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?
Never give up, Never give in. And remember, there are people on the other side of the planet, people you’ve never met, who actually *do* give a damn about you.
Some of whom are no better than you, no stronger, no prettier, not as good in so many ways, and have been through worse.
You can do this. I can’t guarantee you will. But I can guarantee you can.
Hugs, Zoe
^
dito.
still / again tired, but read part of this already…
the rope…we really stand on the ground…we can breathe in and out slowly, it’s ok… calm down our amygdalas…
recently I forgot my money purse in the fast food restaurant…I really wished I could get it back, among other reasons because it was a present from my love… and someone found it and gave it to the police…they called me at the weekend but I did not answer the phone…they called me again and I got it all back.
thank you, universe. do we get all we really wish for?
also recently I drove too quick in the rain, skidding once around, hitting a traffic sign – I’m working too much…it’s all not that urgent, that important…breathe slowly…
I like it so much walking the dogs at the banks of the river, watching it flow…slowly. Ships swimming by slowly. Sometimes a party ship with disco people on it
Recently the river had high tide, the football ground was under water, a few days later it was gone again.
We’re throwing balls for the dogs there…
back to “do we get all we really wish for?” – what blocks us from wishing for simple happiness? from painting this in a more specific form? how exactly would it look like? like a Van Gogh or Gustav Klimt? With some gold? Abstract?
How to get rid of deep fears, axiomatic assumptions that keep us from painting different pictures?
Maybe we’re in a multiverse and we always stay in some universe-instance where we still are alive?
Some other branches of us have died or are married and have children…
maybe my comments are like some abstract paintings.
hope you pick some kind of meaning from it for you
cu, planning to write more soon
BM3
I did? I don’t remember saying that; I must’ve been high.
Of course, you’ll say I *must* be high, as the Object Of My Obsessions should be arriving next month, and I’m planning on taking her in to live rent-free, as you know. I mention this because, if she weren’t coming, I’d offer the second room to you, in the hopes that your prospects would be better in Seattle than Colorado, and that you shouldn’t go homeless.
Don’t give up. It can be very daunting looking for income that won’t kill you one way or another, it wasn’t too long ago that I was in desperate straits myself, with My Crazy Roommate not getting much of anywhere either (but driving me crazy nonetheless). And my current situation doesn’t have much of a margin of error, so I can only hold out so much hope that things get better.
But better is where you find it, I guess. One week ago this morning, I was at the doctor’s office, getting bloodwork done to see if two of my meds were, in combination, having an adverse effect on my muscles and joints (or whether one or both of them is mixing improperly with that other med of mine, ethanol, which is contraindicated with my Rx). I didn’t know at that point that my tests would come back looking better than in the past; but I also didn’t know that our mutual friend, Danger, was about to have a perilous breakdown (and that doctor’s office was only ten blocks from his house, so I was in his neighborhood when it happened, I just didn’t know).
It’s understandable that you’d envy the outpouring of support he received in his time of crisis; but consider that he is, I’m betting, the single most popular person either of us know, so he shouldn’t be taken as a fair representation of what it means to have friends. Also, the “small army of close friends” you alluded to actually consisted of Aaron, Liz, and myself. (Also Jessica, who was first on the scene, but hasn’t reappeared since.) I think Facebook kind of amplified things, and made it look like people turned out in force, but this wasn’t the case–not that I think that makes the situation any better or worse.
Times are tough, no doubt, and I hope things take a turn for the better for you. You can think in terms of ropes or edges–me, as an existentialist, I’ll just say that adversity defines us. I’d say you’re holding up pretty well, all things considered. Take heart from what Richard Pryor said: “I ain’t dead yet, motherfucker!” (That quote became to title of the Comedy Central tribute to him, two years before he died.)
Zoe, thanks for your vote of support (and confidence?). I appreciate your friending me in the “real world.”
Russ, I imagine I’d feel a little more secure if a couple of my friends here would make the couch-crashing offer…maybe I should just ask. (My friends Theresa and Ben offered a few years ago, and I did take them up on it once, in between apartments, but I’m afraid they got tired of having me around.) Thanks for repeatedly offering me shelter without my having to ask. Even if you can’t help me now because you’ll have a special guest, knock wood.
