The Parable of the Horse

Set against the backdrop of a terrifying and tragic personal story Jon discusses and analyzes an old Chinese parable and we ask “what is good, and what is bad?”. This episode includes discussions of mental illness, suicide and the death of amazing pets. This episode may be difficult for some listeners and some podcast hosts…  

Featured Sources:https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/fellows/the-story-of-the-chinese-farmer/ 

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The voice of The Abracast – Hila Assor https://hilaassor.com/


Theme Song “Red Horse Rising” by X-Proph3t: http://www.reverbnation.com/xproph3t
Written / Produced / researched / Performed – Jon Towers

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
In the dark shadows, in the white cold. Fearlessly, we
search for knowledge new and old. We drink the strong
spirits and read the ancient tongs. The order of the Abercast.
We are the brave and the bold. The Abercast a

(00:36):
cult history, conspiracy and violence.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
All right, hey, welcome to the Ebercast. I'm your host,
John Towers, and I feel like we've dodged a bullet.
Dodged a bullet. Oh man, what a wild ride. So
I'm having this weird situation now though, where I feel
like this emergency that I've been kind of preparing for

(01:44):
for the last four years, you know, maybe maybe maybe
it's not needed. Maybe I'm gonna regret having three months
worth over three months worth of emergency of food packway.
Maybe I'm gonna regret having a manual washing machine or

(02:05):
dish uh yeah, washing machine, laundry. Maybe I'm gonna regret
uh all these bullets. I don't you know, I don't
know anyhow. I'm I hope everyone made it through, okay,
And uh man, what a what a wild what a
wild time to be alive. I've been away with things,

(02:31):
so I haven't been around, and I had a bunch
of stuff planned we're gonna start a new series tonight. Maybe.
But as I'm sitting down, you know, I poured my
drink here, I have my weapon of mass distraction as
always here with me, and I'm thinking that might want

(02:56):
to talk about something something else. I had some philosophy
stuff to kind of talk about. But uh so I've
been as open as I can be with you guys
regarding mental health concerns between my my wife and I.

(03:17):
You know, I'm sure I've talked about mental health situations
with my fam, my immediate family and my extended family
and everything. And you know, just about a year ago,
we're coming up on we're coming up on the year
anniversary of some serious shit, and I thought, maybe, you know,

(03:43):
I might just want to talk to you guys about it. So,
you know, we're in the situation where, you know, we
kind of dodged a bullet. We can step back away
from Well I always say that we don't talk about politics.
We talk about you know, conspiracy theories and psyops and
all that other kind of stuff. But whatever however you

(04:03):
put the subject on it, Like, you know, we're in
a space where we can kind of back up away
from those topics. Which is why I had philosophy in mind.
Went to the bookstore today and picked up some things
for us to talk about and discuss. You know, But
again I'm now backtracking, and I feel like I want
to tell you guys story, what happened to me us,

(04:30):
what happened to us just about a year ago, just
about a year ago. What's today's date? I don't know,
so a week from today, last year, the last day
of November twenty twenty three. You know, my wife is bipolar.

(04:58):
She's been diagnosed with bipolar for you know, years, forever,
psych meds, the whole nine yards, everything. And before we
got married, I did my research and stuff, and I
realized that, you know, ninety percent of marriages that have
a bipolar person involved in it, you know, as one

(05:20):
of the two parties ends in divorce. It's got a
huge failure rate, enormous. And you know, we've been married
for a long time. We were together for well, obviously
even longer. We got married in twenty thirteen, and the
last day of November twenty twenty three, we had the

(05:43):
biggest fight ever, a massive World War three level fight,
and it was awful. We don't fight about things, you know,
not just getting into the fight and all all that
other stuff. It was monumental shift and I had decided

(06:09):
that I was leaving. I'm done, I'm punching out, you
know whatever. You gotta do, find another place, but live
like That's how bad, That's how big of a deal
are Uh this fight was it's never happened before. Hope
to god it never you know, happens again. But it

(06:30):
was this. It was a massive I can't state how
big it was. And what happened the next morning was
my wife overdosed on a bunch of medication and she

(06:54):
slashed her wrists. It it was a blood bath. Was
the most horrific thing I had seen. I think that
is saying something. I think I've seen some pretty horrific things.
But this was uh bad, It was awful. And this

(07:17):
led to you know, hospitalization and then after that some
spending some time in uh Western psych psych ward and
uh man, it's hard to process, still hard to process.

