I originally drafted this shortly last year shortly after my brother's passing.
The theme of this is a question: Is a man who seemingly has no special talents except excelling at things we consider ordinary actually an extraordinary man amid a sea of average people?
I was driven to analyze this idea because I believe Fred was extraordinary, rare person and lament how his passing the loss of this wonderful man, like most of our deaths will was unnoticed in society, while the death of a celebrity is perceived as a great loss no matter what the person's personal qualities were, which by and large remain unknown and mythologized by hearsay by the society that laments their passing.
Indeed,my experience is that an 'average person' in America (no the world) declares themselves honest, decent, hard working without putting that much effort and thought into actually being those things, therefore, in reality, are self-centered, selfish and lazy, including to more extent than I'd like to admit, myself.
A correlation is that, I find that most people also surround themselves , without thought, throughout life deem hat they associate with automatically "good" and "right" with "good" things just by association. All the institutions or groups that they belong to, are perfect, above criticism because to acknowledge otherwise is to admit they have flaws and make mistakes which they've spent their entire lives covering up to preserve their false sense of self esteem that they have built.
These things were not my brother Fred. While I am cynical about my fellow man and often bitch about "the average person" being what is wrong with the world, he was always positive, forward looking, silently compensating with his positive attitude, good behavior, work ethic for all the "average people" around him. He also worried about my negativity & thought it caused me stress. However, I believe that his is a common misconception brighter, nicer people have about us negative, bitchy people, that we generally to some degree or always dwell on "all that is wrong in the world" and are thus shortening our lifespans with the stress caused by our negative perspectives.
But Fred died before me, under all kinds of stress from many quarters, not the least of which was building & running a new business that took a lot of physical and mental effort; taking care of his family and mine all while suffering from diabetes, marital relationship problems and May 12 Mother's Day in the morning he shot himself and here I am, alive free of the concerns a that drove him to what we assume was horrible, severe and debilitating depression that caused him to end his own life.
That tells me that us living, 'average" people don't deserve to have among us an extraordinary man like Fred who was the glue that held more than one entire family together by sheer dint of his endless positive, forward looking nature, work and worry. If , Mom, I, his wife, a neighbor or anybody broke down, needed something done, Fred did it. If Fred needed something, Fred did it. He would go out of his way to avoid accepting help from anybody, in fact even tell white lies to keep people from helping him with the smallest or largest task.
The point is that I do not believe that it is we average, negative, self-centered, people who build up health threatening stress within ourselves. Rather, it's people like Fred that this happens to. The mechanism is I believe is that Fred's genuine life loving, people loving, hard working, positive nature was his best trait that made virtually everyone love and admire him (and miss him so much) but also was his ultimate downfall.
My experience is that those of us with negative and self-centered attitudes (most of us) through our outward negativity and/or lack of concern for others actually throw off the pain wither by ignoring it or bitching it away, effectively deflecting it.
Conversely, i believe that the rare person like Fred, so good, so admired and cherished by us, shoulders it silently, not knowing that it is wearing them down and someday may bury them.
My negativity isn't all negative because it more or less motivates me to contemplate "what's wrong" and possible solutions, in other words to try try new ideas and things, look after myself because I have the perception from life that I can expect no help, fairness, consideration or anything positive from my fellow humans (except Fred of course) so I'm better off figuring it out and doing it for myself (or until now letting Fred do it).
Fred and I had a couple things in common: #1 he admitted & shared my belief (in my words) that "most people suck" and even that most of the work he got in his business was due to the fact that much of his work was repairing and replacing shoddy work done by others. But unlike me, he didn't dwell on it & scrupulously (out of basic respect for fellow human beings that I largely lack, I believe) maintained a positive attitude and gave everyone the benefit of the doubt and persevered and silently did it himself without the bitching that I am famous for. He was always eager and ready to help & to do the best job possible, just the same as I, except I will bitch about it and call attention to the slacker while he'd remain positive, silent, buckle down & do the job himself, even if it was me who was the slacker!
