June. The month Sam would have come back, if he were coming back. The end of nine months. Recently I deleted him out of my phone, but he’s been entering more frequently into my thoughts and even my dreams. All of my dating thus far has gone nowhere — unless you count Eli and me becoming better friends — and when I seemed to magically wish the legendary Jonah into finally materializing at a play I attended a few weeks ago, I realized that there was nary a spark remaining between us. (That was a strange week: everyone I so much as thought about either contacted me or appeared. I felt supernaturally gifted.)
Match.com and Chemistry.com are still sending me matches daily, but I have a gut feeling I won’t meet “The One” online. My few Web flirtations have fizzled, strangely thwarted by inopportune multiple power outages and Internet problems.
Without any romantic prospects to distract me right now, and becoming increasingly alarmed at my diminishing funds, I’m faced once again with the perennial questions of work, vocation, purpose, and the constraints of survival fear.
**
The Plan fell through. The Plan was to get a certain salaried 30-hrs-a-week state job (with benefits) that would pay well enough to allow me to hire Lisa Brown to take me through her “Live Your Dreams” program. I didn’t land that job, however, after months of testing and jumping through hoops, and now four months later I’m burnt out and underemployed at the call center, sending out resumes willy-nilly to jobs I merely imagine I could tolerate, and watching my last thousand in savings (the European Dream Fund) slip away like sand in an hourglass.
I am in bare-minimum survival mode. I don’t like being in this mode. Lately I’ve been thinking about the mental frameworks we live by (that define what we believe is possible for us), and rereading the Zanders’ book The Art of Possibility. I started to think about the last time I busted through my own internal fear-constraints to enter into an experience that was better than anything I could have imagined.
It was, of course, when I was grappling with my ambivalence about going forward with Sam. I revisited that comments thread and found some wisdom there.
**
Chris the coach had asked me what my hesitation was in going forward, and I did my best to answer.
It’s like being afraid of setting anything in motion, like a chain of dominoes or a snowball rolling downhill. You don’t know what all’s going to happen, or where it’s going to go. What if I’m a disappointment to him? What if he’s a disappointment to me? What if one of us is more smitten? I almost don’t mind being the one “on the bottom,” as my ex-therapist used to put it…I’m just so loath to be the cause of injury to anyone. Or what if it really does turn into something? Am I prepared for that?
I was taking inventory of my every fear of every unwanted outcome — which is the way I typically approach everything I undertake. I learned this early on: my dad for one was sure, with his incessant quizzing, to instill the proper anxiety in me about every possible thing that could ever go wrong. If I missed something, after all, the worst would surely happen, and then not only would I be up a creek, but my stupidity would be a proven and public fact .
My loyal German reader had a parable for me, in response, borrowed from experimental psychologist and “eco-philosopher” Peter Russell:
We are like a person holding on to a piece of rope.
He holds on for dear life, knowing that if he were to let go he would fall to his death. His parents, his teachers, and many others have told him this is so; and when he looks around he can see everyone else doing the same.
Nothing would induce him to let go.
Along comes a wise person. She knows that holding on is unnecessary, that the security it offers is illusory, and only holds you where you are. So she looks for a way to dispel his illusions and help him to be free.
She talks of real security, of deeper joy, of true happiness, of peace of mind. She tells him that he can taste this if he will just release one finger from the rope.
“One finger,” thinks the man; “that’s not too much to risk for a taste of bliss.” So he agrees to take this first initiation.
And he does taste greater joy, happiness, and peace of mind.
But not enough to bring lasting fulfillment.
“Even greater joy, happiness and peace can be yours,” she tells him, “if you will just release a second finger.”
“This,” he tells himself, “is going to be more difficult. Can I do it? Will it be safe? Do I have the courage?” He hesitates, then, flexing his finger, feels how it would be to let go a little more . . . and takes the risk.
He is relieved to find he does not fall; instead he discovers greater happiness and inner peace.
But could more be possible?
“Trust me,” she says. “Have I failed you so far? I know your fears, I know what your mind is telling you — that this is crazy, that it goes against everything you have ever learnt — but please, trust me. Look at me, am I not free? I promise you will be safe, and you will know even greater happiness and contentment.”