(07:40):
There was a lot of trauma, a lot of tears,
a lot of deep, deep problems, uh you know, obviously
with her, but also a lot of problems with me.
A lot of uh issues, Well we'll just say I'll

(08:03):
just say it that way. Hold on, let me let
me get lubed up here real quick. So there was
a lot of you know what before all of this,
like problems with UH acting out, problems with freaking out,

(08:31):
problems with mood swings. Basically, I spent a large amount
of my life on eggshells, worrying about what was coming next, uh,
checking in on you know, emotional levels, haze everything all
what's going on, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

(08:55):
It was I was very unhappy. I was very unhappy. However,
I knew what I was getting myself into when we
got married, right, So when she was freaking or she
had a massive amounts of anger, you know, I would

(09:16):
just see, hey, my wife's hurting and I should do
whatever I can to try to take care of her.
So it you know, this is the most that I've
ever talked about on the show, I guess.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
So.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
The the issue being a lot of time spent being
like a caretaker. And before we got married, she had
some suicidal ideation. Had to take her to a clinic.

(09:52):
You know, she's got a psychiatrist who's given you know,
the her meds and and all of this stuff. So, uh,
you know, I left that morning to go get my
bank card changed because I'm like, well, okay, well this
marriage is over and my financials are compromised because she

(10:18):
knows all my codes and my card numbers and all
of this stuff. So I did that, and then I
then went to the bank, and then I stopped at
a hardware store because I was buying locks. I think,
I mean, I don't think, I know. I was buying
locks to secure make sure my guns were locked up

(10:39):
nice and safe. I had done a pretty good job
of it the night before, you know, when I when
I knew that we were going to get into this fight,
you know, I locked everything up. Everything was good, but
I was like, you know, I need a couple more. Anyhow,
when I got home, there was an ambulance here and

(10:59):
her room, her studio was like a violent crying see.
There's there was blood everywhere Israeli bandages wrapper you know,
popped open. So I had to talk to the ambulance guy,

(11:24):
and I'm like shutting down, like my brain is. I
can't I can't keep up with what's going on. I've
seen the evidence for myself, but I can't kind of
put it all together. I'm he's like, we're taking her here.
There's what's going on. And I just came in and

(11:47):
I'm like sitting there looking at these looking at this
bloodstained carpet, because this is like a bloodbath. And you know,
I went from just being totally blank and numb and
unconnected to the like reality of, you know, what had happened.

(12:10):
The police called me to talk to talk to me.
I can't even remember the conversation, Like I just lost it.
I was, I was out, I was on the I
got on the phone with my father at one point
in time. Uh, I couldn't you know, drive Like you know,

(12:31):
I was a mess, and I'm like I couldn't believe
what had happened. I couldn't come up with a plan
or an idea of what I had to do. I
fell into this hole where I was like, Jesus, if
she did kill herself because of the fight, like what

(12:52):
would have happened to me sort of psychologue like psychologically,
you know, it's totally unprepared to handle any of this stuff.
And sort of on the flip side of that, I'm like,
well that wasn't that was naivete, right, Like I you know,

(13:16):
I've seen this. I knew that this was a possible reaction.
You know. It's just like a choose your own adventure
from fucking hell, right, Like, I'm just stuck in this situation,
and you know, I went to the hospital. She's they
gave her something. She's throwing up all this medication. She