He conducted himself this way, I believe, because he loved life in all it's details, the people & analyzed and discussed their (positive) idiosyncrasies just like he did his work, refusing to dwell on the negative aspects of society, whereas I do the right thing even though I mostly despise and expect(ed) the worst from nearly everyone but him. So I guess Fred and I had different reasons for doing the same thing. I work hard, am mostly honest, like to help others because I believe it's "right." I'm also much more honest with myself, my faults than most "average" people. But my brother Fred, I recently came to realize shortly before his death, had a much more altruistic reasoning framework for being positive, doing a good job, giving clients more than their money's worth and gladly helping others: He loved them, shared their triumphs and felt their pain, absorbed it, absorbed our negativity and kept it with him, never expelling it like I do all the time. And, while deeply introspective himself (enough to decide long ago that he could not stand a third breakup, another, another bankruptcy when his wife left him for a lover with all the bills, took his children and stuck him with exorbitant child support) but unlike me, he had far fewer flaws to struggle with than the ones I have which I momentarily muss about from time to time and then conveniently forget.
I think that to varying degrees there are people more generally positive and those that are more generally negative and/or simply uncaring for others and that all to some degree sometimes absorb and sometimes deflect the pain of living. But once in a while there is someone extraordinary like my brother Fred, a supremely positive, warm, friendly "can do" person who mostly absorbs the pain of others that we've deflected in the form of negativity, cynicism and our occasional or frequent breakdowns in common human decency to others.
He absorbed all that we expelled and in death, my experience tells me, that same amount of pain he absorbed, must be, by some yet unexplained law of nature, expelled from his lifeless body for us to take back. In other words,the pain can be created by negativity and all sorts of poor human behavioral and character flaws that never goes away and therefore must be absorbed by or deflected around until a better person like Fred absorbs it (can feel it). So when he died, his lifeless body released all the pain and suffering he had collected during his life to go bouncing around off ordinary people until another extraordinary like Fred absorbs it, shielding us from it like the Secret Service agent jumping on top of Ronald Reagan, protecting him from another bullet. Therefore as my half-baked, pseudo-theory goes, the aggregate pain all added together of all the people who loved and lost Fred is equal to the cumulative pain that was burdening his soul that he expelled when he took his life.
I believe that this someday will be measurable and mathematically verified that in life, intelligent, good, open-minded, caring, loving people like Fred who nevertheless manage to remain and display a positive nature are harmed and worn by the life process (we that suck) because they absorb into their being that which they have chosen to overlook (that we suck). So when Freds die, their deaths cause an inordinate amount of pain for those who knew them, precisely because that is how much they endured in life because they were that rare human being an honest, respectful, respectable, thoughtful, loving and above all else, a truly caring person.
Upon their deaths, the pain that all that these rare, precious, unsung people absorbed in life, by some yet-undiscovered natural law, is expelled, and absorbed by we that suck. Then that pain is left for us, finally to deal with that our usual tactics can't handle, so we look for new ways to cope, such as dreaming up and writing stupid things like this. For those of us whose nature it is to deflect the pain using mechanisms such as self absorbstion an /or a bitchy nature and not absorb we must finally and ultimately deal with by experiencing the loss of an extraordinary man like Freddy.
This experience tells me that people like Fred are too good for this world, that we do not deserve to have the benefit of having among us excellent people like him because we literally kill them off.
Finally, I'd like to define the difference between people who are great at something (such as in politics, business, writing, being a celebrity) and those who are great people. My first point about this is that most of us think of movie stars, Presidents, NFL players and J.K. Rowelings as "great" when that is not necessarily the case. Certainly any world-renowned personality may be a great person, but personally I would not know since I have never met any of them.,but it is not being President or the best MLB catcher in the league that makes them a great person, rather it's the person they are that makes them great. So by my estimation, a great person does not have to be famous or widely recognized for any skills, talent or status in society, rather, that person just simply needs to be a good, thoughtful, honest, hard working person that makes the world a better place with their presence in it like my brother Fred Tomberlin, May he rest in peace.
