Walter Mosley Read Online Free PDF

therapist has shifted. It started out with my trying to decipher emotional issues in an almost abstract vacuum. I saw myself and my world as I had been conditioned, and it took some time for me to understand about the untruths that I swallowed whole and swore by. But as the years have passed I have begun to use the time in therapy to figure out where I stand in my art, my personal relationships, my career, my political work, and in relation to the culture in general.

    For me this experience has been invaluable.
    Harking back to the step about truth-telling I am reminded that untruths come in all shapes and pretexts: We are lied to, we lie to ourselves, the truth is left unrevealed, we believe things that are obviously wrong, and, even worse, we want to believe what is obviously wrong.... This last form of lying is tricky and almost undetectable. I want to believe in my friends, workmates, the police, and our so-called leaders. When I am confused or in need I turn to these people for answers and help in figuring out my issues and problems.
    Most of the time this is as it should be. My lawn is turning brown but Jack next door has the greenest grass I’ve ever seen. Of course I go over and ask him how he manages such an agricultural feat.
    Someone breaks into my house and steals my TV and stereo equipment; the police are really the only option here.
    I overlook the fact that Jack uses poisons to cultivate his grass and that the police spend their leisure hours profiling my friends and their children.
    These barely hidden truths are the crumbling bedrock of our existence. The desire to ignore these truths is why most of us never try to climb out of the shambles of our lives.

    What happens when you wake up one day and suspect that everything you do works against what you believe in—that the systems you turn to are actually predators in cops’ clothing? What if you wonder whether you might serve your world and your moral beliefs better if you became a grassroots organizer on the other side of town, or a journalist/photographer in sub-Saharan Africa? Your father might ask how you will pay the rent. Your friends at the bank will not understand and tell you that it’s just a phase. Your fiancé may ask, How can we plan a future in the gated community when you work eighty hours a week for one-twenty-five an hour? The profiling police department might even wonder if you have joined some kind of turban-wearing, bearded anti-American cell.
    Very few people who have bought into the class system of the workaday world will support the changes in you. And even if some of your friends and acquaintances do seem to understand, this understanding will come on their own terms with their own agendas (consciously or unconsciously) attached. The director of the grassroots organization will support your impulse whether or not the move is good for you. The group looking for photographers may not warn you that you might be putting your life in jeopardy in a hostile
environment. Your own mother may love you and support you but still not understand a word you’re saying; you may not understand yourself.
    These problems arise because unexamined subjectivity rules the format of the vast majority of human actions and interactions. We are conditioned to have expectations in our jobs, our relationships, our aesthetics, even in death. We most often work against ourselves and try to keep each other in line doing the same thing. We do this to have a sense of security in our lives. We expect conformity so that we don’t have to think about what we’re doing and what our neighbors are doing behind closed doors.
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    Psychotherapy, for all its potential value, has many of the same problems. The use of prescription moodaltering drugs, anesthetizing exercises, and good oldfashioned phrases like You’re as normal as I am often roll off the psychotherapist’s desk and out of his mouth. Most people seek out therapy so that they