(13:38):
must have had like two hundred fucking pills, you know,
in her her wrists were hamburger like they were just
slashed at hell, you know. And you know, so then
starts the home alone. You know, I'm sitting here with

(14:02):
my cat. I had a seventeen year old black cat
named Edgar. They helped get me through all this stuff,
and you know, I just had to put him down
a couple of weeks ago. It was really rough for me. Anyhow,
I'm jumping around. I'm sorry. Please, we are gonna do
some reading. I'm gonna get through this. I'm just trying
to kind of the set the stage and then we're

(14:26):
gonna talk about the parable of the horse and kind
of then bookend that with kind of current event, kind
of what's this happened? You know whatever. So then there
was the weeks of just being here all by myself
with my cat and watching YouTube videos of you know,
I mean whatever whatever I was watching and just trying

(14:51):
to process this fucking you know, trauma or whatever and
trying to get you know, through it. And you know,
she must have been in the hospital for over a week,
I would, I would guess. And then she was in
the psych word for a couple of weeks, and it

(15:11):
was like going down every day, organizing with her friends
who can come and visit her, and you know what,
all this fucking hoops to jump through, you know, But
I was I was in rough shape. I was at
the end of I was at the end of my rope,

(15:32):
you know, dealing with all this hold on Sprinker wants
me to take. So it was up to me to

(17:11):
you know, call the people in her family that she
still has contact with, to call her friends, call her work.
There was before all of this stuff happened. There was
a long time where she wasn't able to hold a
job and it caused a lot of you know, stress

(17:32):
and problems, and for some reason in my brain, I
just prioritized, like, we've got to keep her job, like
no matter you know what, in order to you know,
when she starts again, she's not starting over there, you
know what I mean, she wasn't happy at her job.

(17:54):
But also I was like, oh, well, we're gonna need
the insurance. So trivial and weird thought, but I have
a vivid memory of like standing in the parking garage
outside the emergency room before they let me get in
to talk to her, calling her best friend and calling

(18:16):
her sister and calling her work and just being like,
you know, there's just been this suicide attempt, and you
know it's this amazing, fucking gigantic problem, and you know,
who need who should be put in charge of delivering
news like this? You know, like it was an emotional wreck,

(18:38):
you know, and you know she, like I said, she
wasn't you know, happy at her job, and there's a
lot of problems at her work and and all that,
you know, and then like getting in to see her
and you know, seeing her throwing up all these pills

(18:59):
and the just massacre of her arms and her wrists,
and you know, then just spending all this time by myself,
you know, and my cat, watching YouTube videos and just
sobbing and just unbelievably you know, I don't want to

(19:24):
say traumatized again because I've said it already too many times.
But like, just you know, this awful thing, and I've
said that before too, Like I can't, I just can't
explain how fucked up I was. I mean, listen to me,
Am I any better right now? I don't know. I

(19:46):
don't know the answer to that, but it was. It
was very challenged, trying and very challenging time. And eventually,
when she got out of the it's like war. They'd
taken her off all over all over meds and then

(20:08):
they start reintroducing them side by side, and it turns
out that she was probably on stuff that was probably
hurting her, you know. But I remember the day I
went to go pick her up. You know, I'd brought
a vape because she hadn't like smoked up for the

(20:32):
whole time she was in the hospital. She complained that
she can only get you know, so much coffee, Like
she can only get a couple of cups of coffee
a day. She wasn't happy with the food and all
this stuff. But she's stuck in there, and she did
like the group stuff, and she did her activities. And

(20:56):
I remember when I picked her up, it was nighttime
and she was sitting in my car with the vape
and you know, she hadn't been outside and probably like
a month and a half, you know, whatever, whatever it was.
And we were coming through down to the city from

(21:18):
Oakland for people who are familiar with Pennsilvan with Pittsburgh,
you know, and the night was like clear, like super
clear and crisp. It was not snowing, and the lights
of the city were like reflecting, and she was like