The theme of this is a question: Is a man who seemingly has no special talents except excelling at things we consider ordinary actually an extraordinary man amid a sea of average people?
I was driven to analyze this idea because I believe Fred was extraordinary, rare person and lament how his passing the loss of this wonderful man, like most of our deaths will was unnoticed in society, while the death of a celebrity is perceived as a great loss no matter what the person's personal qualities were, which by and large remain unknown and mythologized by hearsay by the society that laments their passing.
Indeed,my experience is that an 'average person' in America (no the world) declares themselves honest, decent, hard working without putting that much effort and thought into actually being those things, therefore, in reality, are self-centered, selfish and lazy, including to more extent than I'd like to admit, myself.
A correlation is that, I find that most people also surround themselves , without thought, throughout life deem hat they associate with automatically "good" and "right" with "good" things just by association. All the institutions or groups that they belong to, are perfect, above criticism because to acknowledge otherwise is to admit they have flaws and make mistakes which they've spent their entire lives covering up to preserve their false sense of self esteem that they have built.
These things were not my brother Fred. While I am cynical about my fellow man and often bitch about "the average person" being what is wrong with the world, he was always positive, forward looking, silently compensating with his positive attitude, good behavior, work ethic for all the "average people" around him. He also worried about my negativity & thought it caused me stress. However, I believe that his is a common misconception brighter, nicer people have about us negative, bitchy people, that we generally to some degree or always dwell on "all that is wrong in the world" and are thus shortening our lifespans with the stress caused by our negative perspectives.
But Fred died before me, under all kinds of stress from many quarters, not the least of which was building & running a new business that took a lot of physical and mental effort; taking care of his family and mine all while suffering from diabetes, marital relationship problems and May 12 Mother's Day in the morning he shot himself and here I am, alive free of the concerns a that drove him to what we assume was horrible, severe and debilitating depression that caused him to end his own life.
That tells me that us living, 'average" people don't deserve to have among us an extraordinary man like Fred who was the glue that held more than one entire family together by sheer dint of his endless positive, forward looking nature, work and worry. If , Mom, I, his wife, a neighbor or anybody broke down, needed something done, Fred did it. If Fred needed something, Fred did it. He would go out of his way to avoid accepting help from anybody, in fact even tell white lies to keep people from helping him with the smallest or largest task.
The point is that I do not believe that it is we average, negative, self-centered, people who build up health threatening stress within ourselves. Rather, it's people like Fred that this happens to. The mechanism is I believe is that Fred's genuine life loving, people loving, hard working, positive nature was his best trait that made virtually everyone love and admire him (and miss him so much) but also was his ultimate downfall.
My experience is that those of us with negative and self-centered attitudes (most of us) through our outward negativity and/or lack of concern for others actually throw off the pain wither by ignoring it or bitching it away, effectively deflecting it.
Conversely, i believe that the rare person like Fred, so good, so admired and cherished by us, shoulders it silently, not knowing that it is wearing them down and someday may bury them.
My negativity isn't all negative because it more or less motivates me to contemplate "what's wrong" and possible solutions, in other words to try try new ideas and things, look after myself because I have the perception from life that I can expect no help, fairness, consideration or anything positive from my fellow humans (except Fred of course) so I'm better off figuring it out and doing it for myself (or until now letting Fred do it).
Fred and I had a couple things in common: #1 he admitted & shared my belief (in my words) that "most people suck" and even that most of the work he got in his business was due to the fact that much of his work was repairing and replacing shoddy work done by others. But unlike me, he didn't dwell on it & scrupulously (out of basic respect for fellow human beings that I largely lack, I believe) maintained a positive attitude and gave everyone the benefit of the doubt and persevered and silently did it himself without the bitching that I am famous for. He was always eager and ready to help & to do the best job possible, just the same as I, except I will bitch about it and call attention to the slacker while he'd remain positive, silent, buckle down & do the job himself, even if it was me who was the slacker!
