Toxic people

Morford does it again.  This time, he seems to be referring to a neighbor of mine.

Hello, I find you perfectly toxic

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

You spend some time with a person. You go out for a drink, you go to a ballgame, you get matching tattoos, you buy a timeshare in Vegas, you suck at the same giant blue margarita from the same giant pink straw, you howl at the moon and dance 'til dawn and have three unruly kids and regret only one of them.

You take that person to dinner, loan him or her a copy of "Jitterbug Perfume," you hang out after work, you talk about the thrum and pulse of time, sex, dim sum, the universe. It doesn't really matter.

What matters is what comes next. You exit said person's company and you go home, sit down, take a breath, gaze inward and check the gauges. You ask yourself: How do I feel?

Are you energized or depleted? Drained and bleary or a little bit amped and pulsing in the core, ready for more? If you are more tired, you have been poisoned. If you are energized, you have been nourished. Simple, no?

This is the test. This is how you know. This is how you can tell if someone is toxic or replenishing to you and your life and it's failsafe and bulletproof and you should hereby use it the rest of your life.

This is also the test I just discovered -- and paraphrased more or less verbatim -- via one Milton Glaser, who is a famous graphic designer, by way of a talk he gave in London about 10 years ago, in which he cites Fritz Perls, who is a famous gestalt therapist, who was probably citing something/someone else. Glaser mentions this fine test in his talk called "Ten Things I Have Learned," which is a great read all the way through, and when you are done here I highly suggest you go there read the rest because, well, what the hell else are you gonna do, work?

Is it not some form of perfect magic, this test? Is it not some lucid insight so simple and profound that it cannot possibly be true because, well, because we have a hard time believing things can be true if they're so simple and profound?

Doesn't matter. It's easily one of the most invaluable tests on earth, and yet one we overlook or ignore freely, thoughtlessly, to our detriment, every single day. Is someone toxic or nourishing? Is someone good for you or sort of not? How do you know? And what the hell do you do about it when you find out? Do you marry them? Eat them alive? Scream and run like they were a new Adam Sandler movie and you had a shred of taste and nuanced intelligence? Well, yes.

Maybe it's not so simple in practice. For one thing, most people, it appears, are not at all attuned to the tone or quality of their inner energy states. They have no idea which way the needle is pointing -- or if they do, they have no idea why.

This is because the world is loud, chaotic and distracting as a porn star bumble bee car crash on Neptune, and we love nothing more than to let ourselves get caught up in all manner of shiny mental BS so we don't have to try and figure out anything way down deep, where the meanings are.

This is also because tuning in to such energies requires that most difficult and challenging thing of all: practice. And time. And patience. Followed by the hardest part of all: If you find someone is actually sort've toxic or nourishing, well, you might have to do something about it. Make a change. Lose friends. Gain wisdom. Invite a new way. Flip it all around. Get ugly. Get beautiful. Risk. Dare. Try. Try again. Dive in. Dive out. Usurp. Bring forth. I know, right? Goddamn terrifying.

So we avoid. We complicate, make things messier, hang out in comfy numbness, let the mind get in the way and start asking all manner of unnecessary and stupid questions. What sort of energy are you speaking of? What do you mean depleted? Do you mean use this test with everyone? All the time?

After all, how can you tell? A great night out dancing, talking, eye contacting, dropping ecstasy and going bowling, having sweat-drenched sex, or any number of fine and blissful shared activities can leave you breathless and wiped out and going oh my God oh my God oh my God before crashing hard and sleeping for three days in a fine state of yum and yes and wow.

Which is, you know, wonderful. Supercharged. Indelible, in fact.

But that's not the energy we are speaking of. The test is something deeper, more subtle, more about spiritual energy, the flicker in the core, some sort of click of alignment with what the hell you're really all about.

Of course, this test, it's nothing really new. In yoga philosophy we have a nearly identical modality, a way of observing the world around you and measuring its effect, something we might call energy leaking, and it's not just about people but about anything at all -- places, ideas, work, shoes, food, attitudes, situations in your life that either nourish at the core or tend to suck the life force right outta you and cause you to feel endlessly shaky and disoriented and sighing heavily all the damn time, reaching for the bottle or the pill, the reality show or the foodstuff, the doubt or the fear or the endless incessant whining that makes everyone shun you like sunlight shuns Michele Bachmann.

Perhaps this is why the simplest test of all can be the most insanely difficult. Maybe this is why we do not apply it more freely and regularly.

Because if you really employ the test every single day and actually dare to follow through with what you find, well, you can lose family. You can lose (what you thought were) close friends. You can shed dull ideologies, religions, gods. You can leave unhealthy marriages, your job, the way you thought it was all supposed to be. You can gain new and terrifying insights and worldviews that run completely counter to what you thought, felt, loved before.

Some people will think you have gone partially insane. They are partially correct. But, you know, in a good way. Simple, no?

Original.