(21:39):
captivated by the whole thing, and you know, I was like,
this is like, you know, she's kind of being bored again,
you know, like she's kind of you know, you know, figuratively,
symbolically or whatever. Her died and you know, she was

(22:02):
in the hospital and in the psych ward and then
you know, she came out and we were coming home.
She was getting she was gonna be able to see
her cats and whatever, and it was like this really
just special kind of you know moment. Yeah, like I

(22:29):
don't know, I had they made appointments for her to
go to her therapist, and I was driving her everywhere
and making sure she was getting where she needed to go.
And she did an outpatient program where they would meet

(22:51):
during the day like four days a week, five days
a week maybe all day long. It was like a job.
You know, she was like law getting in doing like
these zoom meetings with her group, and you know, we
tried to we started like going on like little adventures
on the weekends. You know, we did we went to

(23:17):
uh she collects you know, gems and crystals, and you
know she's a witch whatever, so we went to like
a gem show and we did uh just other stuff
or whatever. And I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't sleeping, so

(23:43):
I like take her to her psychiatrist appointment and I
would sleep in the car in the parking lot while
she went to go do like her appointments and stuff.
And it was just it was like a really rough
I don't know why I keep saying this. It's obviously
it is a really rough situation for me. Obviously it
was the closest thing to like hell that I've ever

(24:05):
been in. And just let's take a second to fucking
qualify that statement. Uh, you know, without getting too far
far into all this stuff. But you know, as as
weird and wild as the situation was, you know, there

(24:28):
was still you know, bipolar things happening that wasn't necessarily
you know, fine, we're out of the woods. You know,
she might not be suicidal anymore or whatever, but there
were still these giant you know, anger, confidence problems, issues,

(24:50):
a mood swings were still happening, things that were going on.
One that I was like, I can't come out the
other side of this and things just be back to
normal quote whatever that whatever, quote however awful normal was,

(25:12):
however fucking terrible normal was, Like I was, I couldn't
just come out of this fucking meat grinder that I
just got put through and just go back to, you know,
the way, like the way it was before. I was like,
big changes needed, Like, uh, this is all awful. I

(25:38):
was forty nine going on fifty, and I just couldn't.
I couldn't do it. You know, my my life was
a mess. And I had done everything that I could do,
and I couldn't do any I couldn't do anything more.

(26:00):
And you know, I wound up leaving, leaving her. I
wound up leaving her, and what I had done is
uh sh She was going off about doing something, going crazy,
about going crazy about something, and I was just like,

(26:22):
I'm packing up my ship and I'm going to my
dad's house again. Let's fucking take a breath and quantify
that statement. I went and I lived in the room
that I lived in in my freshman year of high
school as a grown, goddamn fifty year old man. And

(26:44):
I didn't like it when I was there the first time.
I fucking certainly did like get going back, going going
back there. It was this, it was this awful again,
another awful situation. I'm staring down the reality of having
to restart my whole goddamn life here at the end

(27:06):
of it. You know, we look at it statistically, the
last twenty years of my life, I got to rebuild
everything because of all this awful shit, all this fucking shit,
and and it was bad. I was in a really,

(27:30):
really low place. I would I've never been homesick before,
you know. I I traveled the world, I was a
combat engineer in the army, I've whatever, like ever whatever.
But I was like homesick, and I messed my cat,

(27:50):
and I hated being at my old man's house, and
and I was at a really you know, low, awful
kind of plates. Mhm, all right, we're finally gonna get

(28:21):
to the point of the episode right after this. All right,

(29:53):
So the link to this is going to be in
the show notes, but you can find this story and
a bunch of different place different versions of it, different iterations.
The one that I decided on this evening is on
a website called word on fire dot org. And this

(30:14):
is something that we, my wife and I discovered. I
believe it was like an Instagram post or something. I
can't really remember where we got this, but through the years,
whenever we would run into issues, we would always say,
you know who knows what's good and what's bad? And
that is a reference to the story that I'm going
to tell you, guys. It's known by many names, the

(30:38):
story of the Chinese farmer who knows what's good and
what's bad, the Farmer's horse. But I like the I
like when it. My favorite title for it is called
the Parable of the Horse. So and I think, if
you guys stick with me, I mean, you've stuck with
me this far, just a little bit longer, and we're

(31:01):
gonna get to the point of it after this evening's raiding.
So here you can tell it's almost done with this
fucking thing. Already long ago, there was a widowed Chinese farmer.