To summarize the situation as “adversity defines us,” though, seems to shrink the whole world down to nine dots again. I’m trying to ask the question, as bm3 put it, “How to get rid of deep fears, axiomatic assumptions that keep us from painting different pictures?” I’m tired of this passive, survival-oriented, uninspired existence. Last night I watched “Man on Wire” and was blown away by Philippe Petit’s vision and drive…he overcame enormous odds to do the virtually impossible (breaking into the top floor of the WTC to set up and walk a tightrope between the buildings), and along the way he enlisted a motley assortment of unlikely helpers. This wasn’t a guy with enormous resources, or even the cooperation of the authorities. He just didn’t let anything get in his way.
I like the notion that we impose a lot of our own limitations. Rilke said that most people are like the person pacing back and forth in the corner of one room…they stick with what they know, and that way have a certain security. I’d like to get out of my corner! I’m just so close to the “edge” that I don’t feel free to fail. Then again, Petit never obsessed about falling. Failure in his case really DID mean certain death.
Re: Multiverses
We’re in one of the odder ones.
One where there was no WW III, and where I had a natural sex change to the right body.
Talk about an outlier!
So anything can happen.
Three days ago, a friend of mine, one of the few who share my medical condition, was doing sound for a graduation ceremony. She’s a professional sound engineer.
And who should be graduating? Her daughter, who she hadn’t seen or heard from since she was 4 years old. So she got to see her daughter graduate.
The Universe can sometimes deal us nasty, even fatal surprises. But sometimes the most amazingly good ones too, vastly improbable, but they can happen. All you have to do is endure in the meantime.
I of all people should know that. Maybe that’s why your blog caught my eye. Maybe I’ve been put here just to say “Hang On”.
Hugs again, Zoe
Thanks for the hug, Zoe.
That’s a cool story. It made me think of a little tale within the Chechen film “12,” a modern-day adaptation of “12 Angry Men.” When told two unlikely coincidences “don’t just happen” in sequence, an elderly man whose Jewish family survived the Holocaust tells the story of how his father fell in love with an (enemy) Lithuanian officer’s wife during the war…they both spent 10 years in separate Siberian workcamps…then somehow found each other afterwards and had 11 children. The old man, who surprisingly doesn’t blame his father for leaving his mother (“she wasn’t all milk and honey”), concludes “Anything is possible.”
(Another film I heartily recommend. Instead of Puerto Ricans the hated minority are Chechen Muslims.)
i want to smile, i want to dance
- see me dance
Finally had a chance to watch that. Can’t stream at home.
David Lynch…he manages to make everything he does seem a little bit ominous. (I’ve actually been watching Twin Peaks reruns lately.) I like it though.
glad you like it. Lynch is really crazy in a very creative way – I like that a lot
Today he’s a fan of transcendental meditation – with emphasis on the “transcendental”, which I would not follow, but I like the consciousness stuff…packaging this into a luxury product advertisement – yes, that’s magnificently crazy
i am certain that polish-man is an abuser. you don’t just get an order of protection for nothing and usually the system is stacked against the woman. trust me, i know, dear readers, this from personal experience. right now i am trying to get an abuser who tried to kill me and is now violating the order of protection arrested and it can’t seem to get done, a month later. so hold on, my sisters. the “miscarriage of justice” in “domestic disputes” is much more likely to go against the woman. men who kill their partners get an average of 6 years in jail, whereas woman who kill in self-defense get 25. i seriously doubt his diatribe had anything to do with reality. what a jerk!! best thing you did was trust your “gut” and get out.
i commented on the wrong blog–oops!
Right blog…wrong post. At least you were in the right neighborhood! (I tried to see if I could import it to “Not Every Conversation…” but I don’t have that power as administrator.)
Thanks for your expertise on the matter, although I’m very sorry you had to gain it the hard way. That’s scary stuff. PG came across as more or less “normal” at first…perhaps all abusers do…but given how much jail time he said he got, and given the fact that he isn’t allowed any access to his daughters whatsoever — despite his cries and outrage about gross miscarriage of justice — something just smelled bad.