Front Door VS Back Door.

Pointing out the obvious to people typically doesn’t work. Why? We have defense mechanisms in place to distort our reality so we don’t see those things. It’s like a cop coming to your front door, and saying, “Hey dude, we want to talk to you.” Your first reaction is OHSHIT. You run, you flee. But if a plainclothes cop talks to you while you’re barbequing, you invite him inside, and then he points out how your car is in front of a fire hydrant, maybe you’ll take him more seriously.

In more applicable terms, this is more or less what Cliff had to do with me. There’s some obvious truth A that he wants me to realize. If he were to point it out, I’d go into denial. Or, failing that, I’d say, “Oh, of course”, but I wouldn’t really understand the significance. So, Cliff would get me to agree with some seemingly unrelated thing Z. It’s about gaining my trust. Then relate Z to Y. Then relate Y to X. By the time he reaches A, I’ve agreed with so much that it would be nearly impossible for me to deny A, as it leads from twenty-five other things I’ve already agreed to. He’d have to come up with some incredibly elaborate stories and examples to pull this off.

To put it another way, let’s imagine I believe, “I am not A.” In every way, I try to convince other people that I am not A. Unfortunately, I am, in fact, A. (Or an A, whatever.) Cliff’s perceptive enough where he could see past my own lies. I could be saying “Not A!!! A this, A that, I am the last person to be A!”, and Cliff would simply say, “I’m getting you up the ass regardless of what you say. I know you’re A.” Then I’d go “AARRRGGG” and feel rather violated and helpless because I couldn’t hide from him.

*cocks head* That seems like a separate issue.

Sometimes the problems are right in front of our face, but we simply don’t know how to deal with them. The front door? The problem’s right there at the front door, is it not? But if all our problems could be solved by openning the front door, we’d cure ourselves fast. That’s typically not the case. Most of us have to go through the back door, whether it be our own experiences or a long detailed conversation with a friend. (Or both, as they can tend to link up.) You have to go in some back door, a completely unrelated topic, watching through your house of baggage until you eventually reach that problem. Only can you open the front door and truely understand how that problem afflicts everything.

…

This entry made so much more sense in my head. Maybe another day I’ll articulate it better.