Entry 2211
The country is bleeding and it reminds me of my helplessness.
I hate feeling helpless.
It’s also reminding me of times when I was working in the accident and emergency unit watching people wail loudly because someone had died.
Limp bodies. Real bodies
I would sit in the tiny pharmacy building, watching them from a distance.
I could only watch them cry.
I couldn’t cry with them. It would have been unprofessional.
It is the same helplessness that made me somewhat immune to tragedy because the fifth time I saw a dead body in the ward, I did not feel any urge to cry.
Yesterday, I texted my friend ‘I’m seeking a distraction. I can’t stay still’.
Without waiting for a response, I found something, abandoned books.
There are three books I’ve been struggling to read or finish: Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows and the Absent Father Effect on Daughters by Susan Schwartz.
If I’m struggling with a book, it’s because there is a form of fear, either because of the complexity or because of the feelings the book uncovers.
I’m never under any pressure to read, finish or like a book. Naval made me understand that it’s a vanity metric.
Today, I will face my fears and go ahead to read a chapter from each book and explain what I think and feel.
I will explain how I feel. I don’t have to but I want to.
Father’s desire
The title of this book, Absent Father Effect on Daughters by Susan Schwartz already tells me what to expect.
However, I did not expect to be met with Jephthah’s story in the Bible.
He had come back from a victorious battle and had made a vow to God to sacrifice as a burnt offering whatever first came out to meet him upon his return.
Maybe there are a couple of things to note.
Firstly, when he saw his daughter, he blamed her for coming to welcome him.
Victim-blaming. Count one.
It is also striking how his daughter was quick to accept her fate without a fight.
Even more, she chooses to spend her last days with her friends, with people she trusts.
It is even sadder that she doesn’t have a name.
She is referred to as ‘his daughter’.
I am reminded that this is one of the reasons for the pseudo-covering that daughters eventually make, a persona formation, a shell, disconnected from the inside.
A persona to fill a role.
Before now, I had no idea that a father’s mental representation can be this internalised in one’s psyche.
It goes further to explain that once a daughter is uncertain of who she is because she is uncertain of how she is seen, she experiences anxiety.
Socially, and personally, she learns denial and avoidance of feelings while her desires are dampened.
The wound continues to bleed.
There is a distance between the father and the family that leads to an emptiness.
Both parental figures inhabit the psyche but it genuinely surprises me that the silence around the father’s absence is this loud.
It is almost funny to me. Funny in a sad way.
Thinking in systems
Why systems work so well
I know I won’t finish this chapter because it’s boring.
Systems work so well because of one or three characteristics: resilience, self-organisation or hierarchy.
I’m more interested in the definition of resilience because I want to be resilient not in the I-want-to-experience-things-that-make-me-resilient but in a I-just-want-to-understand-it-so-you-can-keep-the-experience-because-I’ve-had-enough.
Resilience is the ability to bounce or spring back into shape or position after being pressed or stretched while elasticity is the ability to recover strength, spirits, or good humour quickly
So typically resilience is how a system can survive and persist within a variable environment
I feel impatient most times so I like the idea of elasticity. The quickness.
I want to recover quickly.
Resilience guarantees I’ll bounce back but elasticity assures me that it will be quicker.
Okay, enough English lessons.
This is not even the point of this chapter but this is what is staying with me.
I want to learn how to think in systems because I think it will help me but I’m struggling with this book and I hate struggling with things, like reading.
Life is hard enough, reading should be easy. I’ll stop here.
Nassim is winking at me in Black Swan and I hate to ignore him.
Black shwan
Nassim is the only serious author I know who is funny.
Like he genuinely makes me smile while reading.
I can’t keep reading Black Swan because it truly drives me crazy.
The point of a black swan event is to show the unpredictability of life or events and all the nuances attached with it. Period.
But there are different contexts.
Last time I read a chapter, I began questioning everything around me and it gave me such a headache.
It is why I’ve never finished reading the book.
My attention span is weak and Nassim leaves me with a headache.
I don’t like headaches.
Maybe I’m not resilient enough?
I know because I can even barely read a chapter.