“Do I really want happiness and inner peace so much,” he wonders, “that I am prepared to risk all that I hold dear? In principle, yes; but can I be sure that I will be safe, that I will not fall?” With a little coaxing he begins to look at his fears, to consider their basis, and to explore what it is he really wants. Slowly he feels his fingers soften and relax. He knows he can do it. And he knows he must do it. It is only a matter of time until he releases his grip.
And as he does an even greater sense of peace flows through him.
He is now hanging by one finger. Reason tells him he should have fallen a finger or two ago, but he hasn”t. “Is there something wrong with holding on itself?” he asks himself. “Have I been wrong all the time?”
“This one is up to you,” she says. “I can help you no further. Just remember that all your fears are groundless.”
Trusting his quiet inner voice, he gradually releases the last finger.
And nothing happens.
He stays exactly where he is.
Then he realizes why. He has been standing on the ground all along.
And as he looks at the ground, knowing he need never hold on again, he finds true peace of mind.
Somehow this tale eased my misgivings. My friend Russ the Librarian added, “Sometimes it’s best to just let that insecurity go and dive in head-first.” That image, of “diving in,” brought up a memory for me of facing my fear of heights as a teenager:
I’ll never forget the time on a camping trip that I jumped off a bridge (with an inner tube) into a river. My fear of heights had me absolutely paralyzed. The longer I stood there, the harder it was to jump. Finally I just did it…and the fall and the dunk and the bobbing up was exhilarating and fun.
It taught me a lot about my tendency towards overthinking.
**
Benjamin Zander in The Art of Possibility demonstrates the puzzle of the nine dots. The challenge is to connect all nine dots with just four lines, without taking pen from paper.
Most people, of course, see a “box” here, and cannot fathom how to connect the dots within the box with less than five lines. The answer is, of course, to use the white space around the dots (to “think outside the box”) and create an arrow figure.
Says Zander, “The frames our minds create define — and confine — what we perceive to be possible. Every problem, every dilemma, every dead end we find ourselves facing in life, only appears unsolvable inside a particular frame or point of view. Enlarge the box, or create another frame around the data, and problems vanish, while new opportunities appear.”
If you learn to notice and distinguish (the invented stories you tell), you will be able to break through the barriers of any “box” that contains unwanted conditions and create other conditions or narratives that support the life you envision for yourself and those around you. We do not mean that you can just make anything up and have it magically appear. We mean that you can shift the framework to one whose underlying assumptions allow for the conditions you desire.
These are some of the stories I tell myself: I am all alone, with no one to rely on but myself — no one will help me; I am not fit or competent to do more than survive by the skin of my teeth on my own; no one wants or values my talents and gifts; if I run out of money, I will either have to go back and live with my parents (the ONLY ones who will take me in) as a failed Prodigal child, in that insanity-inducing religious environment, or live on the street. (Or kill myself.)
These are all part of a narrative of scarcity and terror, of consistently giving myself (not to mention my so-called friends and loved ones) C’s and D’s, even F’s, in life.
**
“All of the manifestations of the world of measurement,” says Zander, “the winning and the losing, the gaining of acceptance and the threatened rejection, the raised hopes and the dash into despair — all are based on a single assumption that is hidden from our awareness.”
The assumption is that life is about staying alive and making it through — surviving in a world of scarcity and peril. Even when life is at its best in the measurement world, this assumption is the backdrop for the play, and, like the invisible box around the nine dots, it keeps the universe of possibility out of view…
On the whole, resources are more likely to come to you if in greater abundance when you are generous and inclusive and engage people in your passion for life. There aren’t any guarantees, of course. When you are oriented to abundance, you care less about being in control, and you take more risks…in the measurement world, you set a goal and strive for it. In the universe of possibility, you set the context and let life unfold.
As an alternative to the measurement approach, Zander espouses the practice of “giving an A.” We are so used to being evaluated and compared to others from our earliest years, he explains, that performance anxiety can short-circuit our best efforts and shrink our creative horizons.
Zander’s radical solution, with his own music students, was to grant everyone an A for the year, but require them to write an essay — dated the following May! — explaining what they had done over the course of the year to earn this grade. This exercise opened the door for the students to envision their best abilities coming forward and developing, rather than causing them to obsess and compete.
Getting feedback later on how the class felt about doing this assignment, Zander heard from one of his more reticent Asian students. The young man’s words reduced me to tears.
