A story of Redemption

A story of Redemption.

Foreword:

I've cleaned up the grammatical errors due to my propensity for haste. My soul was laid bare in this fictionalized real life story. It was another manifesto of a vain, but honest man. What I have found most distasteful about so many human animals I have met is that they tend to inflate their pathetic, meager "achievements" which in the scheme of things didn't amount to anything worthy to be impressed with, that is to say, they have not made a name for themselves in the world (nobody knows about them except their family members and a few friends and acquaintances) and they have not produced anything contributory to human knowledge and aesthetics. They didn't and don't impress me, not even an iota. I am only impressed by real thinkers who wrote influential books and artists who left lasting legacy. 

A real man must know who he is and his true worth. (Also, a really talented man does something that very few persons can do. If you have done something that thousands and millions of other humans can do, you have no bragging rights. Ask yourself if you are a Bobby Fischer, a Wittgenstein, a Shakespeare, an Einstein, etc...or if you are an insignificant, untalented regurgitator of undigested facts and don't have a single original idea or thought in your head, and your religious and political ideas are what you got from your parents and from what you heard from Fox "News" or CNN. Can you hold your own in a debate? Can you really think? ). An asshole, on the other hand, is a stinking blowhard, full of ugly sound and fury, signifying a sordid stench. 

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I believe in redemption. Big time. I also believe in forgiveness, especially self-forgiveness. And grace. My life has been a struggle against hate and vengeance and self-destruction, as well as contempt for human animals. I wasn't too smart. I thought slowly on my feet. I was naive and gullible and stupidly not cognizant that life in its essence was not so much about love as about power dynamics. To be weak is to invite attack. To be kind-hearted is to be exploited, again and again. The key is to be firm with human animals and to stay away from them, if possible. 

I'm a bit wiser now. I'm no longer a starry-eyed, clumsy, hot-headed little ignoramus. Life has taught me to become wary of human animals. I'm glad that I haven't been in jail or killed because of my follies. You could say I was lucky. 

The following story is real and reported in a poker magazine. It was not about me, but eerily resonant with me. There were some parallels.

A young Korean-American who was strikingly handsome and came from an educated family, dropped out of college with just a few more credits to go in order to pursue a career in poker. By the time he was 23 years old, he had made millions (4) and a name for himself in the poker tournament circuits, an achievement that millions of poker players want to have, but only about 5 persons in the world could do that at that young an age, considering one has to be 21 of age to enter a tournament. In December 2009, when he came in fourth and won "only" $400,000, he was so despondent that he blew most of that prize money at a blackjack table. A few weeks later, on New Year's Eve, he decided, for the first time in his life, to try drugs. Unsurprisingly, drugs proved to be stronger than his brain's chemistry. He was hooked and became addictive and unhealthily paranoid. Amazingly, he continued to be successful in poker while his life was in a descent to hell. He continued his forays into blackjack. An episode best illustrated this period in his life. One night, he was down $250,000 playing blackjack when he blacked out. When he regained consciousness in the morning, he was up $1.2 million. He has very minimal recollection of how that happened. 

At any rate, he thought very little of his life. He sought help from doctors and psychiatrists to no avail, until his mother heard of a "Global Performance Coach" in Hawaii from a friend at church. It took the coach only 10 days to get the young man free of all addictive substances that he was using. The coach explained his methodology as follows:

"We came into this world with a blank slate, innocent and impressionable. Then things, good and bad, happened to us. Very bad things threatened our survival and caused traumas to us, if we survived. We had psychic scars, caused by heightened fear responses. Then as we move forward through life, anything that resembles the traumas will reopen the wounds, and the old tapes of bad experiences and our responses to them will replay themselves. That's how weak-willed humans get stuck in bad habits and addictions. We are the sum total of our experiences, but we do have higher consciousness and we can apply this higher consciousness in identifying the trigger points and avoiding being Pavlovian dogs. Freud was right. We do have Death Instinct, in addition to the Will to Live. In many ways, there is much dualism in this world. It doesn't hurt to think in terms of dualism. We just have to remember that we have to transcend dualism and achieve integration. A healthy human is the one who has learned to master the warring forces inside him. I just told this immensely talented young poker player that he had nothing to fear in this world because death is already a given. We fear because we're afraid to lose what we have or what we hope to have but are not sure if we can have it. Just be sensible, do the right things, put the maximum effort into whatever we do and the results will take care of themselves. "

