“No good deed goes unpunished” is not an ironic reflection.
It is a mathematical certainty I fear.
I like the different psychological models that set up a binary in the psyche- conscious/subconscious, extroverted cognitive function/introverted cognitive function, social persona/private persona, outer mental armor/protected inner child.
The last one is what they feel like in aggregate to me. Spherical souls, like tootsie pops, with a hard shell on the outside to protect the soft vulnerabilities on the inside.
I feel like I could conceptually measure the soul of anyone with the tootsie pop model. Monsters- serial killers, psychopaths, and the like- are like tootsie pops that accidentally never had the tootsie put in- defects, from the assembly line- or, they had it sucked clean out before the shell could harden to protect it.
People who are open and vulnerable and empathic have thin, hyper permeable shells, and pay a heavy price for their openness and lack of armor. Quite heavy, likely prone to dying young, dying violently, or surviving such to grow incredibly strong in the shell department.
But not too strong. The soft tootsie roll center is where everything good we have to offer others comes from- generosity, empathy, kindness, love warmth and coziness- and if the shell is too thick, or too hard, it never escapes us to others for their benefit. And others never even know we have it in us for ours.
The moral game of life becomes, then, in whatever degree we are able to hold control over ourselves, how thin we can maintain our outer candy shell without incurring too much damage. The thinner we can keep it and still survive- the more open we can be to risk, to patience, to generosity. The more we can see where these things are needed in life’s situations and apply them. But the degree to which we make ourselves useful and caring and supportive of others is the exact degree to which we open ourselves to danger, harm, and pain.
Worth it?
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