Once upon a time, there was a girl who needed to make a phone call for her work. She was not a girl who liked to make phone calls to unknown entities to begin with, and this phone call was to one of the scariest entities in all the land: a nun. It was scary because a few months earlier, she had written a difficult and demanding manuscript for some nuns, and they had scorned it, snatched it away, and sighed that they would just have to do it themselves.
The girl really did not want to make this phone call. She hemmed and hawed, she puttered and procrastinated. Procrastinating made her feel miserable. She talked it over with some friends. They agreed that she had good reason to fear the phone call to the scary nuns. They agreed that procrastinating tends to make one feel miserable and only serves to prolong anxiety. Everyone was in agreement. But this did not change the fact that she had to place the call, and reeeeallly didn't want to.
She pondered and fretted. She knew with her mind that what she needed was courage. She thought of something Wilma Mankiller had said, that the difference between a cow and a buffalo is that buffalo run toward a gathering storm rather than away from it, and therefore get through it faster. She knew that she should be like the buffalo.
But how? How does one muster courage? How does one become like the buffalo?
The girl Googled "facing your fear". She found some advice that told her to think about the benefits of doing the thing she was afraid. She thought about how it would feel to have placed the call - she would feel light, free, un-guilty, confident, peaceful. She asked herself, is this something you are willing to do for yourself? Are you willing to fight for this reward? Yes, she decided.
She gathered the phone number. She dialed it quickly so that she wouldn't have a chance to hang up before it rang. It rang. The nun wasn't there. She left a voicemail.
She felt relieved. The burden was lifted, for now. She could move forward. She felt strong and determined. She lived happyishly ever after. At least until the next phone call.
The End
Showing posts with label human suffering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label human suffering. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
This Time Last Year
Not to linger in the past, but as the calendar turns and personally significant dates come into view again, I can't help but think about what I was doing 365 days ago. This time last year I was about to begin a 24-hour fast before a colonoscopy/endoscopy.
From the vantage point of a year's time, the whole summer was a blur of sweaty bike rides past tractor trailers and dumpsters to work, stomach cramps, getting to know the ugly new cubicle world that had become my life, and making frequent trips to the bathroom. I used to sit outside at the picnic table in the overgrown grass in the blistering sun, eating pre-canned tuna and crackers, and calling MamaBear to complain. "I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, " was all I could say.
I recently tried eating one of those tuna packs again, and found that I no longer liked the taste. I have close to a physical aversion now.
I am trying hard to think of that time not as a miserable miasma of misery, topped with a soupcon of fear and a smattering of foreboding insurance letters, but as a time when I went up against scary, bewildering, painful things, and came out on top. As evidence of grit and bounce-back-ativeness, and not the suckiness that is achievable in this life.
In honor of this, and of the book by Cheryl Richardson which I just picked up at the used bookstore that instructs me to do so, I will now write a list of 25 things I have accomplished in the past year.
1. Managed newfound chronic illness and attendant insurance mazes, pill regimens, doctor's appointments, dietary restrictions, symptom tracking, and medical bills. (Guess what, I pay off the hospital stay this month!! Now all that's left is the ER visit and the butt-scopes :/) In fact, let's make that an entirely separate accomplishment:
2.Paid off majority of attendant medical bills.
3.Quit soul-sucking job despite unknown outcomes.
4. Did so in a classy and non-spineless way.
5.Dealt with fallout from remarkably crap-tastic year of catastrophe.
6.Joined a writing group.
7.Took an art class.
8.Re-discovered my enjoyment of working at Eastern State.
9.Turned down offer to return to soul-sucking temp job.
10.Discovered my new favorite Ethiopian restaurant with Spangles.
11.Graduated from Celebrant school.
12.Landed 3 celebrant gigs, including one with a couple I'm not friends with!
13. Downloaded free screenwriting software.
14. Became obsessed with, and inspired by, the tv show ballykissangel.
15. Found and signed lease on a new apartment with Spangles.
16. Learned some things about West Philadelphia's history.
17. Spent a lot of quality time at family events.
18. Made medium-firm plans to attend graduate school.
19.Got a new computer.
20.Learned to cook some new dishes.
21. Began collecting songs for my happiness playlists.
22.Spent time with old and new friends.
23. Began collaging with magazine cutouts.
24.Started writing in this blog.
25. Survived. Didn't give up. Kept trying.
So, there I go. Not bad for a rebound year.
From the vantage point of a year's time, the whole summer was a blur of sweaty bike rides past tractor trailers and dumpsters to work, stomach cramps, getting to know the ugly new cubicle world that had become my life, and making frequent trips to the bathroom. I used to sit outside at the picnic table in the overgrown grass in the blistering sun, eating pre-canned tuna and crackers, and calling MamaBear to complain. "I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, " was all I could say.
I recently tried eating one of those tuna packs again, and found that I no longer liked the taste. I have close to a physical aversion now.
I am trying hard to think of that time not as a miserable miasma of misery, topped with a soupcon of fear and a smattering of foreboding insurance letters, but as a time when I went up against scary, bewildering, painful things, and came out on top. As evidence of grit and bounce-back-ativeness, and not the suckiness that is achievable in this life.
In honor of this, and of the book by Cheryl Richardson which I just picked up at the used bookstore that instructs me to do so, I will now write a list of 25 things I have accomplished in the past year.
1. Managed newfound chronic illness and attendant insurance mazes, pill regimens, doctor's appointments, dietary restrictions, symptom tracking, and medical bills. (Guess what, I pay off the hospital stay this month!! Now all that's left is the ER visit and the butt-scopes :/) In fact, let's make that an entirely separate accomplishment:
2.Paid off majority of attendant medical bills.
3.Quit soul-sucking job despite unknown outcomes.
4. Did so in a classy and non-spineless way.
5.Dealt with fallout from remarkably crap-tastic year of catastrophe.
6.Joined a writing group.
7.Took an art class.
8.Re-discovered my enjoyment of working at Eastern State.
9.Turned down offer to return to soul-sucking temp job.
10.Discovered my new favorite Ethiopian restaurant with Spangles.
11.Graduated from Celebrant school.
12.Landed 3 celebrant gigs, including one with a couple I'm not friends with!
13. Downloaded free screenwriting software.
14. Became obsessed with, and inspired by, the tv show ballykissangel.
15. Found and signed lease on a new apartment with Spangles.
16. Learned some things about West Philadelphia's history.
17. Spent a lot of quality time at family events.
18. Made medium-firm plans to attend graduate school.
19.Got a new computer.
20.Learned to cook some new dishes.
21. Began collecting songs for my happiness playlists.
22.Spent time with old and new friends.
23. Began collaging with magazine cutouts.
24.Started writing in this blog.
25. Survived. Didn't give up. Kept trying.
So, there I go. Not bad for a rebound year.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
The Bridge That Carried Me Over
I have observed before how quickly I can go from zero to sniffly. To wit, this morning Spangles and I got coffee and a croissant and strolled down to Clark Park, which on Saturday mornings is a quintessential West Philly scene and one of the main reasons I'm planning to move there. Every Saturday there's a big farmer's market, people, children, picnic blankets, dogs, and when the sun is out and the people are spring feverish there's not a more festive place on the planet. Today there was a large choir of Mennonites in the square, singing some gorgeous hymns - practicing, perhaps, for Palm Sunday tomorrow.