I applied this insight from the coach and came to understand why certain scumbags and assholes behave the way they do. They are just nasty fearful animals full of disguised inferiority complexes, over-proud of their meager "achievements" which are not earth-shaking at all, and unwilling to admit their foibles. So they have to lie, cheat, make up stories to make themselves look good, even if they know their peers know about their true nature which is full of cheap animalism. A human, if his human attributes not properly developed, will end up worse than a wild beast. You can tell a human animal by its brazen bullshit, its furtive glances, its unsubstantiated bragging, and its failure to admit and welcome facts, truths, and logic into its "life".  It craves for respect, but all it does is to denigrate itself constantly and unwittingly. It wants to win an argument at any cost. It always thinks it's in the right.

By the way, the young Korean-American, now 27 years old, won another $2 million in poker tournaments since his cure from addictions. He recently said that he used to want just to be alive because he was in such a dark place, and now that he has stepped into the light, everything that is feasible is possible if maximum effort is expended. He has found redemption. Life is now beautiful and no longer a burden.

Wissai

October 27, 2013.

Reactions to my post:

About 4 hours have elapsed, and so far, two "humans" (women) in the bcc recipients wrote back. What they wrote didn't surprise me a bit. They apparently either weren't equipped to understand me or their English was so pathetically elementary that they failed to get past the transparency in order to fathom the connotative meanings of my words. What monkeys (the two women) saw when they looked into the mirror (my words) was the image of themselves! They couldn't see the angel (me) grinning in the background. Their cognitive abilities were abjectly dismal! Needless to say, these two women were the least accomplished of all the recipients. Perhaps that was why my words stung them and they felt compelled to speak up in a typically stupid manner.

When Henry Miller got his "Tropic of Cancer" published in Paris, prudish and stupid readers decried the alleged pornographic elements contained therein, while the more discerning men of letters (Lawrence Durrell, Erza Pound, Karl Shapiro, Norman Mailer, and so on) recognized a free spirit and a revolutionary approach to fiction writing. Nowadays, Henry Miller is part and parcel of American literary history. The above can understand the below, but the below can never understand the above. Where you stand can affect what you see. Ditto for your intellect. A stupid and ignorant person can never understand a more intelligent, sensitive, and knowledgeable person. 

Thus spoke Wissai

The Viet woman was so common and pedestrian that she triggered a yawning chasm of disbelief and contempt inside me when I read her words. I definitely will not cc or bcc her anything I write from now on. After I broke off with her in August 2011(because of her selfishness, cheapness, and failure to keep her promises), she tried to get back to me twice after leaving nasty and obscene messages on my phone and emails, but I was cool to her overtures. She was still trying to keep me interested by cc to me her mails, but today, she just killed off any lingering sentiments I once had for her. 

I was far more successful, financially and romantically, than I let on (in five weeks, I will spend ten days in Tahiti. I will have a chance to freshen my French. In June, I will spend a vacation in Seattle with a friend where I will cruise around in a yacht having two bedrooms, and spend time in a cabin on an island and in another cabin on the mountain. I am not lonely as I let on in my writings). I didn't want to reveal to her too much of my finance and my personal life. In retrospect, I am glad I was being prudent. Her words described more her conditions than mine. But, as I said, humans have a tendency to read themselves into other people's words or lives. I knew her well. She used to be a college classmate of mine in Vietnam. She was a totally common woman. I didn't regret of having a romantic relationship with her. I learned a lesson about humanity. 

Wissai