Going swimming

A dozen years back, I was seeing a counselor. I was still in the monastery at the time, but I was dealing with some difficult life issues and found her very helpful.

I remember once she asked me, after I had been rambling on about what my family wanted and what the Carmelites wanted and what my  friends wanted and so on, “And what does Michael want?”  

I was stumped. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had no idea what I wanted. What I wanted was to know what you wanted, and then I would want that. So you would like me. 

I guess I wanted you to like me. 

One day when I was with a group of very close friends, I  mentioned that I felt like Bruce Banner, the guy who turns into the Hulk when he get angry. 

“Don’t get me angry,” he/I said. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” 

My best friend asked, “And what would happen if we didn’t like you?” 

“The world would end,” I said quickly, half-joking and more than half-fearful.

 As I pondered the questions, what did I want and what would happen if people didn’t like me, I began to realize that it had been a long time since I let myself think about what I wanted, instead of what was right or what should be done or what was important or what other people wanted or needed. I could not answer a very simple question: What do I want? 

Ask me what I want to eat and I can be thrown into a quandary. My usual answer: “What do you want?"

Ask Tom and he will tell you that I am far from over this. He asks, “Where do you want to go to eat?” and even though I want to go for Indian, I will always say, “I don’t care.” 

When we were building the house, he would ask what color I wanted for walls or what furniture I wanted or what to do about the garden.

"I don’t care.”

At a certain level, this was true and is still true. It is his house, after all. And I don’t care about a lot of things. (I did pick the wall color for my bedroom.) Having spent most of my adult life in a monastery where the walls were already painted, where the furniture was already in the room, where the schedule had been in place for centuries, I had learned to go with the flow. But I was going with the flow to such an extent that I had forgotten how to swim. 

And sometimes, you know, you have to swim.

That's JFK diving into the water, by the way.