Shortly after I began privately corresponding with Cognitive Dissonance I learned he had fibbed to his Zero Hedge audience. There was no Mrs. Cog. In fact there wasn't even a Pet Cog. He repeatedly assured me that he was fine being alone and had been so for many years. "I may be alone, but I'm not lonely" he would tell me. This concept was so far from my programmed upbringing that I immediately launched a campaign to convince him he needed a companion, if only a cat. Alone was unacceptable.
Contrary to everything I understood Cog insisted that he preferred to be alone. He said he selfishly wanted to focus on looking deeply within and that this was a solitary activity. In fact he told me many on a similar path had withdrawn completely from most or all personal relationships in order to better examine their inner self. Comparatively he claimed he was actually a social creature lol.
I wasn't buying the ragged secluded hermit story, nor the Buddhist monk-esque retreat from the Matrix. He liked his ice cream too much... and he was a stock broker to boot. That was proof enough in my eyes.
I sensed my "Adopt a Cat" marketing campaign was beginning to take effect as Cog started to ask questions about how people would even go about acquiring a cat. Thus stage two of his feline conditioning was launched... "You're a deep guy, you need a young kitten so you can imprint on each other at its early age. But you can't get just one!" What?
"You can't get just one. If you only get one kitten, he won't have another kitten to reflect back to him that he is also a kitten. They learn what they are by seeing each other, so you have to get two." "Oh," he said, "I had no idea." Either he had decided to humor me or I was making serious progress. At the time I didn't think it mattered because he had actually made an appointment with a rural woman who fostered cats and kittens until they could be adopted.
Cog is a much better storyteller than I am, and he relays this adventure much better than I will. The appointed day of kitten selection arrived. Armed with all the litter box items and kitten food needed to bring home two fuzzballs, Cog left his office for kitten heaven. The only problem was that it was raining....sideways. Indeed, just like in the proverbial novel, it turned out to be a dark and stormy night.
Several local bridges had already flooded out and it was raining cats and kittens. When he finally located the lady's farm house after navigating several detours it was nearly dusk. Cog should have taken this as the sign he already recognized it to be, but still he pressed on. When he finally arrived at the cat lady's home he had to walk through nearly two inches of standing water to get to her front door, completely soaking his dress shoes.
The cat lady proceeded to lead him through various rooms and out buildings crawling with kittens and cats of all shapes and sizes. Eventually they came to the place where the youngest kittens were housed, an outbuilding separated from the main house by fifteen feet and, with the rain still pounding down, three or four inches of standing water. He realized he just couldn't do it.
Leaving the woman with much gratitude, apologies and a generous donation to the kitty maintenance/adoption fund, Cog left and drove home still wearing his soaked, and now ruined, dress work shoes.
He tried to break it to me gently "They just didn't glow", he began. "I didn't see my kittens." I think he was more worried about my disappointment than I was about his. It just wasn't right for him at that time and I accepted it, but still I worried about his aloneness.
It wasn't until more than a year down the road, after our relationship had much progressed and we had begun to live together, that I started to understand the concept of 'alone'. I had to shed the tapes in my head that had connected alone = bad and together = good.
Indeed, this concept of each being alone on our own individual path to grow and explore our sense of consciousness has granted me an incredible new sense of freedom since the view inwards is infinite. Ironic that it was after we were together that I became comfortable with the idea of 'alone'.
Conversely, together has been a revelation for Cog. While he continues to maintain that self examination is best accomplished alone, slowly he adapts to those compromises that allow together to work - delegating, deferring and, of course, giving up closet space. :-)
In the end, Cog says he got his kittens when I arrived in his life (crashed into is more like it) along with my daughter and Tramp, our 20 pound Maine coon-cat. It turns out I am the kitten (alien) that reflects and projects back to Cog his inner kitten (alien) as we bounce this totally weird, but cool, inner examination back to each other, often in Zero Hedge lingo.
I joke with him: "All your awareness are belong to us". Living this way while we each turn our attention to ourselves isn't as complicated as it sounds. I like to think while each of us are on our own individual journey that prioritizes personal growth, we can hold hands as our paths cross and intertwine and then meander a bit.
Mrs. Cog
Tramp loving life on the mountain.
I love this story. The first time I read it I had to run out, but the story stayed on my mind the rest of the day, and what eventually came to me was this: I am impressed with how much CogDis was already committed to making you happy, even at that point, that he was willing to push so far against the Fates telling him in no uncertain terms that he was way off the Path into the weeds. If that ain’t love, I don’t know what is. Walking through standing water in his dress shoes indeed!
Hey! I made a promise. Doesn’t everyone walk through standing water in their dress shoes to keep a promise?
Love indeed. Up to that point I hadn’t even met her then, so how could I have been in love? She could have been a buck toothed frazzled haired hillbilly for all I knew. :)