The Keeper of the Keys:

The Keeper of the Keys:

I recently read a somewhat distressing post on Instagram:

“You’re going to come across a woman who has it together. Be honest with yourself.

If you’re not ready, admire from afar.”

This one took a while to decipher, as do most aphorisms.

If it were several centuries old I would have attributed its contents to one of the more repressive dynasties in Ancient China. But I decided not to jump to that cynical conclusion.

One interpretation I gathered was that it is best to create spaces in any courtship. Love takes time. Yet what does that have to do with “having it together”? And furthermore: what EXACTLY does that Orwellian idiom MEAN?

I elected to inquire:

-          What does that even mean? To “have it together”? To be “ready”? To be “afar”?

-          Put an other way: if someone truly “has it together”, what could there be to be “ready” for?

-          Okay I think I get it. She believes that she has it all figured out and would prefer to keep you at a distance to prevent you thinking (or convincing her) that she is Wrong.

USUALLY I interpret the idiom “to have it all together” to suggest that one has attained some degree of mental health and maturity. But that all ways seemed to entail not ONLY a great degree of Privacy, but ALL so a great degree of SOCIABILITY. The healthier that one is, the less one needs to keep Others at a Distance, because the Self has been made secure.

So what is to be inferred from the advice?

And what does one need to be “ready” for?

Supposing that the topic is romance. One is never “ready” for love; it just happens. Its nature is literally the antithesis of anything for which one might be “prepared”.

And is this advice in the interest of the woman herself? Or is it a warning?

Besides that, why should one have to be “honest with one’s self” moreso than if she had NOT had it all together? Does an other human being’s sorrow grant one an excuse to skip classes in Self-Knowledge?

Fundamentally it seems difficult to escape the more eerie implications. I would be rushing to judge, and to judge harshly, if I were to act on these implications. And yet they are made no less haunting by this reservation.

One exceedingly cynical reading is as follows:

That in approaching a woman who has STATUS one should be vigilant of one’s own status. If one’s STATUS is wanting, one should humble one’s self instead of pursuing a relationship, allowing her to choose an other suitor.

But all of this makes one feel as though one were a guest in the Sultan’s Palace, NOT a resident of the notoriously egalitarian United States of America.

After all: what the FUCK is Status?

One may have accrued a resume that is at once diverse and impressive and one might still be much too shy, either by virtue of temperament or by vice of upbringing, to take full credit for it. One goes to the job interview or to the date as to a Sacrificial Altar, not knowing what will happen next. He does not “have it all together”, because there are so many variables outside of his control, and he KNOWS that. But is any one any different? Only in that they may not KNOW. And is it not true that the most FEARFUL people are the ones who find the greatest need to put on airs and to PRETEND?

If the woman in question is honest with HER OWN SELF, she will admit that it is silly to claim to have it ALL together. There is no definite line where one ends and the Other begins. So it is best to have the humility to help others up, rather than to keep them at a distance. After all: Maslow pointed out that the individual who self-actualizes by means of competition, corruption and conceit is going to be less satisfied and less satisfying than the one who climbs the Hierarchy of Human Needs by helping others along the way. (And by this of course I do NOT mean to use others as means towards ends under the AUSPICES of helping them, but rather legitimately, like Hagrid from Harry Potter, SLOWING ONE’S ASCENT through the ranks in order to remain as a Helper, Friend, and Gamekeeper.)

Dm.A.A.