I looked forward to the time when Spangles and I will live close by together, able to roll out of bed and ramble down there as frequently as we like. If we get the apartment we applied for, we will live but two blocks away.
As I chewed a big buttery mouthful of croissant, I was overwhelmed with one of those "isn't life grand" feelings, and looked up at Spangles, and up at the trees, goofy with pleasure.
Less than an hour later, as I headed back to my apartment while Spangles headed off on a bike ride with his dad, the morning's glow had evaporated. I felt kind of anxious and off, some rocks in the stomach, un-pin-point-able dread. Was it just self-flagellation about my messy, gloomy apartment and the plants I've been neglecting? Have I been spending so much time in the company of Spangles that, pathetically, I can no longer enjoy the company of just myself?
When I got in, I found that MamaBear had sent me an article she thought I would like. It's a woman describing her struggle with losing her job and deciding to move and trying to slow down to appreciate the little things - except much more eloquent. And as MamaBear rightly assumed, there's nothing I love more than a good story about a sleepless, heart-wrenched woman whose pain slowly gives way to hope and gratitude, and I read it greedily.
One part in particular struck a gong, as she was describing her decision to move, and I found that I had burst into tears. But at the same time, the clouds suddenly parted, and I had the realization "Oh, you're sad about moving away!"
Not sad about leaving the tiny galley kitchen or or the lady who yells her conversations in the laundromat below at 8am on Saturday mornings, or about the awkard backwards-hung front doors or the occasional rodent roommate or the dropped ceiling that collapsed on us last summer. And most definitely not sad about moving to an apartment (I hope I hope) with hardwood floors and a little grassy patch outside and an actual dishwasher that is an actual machine and not Spangles in rubber gloves.
But it will be the end of an era. This is and will be "my first apartment." This is where I grew from a bewildered, wide-eyed recent college graduate into a bewildered but increasingly cynical cosmopolitan city girl. This is where I had friends over, sometimes, where my sisters slept over on the couch, but more often where I was alone. This is where I first encountered that "real world" they so often talked about, with its electric bills and errands to run and groceries to buy.
This is where I learned all of my most painful lessons of adulthood - where I learned about loneliness, unemployment, increases in insurance premiums. This is where I first felt the strange floatiness when friends announced they were engaged and I realized that we were now at that age where we do that kind of thing. This is where I learned that people you know can die in tragic, unfair ways. This is where I learned that there can be times when bad news just keeps washing in from all sides and it feels like the only option is to crawl into a bomb shelter with some canned goods and wait for Armageddon. This is where I sat curled in pain before I knew the name for what I had. And this is where I cried about it, logging long hours of tears.
There were good times, too. Bottles of wine and rambling conversations, nights we climbed out the window on the the roof, hours I spent talking on the the phone with The Twin, gabbing and wandering in circles through the apartment. The time Steph and I melted a patch of carpet while conducting an ad-hoc ceremony to release negative vibes and boys who didn't love us. I remember painting the walls with T-bone when I first moved in, the care he took in teaching me how to do it right, like passing down a family tradition, the way he bought me all the paint but didn't say a word, even about the bright tangerine orange color. I remember the first time Spangles came over, for spaghetti, when we were both kinda realizing that we both kinda liked each other.
This is the apartment that got me where I am today. Who was it that said, praise the bridge that carried you over?
And even though I'm ready for greener pastures, preferably pastures to which I have exclusive access through a back door, I'm realizing that old truth about how beginnings and ends are hopelessly intertwined. I'm realizing that I do keep getting older, and even though I'm still young, I'm not that young, I'm not the child that I once was. I can rent a car without the extra fee, I can apply for an apartment without a co-signer, I can roast a chicken and serve it to guests. I'm remembering that this, right here, is my life, in which I'm in the process of writing the story of my twenties. The stories which, when my elders told me theirs, seemed so set in stone, so final, as if they had simply been the decree of the Fates from the very beginning, not an uncertain present with an uncertain outcome.
It's just the passage of time, the most dependable thing on the block, and yet it's always finding new ways to sneak up on you. Surprise!!! You are older. Surprise!!! You are moving in. Surprise!!! You are moving out.
What can you do but shake your head, after the shock wears off, and say "You again. You get me every time." And try to smile, and try to be grateful that you will be allowed to move again, move anywhere at all.
Here is my send-off, from Dominique Brown's article:
I settle into my new home; its healing balm has been there all along, nestled in a sofa that beckons me to pick up a book, hovering outside the window inviting me to take a walk. I find room in my life again for love of the world, let the quiet of solitary moments steal over me, give myself over to joy. What a surprise! That I can cook a meal for my children, or take a long walk on the beach, or watch an osprey wheel through the sky, or set down a page of thoughts — these are moments of grace. Old Testament loving-kindness, the stuff of everyday life.
One adventure is over; it is time for another. I have a different kind of work to do now.
I looked forward to the time when Spangles and I will live close by together, able to roll out of bed and ramble down there as frequently as we like. If we get the apartment we applied for, we will live but two blocks away.
As I chewed a big buttery mouthful of croissant, I was overwhelmed with one of those "isn't life grand" feelings, and looked up at Spangles, and up at the trees, goofy with pleasure.
Less than an hour later, as I headed back to my apartment while Spangles headed off on a bike ride with his dad, the morning's glow had evaporated. I felt kind of anxious and off, some rocks in the stomach, un-pin-point-able dread. Was it just self-flagellation about my messy, gloomy apartment and the plants I've been neglecting? Have I been spending so much time in the company of Spangles that, pathetically, I can no longer enjoy the company of just myself?
When I got in, I found that MamaBear had sent me an article she thought I would like. It's a woman describing her struggle with losing her job and deciding to move and trying to slow down to appreciate the little things - except much more eloquent. And as MamaBear rightly assumed, there's nothing I love more than a good story about a sleepless, heart-wrenched woman whose pain slowly gives way to hope and gratitude, and I read it greedily.
One part in particular struck a gong, as she was describing her decision to move, and I found that I had burst into tears. But at the same time, the clouds suddenly parted, and I had the realization "Oh, you're sad about moving away!"
Not sad about leaving the tiny galley kitchen or or the lady who yells her conversations in the laundromat below at 8am on Saturday mornings, or about the awkard backwards-hung front doors or the occasional rodent roommate or the dropped ceiling that collapsed on us last summer. And most definitely not sad about moving to an apartment (I hope I hope) with hardwood floors and a little grassy patch outside and an actual dishwasher that is an actual machine and not Spangles in rubber gloves.
But it will be the end of an era. This is and will be "my first apartment." This is where I grew from a bewildered, wide-eyed recent college graduate into a bewildered but increasingly cynical cosmopolitan city girl. This is where I had friends over, sometimes, where my sisters slept over on the couch, but more often where I was alone. This is where I first encountered that "real world" they so often talked about, with its electric bills and errands to run and groceries to buy.
