Dignitectomy Personality Disorder

Once, a long time ago, I lost my dignity.

Nobody had explained to me what to do when one lost one's dignity; mostly, it seemed, they stressed that one was never supposed to lose it. Dignity was sort of like your passport, your social security card, your PIN - something you're supposed to keep close to you and never let out of your sight or control.

One thing you can do when you lose your dignity is to hide the fact that you lost your dignity. Problem is, dignity is one of those things you don't really notice until you've lost it. So what you end up doing is imagining what having dignity must have been like when you had it, and then pretending to be that way. Only, it doesn't really work. It's like losing a leg: you can pretend all you like that you've still got it, but the more that you pretend like the leg is still there, the more noticeable it becomes that you don't have it. The instant you try to walk on the non-existent leg, the whole charade comes crashing down. Literally.

But dignity is a totally different matter. Dignity is supposed to be intangible, invisible; if you lose it, you should be able to hide the fact far more easily than hiding a missing leg, right?

What I discovered, though, is that pretending that one still has one's dignity is just as noticeable as a lost appendage. There are tell-tale signs and characteristics - symptoms, if you will - of dignitectomy personality disorder (DPD). In DSM-IV style, DPD is characterized by two or more of the following criteria:

• Seriousness of affect and complete lack of humor, as demonstrated by the utter inability to take a joke;
  
• Heightened sense of self-importance, including transient, stress-related delusions of grandeur;
• Belief that one is being purposefully humiliated by inanimate objects;
• Pervasive inability to admit lack-of-knowledge or inferiority-of-skill in any area of expertise or life-experience;
• Affectation of a maturational level beyond one's actual maturity;
• Indirect conflictual or harmful behavior towards others, such as gossip, backbiting, slander, theft, cheating, etc.;
• Deep-seated fear of being just like everybody else.

To the best of my knowledge, DPD is incurable, though treatment may create a remission of symptoms.

DPD can be treated, I've found, by confession of one's fault(s) to another, maintenance of a sense of humor, and most especially by the ready willingness to recognize and accept the utter absurdity of human existence and one's place in the grand scheme of things.

The interesting thing about DPD, I've found, is that treatment does not necessitate the restitution of one's previous dignity or the acquisition of new-found dignity; in point of fact, proper treatment requires the relinquishment of all of one's dignity, a further abasement of one's self, as it were, to the lowest possible levels of humiliation, foolishness, degradation, and patheticalness.

The more interesting thing, though, is that the treatment has the potential to heighten the perception of one's dignity in other people's eyes, and that the further down the ladder one is willing to go, the higher the estimation of one's self, one's virtues, one's honor and one's dignity in the eyes of witnesses about you. Of course, to act in a manner by which one wishes to gain an estimation of dignity in the eyes of others immediately renders treatment ineffective, and therefore a willful abasement and loss of dignity is the key.

'Tis an interesting paradox, is it not?

Striking Ordinariness

There was a moment, tonight, when I was sitting with my friend in our Fellowship, and he kicked his cup of coffee by accident. It spilled over the floor, and very quickly I got up, went to the kitchen, got some towels, came back, and cleaned it up while our meeting continued.

There was something about that activity, though, that was so... so precious.

Maybe this sounds crazy, but it was perfect. Beautiful. There was no thought involved. I wasn't angry with him because he had spilled his coffee, and I wasn't trying to 'prove' myself with service by cleaning up after him. I just enjoyed the act of cleaning up the coffee, wiping until it had been sopped up by the towels and then disposing of them properly.

I wish all things, everything, could be like that.

I think of the Zen saying "chop wood, carry water"... and how wonderful just the simple acts in life are. I remember, a while back, when I discovered how wonderful it was to do the dishes, to feel the warm and hot and soapy water, to learn how to apply just the right amount of pressure to scrape the pan without hurting it, smelling the water and the soap scents, feeling the little aches in my feet and back... folding laundry while it's still warm... bathing a dog.

So much of life now, it seems, is lived in the head. We spend time thinking. We spend time talking. Less and less do we go about simple daily tasks with simple daily rewards to them, like making the bed, taking out the garbage. We don't do these things any more, really.

The more I think about it, though, it's precisely in those things that the joy lies. It always has been that way; I just never looked for it.

So here's my dream: to have a job I leave at work. No working my job at home.

To have a garden to tend, dirt for my fingers to dig in.

A kitchen where food is prepared, cooked, recycled.

To make beds, clean dishes, fold warm laundry. Listen to the radio.

Clean up coffee spills.

Think less about complicated things. Center my mind on the simpler bits of living, like food.

I'm tired of high-falutin'.

I want to sweep.

The Art of Being Humiliated

Lately, I've had simplicity on the mind; how I wish my life were simpler, how I wish that my schedule were steadier, more stable, how I wish I could plan this, or that, or th'other, and know with something approaching a sense of certainty that X, Y, or Z were likely to transpire. I wish it all made more sense, I wish it fit together; I wish I had a job, and a garden, and my avocation were a simpler bit of work as well, steady and certain too.

And then, last night, I heard someone speaking about how she had been hoping and wishing to learn something new, something more, and how she was coming to realize that there really wasn't anything new, or more, to learn. That she had been taught all the secrets long ago, and the key was now to practice them. At least, that's what I think I heard: I could be wrong. We were in a basement, and the heating system was rumbling with life, and I couldn't really hear everything she said with perfect clarity.

But it became apparent to me, in some way, that although I've been seeking simplicity as something out there, something external to myself, what was really needed was simplicity in here, in my head and my heart. I've been collecting all these books, these methods, these spiritual practices, just accumulating them one after the other, hoping that the next one is going to unlock some mystical secret that I can't seem to pin down, and - Bam! - I will have a gnostic glimpse of the Good and all will be well.

Only, I don't think it works that way.

I feel resigned, as it were, to the thought that I will never be very good. I will never be very wise, or charismatic, courageous or compassionate, no matter how much I want these things. I will never achieve Single-Pointed Concentration or All-Embracing Awareness, or anything else with capital letters you can hear spoken.

I will never be famous; nor will I be a part of something greater than myself, some Greater Good, let alone an integral part of it.

I shall always be, more or less, a poor, ordinary shlub; a breathless spectator of giants, wishing dearly that I might one day be one of them.

But rather than feeling at all good about this, humbled and realistic, I just feel... depressed. I feel as if I struggle for a breath of hope. I wonder what difference I can truly make, what the point is, as it were. I feel humiliated, not humbled.

I know this is a good thing, but... right now, all I feel is emptied of childhood dreams.