He conducted himself this way, I believe, because he loved life in all it's details, the people & analyzed and discussed their (positive) idiosyncrasies just like he did his work, refusing to dwell on the negative aspects of society, whereas I do the right thing even though I mostly despise and expect(ed) the worst from nearly everyone but him. So I guess Fred and I had different reasons for doing the same thing. I work hard, am mostly honest, like to help others because I believe it's "right." I'm also much more honest with myself, my faults than most "average" people. But my brother Fred, I recently came to realize shortly before his death, had a much more altruistic reasoning framework for being positive, doing a good job, giving clients more than their money's worth and gladly helping others: He loved them, shared their triumphs and felt their pain, absorbed it, absorbed our negativity and kept it with him, never expelling it like I do all the time. And, while deeply introspective himself (enough to decide long ago that he could not stand a third breakup, another, another bankruptcy when his wife left him for a lover with all the bills, took his children and stuck him with exorbitant child support) but unlike me, he had far fewer flaws to struggle with than the ones I have which I momentarily muss about from time to time and then conveniently forget.
I think that to varying degrees there are people more generally positive and those that are more generally negative and/or simply uncaring for others and that all to some degree sometimes absorb and sometimes deflect the pain of living. But once in a while there is someone extraordinary like my brother Fred, a supremely positive, warm, friendly "can do" person who mostly absorbs the pain of others that we've deflected in the form of negativity, cynicism and our occasional or frequent breakdowns in common human decency to others.
He absorbed all that we expelled and in death, my experience tells me, that same amount of pain he absorbed, must be, by some yet unexplained law of nature, expelled from his lifeless body for us to take back. In other words,the pain can be created by negativity and all sorts of poor human behavioral and character flaws that never goes away and therefore must be absorbed by or deflected around until a better person like Fred absorbs it (can feel it). So when he died, his lifeless body released all the pain and suffering he had collected during his life to go bouncing around off ordinary people until another extraordinary like Fred absorbs it, shielding us from it like the Secret Service agent jumping on top of Ronald Reagan, protecting him from another bullet. Therefore as my half-baked, pseudo-theory goes, the aggregate pain all added together of all the people who loved and lost Fred is equal to the cumulative pain that was burdening his soul that he expelled when he took his life.
I believe that this someday will be measurable and mathematically verified that in life, intelligent, good, open-minded, caring, loving people like Fred who nevertheless manage to remain and display a positive nature are harmed and worn by the life process (we that suck) because they absorb into their being that which they have chosen to overlook (that we suck). So when Freds die, their deaths cause an inordinate amount of pain for those who knew them, precisely because that is how much they endured in life because they were that rare human being an honest, respectful, respectable, thoughtful, loving and above all else, a truly caring person.
Upon their deaths, the pain that all that these rare, precious, unsung people absorbed in life, by some yet-undiscovered natural law, is expelled, and absorbed by we that suck. Then that pain is left for us, finally to deal with that our usual tactics can't handle, so we look for new ways to cope, such as dreaming up and writing stupid things like this. For those of us whose nature it is to deflect the pain using mechanisms such as self absorbstion an /or a bitchy nature and not absorb we must finally and ultimately deal with by experiencing the loss of an extraordinary man like Freddy.
This experience tells me that people like Fred are too good for this world, that we do not deserve to have the benefit of having among us excellent people like him because we literally kill them off.
Finally, I'd like to define the difference between people who are great at something (such as in politics, business, writing, being a celebrity) and those who are great people. My first point about this is that most of us think of movie stars, Presidents, NFL players and J.K. Rowelings as "great" when that is not necessarily the case. Certainly any world-renowned personality may be a great person, but personally I would not know since I have never met any of them.,but it is not being President or the best MLB catcher in the league that makes them a great person, rather it's the person they are that makes them great. So by my estimation, a great person does not have to be famous or widely recognized for any skills, talent or status in society, rather, that person just simply needs to be a good, thoughtful, honest, hard working person that makes the world a better place with their presence in it like my brother Fred Tomberlin, May he rest in peace.