This is where I learned all of my most painful lessons of adulthood - where I learned about loneliness, unemployment, increases in insurance premiums. This is where I first felt the strange floatiness when friends announced they were engaged and I realized that we were now at that age where we do that kind of thing. This is where I learned that people you know can die in tragic, unfair ways. This is where I learned that there can be times when bad news just keeps washing in from all sides and it feels like the only option is to crawl into a bomb shelter with some canned goods and wait for Armageddon. This is where I sat curled in pain before I knew the name for what I had. And this is where I cried about it, logging long hours of tears.
There were good times, too. Bottles of wine and rambling conversations, nights we climbed out the window on the the roof, hours I spent talking on the the phone with The Twin, gabbing and wandering in circles through the apartment. The time Steph and I melted a patch of carpet while conducting an ad-hoc ceremony to release negative vibes and boys who didn't love us. I remember painting the walls with T-bone when I first moved in, the care he took in teaching me how to do it right, like passing down a family tradition, the way he bought me all the paint but didn't say a word, even about the bright tangerine orange color. I remember the first time Spangles came over, for spaghetti, when we were both kinda realizing that we both kinda liked each other.
This is the apartment that got me where I am today. Who was it that said, praise the bridge that carried you over?
And even though I'm ready for greener pastures, preferably pastures to which I have exclusive access through a back door, I'm realizing that old truth about how beginnings and ends are hopelessly intertwined. I'm realizing that I do keep getting older, and even though I'm still young, I'm not that young, I'm not the child that I once was. I can rent a car without the extra fee, I can apply for an apartment without a co-signer, I can roast a chicken and serve it to guests. I'm remembering that this, right here, is my life, in which I'm in the process of writing the story of my twenties. The stories which, when my elders told me theirs, seemed so set in stone, so final, as if they had simply been the decree of the Fates from the very beginning, not an uncertain present with an uncertain outcome.
It's just the passage of time, the most dependable thing on the block, and yet it's always finding new ways to sneak up on you. Surprise!!! You are older. Surprise!!! You are moving in. Surprise!!! You are moving out.
What can you do but shake your head, after the shock wears off, and say "You again. You get me every time." And try to smile, and try to be grateful that you will be allowed to move again, move anywhere at all.
Here is my send-off, from Dominique Brown's article:
I settle into my new home; its healing balm has been there all along, nestled in a sofa that beckons me to pick up a book, hovering outside the window inviting me to take a walk. I find room in my life again for love of the world, let the quiet of solitary moments steal over me, give myself over to joy. What a surprise! That I can cook a meal for my children, or take a long walk on the beach, or watch an osprey wheel through the sky, or set down a page of thoughts — these are moments of grace. Old Testament loving-kindness, the stuff of everyday life.
One adventure is over; it is time for another. I have a different kind of work to do now.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
The Secret of My Success: 30% Perspiration, 70% Procrastination
Well, I am on two tight deadlines that are kinda of own making today, so naturally it was a great time to surf blogs and make exorbitantly lengthy comments on blogs I'd never heard of until an hour ago. Still, rather than letting all that hot air go to waste, I thought I would reprint my comments here. This was in response to a question from this guy's reader, who had a job that was not-so-slowly destroying his soul and wanted advice. Now this is a topic I know a thing or two about. Below, my response.
::::::::::::::
I am another one who has been there. Last year I took a job I knew I would hate, because everything kept saying how awful the job market was, etc. I was, predictably, miserable. Coincidentally (or not!) I also developed a chronic inflammatory disease that has been linked to stress and which has been very expensive and time-consuming but thank god is treatable.
All I can offer is what helped me:
1. See a counselor, stat! Even if you don’t want to, you don’t think you need to, you can’t afford it…whatever. Just go. Does the crappy job have benefits? Find out if they include mental heath. If not, go anyway. Someone will work with you. Make it work. The Psychology Today web site has a good finder tool for therapists.
2. Lean on your peeps. I leaned hard on my boyfriend, my friends, my parents, my cousins. I mean I was a *mess*. But it’s true what they say, you find out who your friends are. If you don’t have a strong support network, see item 1. But have the guts to ask for help.
3. “One is not got out of the cave, one comes out of it.” I think Simone de Beauvoir said that. The only person who can save you is you. I think the fact that Mark wrote this email is a good sign that he’s workin’ on it.
4. Brainstorming your options. OK, so the traditional “send resume, wait for call” approach is not working right now. What else could you do? Leave no stone unturned. Could you move in temporarily with family or friends to save money? Have a roommate move in with you? Move somewhere where you don’t need a car? Give up cable? Do you have a skill or knowledge set that other people would pay to have access to that you could advertise on craigslist? For me, even thinking of really heinous options was oddly refreshing. Thinking about how much of a personal failure it would feel like to move back in with my parents was kind of motivating. There is always a choice, and there is more than one. Thinking that the only two choices are “be miserable or lose everything” is just false.
4. Taking care of yourself. Getting enough sleep, trying to eat right, trying to get some exercise. I realize when your job totally sucks you dry and when you’re really in pain, it’s hard to do anything but numb out with food/alcohol/TV etc. Maybe think of one thing you could do that would bring you some energy, or just some fun. I hate to admit it, but all that cliche touchy feely stress management stuff kinda helps – going for walks, taking a bath, calling a friend, writing in a “journal.”
5. Hear yourself: the job is literally killing you. It’s literally sucking the life force out of you. Save your own life, man! It is really risky and really scary to jump out of a burning plane. So you have to pick – scary jump with uncertain outcome? Or certain death by burning plane?
5b. That said, you don’t *have* to jump tomorrow. As tempting as it is to drop it like a hot potato (and I’m not convinced that’s *not* the best idea), you could also start small. Start plotting your escape. Add one good thing to your life each week. Or take one bad thing away.
6. You gotta believe. I know all too well how hopeless and impossible it seems when you’re in the middle of it. You just have to go on faith that a better future awaits and that better possibilities await. It really doesn’t seem that way when all you can see is the reality in front of you. But it really is true, i’m telling you. When you ARE in the right place (or at least headed there), you can tell.
7. Recognizing that it’s the work of a lifetime to find out your life’s work. Mark has a really good start because he already knows that what he’s doing… ain’t it. Cross that one off the list. Every person has something that they can give to the world – sometimes it’s hard to recognize because it’s right in front of you, a passion or a talent that seems like no big deal because it’s such a part of you that you don’t notice it. But to put it another way, the longer Mark stays in this wrong job the longer he is depriving the world of what he has to offer. If you can’t do it for you, do it for the rest of us who need what you got!
My life isn’t perfect or anything now, but it’s waaaay better than it was. I still look back on that time and cringe. If there’s any use for it it’s the ability to tell people “no, seriously, just get out. it IS possible.” Changing my life around felt less like a magic wand wave and more like crawling out of deep well using only my fingernails, but at least I was going somewhere.
Even just from his comments, you can see Mark has a lot going for him – he is articulate, apparently well-educated, good vocabulary. I’m sayin’, times are tough. No one’s saying it isn’t hard. It’s easy to get discouraged. But you gotta fight for your life, the good life, the one your soul is rebelling against not having. In some ways, this is bigger than you. Obey!
