I mention elsewhere on this site about how I came to believe in God. It's great to believe in God. Now what? I guess to believe in God it helps to believe that God has a purpose for one in this life. It seems to go hand in hand with a belief in God to believe that God has a purpose for each and every one of us, we just need to find out what it is.
Looking back on my life since my early twenties, and how my struggles played out on an almost daily basis, I would say that I had a purpose in life, and went about fulfilling it, long before I ever came to believe in a Supreme Being. That struggle to fulfill God's intended role for me in this plane of existence continues to this day. I simply have more clarity as to what it is all for and why I wind up doing what I do when I am at my best.
My purpose seems to be to challenge so-called normal people on their perceptions and prejudices about what it means to be a mentally ill person. I remember a class in college that I took on Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales." The female instructor seemed intent on doing a feminist deconstruction on the tales. Not only did she seemed intent on doing a feminist deconstruction on "The Canterbury Tales," She also seemed intent on doing a feminist deconstruction of me.
The first day in class she noticed me noticing a young Asian-American girl in front of me, and in her lecture, she talked about how the first tale of the volume look as if it were going to be a love story. As the semester progressed she lectured us on the evils of patriarchy and how women were depicted on society and art. She said something about how men believed that virgins wouldn't get raped as one example. The Asian-American girl in question seemed pretty virginal, so that remark seemed pertinent. I acted visibly distressed by her vitriol one day and she backed off and gave a few examples of how the female form also represented things like Justice and Faith, Hope, and Charity. I acted placated and we were able to move on.
One day I asked the Asian-American girl out after I followed her out of class, and she said that she had a boyfriend. A couple of days later I saw her in the library and said hi to like it was all cool. In a class or two after that the teacher said something about someone "doing something wrong" and she looked at me with kind of a distressed look on her face. The Asian-American girl was not in the class.
One of the last classes centered on the Pardoner's Tale. I had talked this tale up as one of the best stories in the English Language. The Pardoner's Tale is about two men who try to escape Death by leaving their village and they come to rest under a tree. They find a stash of gold in the trunk. They drink some wine to celebrate their good fortune, Then one of the men stabs the other man so that he can have the gold all to himself. Wouldn't you know it, the stabee had poisoned the stabber's wine so that the stabber subsequently drops dead as well.
'The teacher got the message about Death, which was a topic of great concern to me at time. I remember after one of these last classes an older man sort of gave me commiserate, sympathetic look as we left the class. Every now and then in the week, and months that followed this class, another Asian-American girl who took the class would give me a knowing, conspiratorial smile as we walked by each other.
Middle-Class white and hispanic women who adhere to a feminist ideology seem to often believe that I need to be "taught" some kind of lesson. They never seem to target men who are real scoundrels to the women in their life, but seem to instead make it about me and what ever it is I am to them. I concluded, years ago, that these women sense a vulnerability in me that they don't sense in men they consider to be "normal." Recently I concluded that Middle-Class white and hispanic women with a feminist ideology are very insecure about their level of intelligence in relation to the men in their environment, and often they seek out men that they can "best" in some sort of mind game. That is where I tend to come in.
At the age of 49, I still have women with this attitude in my daily life. I'm much better at being able to smell a rat than I was in the days of Chaucer et al. It's not just these kind of women that seem to perpetually intend to teach me a lesson, it's often male confederates who consider themselves somehow superior to me as well. I guess the main lesson that I'm supposed to learn is that they are better than me. Liberal/ Left Wing types of both sexes seem to really want to teach me this lesson for some reason.
I guess that God has put me here to challenge people such as these about what a guy with a major mental illness, all by himself, can stand up to in the face of such overwhelming numbers combined with intellects that function on a level that, really, I can only guess at. I have no illusions of being able to win the hearts of attractive young or youngish feminist women with this attitude. I guess that is because, to them, I am no better than, say, a mentally retarded man who had somehow, someway, managed to outsmart them. Make no mistake, such women are in no way obliged to take a romantic interest in me, any more than I would say they were obliged to take an interest in a mentally retarded man who has somehow, someway thwarted their best laid plans. They must wonder, though, how does he do it? Could it be, that people such as myself and others with a "diminished mental capacity" have to deal with this stuff all the time, and that the sheer repetition and near constant presence of these people in our lives give us plenty of opportunities to get it right?
