Thursday, March 5, 2009

Kissinger and the peace prize

You cannot change your personality. You have to accept the way you are, like you have to accept the way you look. If you miss an arm or a leg you have to accept it. To be gay is as normal as being left-handed. To be very empathic is as normal as being a psychopath. You cannot change a psychopath to make him more kind. And a psychopath cannot change himself to become a kinder person. An artistic and bohemian kind of person cannot change himself into a well-structured social climber just because his family wants him this way. Fifty years ago, they tried to force left-handed kids in school to use their right hand when writing and they tried all conceivable ways to make the gays straight. It did not work. You have to accept your own personality and you have to accept that all people have different personalities. Animals have also different personalities. Some dogs are hyper sensitive and some dogs are lazy.

Anyway, Hitler was a psychopath, but the Germans in general were not. So why the hell did they vote for him. Why the hell did they get so hysterically enthusiastic about him? Henry Kissinger is a psychopath. How the hell could he be rewarded with the Nobel’s peace price after the Christmas bombings of Hanoi 1972? 40 000 tons of bombs were dropped in 12 days due to his advise. As I see it: Those who were fanatic Nazis during the Second World War and those who gave Kissinger the peace price were in a deep hypnotic trance. They lived in a fog or a deeply unawakened state of mind.

In the old days, and maybe even today, many gays were forced to create a false straight personality. They married someone they did not love and produced children just to please their parents. Many are the artistically bent people who have tried to make themselves into bankers or lawyers just to please their demanding mothers. Many are the left-handed people who have through big efforts learned how to write with the right hand. Many, many people have, through the years, been forced to change their personality into a false but more accepted personality. So many people have been forced to live their life with an false identity. Even today many people yearn to to come out from the closet.

Nothing is strange with this. All people are sleepwalkers. All people know what it feels like to pretend. All people have spent years of their life pretending that they are someone else. I am by no means different. Sometimes though, for short periods, I feel like I can see the sky. To wake up, I believe, is not impossible, and it is not like trying to change ones personality. Awakening is, I think, a change in the way we look at the world and ourselves.

I do not think, though, that awakenings or changes in the way we look at the world, is something that comes about through psychotherapy, meditation practice or by reading self help books. Some people meditate for years and years or spend years and years in therapy, and read tons of self help books, but still don't wake up. Why is it so? If people wake up, they seem to wake up because of no particular reason at all.

Well, an awakening can be small and concern only minor things and it can be dramatic and change a person’s life completely. An awakening can come and go; it can last for a few seconds or it can change someone for the rest of his or her life. In real life nothing is written in stone.