::::::::::::::
I am another one who has been there. Last year I took a job I knew I would hate, because everything kept saying how awful the job market was, etc. I was, predictably, miserable. Coincidentally (or not!) I also developed a chronic inflammatory disease that has been linked to stress and which has been very expensive and time-consuming but thank god is treatable.
All I can offer is what helped me:
1. See a counselor, stat! Even if you don’t want to, you don’t think you need to, you can’t afford it…whatever. Just go. Does the crappy job have benefits? Find out if they include mental heath. If not, go anyway. Someone will work with you. Make it work. The Psychology Today web site has a good finder tool for therapists.
2. Lean on your peeps. I leaned hard on my boyfriend, my friends, my parents, my cousins. I mean I was a *mess*. But it’s true what they say, you find out who your friends are. If you don’t have a strong support network, see item 1. But have the guts to ask for help.
3. “One is not got out of the cave, one comes out of it.” I think Simone de Beauvoir said that. The only person who can save you is you. I think the fact that Mark wrote this email is a good sign that he’s workin’ on it.
4. Brainstorming your options. OK, so the traditional “send resume, wait for call” approach is not working right now. What else could you do? Leave no stone unturned. Could you move in temporarily with family or friends to save money? Have a roommate move in with you? Move somewhere where you don’t need a car? Give up cable? Do you have a skill or knowledge set that other people would pay to have access to that you could advertise on craigslist? For me, even thinking of really heinous options was oddly refreshing. Thinking about how much of a personal failure it would feel like to move back in with my parents was kind of motivating. There is always a choice, and there is more than one. Thinking that the only two choices are “be miserable or lose everything” is just false.
4. Taking care of yourself. Getting enough sleep, trying to eat right, trying to get some exercise. I realize when your job totally sucks you dry and when you’re really in pain, it’s hard to do anything but numb out with food/alcohol/TV etc. Maybe think of one thing you could do that would bring you some energy, or just some fun. I hate to admit it, but all that cliche touchy feely stress management stuff kinda helps – going for walks, taking a bath, calling a friend, writing in a “journal.”
5. Hear yourself: the job is literally killing you. It’s literally sucking the life force out of you. Save your own life, man! It is really risky and really scary to jump out of a burning plane. So you have to pick – scary jump with uncertain outcome? Or certain death by burning plane?
5b. That said, you don’t *have* to jump tomorrow. As tempting as it is to drop it like a hot potato (and I’m not convinced that’s *not* the best idea), you could also start small. Start plotting your escape. Add one good thing to your life each week. Or take one bad thing away.
6. You gotta believe. I know all too well how hopeless and impossible it seems when you’re in the middle of it. You just have to go on faith that a better future awaits and that better possibilities await. It really doesn’t seem that way when all you can see is the reality in front of you. But it really is true, i’m telling you. When you ARE in the right place (or at least headed there), you can tell.
7. Recognizing that it’s the work of a lifetime to find out your life’s work. Mark has a really good start because he already knows that what he’s doing… ain’t it. Cross that one off the list. Every person has something that they can give to the world – sometimes it’s hard to recognize because it’s right in front of you, a passion or a talent that seems like no big deal because it’s such a part of you that you don’t notice it. But to put it another way, the longer Mark stays in this wrong job the longer he is depriving the world of what he has to offer. If you can’t do it for you, do it for the rest of us who need what you got!
My life isn’t perfect or anything now, but it’s waaaay better than it was. I still look back on that time and cringe. If there’s any use for it it’s the ability to tell people “no, seriously, just get out. it IS possible.” Changing my life around felt less like a magic wand wave and more like crawling out of deep well using only my fingernails, but at least I was going somewhere.
Even just from his comments, you can see Mark has a lot going for him – he is articulate, apparently well-educated, good vocabulary. I’m sayin’, times are tough. No one’s saying it isn’t hard. It’s easy to get discouraged. But you gotta fight for your life, the good life, the one your soul is rebelling against not having. In some ways, this is bigger than you. Obey!
Monday, March 15, 2010
Reading Material for the Chutes & Ladders of Life
Here's a list of directives from the ZenHabits blog on how to be a positive person. Like a lot of these types of suggestions, they include nothing new under the sun, but it's the implementation that's the hard part:
Realize it’s possible, instead of telling yourself why you can’t.
Become aware of your self-talk.
Squash negative thoughts like a bug.
Replace them with positive thoughts.
Love what you have already.
Be grateful for your life, your gifts, and other people.
Every day.
Focus on what you have, not on what you haven’t.
Don’t compare yourself to others.
But be inspired by them.
Accept criticism with grace.
But ignore the naysayers.
See bad things as a blessing in disguise.
See failure as a stepping stone to success.
Surround yourself by those who are positive.
Complain less, smile more.
Image that you’re already positive.
Then become that person in your next act.
I've been reading The Happiness Project, too, and she also has her own list of twelve resolutions to live by, and her blog readers write in with many more.
I too work on creating my guiding principles each year when I do my yearly goals - the method I use has you focus on three guidelines for the year that you set for yourself.
It seems like I've been working on this for years - trying to assemble a comprehensive list of guiding principles based on wisdom gained from my own or other people's experience - the Gospel of Liklik, if you will. I probably have pages and pages of these scattered over the various notebooks of the years. Perhaps this blog is a good place to try to assemble a comprehensive collection? An ongoing work.
I often find myself wishing for my own version of "scriptures" to read over when I'm feeling at a loss or particularly un-wise. I'm afraid that actual scriptures, while replete with many useful nuggets, are rather abstruse to parse through when you're looking for a quick hit of inspiration.
I do in fact have a binder I started in college to be my own little Book of Comforts. I collected in it poems, clippings, quotes I copied, things I printed off the internet - but after it filled up I kind of gave up on a second volume. The first is rather worse for the wear after a run-in with cat puke.
Ever since karaoke a couple week's ago I've had a line from Destiny's Child stuck in my head: "If I surround myself with positive things..." - that's kind of where I'm at right now. Another blog I was reading spoke about paying attention to what you're giving your attention to. Trying arrange for myself a feedback loop of the positive, the inspiring, the good.
And I should qualify, I don't mean smarmy fake positive. I mean gritty, earthy, maintaining-my-belief-in-the-human-spirit-against-all-odds positive. A positivity that can stand with composure in the face of earthquakes and devastation, poverty, injustice, unfathomable loss. A hard-won, single-weed-growing-out-of-the-concrete-cracks type positive.
And also the kind of positive that says yes, embrace all the chutes and ladders of life, believe in your own possibilities, your capacity for joy and bringing joy to others and survival and the capability to overcome and accomplish and thrive.
To life! And also, back to work, to make good on all this grandiose talk of positivity and self-actualization.
Realize it’s possible, instead of telling yourself why you can’t.
Become aware of your self-talk.
Squash negative thoughts like a bug.
Replace them with positive thoughts.
Love what you have already.
Be grateful for your life, your gifts, and other people.
Every day.
Focus on what you have, not on what you haven’t.
Don’t compare yourself to others.
But be inspired by them.
Accept criticism with grace.
But ignore the naysayers.
See bad things as a blessing in disguise.
See failure as a stepping stone to success.
Surround yourself by those who are positive.
Complain less, smile more.
