‘Did that draw the two of you closer together?’
‘In a sense, but not in so far as affection is concerned. I’ve just decided that this is not in my life. In my own family we were never affectionate. I don’t recall my mother and father, or my brothers and sisters having a hug between any of us, ever. With this group now, that’s something I’ve had to get used to, always that’s the greeting, a big hug, and, my goodness, with that something passes between you. It’s like something bad goes out of you. It doesn’t go into them, but you share something. I had never had that during my life. That’s something I appreciate about this group. But as far as depression is concerned, the way it shows up now, I feel that life is no big deal. I don’t think it’s all that worthwhile, short of what I believe in. I’m trying to improve myself as best I can for as long as I can – that precludes any notion of doing away with yourself. I don’t think I’d ever consider that. I simply don’t think that life’s all that great.’
‘Would I be right in thinking that when you think about your life you feel disappointed?’
‘In some ways yes. I’ve never had any great aspirations. I’ve never wanted great wealth. I’m possibly disappointed in what I’ve accomplished. It’s possible to do a lot better than I did with the job. But I wasn’t able to do that. Concentration was always a problem, and another thing was my personality. Even though I wasn’t a boss, when people were doing things wrong I’d get after them. I was really add about it quite a few times.’
‘So you wanted the jobs done properly?’
‘I felt it was all I could handle to do my own job.’
‘My grandmother always said, “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well”. Does that apply to you?’
‘Well, my friends tell me that it does. I don’t like to be tagged with being a perfectionist. But yes, generally speaking, if I want to do a job, I want to do it well.’
‘Why is it important to you to do it well?’
‘Because of my pride in what I’ve accomplished. I’m not interested in doing it any other way.’
‘Why is it important to accomplish?’
‘Maybe I can give you a for instance. The shower in our house, I considered was a poor design. I decided I wanted a nice tiled shower. I bothered everyone in town until I had quite a good knowledge about how to build a tile shower. The result is very nice. I enjoy it. I wouldn’t enjoy it if it was a mess.’
‘You don’t enjoy mess at all?’
‘I have mess around me, but I don’t enjoy it. It bothers me.’
‘What would happen to you if you couldn’t accomplish anything, if everything around you was a mess?’
‘Oh my God! I’d never considered that. A lot of it has to do with what other people think. I take other people in and show them the shower.’
‘It’s important that other people approve of it?’
‘Approval, now there’s a thought. That’s something I seem to seek all the time. I wish I didn’t. I have a cousin I really look up to. He couldn’t care less about what anybody thinks he’s done. If they pick on him about it it just rolls off his back. He never makes any effort to organize anything.’
‘You’re a good organizer?’
‘Yes, if I’m motivated.’
‘There are a lot of people who want to get things organized and under control. I call them What Have I Achieved Today Persons.’
‘I’m sure I’m that way. Every night I’m frustrated if I haven’t done something during the day. Other people just seem to do nothing all day long. They’re happier than I am. My memory is such that if I have half a dozen things which need to be accomplished in a day, I write them down and I cross them off, and if I cross them all off I feel pretty good.’
We talked about his problems in not sleeping, and then George said, ‘I wonder what I should be doing that I’m not doing. I think I should be quite excited about the prospects of my religious beliefs. There really are an awful lot of proofs. There’s enough there to get a person excited, but there are also the things that prevent me from doing what I want. There are the physical problems like sleeping and aches and pains, and you wonder who you could talk to who could guide you so you correct some of these things, and that bothers me a lot. I just don’t know who to talk to. Things like this medication. I don’t know whether I trust my doctor. A lot of medical changes have come to pass because of things that I’ve suggested to him. I guess they don’t know everything about what they’re dispensing.’
George talked about some of the difficulties his children were experiencing, then said, These kind of things don’t inspire confidence. I feel partly responsible because I didn’t keep the family together and give them a better basis. Anyway, my biggest problem is the lack of sleep and the lack of concentration and ability to recall. Our belief requires, or I feel it requires, I study a lot. But if you can’t keep your mind on what you’re studying, what good is it? So that was probably my biggest problem, because it relates to my spiritual belief. The sleep just adds to that problem.’
‘Why is it important to you to do this kind of study?’
‘One reason is that all the people around me have been doing it all their life. But they can say verses all day long. I’d like to have some ability, just a little bit, enough where I can function in my own group. I won’t even stand up and offer a prayer, let alone give a talk, because I can’t seem to remember. Part of it is I’m afraid and part is that I haven’t applied myself well enough. That bothers me too.’
‘Whenever we’re frightened, it’s hard to remember something we’ve learned.’
‘That’s happened to me for many years now, and it’s really common. When I’m forced to think of something, there’s a blank. If I’m off by myself my own prayers are satisfactory. I know if I stood up in front of the group a wall would just cover me, and I don’t want that to happen.’
‘You won’t risk it happening, and so you won’t let yourself discover that you could get up and it will be all right.’
‘I can’t believe that.’
‘The problem with us being wonderful organizers, we like to get everything organized beforehand. People like us always have problems in being spontaneous. We don’t have enough trust in ourselves, in life, to act spontaneously. That’s when we become our own worst enemy. We stop ourselves from being spontaneous.’
‘How do you start?’
‘I think one part is not to worry about making a fool of ourselves.’
‘That’s easier said than done.’
‘It’s important to come to realize that it’s not the end of us if we do make a fool of ourselves. When we were children, that did feel like being wiped out; as adults we can realize It’s not the end of everything, and that people like us to make mistakes, not in a nasty way but –’
‘So we seem human.’
‘Yes. You must have a tremendous knowledge of this material because you’ve studied it for