(31:22):
The farmer and his only son labored through the cold
winds of winter and the scorching rays of summer with
their last remaining horse. One day, the sun did not
lock the gate of the stable properly, and the horse
bolted away. And when the neighbors learned what had happened,

(31:43):
they came to the farmer and they said, what sadness
this is Without your horse, you were unable to maintain
your farm. What a failure that your son did not
lock the gate properly. This is a great tragedy. And
the farmer says, maybe yes, you know, maybe no. The

(32:03):
next day, the missing horse was returned to the farmer's stable,
bringing along with it six wild horses, and the farmer
son locked the gate of the stable firmly behind all
seven horses. When the neighbors learned what happened, they came
to the farmer and they said, what happiness is this?
What happiness this brings? With seven horses, you'll be able

(32:26):
to maintain your farm with three of them and sell
the rest for huge profets. What a blessing, old farmer,
What a blessing? And the farmer replied, maybe yes, maybe no.
Who knows what's good? Who knows what's bad. The next day,
the farmer's son was breaking in one of the wild horses,
and the son got thrown from the horse. He fell

(32:50):
on hard rocks and he broke his leg. And guess
what these nebby fucking neighbors did. When the nebby neighbors
learn that's a puts thing, I think nebbe. I haven't
heard that anywhere else besides here, But that means nosy.
When the nosy neighbors learned what happened, they came to
the farmer and they said, what great sadness this is.

(33:10):
Now you will be unable to count on your son's help.
What a failure to break in the horse properly? What
a tragedy, What a tragedy? And the farmer said, maybe, yes,
maybe no. Who knows what's good? Who knows what's bad.
The next day a general from the Imperial Chinese China,

(33:33):
the Imperial Chinese Army, arrived to conscript all the young
men in the village and to the army, and their
assignment was to fight on the front lines of a
battle against a terrifying enemy of overwhelming force. But because
of the farmer's son, because of his broken leg, he
was not taken. And what do you think these fucking

(33:56):
neighbors said. When the neighbors learned what happened, they came
to the farmer and they said, what a great joy
your son avoided facing certain death on the front lines
of battle. What a blessing? And do you know what
the farmer said? The farmer said, maybe, yes, maybe no.

(34:17):
Who knows what's good? Who knows what's bad? Let us
ponder the meaning of this story. You will contemplate this
on the tree of whoa so wild on fire dot
Org goes on to dissect and analyze this story a
little bit. What does this story mean? Perhaps the story

(34:40):
of the Chinese farmer teaches us about suspension of judgment
regarding what actually is a tragedy or a triumph? Can
we always tell what is fortunate and what is unlucky?
Might the wiser course of action often be to often
be to withholdjudgment rather than definitively declare what happens as

(35:05):
good or bad. Maybe, as Alan Watts claims, the story
teaches us radical skepticism, because if it's it is impossible
to tell whether anything that happens is good or bad.
Or On the other hand, this is my hand. This
is the hand that I would deal into. On the

(35:27):
other hand, a Stoic philosopher like Epictetus might see the
story as the farmer's rightful detachment from what is not
in his control, matters about which he should be indifferent.
In his and Caribean, Epictetus taught, there are things which
are within our power, and there are things which are

(35:49):
beyond our power. Within our power, our opinion, aim desire aversion.
And in one word, whatever affairs are our own be
beyond our power, our body, property, reputation, office. And in
one word, whatever we are not proper properly are in