Image that you’re already positive.
Then become that person in your next act.
I've been reading The Happiness Project, too, and she also has her own list of twelve resolutions to live by, and her blog readers write in with many more.
I too work on creating my guiding principles each year when I do my yearly goals - the method I use has you focus on three guidelines for the year that you set for yourself.
It seems like I've been working on this for years - trying to assemble a comprehensive list of guiding principles based on wisdom gained from my own or other people's experience - the Gospel of Liklik, if you will. I probably have pages and pages of these scattered over the various notebooks of the years. Perhaps this blog is a good place to try to assemble a comprehensive collection? An ongoing work.
I often find myself wishing for my own version of "scriptures" to read over when I'm feeling at a loss or particularly un-wise. I'm afraid that actual scriptures, while replete with many useful nuggets, are rather abstruse to parse through when you're looking for a quick hit of inspiration.
I do in fact have a binder I started in college to be my own little Book of Comforts. I collected in it poems, clippings, quotes I copied, things I printed off the internet - but after it filled up I kind of gave up on a second volume. The first is rather worse for the wear after a run-in with cat puke.
Ever since karaoke a couple week's ago I've had a line from Destiny's Child stuck in my head: "If I surround myself with positive things..." - that's kind of where I'm at right now. Another blog I was reading spoke about paying attention to what you're giving your attention to. Trying arrange for myself a feedback loop of the positive, the inspiring, the good.
And I should qualify, I don't mean smarmy fake positive. I mean gritty, earthy, maintaining-my-belief-in-the-human-spirit-against-all-odds positive. A positivity that can stand with composure in the face of earthquakes and devastation, poverty, injustice, unfathomable loss. A hard-won, single-weed-growing-out-of-the-concrete-cracks type positive.
And also the kind of positive that says yes, embrace all the chutes and ladders of life, believe in your own possibilities, your capacity for joy and bringing joy to others and survival and the capability to overcome and accomplish and thrive.
To life! And also, back to work, to make good on all this grandiose talk of positivity and self-actualization.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Hitting the Reset Button
So the shitstorm is a-wailin' at the Parent Company, and I am like the foolhardy TV reporter clinging to the sideways palm tree.
I awoke in the middle of the night with a stabbing pain in my neck and shoulder, and rolled around in bed, on the floor, back in bed, with pillow, without pillow, got up and tried yoga poses, got back in bed and tried to ignore it.
Interrupted sleep is always such a rude surprise to me, because normally I'm an excellent sleeper. Among the best.
I finally took some Tylenol and tried the last, and least palatable, trick in my book, which is just to sit with the pain and focus on breathing in and out. (This trick is courtesy, well, lots of people over the years, but most recently I've been reading Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat Zinn). When I allowed the pain rather than mentally running from it full-speed, I realized that it was coming in dull spasms that were a good 1 - 2 breaths apart. I found that I was able to calm myself down enough in between spasms that I got drowsy and finally fell asleep again.
As you might guess, I did not arise in the most rosy-cheeked and resplendent of moods. I had to get to the Parent Company earlier than my usual time, which meant rush hour traffic, I'd slept through the time I'd allotted to take a shower which was, to put it delicately, sorely needed, and it was raining, and I made my instant coffee in the dark and dumped in too much grounds so it tasted like crap-syrup. Plus, my right neck and shoulder still hurt like a beast.
Despite playing my emergency inspirational playlist entitled "Hold On," on the way to work, I was in decidedly poor shape by the time I got there.
I decided I needed to start over. Just go to the start menu, hit shut down, wait 30 seconds, and then reboot. I started with calling the massage place and scheduling a same-day appointment.
I've never had a massage before today and it both was and wasn't what I expected. Was, because it felt reeeallllly good, and I was pretty much zoned out drooling about two minutes into it. What was surprising was a) tearing up when she placed her hands on my head at the beginning and b) when she finally hit that sweet spot right where the ouchies were, I felt an immediate zing back down to the old irascible colon. It was like the ball of tension got scared out of its hiding spot and settled right back in its colon-cave, like a hermit crab of dull pain.
And what I was surprised to feel while I was facedown on the massage table drooling up the carpets, was something almost like remorse. It was like: wow, body - we've been in like, actual pain here. We've spent so much of the past year in physical and psychic pain, and I've been in such a hurry to leave that all behind, but my body has forgotten much more slowly than the rest of me.
And I started to feel sorry. I'm sorry, body, for yelling at you so much. I know you don't have language so you have to get the message across in whatever way you can. I spend so a lot of time plugging my fingers in my ears saying "shut up shut up shut up, I don't have time for this now!" when it's telling me we're tired, we're hungry, we're stressed out, we're still. in. pain. I keep trying to placate it by swallowing my palmfuls of pills, but it's like a pet that doesn't totally understand the whole gist of it all. All it understands is it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, and you gotta respect that. You can't just be like, "Hey, walk it off."
I felt sorry for dragging it all over town, stuffing in whatever food is on hand at whatever time is most convenient for the rest of my agenda, sorry for guzzling down caffeine as a replacement for rest, for energy, for the Life Force itself. Sorry for slapping it around and making it wear underwear with holes in it and skipping the night-time toothbrushing and forcing it to squint at streetsigns rather than taking the time to get a new pait of glasses. No wonder it's going on strike.
And I was sad to hear a phrase echoing back to me which I'd heard before from myself during those dark times when I was sick, like really sick, something the doctors couldn't tell me but which I nonetheless knew to be true. My body was speaking to me and it was saying, "Liklik, your life ain't right."
Dammmmmm. I mean haven't I learned this by now?! I thought for sure I had skipped merrily into the light, into a life of contemplation and yoga and watering my herb garden and reading personal growth books and writing in my journal with a special pen. But here I am with the rest of the mortals, running around like a headless chicken, pace too fast, demands too much, apartment like a bomb went off, playtime not nearly enough, and the herbs are all dead, dead, dead.
I left the massage place in a quasi-dream state. I felt like everything was in slow motion. "Keysss...keysssss...I need car keys now. Car keys. Caaarrrr keeeeys." The world seemed very loud and seemed to be moving very fast. I found myself crying in the car again, but these weren't like frenetic stress tears, or Dane Cook "I tried my best" tears. These were slow-moving tears from down in the bedrocks, tears that cried themselves with great compassion, out of respect for the great quantities of grief and pain there can be and is and will be in the world over. The tears of a sage! The tears of person whose people have lived through war and sickness and evil but kept living despite it all!
I came back, drank some water, took a hot shower. I consult the voice of reason. She says, it's not to late to start again. She says at least you know where you are, because that will help you get where you want to be. She says start over. Begin again, and again, and again, and again, forever and ever amen.
I awoke in the middle of the night with a stabbing pain in my neck and shoulder, and rolled around in bed, on the floor, back in bed, with pillow, without pillow, got up and tried yoga poses, got back in bed and tried to ignore it.
Interrupted sleep is always such a rude surprise to me, because normally I'm an excellent sleeper. Among the best.
