I Don't Want To Be Dolores

Here I am, after a three year hiatus.

For some weeks I have been occupied with the sensation that I am understanding things that I could not comprehend before.

I have been avidly watching Westworld in my third attempt to grasp the deeper meaning, and here are a few observations and thoughts that it triggered:

When I was seven years old, which is my favourite age to remember, everything just was the way it was to the naked eye. My intrinsic understanding of the world was that of all the tales I had read. There was good and bad and one could chose between one or the other. There were virtues that one would eventually be rewarded for and vices that one would either relinquish for better deeds, or be punished for. There were struggles that could be overcome along the way to getting to the happy end. All in all, I had faith in the world; I saw it’s beauty, like Dolores chose to see it. I did see the ugliness too late however. “That didn’t look like anything to me.”

I had just been thrown into a new country, far, far away from the one I grew up; I had no fear, I was so hopeful to find new friends, I trusted that if one did the right thing – and carefully hid what wasn’t right, like smoking stolen cigarettes in a barn, or stealing flowers – life could only gratify you with the sweetest gifts of friendship and games.

The fences I peaked over trying to get the attention of some kid in the neighbourhood remained closed, and my little seven year old heart old became sad and lonely. Not all hope was lost though, as the next country I moved to two years later offered new opportunities for connection. As a guest, I always tried to understand according to which rules these new people were thinking and behaving in order to melt in. In hindsight, the emulsion was never perfect, and could never have been.

I remained “the weirdo” to myself and others, never feeling familiar anywhere, and eventually grew up thinking that there was something wrong with me, something bad that I had to identify to eradicate.

I kept on reading books hoping to find the secret to life and myself, and translate it in the real world, as one would look for a recipe. At the peak of my confusion and many disastrous relationships later, I discovered the mental health industry which I had only heard of in Woody Allen movies so far.

Here I learned that others were responsible for my ‘mal de vivre’, thereby turning me into a victim with a persecutor to focus on. I was also told that because of that formative biography, I had turned into a narcissistic attention seeker. The latter surprised me, but if they all agreed on it, then it must have been true.

What follows were decades of research, inner and outer to find the root of that evil that all but me could see.

As soon as I would question any of the precepts, they would use the “attention seeker” weapon against me. I learned to remain silent and further inspect and try to ‘improve’ myself.

I never wanted to be the creator of my world. I just wanted to be a protagonist in it. I wanted to contribute to the best of the talents I had. As a therapist, what I was contributing to was to establish the lies that I had been coded to live by and that I believed to be living by as well…without them ever leading to the outcome I had been promised (see all self-books for the imaginary goals of what to become).

Like Dolores in Westworld, I have undergone several updates in the past three years; with every new death, in her case, and every successful integration of a newly discovered truth that came with the undoing of a belief (and some dying of a piece of me), my eyes have opened to a reality where faith in the inherent goodness of men is now just an illusion. This foundational premise I used to work by that men are inherently good and wish to live together in harmony turned out to be contradicted by the cult of individualism which negates inter-dependency and the need of others. I thought that all they required was some appropriate guidance to go about their lives with regained drive and enthusiasm.

Even if that was true originally, nowadays humanity seems so far removed from that kind of a possible reality and any common sense or desire for truth that there does not seem to be any hope for fixing what is broken beyond reparation.

With every new episode of Westworld, I am coming to the realization that humanity is fundamentally led by lower and destructive instincts if not kept in check.

Even though I don’t know what “counsel” I can still offer, I can choose to extend an invitation to those who want to explore who they are outside of the matrix of perpetual delusions of dysfunctions, and wish to learn how to live without compromising their soul.

Dolores, whose name means ‘sufferings’, lived in a programmed naive reverie that ended by death and killing each time…until she learned with every new update that she had some agency too. It takes many updates in my life as well to see the whole picture, or, if not to that extent, a picture that makes sense and is rooted in reality. It seems to take many more to know how to affect that newly revealed reality.

Every rebirth is accompanied by pain. It is all but a game of losses and gains. The best one can hope for is to keep the accounting balanced.

They say that everyone has a price. There has been no better time than the past three years to see what people’s price was. In my opinion, it was pretty low for many. I keep wondering what mine is. If someone were to offer me something in exchange for my compliance and obedience, what would that possibly be? So far, I have let go of most, or all of the advantages and benefits that came with a career built on lies because I could no longer in good conscience abide by illogical and detrimental rules. It was quite a comfortable life for a few years. I am paying a price now to live by my principles.

What if I was really hungry and cold? Would I accept their offer to join then? I will be in a position to answer that question honestly once I find myself in it. For now, I choose sacrifice over corruption. Not as a martyr. As a learner, like Dolores.