(36:09):
our own affairs. So if you go back in the
way back machine, you might have to go to the
archive for this. Did a whole series on Epictetus and
in Caribean. So if you're interested in that, you know
I have at it. It's all there. I did the
whole book. I did the whole fucking book. I read

(36:31):
the whole thing. Losing his horse, gaining new horses, his
son's broken leg, and his sons avoiding deadly combat are
all matters that are not within the farmer's power to control.
On the Stoic view, the farmer is wise in not
letting these external matters disturb him. As the first Lady

(36:53):
Martha Washington said, I am determined to be cheerful and
happy in whatever situation I may find myself stoic. I
didn't know Martha Washington was a stoic, for I have
learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness
is determined not by our circumstance, but by our disposition,

(37:17):
or we would say, probably nowadays, in our attitude we
would have we would have a good attitude. Or maybe
the story teaches us about how what appears to be
bad initially may ultimately be a blessing. Short term thinking
is not always twenty twenty. How often has something that

(37:37):
seemed like a major setback or even a tragedy at
first becomes the beginning of something great? I know this
from experience. Do we not often see only in hindsight
that a difficulty that was just what we needed to
grow and flourish in the long term? Painful and challenge

(38:00):
genie experiences often lead to development, especially when reframed as
opportunities to grow in skills, virtues, and in bonds. The
ancient Greek playwright boy, here we go. I was getting

(38:20):
ready to read to you guys tonight Marcus Aurelius's Meditations,
and I was getting a head start going through the book.
And I'm like, I'm not gonna be able to pronounce
all this, so let's find something else to do. And
here we go. This sounds like a sneeze. The Greek
playwright Asclesius said, he who learns must suffer. And even

(38:44):
in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by
drop upon the heart, and our own despair against our
will comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
Terrible sufferings is a medicine so dangerous that it may

(39:06):
only be rightfully employed by the divine physician. Perhaps, man,
that was well said the divine physician. Perhaps the story
of the Chinese farmer teaches us about the complicated relationship
between suffering and well being. Sometimes what is indeed bad

(39:31):
breaking a leg can lead to something good, avoiding death
in battle, And yet what is bad remains bad even
if something good comes from it. It is always bad
when an attempted murder takes place. Yet in some cases
an attempted murder leads to something good, like a serial
killer finally getting arrested. Similarly, yeah, that happens all the time.

(39:53):
What couldn't find something. What is good remains good, even
if something bad comes from it. It is a good
for a husband and wife to have a child, even
if years later it is bad that the child becomes
a criminal. The story of the Chinese farmer could also
teach us something about what we ultimately consider good and

(40:16):
evil amid the viscitoos of the lesser goods and evils
in life. People of faith, the ultimate good is enjoying
perfect love, perfect goodness, perfect beauty forever it is called
heaven in the community of those who love each other
and God perfectly. The ultimate evil is eternal self willed loneliness,

(40:43):
a heart forever divided against itself, a will ever frustrated
in seeking the good. In the Inferno, Dante imagine the
fate of the worst lost souls in the lowest ninth
circle of hell, and they are the coldest and smallest
prison cells. A man totally encapsulated in ice, isolated from

(41:03):
each other and lacking in even the smallest freedom. The
ice is made by Satan, who cries tears of frustration
as he flaps his great wings, struggling in vain to
free himself from the ice. Satan's vain, tearful struggle against
God only creates more and more ice, increasing his imprisonment.

