LifeCoach

Life and Life Coach

"Life coach" is nombre de rigueur nowadays. Words such as "shrink", "psychotherapist", "psychologist", and "psychiatrist" are falling out of favor, especially among those who are not necessarily sick and dysfunctional, but into high competition and looking for a thin-razor edge in mental toughness. These modern-day gladiators, financial or otherwise, know in their arenas of rarefied competition, Mind Control is of paramount importance. 

I decided to reread an article about a financial gladiator who credited his life coach for saving his life and putting him on a winning streak ever since, after I had come across a book review about Saki of whom  the critic V. S. Pritchett said: “Saki writes like an enemy. Society has bored him to the point of murder. Our laughter is only a note or two short of a scream of fear.”

These three sentences jolted me out of a spiritual slumber. They energized me. They reminded me of what I had written to a friend:

"Your missive was on target. It forced me to respond with the following words: 

Lost love is lost love. Being fake or real doesn't make it any more or less lost. However, strictly speaking, no love is lost. Love, once experienced, changed us. We would never be the same afterwards. 

During the cruise  on The Allure of the Seas and the stop-over in Barcelona, I noticed that you are lucky to be loved by a caring and capable woman. A lot of men would love being in your shoes. 

I'm a lucky man, too. More than 30 years ago, a woman agreed to be with me, knowing fully well of my impractical thinking and predisposition to chaos. She has stayed with me despite the dislocations and disturbances in my life. A lesser woman would have walked out on me a long time ago. Our union has produced an offspring who is reasonably intelligent, well-read, and financially self-sufficient. I cannot ask for more."

Back to the three sentences of Pritchett, I would like to modify them as follows to suit my friend, Omar Sabat

"He lives like an enemy of his. Meanwhile, several scumbags have angered him to a point that he begins to fantasize homicide. He is long past of thinking of killing himself. Those days are days of Stupidity and Sufering. Now, it's the time to inflict, not to undergo, sufferings. His laughter is only a note or two short of Sneer, a barely contained flicker of Anger.

So he is assiduous at working on his aging body to keep the creeping ravages of Time at bay. He does Yoga, meditates, swims as swiftly as he can, sprints, shadow-boxes, and lifts weights, preparing himself for a day of reckoning when reflexes must be sharp and actions must be decisive. And he writes, that is to say, he strings words together in order to hopefully make an impact. He tries to do what Roberto Bolaño said, "Form seeks artifice; the story seeks a precipice."

I often fancy that I am an unusual, non-ordinary (not extraordinary) man whose strange sensibilities set me apart, and whose words bring light to the darkness in the lives of some folks, more than the moonlight and occasional showers of meteors in the night would do.

I am drinking again, alone, in my study; the iPad in front of me; a bottle of tequila on my right, next to it a glass full of ice and a bowl of unsalted mixed nuts. The time is Friday night; the place a high rise condo in a middle of the desert; the curtain is pulled back; stars are out in full force in a clear Spring night; the moon is on the other side of the condo, up high. 

I'm stuck. Words are playing hard to catch. Maybe I should first empty the bottle, and then my soul, so to speak. I don't really subscribe to a separate existence of the so-called Soul, apart from the physical body. Body and soul are intertwined, inseparable, fused. Soul, to me, is just another term for heightened self-consciousness, a state of existence inextricably linked with the survival of a physical body. Call me stupid, call me stubborn, but I know I am right in this regard and anybody who disagrees with me on this is wrong and delusional. That's why I have a contempt for any religion which preaches nonsense about Soul as if it were an imperishable entity. To me that's just cockamamie assertion and wishful thinking without any evidential foundation.

Years ago when I was a stupid, childish, immature young man, I allowed myself to fall in love again and again. Now I'm an old man in my 70's, I laughed at the follies of my youth and recognized that Love was overrated. If I happen to run into the women of my youth, I would just walk on by them without a shudder of my body and a flutter of my heart. Nowadays I am busy preparing for my death. I want to die at the right time and with serenity. I have accepted who I am and the women for who they are. Meanwhile I am working on improving what's left of my life: my body and my mind. I want to exit this world with a smile. I have Pride, true Pride, unlike that of so many monkeys and bitches I have known. If you have no Mercy for the motherfuckers and assholes of this world and you can't kill them, the only alternative is a Silent Contempt abd view them as just dog shit on your Path through Life.