Sometimes, Mind, Body In Separate Orbits
Dear Jennifer: My brother got a girlfriend recently and never pays attention to anything else. He’ll say he’ll do something with you and never does it because “he is busy” with his girlfriend. It bugs me. I don’t know what to do. Could you help me?
Jeri
Dear Jeri: Can you remember a time when you were reading a book, watching a television show, playing a game, doing something that really absorbed you, and someone kept trying to interrupt? You couldn’t understand why they were bothering you.
Your brother is captured by his current “interest.” It isn’t that he doesn’t care about you; he just does not have enough attention left to notice you.
This “love” could last a few months or longer. You have to either wait it out or find other friends to do things with. Think of him as away on a trip.
Send him postcards, be nice, but understand that just because you can see his body doesn’t mean he’s home.
This is the time for you to look at your own life and whether you need to pay attention to making more friends and getting involved in some new activities or projects. Get your own “interest” and you won’t resent his.
Jennifer
Dear Jennifer: I was interested to see that one of your readers took issue with you for “publishing your beliefs as if they were facts.” She should know that there are those of us who are unable to accept the Bible as factual, regarding it as words written thousands of years ago by men who thought the world was flat, and who then proclaimed them as the “word of God.”
It always amazes me that while Christians feel free to proclaim their ideas/beliefs to one and all, they cannot tolerate the same from those who disagree with them, feeling those opinions are “an insult.” And I wonder why this is? If they are so secure and so sure of their rightness, why are they so incensed when an agnostic or an atheist ventures to state his or her beliefs? From my experience, religious devotees are stunned to find that an individual is “so arrogant” as to use his or her own brain and come to his or her own conclusions, instead of blindly accepting the theories of a so-called authority figure.
JBK
Dear Jennifer: People seldom take responsibility for their own religious beliefs, regardless of how intensely personal such beliefs are or ultimately become. It is not the belief that causes the turmoil and conflict - it’s the way people interpret and, more specifically, are behaviorally influenced by those beliefs.
Most of mainstream, middle-class America’s religious beliefs are a combination of what the believers were taught as children and what they see in the movies and on TV. (What can go wrong: “Raiders of the Lost Ark” has Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mt. Ararat instead of Mt. Sinai; the belief that “the Jews killed Christ” is still lethally pervasive, even though everything about the event was Roman; movie director Cecil B. De Mille didn’t think 12 apostles were grand enough for one of his epics - he wanted a lot more.)
Apparently, it’s easier to subscribe to the existing belief system than it is to actively shape one’s own. Very few people decide their own religion for themselves.
Perhaps one of the most telling anecdotes concerning ego and religion is about Eva Braun, mistress of Adolf Hitler, shortly before her death in the bunker under Berlin in the final days of WWII. As the fighting was raging in the streets above, and the end was only a matter of time, she turned to a friend and said, “I don’t understand how all this could have happened. It’s enough to make one lose one’s faith in God.” Thank you.
Carl
Dear JBK and Carl: If you accept someone else’s interpretations of documents, events and meaning, you are a follower. Followers can live fine lives if they choose the right leader, but they can also make the devastating mistake of not thinking for themselves and trusting their own perceptions of reality.
Nazism, the Aryan Nations and other semi-religious belief systems are powerful examples of the cost of following the wrong herd. You can too easily end up living a life with no honor or one that is counter, in the case of some Christians, to the very beliefs you claim to follow.
Jennifer
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jennifer James The Spokesman-Review