(41:30):
The great French novelist Leon Bloy once wrote, the only
real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy
in life, is not to become a saint. If so,
then the only perfect happiness, is the only ultimate success,
and the greatest blessings in life is to become a saint. Someday,

(41:55):
will you and I enjoy the perfect happiness of the saints?
Maybe yes, maybe no? Who knows what's good? Who knows
what's bad? All right, So here's the bookend part. Let's

(43:38):
wrap this thing up. Let me finish my story here
now that we've heard the parable of the horse or
the Chinese farmer, or I don't know, whatever you want
to call it. So after after the event happened, it
was right around I think Christmas time. So we got

(43:59):
our home, we got a kind of like acclimated and everything,
and I was struggling. I needed to find uh a therapist.
I need to find someone to talk to. I've had
therapy before, and I was like I need it, like
I need first, I need someone to help me process

(44:20):
all this stuff is kind of where it started. And
I eventually, because it was the holidays, it was really
hard to like find somebody, and I had like people
that were like, we're not taking new whatevers, And I'm like, ethically,
is that sound? Like? What do you any anyhow who

(44:40):
knows what's good and what's bad? Right? Because I found
in this amazing therapist, uh Cecilia who I saw weekly
for months uh after for six or seven months, and

(45:03):
she I think was some kind of angel and that's
all that I can. You know, it might sound cliche
or something. I don't know, like I think back, she's here,
we go. She uh talk to me about a bunch

(45:28):
of stuff, and sometimes it was just goofing off and
we would just have fun and babble whatever. But she
started talking to me about this internal family system kind
of theory, and I wanted to talk about it at
the time. I wanted to do kind of like a
whole series about it because it was so beneficial. It

(45:49):
helped me so much. Anyone who's having all her time
with anything fucking find a therapist, Like I'm all in
on therapy. But about the time that I left, I
was like, well, what happened? How did it happen? So

(46:13):
I was getting antsy and I was like at my
old man's house, like I was telling you guys, and
I was like, what is she still doing in I
hot Like she's got to go, Like she's got to
find some place to go because I need to come home.
And we would text message and stuff, and I was

(46:34):
just like, you know, it's over, like just just find
someplace to go. And she wound up running me like this.
It would have been like three pages, four pages maybe email,
and she was like, hey, let's do therapy, Let's do
a couples therapy, and let's see if we can get

(46:56):
through all this stuff. And I was just like at first,
you know, my first inkling was like no, no, like
I've had enough. And then I was like, I had
such a positive situation with Cecilia I and you know,

(47:18):
when she first got out of the hospital, she was
trying to sell me on couple's therapy, and you know
my situation that I had with my therapist, I was like,
I'm kind of a hypocrite. If I don't do if
I don't do this because I'm running around telling everyone
do therapy. I had my old man while all this

(47:41):
is going on, listen to this. While all this stuff
is going on in my life, and I'm pushing down
on my old man, I'm moving into his house and
all this stuff. His brother had like a nervous breakdown,
and his sister also attempted suicide. So it's like all

(48:03):
this stuff is going on in the background, and I'm
telling him, you should go see you should go see
a therapist, just talk to them, blah blah blah blah.
And you know, I've talked shit on my old man before,
like he's left of mouse, say tongue, and all this stuff.
Like I can't actually wait for Thanksgiving because I'm gonna
wear my Maga hat. It's gonna be great. We're not
gonna have to stay very long at all anyhow. Also,

(48:24):
by the way, don't break up with your family because
of the fucking politics. Hang in there, do the right thing,
be there for your people. I don't I don't know
what to talk about anyhow. So I agree that I'm
gonna come back home. We're gonna do a couple's counseling
and all this, all this stuff and in the meantime,

(48:51):
she did some kind of like crystal healing, some kind
of energy clearing thing with herself. I mentioned, I've mentioned
for years that she's a witch and she's a wiccan
and you know whatever. But like, when I got home,
she had rearranged the furniture, she fixed the washing machine.
I'd been in a flight with my washing machine for months.