I finally took some Tylenol and tried the last, and least palatable, trick in my book, which is just to sit with the pain and focus on breathing in and out. (This trick is courtesy, well, lots of people over the years, but most recently I've been reading Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat Zinn). When I allowed the pain rather than mentally running from it full-speed, I realized that it was coming in dull spasms that were a good 1 - 2 breaths apart. I found that I was able to calm myself down enough in between spasms that I got drowsy and finally fell asleep again.
As you might guess, I did not arise in the most rosy-cheeked and resplendent of moods. I had to get to the Parent Company earlier than my usual time, which meant rush hour traffic, I'd slept through the time I'd allotted to take a shower which was, to put it delicately, sorely needed, and it was raining, and I made my instant coffee in the dark and dumped in too much grounds so it tasted like crap-syrup. Plus, my right neck and shoulder still hurt like a beast.
Despite playing my emergency inspirational playlist entitled "Hold On," on the way to work, I was in decidedly poor shape by the time I got there.
I decided I needed to start over. Just go to the start menu, hit shut down, wait 30 seconds, and then reboot. I started with calling the massage place and scheduling a same-day appointment.
I've never had a massage before today and it both was and wasn't what I expected. Was, because it felt reeeallllly good, and I was pretty much zoned out drooling about two minutes into it. What was surprising was a) tearing up when she placed her hands on my head at the beginning and b) when she finally hit that sweet spot right where the ouchies were, I felt an immediate zing back down to the old irascible colon. It was like the ball of tension got scared out of its hiding spot and settled right back in its colon-cave, like a hermit crab of dull pain.
And what I was surprised to feel while I was facedown on the massage table drooling up the carpets, was something almost like remorse. It was like: wow, body - we've been in like, actual pain here. We've spent so much of the past year in physical and psychic pain, and I've been in such a hurry to leave that all behind, but my body has forgotten much more slowly than the rest of me.
And I started to feel sorry. I'm sorry, body, for yelling at you so much. I know you don't have language so you have to get the message across in whatever way you can. I spend so a lot of time plugging my fingers in my ears saying "shut up shut up shut up, I don't have time for this now!" when it's telling me we're tired, we're hungry, we're stressed out, we're still. in. pain. I keep trying to placate it by swallowing my palmfuls of pills, but it's like a pet that doesn't totally understand the whole gist of it all. All it understands is it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, and you gotta respect that. You can't just be like, "Hey, walk it off."
I felt sorry for dragging it all over town, stuffing in whatever food is on hand at whatever time is most convenient for the rest of my agenda, sorry for guzzling down caffeine as a replacement for rest, for energy, for the Life Force itself. Sorry for slapping it around and making it wear underwear with holes in it and skipping the night-time toothbrushing and forcing it to squint at streetsigns rather than taking the time to get a new pait of glasses. No wonder it's going on strike.
And I was sad to hear a phrase echoing back to me which I'd heard before from myself during those dark times when I was sick, like really sick, something the doctors couldn't tell me but which I nonetheless knew to be true. My body was speaking to me and it was saying, "Liklik, your life ain't right."
Dammmmmm. I mean haven't I learned this by now?! I thought for sure I had skipped merrily into the light, into a life of contemplation and yoga and watering my herb garden and reading personal growth books and writing in my journal with a special pen. But here I am with the rest of the mortals, running around like a headless chicken, pace too fast, demands too much, apartment like a bomb went off, playtime not nearly enough, and the herbs are all dead, dead, dead.
I left the massage place in a quasi-dream state. I felt like everything was in slow motion. "Keysss...keysssss...I need car keys now. Car keys. Caaarrrr keeeeys." The world seemed very loud and seemed to be moving very fast. I found myself crying in the car again, but these weren't like frenetic stress tears, or Dane Cook "I tried my best" tears. These were slow-moving tears from down in the bedrocks, tears that cried themselves with great compassion, out of respect for the great quantities of grief and pain there can be and is and will be in the world over. The tears of a sage! The tears of person whose people have lived through war and sickness and evil but kept living despite it all!
I came back, drank some water, took a hot shower. I consult the voice of reason. She says, it's not to late to start again. She says at least you know where you are, because that will help you get where you want to be. She says start over. Begin again, and again, and again, and again, forever and ever amen.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Creation Myth
About eight months ago, something happened that is so uncommon for me as to make it truly remarkable: I didn't want to eat.
I didn't want to because eating, or more precisely, digestion, caused excruciating pain and some other very unpleasant results. I remember looking at a salad someone at work had brought for lunch and thinking "Aw helllll no!", and starting in on my saltines. My business casual clothes started hanging off of me, but I couldn't enjoy the rapid weight loss because I was scurrying to bathroom every ten minutes like clockwork, doubled over.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was in the throes of what was eventually diagnosed as ulcerative colitis, which is when your colon freaks out for reasons that are not entirely clear to medical science. Another thing that is pretty clear in hindsight but which seemed to escape me at the time, was that I was acutely miserable, and not just because of the problems with the ole' poopshoot.
I was going through what you might call a Bad Time. I was working at a disheartening job, after a bout of unemployment, after having been un-hired in a somewhat unclassy way from a job I'd been working at for five months as a temp-to-hire (minus, apparently, the -to-hire part.) On top of that, each parent, my father one month and my mother the next, had to undergo major operations for life-threatening diseases. Louise, the cat I'd taken in during college and then adopted out to my aunt in order to give her a better life, passed on. On top of that, one day I came home to my apartment and as I opened the door the entire dropped ceiling collapsed. And on top of that, or perhaps because of all that, I had the mysterious gut-pain and concurrent frightening bowel movements, and an insurance plan that was chosen based on the gamble that I would not, in fact, ever get sick.
Things are better now, although I don't feel completely over it. Lo, though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and made it to the other side, the memory is still very sharp. But that, in a way, is why I'm here.
Later, a wise friend of mine would remark on the symbolism of having developed a problem in my gut. Literally and figuratively, I was having a hard time digesting everything. I think it was my body telling me that something was very not right, in a way that I couldn't ignore or stuff down or push past like the trooper I am. The tummy trouble is caused by my immune system attacking - responding to the threat of enemies, only there's nothing there but me. I have come to think of it as a very effective early warning system. For me there is still a direct correlation between stressors and gastrointestinal shenanigans, and there may always be. But, as I explained to my mom, in a way this is good because often when my worries get carried away and I get too wound up on the cares of the day, my body gives me what feels like a swift punch in the stomach, and it is often (sometimes) enough to make me stop. Give myself a time out, take my temperature, take a breather, take a nap.
I think of the recent unpleasantness as a turning point for me. It forced me to step back and take a good hard look at myself. What was I enduring all that misery for? A job I didn't like? A world that had become very small and very scary? A life that was so much less than I had the one I had imagined, back when I had let myself imagine anything at all.
One day, when I was balled up on the couch crying, I had enough sense to ask my friend Jo to come over to keep me company. (It's true what they say, that when adversity strikes, you find out who your friends are.) She gently suggested that perhaps now might be a time to look into seeing a counselor. And I did. One thing I am proud of about myself is that even when the world was very very dark and it felt like my back was totally against the wall, I didn't give up on the belief that things could improve. I took my shell-shocked, hopeless, depressed little self to a social worker, in the hope that she could point me to something - ideas, strategies, pharmaceuticals, whatever - that would help life be better. And, slowly, it was. It is.
