{"id":2541,"date":"2010-12-29T11:39:19","date_gmt":"2010-12-29T17:39:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/?p=2541"},"modified":"2010-12-29T13:01:58","modified_gmt":"2010-12-29T19:01:58","slug":"duality-in-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/12\/duality-in-the-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"Duality in the Sun"},"content":{"rendered":"

Copyright 2010 Ben S. Pollock<\/small><\/p>\n

The occasional, amateur anthropologist in me has been studying the spouse for 19 1\/2 years. Occasional discoveries have been made during the field work, but a revelation has occupied the study recently: There’s two of her. I’m pretty sure of this because there’s two of me.<\/p>\n

My Beloved has the usual pairs, the confident and the timid, the girl and the woman etc. What’s of interest are the person she is and the person she’d like to be. Same deal in me. This is not quite self-actualization<\/a>. Until I find the psychological school or philosophy with its official terms, let’s go with: the Real Self and the Imagined Self. The Real Self is what’s out there, simply enough. It’s the person that other people see. The Imagined Self is an ideal, the person I almost am but for this that and the other, the person I should be, or the person whom if I had the guts somehow I would be.<\/p>\n

Out in the field, which usually is in the home or traveling the rain forests of Fayetteville and occasional ventures much farther out, this anthropologist learned through observation and interviews who MB would be if she could. She sometimes believes she is that Imagined Self now. But I see the circumstances, analyze and conclude, “She’s not that. Who does she think she’s fooling? Why does she persist?”<\/p>\n

The Real Self she is, is remarkable enough. The anthropologist drops his objective distance and tells her this. His statement does not worry her, another wonderful thing about her.<\/p>\n

The anthropologist — a guy trying to understand his wife (join the club, bro’, it’s a big one) — realizes the same is true in himself: there is the real me<\/a> and the fellow I’d like to be, the one I am sometimes, the me I’d have been with better breaks in life. Like My Beloved, some hours I believe I am my Imagined Self.<\/p>\n

The field history shows these aren’t vague fantasies but concrete descriptions. MB and I can list attributes of ourselves handily, even if they’re sides of us no one else has observed. They’re how we see ourselves, and believe me we’ve been looking. We reflect to try to ensure we’re getting everything from life we can and that we’re giving out what we genuinely have available to give.<\/p>\n

MB’s selves are nobody’s business, but to elaborate I’ll chance it and reveal mine. After all, I am in the jungle, encamped with a water bottle and towel<\/a> as well as a pen and notebook (not the overrated Moleskin), to conduct more field work.<\/p>\n