(49:17):
She had basically done all this stuff like by yourself,
like autonomously. She started applying herself, you know, at work. Subsequently,
she's gotten a promotion, and now she's like in this
little leadership job, this little leadership position at a And

(49:40):
I'm not saying little like to Bill little. It like
it's like a first kind of step like leadership position
for her. And I never seen her do anything like
this before. And she's just working through it. And she's
hasn't missed a day of work in like six months
now or something. Maybe once when I was sick, like
she's still home to take care of me. Like that

(50:01):
was nice. But like all the all these great kind
of great things, you know, have happened. And this was
back in June for us, so literally it's been about
you know, six MONTHSS whatever and she's doing like all

(50:22):
these amazing things like attitude or whatever, uh has changed
And all the time now I'm always like, who's to
say what is good and what is bad? And when
you're looking down the barrel of fucking serious, honest to

(50:44):
god suicide attempt, it doesn't get much worse. Like you
there's no there's no other bottom, you know, there's no
rock bottom deeper than that. You know, one, possibly both
of us could have died, died and or lived the

(51:06):
rest of their lives in like this fucking like psychological hell,
like a Nietzschean time loop of guilt. And you know, bullshit,
and you know awful, terrible awfulness, you know. So you know,

(51:27):
when I think of the parable the horse or the
Chinese farmer or whatever the fuck we're calling it, you
know who knows what's good and who knows what's bad.
If you would have went back, if you would have
went back a year ago, remember all this stuff started, well,
it didn't all start on but the point of no

(51:53):
return was the last day of November. If you would
have went back to this date, November twenty fourth, twenty
twenty three, and you were able to pull me to
twenty twenty three me out of like the timeline and
been like, hey, bro, in a year, guess what. A

(52:16):
year from now, your wife's going to be confident, confident driven.
She's gonna have gotten a promotion at work, she's gonna
be making more money than she's ever made before. She's
gonna have you know, people asking her all these difficult
questions and advice, and she's gonna do it. And you're

(52:37):
not going to have a single freak out moment in
six In six months, you know, I would have never
believed you. I would have never in a million years
believe believed it the most peaceful time of our marriage.
And again, let's just take a breath and think about

(53:00):
what that fucking means in our relationship. The most peaceful time,
you know. And I'm not saying it's perfect. We got shit.
We're still you know, working on and getting through. But
I don't feel like I'm walking on eggshells. I don't
feel like I'm waiting for another shoe to drop. We
haven't had like a bipolar meltdown since I've been back home.

(53:24):
Like it's this, it's been this amazing thing. We're getting
ready to not pull the shoot on the couple's therapy.
But we're backing off. We're going to from my therapy
sessions with Cecilia weekly to our couple's therapy every two weeks.

(53:47):
Now we're gonna be fluctuating that too, and changing that,
evolving that, graduating that till like once a month, just
for like accountability purposes in this kind of stuff, Like
it's the difference between night and day and uh, you
know I'm sleeping, you know certain you know, pressures and

(54:16):
stress are still there totally, but it's not like critical.
It's not life altering, it's not life ending. It's not
anything that I would equate with being trapped in any
kind of hell. So you know, I ask you then,

(54:41):
you know, was it a tragedy? Who's to saying maybe yes,
maybe no? Uh, who's to say what's good and what's bad?
I mean, it's been an amazing year. It's been an

(55:03):
awful year. I can't wait for this year to get over.
And it's like the hits just keep coming, right, Like
I just had to put my cat down, seventeen year old,
the King of All Black Cats, Edgar. But I feel
like I'm digressing. So if you guys, if anybody out
there is listening to this and they need some sort

(55:25):
of help, you know, therapy, therapy, and then like crystal
energy clearing might help you out too, you know. Not
to laugh about it. Obviously, this whatever happened, changed our lives,
you know. But with that being said, there was also
an awful lot of like Hungarian Catholics praying for us.

(55:47):
So maybe it was the work of Jesus and God
came down. I'm not dismissing that. I'm not being funny
about it at all. It's been a profound fucking something happened.
Who to say what's good and what's bad? I'm John

(56:08):
Towers and this is uh the Abercast. Well, uh, maybe
we'll start Marcus releases meditations next week. I want to
get back on the horse. I hope everybody's doing good.

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