If you are observant, it is not hard to familiarize yourself with the monsters that stalk those closest to you.  If we know people well we can follow these battles in detail, even place bets on the next turn with pretty good confidence.   These predictable turns are far easier to observe in others’ lives than in our own, for sure.  For one thing, most of us are masters of rationalizing our own actions, if not always having useful  insight into the things we do.   People don’t do things without a good reason, we almost always believe we are doing the right thing as justly as we can.  It’s much easier to see cause and effect in the lives of friends since we are not always as compelled as they are by what motivates them.   I think of this as I make my way through deep, cold water lately, trying to keep my eye on the bigger picture.

I knew a guy who was a living poster for ‘repetition compulsion’– he relived the same traumatic story over and over again with a new cast each time.   The story became so familiar to me, the build-up, the second act and the terrible betrayal of the third act, and so consistent, that eventually I’d interrupt these long, detailed re-tellings (this was toward the end of our friendship) to predict precisely what happened next.  I was always right, which was infuriating, but it was like taking a test I’d taken many times, answers exactly the same, coming instantly, no need for scrap paper.  It became harder and harder to resist blurting them out.  Which, of course, was maddening to someone caught in an endlessly replayed bad dream with a wise-ass close friend not even letting him tell the goddamned story anymore.

There are probably freelancers who truly relish their freedom, are delighted on a day they can relax and play their banjo all day instead of hunkering over a day job, but most freelancers I know live with the anxiety of not earning a living anymore.  No work calls in a few days is the long-dreaded harbinger of slow starvation, no matter that the yearly average workload and income have been constant for some time.   A black mood descends after a week when the phone doesn’t ring.  The feeling of impending disaster can be difficult to overcome.  With practice they may get better at having shorter and shorter spells of despair, but it’s hard to hear their bleak predictions without reminding them, lamely, of the last time they said the same things, right before that long, dizzying spell of work that made them schedule a vacation.  They are convinced each time that this time the work really has run dry, that it’s all over.  It feels like near folly to remind them of their predictions in every previous situation that has worked out fine.  Their black mood will convince them that this situation is different, the final reckoning, where the bottom falls out of their livelihood for good.

People with well-paid, important, fulfilling jobs may find themselves tormented to one extent or another after they leave work, when there is nothing worth watching on the screen, no good book at hand, when music just isn’t what they want.   They may be prone to argue, pick fights, become listless, drink too much, overeat.  It goes as well for people with shit jobs, tormented with too much time on their hands and events and personalities aligned to make a difficult situation impossible.  It goes famously for the unemployed, those with the most free time and the least money to spend diverting themselves and staying out of trouble.  There is something to be said for keeping yourself busy, it distracts a person from the things that might devour a soul, given enough hours every day to gnaw.  Soul sucking lurks in any life where it is prone to lurk, and can sweep in on a moment’s notice, slurp lustily for as long as time allows.

Each of us carries our own burdens, sensitivities, hurts, angers and fears.  The better we know people the more we will be able to see these at work.   The more stress people are under, the more easily we can see these things pulsing under the skin.  In the world viewed under stress we are skittering around on the ocean floor, surrounded by countless wily and dangerous predators.  We connect momentarily to other skittering creatures, shuddering together against the inevitable, but there is little we can do and a bad end is in store for each of us.  We know it with absolute certainty, and there is not a damned thing we can do about it.  Nor much we can do for the others we care about, particularly as we are being taken.

In our darkest moments we may still be aware of a world of sunshine, though it seems remote and unreachable.  It appears as a realm of mere theory, this place where we laugh, make music, make love, float on perfect water under the ideal sky.  This perspective can’t always be reached alone, sad to say, nor is being content merely a habit of good character.  I think idly how much I wish someone had been present to reach Robin Williams, David Foster Wallace, many other bright examples of the human spirit, right before that terrible, last hurried moment before the belt goes quickly around the neck and everything is thrown into a frantic desperate jerk, to end the torment.   

I try to cultivate empathy as deliberately as I am able these days.  I try to listen more, talk less.  The more I take in, the better I understand how to be gentle with other people’s feelings, especially the harder ones.  I strive to be an example of the change I’d like to see in the world, no matter that it may seem foolish.   Giving in to despair unconditionally is one feeling I find impossible to truly wrap my head and heart around, no matter how affectionately fucking despair may nuzzle and paw at me sometimes.