I have proclaimed this year to be a year of rest and, although I sometimes cringe at the word, healing. I will nurture the fragile broken-winged bird back to life. I have decided that the events of the past are ones that I will use to make me into an awesomer person. I'm still working on exactly how, but well, for starters there's:
-learning your own inner strength, which C---- and I agree is a pretty anti-climactic consolation prize, one that we would give up freely given the choice between that and a life free of pain, suffering and loss. But there you go.
-for another thing, having more compassion for people who are going through a hard time. (And at the same time, oddly, as I have observed with others before, less compassion. "Oh, earthquake victims experiencing some of the most devastating devastation ever? That sucks. Too bad my heart is too stone cold to feel anything more than a passing twinge of regret at this." I will work on this. Eventually.)
-finding out that there are people in your life who completely and totally have your back
- Seething anger with the healthcare and health insurance industries in America.
So anyway, like I said I'm still working on the specifics as to how my hardships will be transformed into a heartwarming and inspirational tale of survival and redemption. Readers are encouraged to write in with suggestions.
But what does any of this have to do with hunger?
Well, for one, I am pleased to report that I get hungry again. Physical hunger, yet another thing to file under the category of "Don't Know What You've Got 'Til it's Gone." (I must also differentiate between hunger and what I felt while undergoing steroid treatment for the colitis. In addition to a chemically induced wit and a remarkable joie de vivre, the steroids made me feel kind of like I was a giant piece of briskly-moving machinery used to clear-cut the rainforest, except that the rainforest was bags of carbs.)
Back when I spent a third of every hour on the toilet clutching myself and groaning, I went through a phase of elaborate bargaining with God or Allah or Jim Henson Creator of All that is Seen and Unseen, or whomEVER, I wasn't in a position to be choosy. I swore that if I lived to eat without pain once again I would do a better job. I would eat real food and go to farmer's markets and make sauces that need to simmer for three days, and stop eating cheese that comes in squeezable form from a foil packet. (I have somewhat made good on this promise, in the sense that I now watch a lot of Food Network while eating squeezable cheeses.)
But the point is, I never knew what a gift it was to be hungry until I wasn't, the same way that it's just not possible to understand what it means to be grateful for your health until you've been sick. There was a tipping point to my illness - and I remember it distinctly, I was balled up on Jo's front stoop on a summer evening unable to enjoy a cocktail - when I realized that I was no longer living. And that is something you don't fuck around with. Jo walked me to the ER that very evening: the first step in a long, infuriating, humiliating, expensive journey toward living again.
Paying hundreds of dollars for medications, having a laproscopic camera shoved up your butt, racking up a five-digit medical bill, crying and pleading with the non-native English speakers answering your insurance company's customer service number, blimping up like a Thanksgiving Day float from corticosteroids, filling a days-of-the-week pill box that's bigger than your Grandpa's was: it makes you think. It makes you think, wow, it is unconscionable that insurance executives are filling their swimming pools with the profits off of my human suffering.
But it also makes you think, what exactly am I fighting for here? A low-paying job that makes me crazy? The chance to come home exhausted and stare numbly at the TV? Two weeks a year plus weekends of reprieve from the drudgery? If you've been wishing there was a pill you could take that would help you get your career choices in perspective, I'm here to tell you, there is and it's called OsmoPrep.
I quit the job. I decided life's too short and suffering is too much of a certainty to voluntarily bang my head against a wall repeatedly for what has been called, to quote from a brilliant film, minor duckets.
Of course, then you are left with the daunting task of discovering what it is, if the rat race is so all-fired unbearable, you really want to do. Which brings me back to hunger. This time I'm not talking about physical hunger, although one might still feel this hunger in the body. Call it desire, longing, yearning, whatever. I think I've had this hunger since I was what, eleven? It's big, amorphous, unspecific. It's probably the kind of thing that gets easily channeled into materialism, the idea that with this next sofa, this next pair of boots or teeth-whiteners I'll finally have It, whatever It is. It's a hunger which for many years I thought would be sated by having a boyfriend who adores me, but in fact I've had a great one for a year so far and...I'm still hungry. Now I think that when I move to a nicer apartment, get a car or a dog, maybe then I'll have everything I want. I imagine hunger like this is what makes people want to be celebrities, get rich quick, star in reality shows.
It's an uncomfortable feeling, in a way. Often I'm able to make enough noise in my head, or become so flummoxed by problems and distractions, that I forget it's even there. But at times when I get halfway clear in my mind, there it is again, and it seems it's never stopped, like a whining or a dull roar, a convection current. Not like a calling or a whisper or anything so articulate. It's just like...an engine rumbling. And it wants something. But what?
I have arrived at the theory that this hunger is not, in fact, bad. Not something to be run from or squashed or stuffed full of high-fructose snacks. Perhaps this hunger, this longing or wanting or what have you, is the feeling of being alive. It's what leads us to desire and seek and move forward in life. Move toward, hopefully, more than away from. It makes me think of the Wupatki Pueblo blowhole. It's this hole, right, naturally occuring in the ground, which for vaguely mysterious geologic reasons, is always blowing a refreshing stream of air up from deep within the earth. I understand the Pueblos ascribed great spiritual significance to it. So - the desire is the rushing air, right, and the idea is not to dig down to find its origin, or try to follow it up to where it dissipates, but just to stand above it and be like, "My, this is rather exhilarating, isn't it." It doesn't lead to anywhere specific. Its source is too deep to fathom. It's just like, there. But not ignorable. Worthy of wonder and symbolizing great cosmic mysteries.
That sort of gets at what I'm getting at. But it will never be gotten at fully, because if it were completely wrapped up tight and understood, what point would there be to keep writing, keep reading, keep waking up in the morning to find out what crazy kooky thing will happen next? Some people might call it a spiritual calling, or the God-shaped hole in the heart, or the creative urge, or the life force, or whatever. And that's cool. It's probably all of those things. I think I'm most comfortable calling it a hunger for meaning, and maybe some other stuff too.
One place to which I have followed this inexplicable hunger is the Celebrant Institute, where I'm learning how to plan and officiate at non-denominational wedding ceremonies. The wedding part was kind of an odd choice for me because generally I'm not like, huge on the whole idea of marriage. It seems like nowadays when fifty per cent of the population is divorced and people get married three and four and seven times, how much does a wedding really mean? This was something I really struggled with, until I had an epiphany: I don't really need to know! I'm going to be an officiant, not some kind of all-knowing marriage guru. Rather than coming to couples as if I have all the answers, I can let them teach me a thing or two about what love means, how it looks, from whence within the majesty of the human heart it comes.
So those two things, in a nutshell, is where the idea for this blog comes from. I want to talk about the impulse to do, well, anything really - the hunger. And I want to record what I learn about this thing we call love, four short letters that belie its breadth and depth and all around bigness. So there you have it: hunger, and love. Love and hunger.
