Saw Dr H today. It was like a vacation day. I managed to escape from the “office” and avoid all the legal paperwork. It was a great day for a walk. Sun and heavy cloud with a few spits of rain. Had two new insights.
First Insight
Realize that I am driven by two key motives. The first motive has to do entirely with the security of my person, and the safety of life. When I sense that my life is under threat then I am capable of a powerful and directed response. The prior posts Seconds To Live, and Survival, address the origins of this motive. I identify this most strongly with my time in Coast Guard Search and Rescue but I know that the same motive followed me into my work in the offshore oil industry.
When I believe my life is under threat I am capable of a very powerful response, a response that is surprising even to me. This level of response is what powered me through the creation of the insurance appeal. It was also invoked in some of the subsequent appeals documentation. My belief was that if I did not get this paperwork completed, if I did not file it on time, then my goose was royally cooked. Because of this perceived existential threat, I was able to respond in a way that I cannot normally muster, or sustain.
The second motive has to do with a sense of injustice. My sense is that injustice is an incredibly powerful human emotion, stronger than love, erotic drive, or hunger. When I mentioned this to Dr H, she agreed, and stated that even animals are recognized to exhibit a sense of injustice. She also agreed that this is a very primeval drive and that it forms early in the life of the individual. Those times when I sense, or I know, that a grievous injustice has been done to me, are those times when I have been driven to achieve redress. Much of my past work effort, from April up until the present, has been driven by this motivation (I would give details and describe the specific circumstance but the matter remains sub judice. Until a decision is reached, I want to refrain from addressing the issue directly).
Somehow both of these insights have been recognized at a sub-conscious level. I acknowledge that I am casting about for injustice issues in part because I am aware that similar injustice is being done to others than myself, and in part because I am seeking to tap into the sense of injustice as a motivator, as a means of driving my therapy forward. The result is a mix of altruism and self-interest. This mix is likely a major driver of all social change.
Second Insight
The second insight derives from the recognition that the legal context provides a very defined action environment within which I have more or less learned to operate. Law is primarily logic driven and text based. As long as I am faced with a written presentation then I am able to master the issue provided I have sufficient time. There are times I fail to do this and the output is corrupted in some way.
An example of this is a recent letter to a lawyer with a top tier Canadian law firm, one of the “seven sisters” group of firms. Perhaps it is in the top three. The letter from this firm struck me as arrogant and dismissive. It appeared to suggest I put all action on hold until their assigned litigator returned from overseas a few weeks from now. My response was to advise them the world did not stop and wait on a top tier law firm. I was not going to wait while they rowed back from the beach and shook the sand from out of their shoes. My correspondent was actually communicating with a 3rd party and copying me in on that third party communication. I miss read his communication, thought he was being arrogant and dismissive, and treated him as I felt he deserved. Which was not particularly kindly as he had identified himself as a representative of Dr X, a man who is not on my favourites list and likely never will be.