There’s
this one Bulgarian Ph.D. student in psychology that I know, that I run into in
the school gym’s weightroom half the time.
He’s
pleasant enough, but somehow he lacks a certain savviness and well-placed
suspicion – he’s much too open to things, it seems! – as a Bulgarian friend had
once told me was true of the people of a certain generation on down, who hadn’t
really ever grown up under communism.
Anyhow,
we had both finished sets at the same time, and he was asking how I was,
pleasantly, and I told him something like “Anxious, to tell you the truth, from
ongoing money problems and ongoing family problems” (my standard answer the
past several months, when I do feel anxious, why hide it from people).
He
seemed dismayed, and so I added that I was actually thinking of getting a
cognitive – behavioral therapy self-help book, since I had heard that that was
effective in reforming negative thinking.
“Oh
yes,” he was like, “That’s true, CBT and appropriate drugs have been proven to
be effective, they’re very effective in helping people adapt to situations when
they cannot change them.”
“Effective
in whose perspective?”, I was like.
“Maybe if more people continued to be anxious, they’d be able to
recognize their social disgust, and cause revolution.”
Then,
since he seem dismayed again, I added, “Who says people can’t change their
situation?”, and added again, “We really do need a revolution,” but he still
seemed dismayed.
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