Welcome, Ven a gozar!

I knew a man a number of years ago. We were not friends, or even formal acquaintances. I knew him from where he worked and he new me as a casual customer. That is about as close as the relationship ever went. We had different views on life, so we lived in different circles. Well that is not really true but, it’s not quite not true either.

In his world, he had problems. Or maybe a better definition is psychological problems. He heard voices, and it used to scare him. I know people who hear voices all the time. I occasionally hear voices once in a while, and I never really think much about it.

When I was a child, my father told me once day, that there was a little man that sat on my shoulder. He would always tell me what was right, and what was wrong, and all I had to do was listen. That took care of any fear of voices I had in my life. Heck, if you can have a little man on your shoulder talking to you, why not a woman, little girl, or space creature? I was young enough not to read very much into what he told me, so voices were okay.

But this poor guy was scared of the voices he heard. They never told him anything bad that I knew of, though I have no idea what the voices told him. But I lived through voices second hand a number of times, and a few of my own from time to time, so I did not think much of it. For most of the people that knew him, it was so terrible he could see it written in practically any face he cared to look at.

He went away. I did not know to where until he came back. He committed himself because of the voices he heard. This is a key thought, because some people in his condition assume they are normal. It is a catch twenty-two from the movie, in action for him. Sane people understand generally that what they are experiencing is not normal, but those less lucky do not question for a moment what is happening to them.

He came back to his old job back, and he seemed to be okay for a while. Then it started to happen again. This time he decided to take a different track, and started talking privately (relatively speaking, seeing I heard about it) with a preacher, about his voices. I don’t know how it came around, but the way I heard the story, is the preacher told him he was possessed. He was told he was possessed and there was nothing to be done quickly because these things took time to fix. I guess he did not have that much time, because he took his rifle into the woods one summer day, and the voices quit talking to him.

The irony to me was, no one seemed really to care what the voices told him. It did not matter to anyone if he was talking to God himself, or to a lost spirit from seventeen hundreds, or a demon. Don’t you think that should make a difference? I think what he was hearing should have made a big difference, plus the fact, he thought there was a problem in his hearing voices, and sought out help once before.

Most people do not have the ability to be a prodigy in some area of life, but a few do. If for example the voices were telling him something worthwhile, or better yet, telling him how to raise money for the preacher, would he have ceased to exist on that summer day?

Welcoming change, and not fearing the unknown should be our focus. We tend to approach strange new things with fear, apprehension, and tunnel vision. It would be refreshing to see most of us act differently. Just because it is new, does not mean it is to be feared. If you do not try, you can not fail, if you never fail, you are not growing.

Comments (1) Jan 08 2008