Stories and Images

When your mind is full of assumptions, conclusions, and belief’s, it has no penetration, it just repeats past beliefs. – unknown

And images. Images of what’s supposed to be.

Images, for me, are almost always about the way things should be. I rarely have images of the way things shouldn’t be. In fact, never. But those images of the way things “should be,” those seem abundant. Little scenes and images, often with a vague sense of being happy, rise and impact on these moments.

Most people I know grew up with television and movies. Images were implanted in our heads about the way life should be. The way hero’s are, and villains, standards of what’s attractive and ugly, and images of success. Lot’s of those images.

How neighborhoods have nice lawns without weeds, how only good looking young people hang out on street corners drinking the right beer and wearing the right watches, talking into the right phones. And driving machines that have room for 8, but transport one king of the road, who has the right to drive anyway he want’s, the commercials say so.

I remember the backlot tour at Universal, all those “perfect” neighborhoods. All angular, clean, and neat, empty as a graveyard, or my neighborhood at 4am. Waiting for perfect people to do perfect things. Families with one and half kids, a dog, an income, and cheery smiles.

Images say relationships aren’t messy, everyone gets their way, women wake up with makeup and hair in place, and no one ever needs to pee when they wake up. And no one smells bad, ever. Everyone is good at sex. And always know what they’re doing and going.

And everyone can be good looking and find the sexy love of their life, and if they don’t there must be something wrong with them. They must be less than, not good enough. Then they must torture themselves with therapy, exercise, thinking the right thoughts, and obsessing about perfection. So they can be normal.

Images of wars, always driven by one man leading an entire country, always an image of the “bad guy” leading the “bad guys” that all need to be stopped. So the rest of us can go on leading our happy lives.

But the worst images are the self images. The “comparative” ones. They always come in the most general of terms, and reflect back to “states.” I call the states, “I’m” states. “I’m not happy.” “I’m sad.”

“I’m this, that, and the other thing.” None of which are true, exactly. And the worst one is this, “I’m not good enough.” This one hurts. All by itself. I don’t even have to specify what it is I’m not “good enough” for. A kind of generalized “not good enough for everything and anything” position.

What if I’m good enough? What if I decide right here and now I’m good enough? For myself, for others? Or better, what if I decide it never mattered anyway? All that crap about what should be, and never is? In fact that whole idea of being “good enough” is just another way to control people, making some folks less than others.

Of course, I’m still not good enough, yet.

But I will be.

Bryan Wagner