In Taiwan, I was Number 68 out of 70 student. I come to Boston and Mr. Zander says I am an A. Very confusing. I walk about, three weeks, very confused. I am Number 68, but Mr. Zander says I am an A student…I am Number 68, but Mr. Zander says I am an A. One day I discover much happier A than Number 68. So I decide I am an A.
As the author says,
Giving an A is a fundamental, paradigmatic shift toward the realization that it’s all invented — the A is invented and the Number 68 is invented, and so are all the judgments in between. Some readers might conclude that our practice is merely an exercise in putting a “positive spin” on a negative opinion, or “thinking the best of someone,” and “letting bygones be bygones.” But that is not it at all. No behavior of the person to whom you assign an A need be whitewashed by that grade, and no action is so bad that behind it you cannot recognize a human being to whom you can speak the truth. You can grant the proverbial ax murderer an A by addressing him as a person who knows he has forfeited his humanity and lost all control, and you can give your sullen, secretive, lazy teenager an A, and she will still at that moment be sleeping the morning away. When she awakes, however, the conversation between you and her will go a little differently because she will have become for you a person whose true nature is to participate — however blocked she may be.
**
The call center is a small, boxed-in universe run by anxious authoritarians who live and breathe the world of measurement; creative deviation from the “call process” is sharply reprimanded, while performance quotas are monitored closely. No wonder I feel like I’m suffocating there. (It occurs to me that Sam’s genius as a leader was that he naturally “granted A’s” to callers and treated them as collaborators rather than misbehaving children.) At the same time, it fully reflects my present desperate survival orientation toward the world: in conditions of scarcity and peril, one takes whatever one can get, no matter how much one is required to give (in opposition to one’s nature, at that) for how little return, even punishment.
I have been in this “starving” mode since I was nineteen and left home for good, feeling that it was all up to me, alone, and that I was, in actuality, hardly up to the daunting task. I imagined a life of washing dishes in restaurant kitchens and other entry-level grunt jobs, making an honest if poor living.
Now that my back and knees and shoulder are giving me trouble I can’t even take care of properly, I can no longer rely on this forty-two-year-old body for physical labor. This, along with my deteriorating condition, frightens me. I never had a backup plan.
To tell you the truth, I always expected I’d be dead by now.
**
A college friend hitting the bottom of the barrel basically tries to drink himself to death, and dozens of people respond immediately. A small army of close friends keeps a vigil at the hospital and then rents a hotel room while others clean house (clearing out bottles). From afar comes a massive outpouring of expressions of love and support. Everyone cares. Everyone wants to help.
Is it sick of me to be envious?
Maybe the problem is that I’m too proud to disintegrate publicly, or to show any real fear or neediness. My mother’s (unhappy, complaining) mother intruded upon every fragile boundary of my adolescent self when her disease forced her to live out the rest of her days in our living room, and from that experience I conceived a lifelong terror of “being a burden” to anyone. I would literally rather die. I usually have to be at my wits’ end to ask for help.
The bottom line here is, I guess, that I don’t believe I have the freedom to fail. I’ve never taken big risks because I’m certain there’s no net beneath me. (Sometimes I’ve wondered what it would have been like to be the young woman whose wealthy parents paid for her entire education and regularly sent large sums of cash when she needed it…or even to be my brother, who lived at home after college and got his first big career break with a man from our church.) It’s all up to me, I have no one to rely on but myself, and I’m not the kind of competent that leads to merit-based success in life.
**
At the end of all this ruminating, I find myself returning to the rope, and jumping off bridges, and the puzzle of the nine dots, and Ben Zander’s A. I stepped out of the box once — I took a genuine risk that genuinely worried me — and I did find, in the end, that I was already standing on the ground. Sam may have been a confused kid who did too many drugs and ultimately left me, but he also left me better off than he found me, because he knew how to give love. I went beyond the nine dots when I fell for a man because of the quality of his heart.
Of course, in this case surviving in the world is what’s at stake. Is there really ground beneath my feet? Are all my assumptions mistaken? Will someone be there to catch me if I risk and fail? Am I so certain to fail? I’ve given myself no better than C’s (and others even lower grades) thus far. What if I believed that others wanted what I have to contribute, and that they were happy to help me? What would that even look like?
And what would I do now?
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