the wizard. 🧙♂️
an attempt at self analysis.1 - what am I?
one must be careful describing oneself. sometimes those truly closest to you can do this better than you can in an honest moment when their guard is down and they show their hand. perhaps they say too much! perhaps what they say is true. or perhaps they do not know themselves well enough to know you…
and yet still, it can be a helpful exercise!
to watch…YOU (ME) …and to report on it.
so here’s a brief report
helping other people comes naturally to me. It’s me that I have to practice helping. Epictetus says that the true cynic cannot just like laying around ground all day in a tattered cloak hurling witty insults at the lay people. they have to be like a father to everyone. they have to really love people like that. they have to be like the Shaolin (as B reports) willing to suffer more so that others suffer a little less. a friend just stops me mid sentence and tells me…have you ever thought about being a life coach? I have to practice helping myself every day like I'm taking care of someone I love. my brother: “he’s good to have around in a fox hole.” — to my pastor. “im trying to smuggle people in.”— I feel like for the last ten years since I graduated college. (2016). I have been collecting a survey. 10 years. a life survey. of who people are and why they do what they do. I have been offering it to every person I meet without telling them they’re taking it. I don’t want anything from them but what they actually think. this isn’t a profitable business model in dollars. but in other ways—Socrates would talk to anyone willing to engage with him in the market place—im not transactional, im transformative. the true cynic I am told must have “the endurance of a veritable block of wood” “they must have a tough and radiant physique as proof of their own philosophy.” and perhaps “they must be willing to be thought foolish in regards to externals”. I can’t tell people exactly what im doing but I can approximate. you have to hang around for a while in watch. it’s a conversation and an experience, not a dogma. I work best in textures and feelings and loose association. as of recent, when I fell 1000 times for 8 hours straight, shouted verses of bible, invited people into how to fall safely, and had children jumping around me—it made an odd kind of sense to me. I was shocked that falls came so easily. compared to the mess I imagined I was getting myself into. when I train with people, physically, they change. we both change. we see things differently. we go though something together. we collect skills. we have stories and things to laugh about.
there are words for these kinds of people and what I am compelled to do.
what am I?