Looking back on my life since my early twenties, and how my struggles played out on an almost daily basis, I would say that I had a purpose in life, and went about fulfilling it, long before I ever came to believe in a Supreme Being. That struggle to fulfill God's intended role for me in this plane of existence continues to this day. I simply have more clarity as to what it is all for and why I wind up doing what I do when I am at my best.
My purpose seems to be to challenge so-called normal people on their perceptions and prejudices about what it means to be a mentally ill person. I remember a class in college that I took on Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales." The female instructor seemed intent on doing a feminist deconstruction on the tales. Not only did she seemed intent on doing a feminist deconstruction on "The Canterbury Tales," She also seemed intent on doing a feminist deconstruction of me.
The first day in class she noticed me noticing a young Asian-American girl in front of me, and in her lecture, she talked about how the first tale of the volume look as if it were going to be a love story. As the semester progressed she lectured us on the evils of patriarchy and how women were depicted on society and art. She said something about how men believed that virgins wouldn't get raped as one example. The Asian-American girl in question seemed pretty virginal, so that remark seemed pertinent. I acted visibly distressed by her vitriol one day and she backed off and gave a few examples of how the female form also represented things like Justice and Faith, Hope, and Charity. I acted placated and we were able to move on.
One day I asked the Asian-American girl out after I followed her out of class, and she said that she had a boyfriend. A couple of days later I saw her in the library and said hi to like it was all cool. In a class or two after that the teacher said something about someone "doing something wrong" and she looked at me with kind of a distressed look on her face. The Asian-American girl was not in the class.
One of the last classes centered on the Pardoner's Tale. I had talked this tale up as one of the best stories in the English Language. The Pardoner's Tale is about two men who try to escape Death by leaving their village and they come to rest under a tree. They find a stash of gold in the trunk. They drink some wine to celebrate their good fortune, Then one of the men stabs the other man so that he can have the gold all to himself. Wouldn't you know it, the stabee had poisoned the stabber's wine so that the stabber subsequently drops dead as well.
'The teacher got the message about Death, which was a topic of great concern to me at time. I remember after one of these last classes an older man sort of gave me commiserate, sympathetic look as we left the class. Every now and then in the week, and months that followed this class, another Asian-American girl who took the class would give me a knowing, conspiratorial smile as we walked by each other.
Middle-Class white and hispanic women who adhere to a feminist ideology seem to often believe that I need to be "taught" some kind of lesson. They never seem to target men who are real scoundrels to the women in their life, but seem to instead make it about me and what ever it is I am to them. I concluded, years ago, that these women sense a vulnerability in me that they don't sense in men they consider to be "normal." Recently I concluded that Middle-Class white and hispanic women with a feminist ideology are very insecure about their level of intelligence in relation to the men in their environment, and often they seek out men that they can "best" in some sort of mind game. That is where I tend to come in.
At the age of 49, I still have women with this attitude in my daily life. I'm much better at being able to smell a rat than I was in the days of Chaucer et al. It's not just these kind of women that seem to perpetually intend to teach me a lesson, it's often male confederates who consider themselves somehow superior to me as well. I guess the main lesson that I'm supposed to learn is that they are better than me. Liberal/ Left Wing types of both sexes seem to really want to teach me this lesson for some reason.
I guess that God has put me here to challenge people such as these about what a guy with a major mental illness, all by himself, can stand up to in the face of such overwhelming numbers combined with intellects that function on a level that, really, I can only guess at. I have no illusions of being able to win the hearts of attractive young or youngish feminist women with this attitude. I guess that is because, to them, I am no better than, say, a mentally retarded man who had somehow, someway, managed to outsmart them. Make no mistake, such women are in no way obliged to take a romantic interest in me, any more than I would say they were obliged to take an interest in a mentally retarded man who has somehow, someway thwarted their best laid plans. They must wonder, though, how does he do it? Could it be, that people such as myself and others with a "diminished mental capacity" have to deal with this stuff all the time, and that the sheer repetition and near constant presence of these people in our lives give us plenty of opportunities to get it right?
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