We do not recall every meal, but we can remember the rare good meals that stand above the myriads of meals we have consumed in our lifetime. Perhaps forgetfulness makes humanity. Perhaps, others will say, the successful application of the will to power allows us to remember meals, and still others, the ego was satiated.
If we place events in their proper context, then I do not consider graduation from high school either as an accomplishment or a milestone, and my outlook has not changed. Is it an accomplishment when the majority of people do graduate? No, of course not. Is it a milestone? Perhaps for many people. Nor do I understand the seeming cultural obsession over pregnancy and children. If it were unique or special or rare, but billions of people is evidence that uniqueness and rarity can not be applied to the continuation of the species. This aspect of people's behavior remains a mystery for me, perhaps forever.
If high school graduation held no meaning, attending college was nothing more than a reprieve from the isolated small town life that I did not like, nor could I appreciate the subtleties and nuances of interacting with the natives. Attending college was not an achievement: it was, and is, a public school.
Perhaps the most disappointing event of my childhood was a certain Christmas morning. Of course, all children will be invariably disappointed by the unreasonable expectations of Christmas, but my deep disappointment of not finding a stegosaurus can not be adequately described by yours truly. The hundreds of present that I received over many years can not be compared to the realization that I was not getting a stegosaurus. I don’t recall my age at the time, but we can be certain I was young- young enough to be fascinated by dinosaur coloring books and dinosaurs sticker books and dinosaur books and plastic dinosaurs and...
Eventually, certain disappointment are rationalized-dinosaurs are extinct, therefore all my wants and hopes were not to change reality. Disappointment and acceptance-a rare occurrence.
While stegosauruses are best left for Santa Claus, as a child I also wanted an older brother. The older brother’s arrival was not restricted to a holiday, so I had hundreds of more days to be gratified upon his inevitable arrival. The longing for the elder brother never left, although I came to understand that as a matter of chronology, I would be the older brother. I never desired to be the eldest sibling and this time my wish was granted.
We can understand the influences of books, cartoons and movies on a child and his inevitable wish for a baby dinosaur. Juvenile and amusing-from an adult perspective, yet not uncommon or extraordinary. As scientists, we conclude that external stimuli affected my motivations, since the desire for stegosauruses is not, as of this writing, a recognized stage of human development.
While we can easily understand that my dinosaur desire was externally influence, we must inquire as to who, when and where was the impetus for the desire for an older brother. Was my “imaginary” friend not tangible enough, and therefore was of no utility, in a strange world that I was now inhabiting? We can not know.
The origin of my almost ever present longing for my older brother can not be attributed to a foreign source, that is, external to myself. I had no obsession with collecting books involving brothers, unlike my obsession concerning dinosaurs. Although I possessed three titles of the Hardy Boys mysteries, this woefully falls short of a compulsion. As a bibliophile, I had hundreds of books on various topics. I recall wondering what could be beyond good and evil? The green and black book had a strange title by a strange author. Love, I would later discover due to the instance of Apprentice Tyler that I read Fred, is beyond good and evil. In retrospect, I enjoyed the presence and the feel of old books that I was fortunate to surround me. I am uncertain of where the longing for my older brother derives. I must conclude that this origin could not can not be external. If it were external, it would, I assume, have been manifested in my various collections-coins, stamp, comic books and innumerable lists, including the movies I saw at the theatre- and behaviors. Yet, there is no trace of an external influence for my brother.
While certain scientists would claim the ego is searching, like the heroine from a gnostic myth, for what is deficient, we are justified in asking from where did the ego suspect that something, something tangible and explicit we note, was lacking. Alas, those scientists, by the nature of their profession, are incapable of inquiring upon that topic.
Plato writes that the soul longs to find its equal and this search he calls “love”. Of course, there is a lie, if not several, on every page of Plato. Even if we assume Plato is not being disingenuous, this does not explain my brother, only my potential “soulmate”, which is not similar. Therefore, we must conclude that my brother existed anterior and external to myself. If my imaginary brother were only in my mind, we would expect an external manifestation of this curious belief, but there are no such manifestations, whereas my dinosaur obsession would lead to my study of animals and from there to the general topics of science. The butterfly and rock collections are manifest evidence of my childhood obsession with dinosaurs expanding to other areas of interest. Once again, we see no external evidence of my brother. Even with the passage of decades, the desire for my brother is present, but only submerged as there are seemingly higher priorities as an adult than a child. I can recall my disappoints at will, but I have no control of when the feeling for the lack of my brother will transpire. Of course, it is absurd to write about a feeling (the lack of my brother) that, in this lifetime, was not experienced and I acknowledge the absurdity, but-
I am content to accept the reality of extinct dinosaurs, and reality in general, but it must be obvious that I do not accept the lack of my brother. Ayn Rand would say that my subjective feelings are irrational. We surmise that astrologers would state that because I am a Libra rising, I am more “in tune” with relationships. Those charlatans would conveniently ignore that I have been celibate my entire life. therefore, I do not have an increased likelihood of being in a relationship. In fact, those frauds of the stars would also ignore that I have been single for the vast majority of my life. As a Great Occultist, I acknowledge my Libra rising and am aware of its influences, but one twelfth of people (more or less) have the same rising sign and all air signs are, by their depictions, dualistic. I have never read or thought that air signs are compelled to reflect upon non existent siblings. Therefore, I am not convinced by astrological insights and reasonings.
We conclude that disappointments are recalled in clearer terms than successes. We have applied psychiatry, philosophy, mythology and astrology to analyze my compulsion for my wanting to find our older brother. Unfortunately, Gentle Reader, from that morning when we were profoundly disappointed to now, we have made no progress in discovering why this obsession exists.