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Greek to Me
Mercury Poisoning
© 2009 by Michael Raysses
When I was a kid I accidentally broke a thermometer while at school. I watched the mercury spill out onto the desktop where I was sitting. Then, as the silver globules rolled to a halt, I tried to pick them up using my fingertips. They squished out from under my clumsy touch and skidded onto the floor. This scene repeated itself numerous times with increasing frustration and frenzy. It wasn’t long before I looked up to see my teacher watching me with what can only be described as a bemused gaze.
Unbeknownst to me, this was an introductory lesson in Life 101, entitled: Things That Look Really Easy, But Aren’t. And despite years of study and research, its message still confounds me today, especially as it relates to self-love.
But before I can even begin to address self-love, I have to speak to what I call “self-like.” Do I regard myself as someone I enjoy and hold in high enough regard to potentially love? I’d hope to respond with an unqualified yes, but the plain and simple truth is this:
I’m just not that into me.
It seems that before you can truly like/love yourself, you have to know yourself. More than anything, I know that saying I’m a creature of habit would be like saying Jesus may have had a Messiah complex. And though that might be true, it doesn’t keep me from liking him. Jesus’ aforementioned flaw arguably only makes him more human and thus more compelling, while my routines feel like they alienate me from myself. Or at least from loving myself as fully as I might.
As for those habits, they span the gamut. From the behavioral (my mercurial temperament/low frustration tolerance), to the biological (my physical inability to sneeze gracefully), to the simply inane (for 34 years, the only cologne I ever wore was Old Spice).
So not only am I a slave to habit, I am judgmental about it, too. But wait a second—isn’t love supposed to be unconditional? Aren’t I supposed to love myself in spite of my flaws? Of course I am. And had I been conceived in a Petrie dish and then raised by wolves, I might be able to do so. But if there is one thing in life I have to get over if I’m ever going to be able to love myself, paradoxically, it is my self.
The earliest formulation of the self in modern psychology stems from the distinction between the self as I, the subjective knower, and the self as Me, the object that is known. That’s where a lot of my problems spring from: the relationship between my Subjective Knower and Me, the object that is supposed to be known. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, I transactionally identify too closely with either one or the other personas, but rarely connect the two, leaving me in a state where I don’t see myself clearly in either aspect. It’s a dilemma that was beautifully illustrated to me in one of my favorite movies, Papillon.
In the movie, there’s a scene where Papillon has been sentenced to solitary confinement on Devil’s Island for his crimes. One day, just as he seems on the verge of death, he is called to his jail door for his weekly shave. Weakly poking his head through the small opening in his prison door, there to his right is another inmate, his head dangling limply from the hole in his door. Delirious and with one foot in the grave, this man is even worse off than Papillon. When he sees Papillon, though, he gathers himself enough to ask Papillon how he looks. In that instant, Papillon realizes that as bad as he has it, things could be worse—he could be this guy. In response to that realization, Papillon lies and tells the unfortunate convict that he looks fine, his words providing a temporary reprieve. The aged felon will live to see another day. (As I mentioned earlier, the scary thing is that I can identify with both men.)
All of which leaves me feeling remarkably like a kid who is still trying to grasp that which can’t be held. But now instead of it being some volatile element that skitters uncontrollably all around me, I’m coming to grips with the mercury that has coursed within my own veins, blinding me to the fact that while some things can never be fully grasped or comprehended, that awareness can’t keep me from loving them. And that self-love is much like any other form of love—it takes a leap of faith to achieve. The best I can do is enjoy trying, and hope I don’t poison myself in the process.
Michael Raysses is a writer/actor/National Public Radio commentator living in Los Angeles. E-mail him at MichaelRaysses@hotmail.com.