SuperHighway To Hell

       The Road to Hell may be paved with Good Intentions, but the Highway to Hell is paved with Being Right.
       When I come from my head in matters of the heart, I can get into big trouble. Because my head is full of itself. It believes it can run my life all by itself. Even in matters of the heart, my head thinks it can handle everything on its own. It can’t. It’s a fish out of water. Actually, it’s worse. It’s a fish out of water that thinks it can fly. And it’s actually surprised when it plummets to the ground like a bowling ball with a pair of paper wings.
       It’s actually my mind that digs the holes I end up having to crawl out of, not my heart. For example, when I get emotionally hurt, my head wants to rush to the rescue, right the wrong, call it like he sees it, confront the problem, and fix it. That’s what heads do. Sometimes, my head even thinks it can fix you.
       My mind can be too smart for its own good. With emotional challenges, from a clinical standpoint, my mind is often right about what the issues are. I have a therapists acumen. My mind is highly insightful, highly analytical, and very well self educated in psychology. When I’m sizing up an emotionally disruptive situation, my mind is often correct about a lot of what’s going on under the surface, on a deeper level, beneath the waves. My mind can break it all down and get to some of what’s driving the behavior. My mind acts like an emotional mechanic, analyzing and diagnosing what’s going on under the hood.
       That’s wonderful. But that knowledge, that insight, that analysis, even if it's correct, can not be delivered from the head. By the head. That information, if it’s delivered at all, must be delivered from the heart. By the heart. And that is where I sometimes fail. That has been one of my biggest blind spots.
       And, just because I may have figured something out, that doesn’t mean it matters. Because the mind is all about being right. The heart is all about being love. The mind is about giving and receiving information. The heart is about giving and receiving love. When I choose being right over being love, I’m on the wrong road. I’m on the Highway to Hell. I have never seen or felt that more clearly than I have in this very moment.
       I don’t always choose the Highway to Hell. But when I do, man, does it create chaos. In my life, and, more importantly, in the lives of people I care about.
       And, even when the mind isn’t spot on, it can create the illusion that it is. So no matter how you slice it, it’s a slippery slope, to say the least.  
       My Highway to Hell may be paved with Being Right , but my SuperHighway to Hell is paved with the phrase “I Fucked Up”. “I Fucked Up” is my own personal demonic colloquialism that really means “I made a mistake so big, so awful and unforgivable, that I caused irreparable damage, changing my life as I know it, forever.” The physical equivalent would be falling out of a tree, severing my spinal cord, and becoming a paraplegic. This is my fastest, roughest, most painful way to Hell. Even the Hell itself is different. It’s Super Hell. At the end of The SuperHighway to it.
       Super Hell and the SuperHighway to it reside in a very special place, deep within me. Deep within many of us. Super Hell is in the very bowels of Perfectionism Land. Perfectionism Land is where you have to be perfect, all of the time, at everything. I know. Fuckin’ insane, isn’t it? But it’s a place I have inside of me. A lot of us do.
       Perfectionism is especially problematic in relationships. If both of you don’t have the leeway to make mistakes, lots of them in fact, then you are both potentially headed down the SuperHighway To Super Hell. The paradox is that when we attempt to be perfect in a relationship, we actually create more problems. Perfectionism is ironically very destructive, and it sabotages relationships; it doesn’t assist them. Because nothing is perfect, all the time, and perfectionism demands that it is. So there you go. Instant napalm. Just add.....well, virtually anything.
       I can be so merciless on myself that it boggles even my own mind. And if I am too hard on myself, I am ultimately, in some way, going to be too hard on you.
       I keep learning that lesson. The hard way. Over and over again.



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