Sunday, March 04, 2018

Plato's Cave

Like most of the people I know, I seem to get a high proportion of my outside experience from social media. Notably Facebook. Yes, like some prisoner in the Allegory of Plato's Cave, I'm getting all my information about the world from a little glowing screen and very little from real life. It's The Matrix.  From time to time something from this manufactured reality really hits home.

One such item was posted by George Takei, linking to an article possibly from the Knowable emporium of clickbaitery. In summary, one anecdote under "Unexpected Things The Doctor Said":

 "I went to the doctor with backache and came out with cancer."

 Oh yes; very familiar indeed.

Another meme, and this time quite independent of the above, was a panel that said something like:

"I weather major crises, 
and then break down 
when I can't find a teaspoon."

This too is happening to me.

DOCTOR:  "You've got incurable Stage IV cancer. We can control it, but you'll need medical intervention for the rest of your life."

ME: "I see. With treatment, can I lead a reasonably normal life?"

DOCTOR:  "Reasonably, yes."

Later...

ME: *Destructive temper tantrum because the new DVD is cracked out of the box and won't play.*

Still later...

ME:  *Massive yelling and throwing things because I'm getting no responses to my email enquiries.*

I am basically a dangerous and paranoid menace to society. Not a nice person at all. Most of the time I am just about able to keep a lid on it, but my life has been one crisis after another since 2010. See old blog posts for the litany.

2010 - Made redundant.
2011 - Made redundant (Constructively dismissed for refusing to commit fraud, actually.)
2011 - 2012  Job from Hell in Qatar Resigned after a year.
2012 - 2014  Banned from Qatar because no NOC from Job from Hell 
2014 - 2016  Job from Hell II in Qatar. Was supposed to be for six months. Contract ended after two years.
2017 - Incurable Stage IV cancer. Unable to take up new job.
2018 - With the clock ticking and, let's be frank, not much time to go, being jerked around by Officialdom over my bucket list.

ME: *Considers reasons to keep trying at all.*

]}:-{>

1 comment:

Gnomad said...

Do not be so hard on yourself.

You are dealing with a dreadful situation just about as well as anyone could. The fact that you are aware of the effects of your rare and entirely forgivable lapses and are concerned about this demonstrates that you are a good person.

Should I ever find myself in a similar situation I would hope that I could deal with it with as much courage and fortitude as you have shown.

 

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