Thank you for telling us who you are Elon!

When I listen to all the squabble about Elon Musk’s painfully honest interview in the New York Times, it makes me really worry about our society and where it is going. A man takes the risk of being honest — nothing else but honest about his feelings, and commentators like the Bloomberg news reporter who is assigned to keep up with Musk say things like ‘he’s lost it’, and the interviewers on CBS This Morning Saturday, including the newly bearded male commentator going through his midlife stuff by porting the beard that ‘all of the young men’ are wearing, chime in on how scary and self-wounding Musk’s comments are, I challenge that it is they who are worrisome. Follow me here, as someone who frequently lied to cover my drug use during my addiction, it was a great relief to never have to lie again once I got sober. It had been drilled into me that ‘we are as sick as our secrets and lies’. So far, these last 15 years, and underlined by the monster in the white house, lying and saying what will look good or what one thinks others want to hear is evidence of personality and psychological problems. Musk probably touched on those things that many if not all of us have felt at times and scared the daylights out of some people with his honesty. Frankly, I applaud him. Not many people are anywhere near okay enough with themselves to do that. He simply has no fears about how people judge him — he has much better ethics than to lie and much better things to occupy his mind with than what you or I think of him. Too many of us today depend on what others say about us to tell us how we are doing. I sure did for a very long time. Boy oh boy has it been a relief to give that up. Sure, telling the truth isn’t frequently the road to popularity, but at the end of the day, I never feel remorse for what I have said nor do I ever worry about being found out. Just look at our president — a man who depends on people around him telling him how right he is despite the reality to the contrary. He is so abusing the powers of his office in his efforts to obstruct justice that it is sickening. Just wait until he bears the fruits of his labors after the midterms where he will learn that the truth — not his pardons and blocking of the truth would have set him free.

So — Bravo to you Elon for being brave and okay enough with who you are and your process in life to tell us all about it. We can all learn to take a page out of your playbook. Sure, you have made mistakes — as I recall, you are human, and that is what we do.

This touches on what Glenn Close and others are finally talking about: MENTAL ILLNESS. Since acquiring my Masters in Counseling Psychology, and my endless study of various treatment modalities, none of which are terribly successful, for addiction, I have become quite aware of just how common some form of mental illness is to all of us, yet few of us outside of California, where everyone is in some form of therapy and as the saying goes, ‘It’s Hip to be Sick’, ever talk about it. If ever it was time to start talking about things like ‘feelings and fears’ and the other manifestations of mental challenges, it is now. I had a crash course in Paranoid Schizophrenia when my sister, a recent honors graduate from Harvard, presented with perhaps the most misunderstood mental illnesses. I wish I had been better equipped to deal with that, and openness and talking about things are the start most of us never have. Please, let’s learn from experiences like my own and change things.

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