker business. You’ll always have a steady supply of customers.
If you eat a plate of peas, save the last pea, put it in a plastic bag and stick it in the freezer. Someday you might want to eat it or just look at it and remember the time you ate the plate of peas.
It really gets interesting when a person wants to preserve the pattern of his life, even though he’s unhappy with it. It’s a “thing” so, automatically, it has to be saved.
I once met a sandal-clad therapist at a party. He asked me, “If you could tell me every thought you have, express every feeling you ever had, without fear of recrimination, would you become a patient?”
An interesting conversation-opener-sales-pitch. I said, “If I were to tell you every thought I have, it would take ten billion years.”
“Why is that?” he said.
“Because I invent them.”
For him, that was a puzzler.
I guess he thought all thoughts were in a metal container you saved in a storage locker, and you could just unpack them and play them back.
In my consulting practice, I work to take the coat of shellac off existing “saved” reality, because, placed in the correct perspective, reality is more like taffy. It can be sculpted into many shapes. It can be invented at the drop of a hat. This isn’t just theory, it’s real.
Saving isn’t really a bad thing until it becomes extreme, until the person wants to preserve his own private status quo, even though it’s not making him happy.
People do a risk analysis—they weigh the dissatisfaction they feel about their own status quo against what the risk might be if they step out of the shadows and begin a new kind of life—a life that would fulfill their deepest desires.
They add up both sides of the ledger and decide where the lesser risk is. Of course, when you use comparative risk as your only standard, you’re pretty much into saving the status quo.
In my articles, my consulting practice, and my audio seminars, I’m building a visible foundation for the second choice—a life lived in pursuit of fulfillment of deep desire.
That’s where the magic shows up.
It’s not really in the pea in the bag in the freezer.
Jon Rappoport