Anyone following this trail of essays on mental health might find themselves feeling sorry for this old fool.  That is not my intention.  About ninety-eight percent of my troubles have been the consequences of my own decisions.  Does that make them less painful?  No.  Becoming aware of consequences directly related to one’s own decisions relieves the resentment of others.  From Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living“. This process allows me to reach the pinnacle of Maslov’s hierarchy – that of self-actualization.  The final step in personal growth is one of letting go.

Maslow’s idea of self-actualization exhibits these characteristics:

• Efficient in how we perceive reality
• • Accepting of ourselves and of other people
• • Able to form deep relationships
• • Appreciative of life
• • Guided by our own inner goals and values
• • Able to express emotions freely and clearly
• Self-actualization is a state in which people are at their very best.

I have become aware of my deficits, and consequential poor decisions.  The great enigma, that of the twoness of man, requires a visit to the dungeon, that low place deep inside our psyche.

As a youth I was given little direction.  My mentors, my parents, were very busy with survival for me and my siblings.  My parents did the very best that they knew.  They offered a safe and secure home.  My mother and father have been noble creatures, sacrificing every personal pleasure in service to their children.  If there is a heaven then God will personally greet my parents with a hearty handshake and embrace of eternal love.

Somehow I missed the maturity boat.  And this is the crux of the mental health point.  Nature?  Nurture?  Maturity? Cognitive ability?  Mental Illness?  Only a life well examined can sort out the truth.  I am blessed to live in the modern era of psychology.  (As an aside, is psychology a product of the industrial revolution?)  I am blessed to live in the era of psychotropic medications.

My final emotional, spiritual, and intellectual transformation is happening as I type.  In the past five years I have bundled all of my grief from a life of bad and immature choices into a discernible whole.  The immaturity most often causing grief has been in relation to my control over people, places, and things and my fear of what might happen if I let go.

Letting go has been my relief.  I am no longer responsible for the outcome of anything other than my next meal.  I have a warm bed and food in the fridge.  What else?

What are some of my conscious choices today?  I think I shall leave nuclear war to someone else.  Of course that is a given – we can all see that we have little control over something as enormous as nuclear war.  Yet I see and hear people stirring the soup of discontent – maybe that is necessary – I only know that it is not my cause to go crazy over.

How about something more close to home?  I have a grandson who is as stubborn as I was at his age.  He rebels against authority – much as I have done.  Am I concerned?  Absolutely!  Should I go to his school and raise hell because they insist that the boy follows the rules?  Most people will read that last sentence as some absurd suggestion – but in my past I have actually thought that my anger could change the policies of an entire school system.  It was not a conscious thought.  I never thought about forcefulness as immaturity – it seemed the responsible course of action.  But forcefulness is only mature when it knows the boundaries.  For instance, cruelty might be a line that is never crossed.

I think back to times when I should have let go, or at least recognized my personal limitations.  That was the immaturity.  I had no boundaries.  Was that a failure of my parents?  Did they fail to teach me about boundaries?  Probably.  Does that excuse my behavior?  Absolutely not!  Somehow as a young man I felt some obligation to pick up any cause that drifted into my space.  The cause would justify my errant angry outbursts.  When challenged I could revert to the martyr complex – “Don’t they know what I did for them”.  If pushed away I played the victim martyr – better go to the bar and drown my sorrows.  More immaturity.

Letting go is best best practiced beforehand.  Al-Anon uses a rope as an analogy for holding on or letting go of a problem.  It is easier to let go if one does not pick the rope up in the first place.  That single notion solved a great deal of my life issues.  They were never mine to begin with.  I was running around picking up other people’s troubles.  Then I was faced with decisions about which problems to let go.  Most of them are problems that I should never have picked up in the first place.

Life is not exactly that simple.  Sorting out our responsibility to our fellow humans rests in complex relationships.  Slow down.  Most problems do not require an immediate decision.  In my volunteer world I run across homeless people on the coldest days of the years.  I point them to the Salvation Army or a cold weather shelter.  THEY decide what they are going to do.  My obligation ended at the advice given.

This is much more difficult when a family member is under threat.  I continue to struggle with when to let go of a loved one.  I embrace that struggle.  I accept that struggle as a part of my life.  Sometimes I just watch the metaphorical rope of family struggles.  The point is that I am a discerning savior.  My mental health is my highest priority.  If I go crazy then I am of no use to anyone – especially my family.

I no longer carry the weight of life on my shoulders.  How did I get here?  It took me a lifetime of bad decisions to realize that I am not in charge of the world.  It has also taken psychotropic drugs to finish the job.  Without the prescription support I am unable to separate myself from a host of worldly problems.  I am blessed with a strong intellect but that intellect was unable to set strong boundaries.  I could see the folly of picking up ropes – but I was unable to resist.

I spoke in an earlier article about being escorted out of a hospital by security.  One thing has changed.  I am on medications.  I cannot imagine a scenario where I might again be escorted out.

Letting go sometimes, as is my case, letting go of my pride.