But Doctor, how could I not feel like a big scumbag about the whole thing.  You know, taking all that opportunity, and like, look where I am now.  For no good reason.

And then you, you know, wait on people and some of them, yes, like Melloncamp says, it's like playing to a room full of drunks chattering away...  And try to deal with that situation without not wanting a good glass of wine when you go home, just to unwind.

So here I am, fifty, and what have I done with my life.  Nothing respectable, like being a lawyer, or a doctor, or a banker, or even having gone to graduate school to be like a college professor.

And all that unspeakable stuff, that trap, that steel trap created by boy girl interaction and my own lack of action, my own, I don't know, misguidedness that sprung from the thing...  So hard to talk about because it's all locked in this tight knot you can't begin to explain as a way to unravel it all, except that, yeah, like you said, just like you said, she said a few things that made me feel like a scumbag, which I suppose is my Achilles heal.

So anyway, you go through life, and you have good intentions and pure spiritual practices and yoga, but, because of it all, because of the stress and the unhappiness and the sense of being defeated over my own goodness, like, what are you left to do but conclude that you are the Prodigal Son himself.

What do you do?  Do you quit everything and start all over again.  Jesus says as much;  if thine eye offends thee, cut it out, something like that.  Sounds a little brutal.  But better to lose a hand or whatever than to be sunk in the depths with a  millstone around your neck.

Why is it me, the peacemaker, who ends up as the outcast, the deviant?  Shouted down, as if.

We could all use a little positive feedback in this world, no?  And that's just the thing.  Unintentionally, we get hurt, and when we're hurt, we hurt the other...  And on and on, into a spiral.

SO.  Here I am.  Talking to you.  And you are kind enough to soften the blows, and say kind things to me...

But there I am, shrink of entire neighborhoods, talking to anyone and everyone, and what do I get out of it?  What do I come home to?