PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -- State police say they arrested a man early Tuesday whose blood alcohol level was 0.491 percent - the highest ever recorded in Rhode Island for someone who wasn't dead. Stanley Kobierowski was taken to a hospital, put in the detoxification unit and sedated.
I've heard many people who are unhappy with their lives talk about their situation. There's always some aspect of it that goes like this:
"I can't be happy until I achieve X. But to achieve X, first I need to put Y in place. But before I can put Y in place, I need to build up Z. Unfortunately, in order to build up Z, I need to achieve X. So, the situation is hopeless." (There are also variations like "But Z is impossible" etc).
The way they state this is always with a certain confidence that the listener will have to agree that there is nothing to be done, and that despair is the only option. In fact, there's perhaps even a sense of triumph. Their ongoing failure is a proof of the superiority of their analysis.
There truly is nothing to be done for these people, because, at bottom, they don't want help.
The answer is usually very simple. It goes something like. "Be happy without X." or "Forget about putting Y in place, and just do X." or "Here's a completely different way to build up Z." There is a way to break the logic trap at each link in the chain. The person arguing for despair will have well-honed defenses for each of these avenues of attack. They have thought of it all before.
Its like someone who has gotten stuck in the "Chinese Handcuffs" (the little bamboo sleeve that you stuck your fingers in). Gently suggesting that they stop struggling, and push their fingers together, in order to get them out, only meets with more hysteria.
Ultimately, despair is a state of mind. Gravity works. We live for a time, and then die. There is only this moment. Everything else is a mental construct.
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
-- Elizabeth Bishop