I didn't want to because eating, or more precisely, digestion, caused excruciating pain and some other very unpleasant results. I remember looking at a salad someone at work had brought for lunch and thinking "Aw helllll no!", and starting in on my saltines. My business casual clothes started hanging off of me, but I couldn't enjoy the rapid weight loss because I was scurrying to bathroom every ten minutes like clockwork, doubled over.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was in the throes of what was eventually diagnosed as ulcerative colitis, which is when your colon freaks out for reasons that are not entirely clear to medical science. Another thing that is pretty clear in hindsight but which seemed to escape me at the time, was that I was acutely miserable, and not just because of the problems with the ole' poopshoot.
I was going through what you might call a Bad Time. I was working at a disheartening job, after a bout of unemployment, after having been un-hired in a somewhat unclassy way from a job I'd been working at for five months as a temp-to-hire (minus, apparently, the -to-hire part.) On top of that, each parent, my father one month and my mother the next, had to undergo major operations for life-threatening diseases. Louise, the cat I'd taken in during college and then adopted out to my aunt in order to give her a better life, passed on. On top of that, one day I came home to my apartment and as I opened the door the entire dropped ceiling collapsed. And on top of that, or perhaps because of all that, I had the mysterious gut-pain and concurrent frightening bowel movements, and an insurance plan that was chosen based on the gamble that I would not, in fact, ever get sick.
Things are better now, although I don't feel completely over it. Lo, though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and made it to the other side, the memory is still very sharp. But that, in a way, is why I'm here.
Later, a wise friend of mine would remark on the symbolism of having developed a problem in my gut. Literally and figuratively, I was having a hard time digesting everything. I think it was my body telling me that something was very not right, in a way that I couldn't ignore or stuff down or push past like the trooper I am. The tummy trouble is caused by my immune system attacking - responding to the threat of enemies, only there's nothing there but me. I have come to think of it as a very effective early warning system. For me there is still a direct correlation between stressors and gastrointestinal shenanigans, and there may always be. But, as I explained to my mom, in a way this is good because often when my worries get carried away and I get too wound up on the cares of the day, my body gives me what feels like a swift punch in the stomach, and it is often (sometimes) enough to make me stop. Give myself a time out, take my temperature, take a breather, take a nap.
I think of the recent unpleasantness as a turning point for me. It forced me to step back and take a good hard look at myself. What was I enduring all that misery for? A job I didn't like? A world that had become very small and very scary? A life that was so much less than I had the one I had imagined, back when I had let myself imagine anything at all.
One day, when I was balled up on the couch crying, I had enough sense to ask my friend Jo to come over to keep me company. (It's true what they say, that when adversity strikes, you find out who your friends are.) She gently suggested that perhaps now might be a time to look into seeing a counselor. And I did. One thing I am proud of about myself is that even when the world was very very dark and it felt like my back was totally against the wall, I didn't give up on the belief that things could improve. I took my shell-shocked, hopeless, depressed little self to a social worker, in the hope that she could point me to something - ideas, strategies, pharmaceuticals, whatever - that would help life be better. And, slowly, it was. It is.
I have proclaimed this year to be a year of rest and, although I sometimes cringe at the word, healing. I will nurture the fragile broken-winged bird back to life. I have decided that the events of the past are ones that I will use to make me into an awesomer person. I'm still working on exactly how, but well, for starters there's:
-learning your own inner strength, which C---- and I agree is a pretty anti-climactic consolation prize, one that we would give up freely given the choice between that and a life free of pain, suffering and loss. But there you go.
-for another thing, having more compassion for people who are going through a hard time. (And at the same time, oddly, as I have observed with others before, less compassion. "Oh, earthquake victims experiencing some of the most devastating devastation ever? That sucks. Too bad my heart is too stone cold to feel anything more than a passing twinge of regret at this." I will work on this. Eventually.)
-finding out that there are people in your life who completely and totally have your back
- Seething anger with the healthcare and health insurance industries in America.
So anyway, like I said I'm still working on the specifics as to how my hardships will be transformed into a heartwarming and inspirational tale of survival and redemption. Readers are encouraged to write in with suggestions.
But what does any of this have to do with hunger?
Well, for one, I am pleased to report that I get hungry again. Physical hunger, yet another thing to file under the category of "Don't Know What You've Got 'Til it's Gone." (I must also differentiate between hunger and what I felt while undergoing steroid treatment for the colitis. In addition to a chemically induced wit and a remarkable joie de vivre, the steroids made me feel kind of like I was a giant piece of briskly-moving machinery used to clear-cut the rainforest, except that the rainforest was bags of carbs.)
Back when I spent a third of every hour on the toilet clutching myself and groaning, I went through a phase of elaborate bargaining with God or Allah or Jim Henson Creator of All that is Seen and Unseen, or whomEVER, I wasn't in a position to be choosy. I swore that if I lived to eat without pain once again I would do a better job. I would eat real food and go to farmer's markets and make sauces that need to simmer for three days, and stop eating cheese that comes in squeezable form from a foil packet. (I have somewhat made good on this promise, in the sense that I now watch a lot of Food Network while eating squeezable cheeses.)
But the point is, I never knew what a gift it was to be hungry until I wasn't, the same way that it's just not possible to understand what it means to be grateful for your health until you've been sick. There was a tipping point to my illness - and I remember it distinctly, I was balled up on Jo's front stoop on a summer evening unable to enjoy a cocktail - when I realized that I was no longer living. And that is something you don't fuck around with. Jo walked me to the ER that very evening: the first step in a long, infuriating, humiliating, expensive journey toward living again.
Paying hundreds of dollars for medications, having a laproscopic camera shoved up your butt, racking up a five-digit medical bill, crying and pleading with the non-native English speakers answering your insurance company's customer service number, blimping up like a Thanksgiving Day float from corticosteroids, filling a days-of-the-week pill box that's bigger than your Grandpa's was: it makes you think. It makes you think, wow, it is unconscionable that insurance executives are filling their swimming pools with the profits off of my human suffering.
But it also makes you think, what exactly am I fighting for here? A low-paying job that makes me crazy? The chance to come home exhausted and stare numbly at the TV? Two weeks a year plus weekends of reprieve from the drudgery? If you've been wishing there was a pill you could take that would help you get your career choices in perspective, I'm here to tell you, there is and it's called OsmoPrep.
I quit the job. I decided life's too short and suffering is too much of a certainty to voluntarily bang my head against a wall repeatedly for what has been called, to quote from a brilliant film, minor duckets.
Of course, then you are left with the daunting task of discovering what it is, if the rat race is so all-fired unbearable, you really want to do. Which brings me back to hunger. This time I'm not talking about physical hunger, although one might still feel this hunger in the body. Call it desire, longing, yearning, whatever. I think I've had this hunger since I was what, eleven? It's big, amorphous, unspecific. It's probably the kind of thing that gets easily channeled into materialism, the idea that with this next sofa, this next pair of boots or teeth-whiteners I'll finally have It, whatever It is. It's a hunger which for many years I thought would be sated by having a boyfriend who adores me, but in fact I've had a great one for a year so far and...I'm still hungry. Now I think that when I move to a nicer apartment, get a car or a dog, maybe then I'll have everything I want. I imagine hunger like this is what makes people want to be celebrities, get rich quick, star in reality shows.
It's an uncomfortable feeling, in a way. Often I'm able to make enough noise in my head, or become so flummoxed by problems and distractions, that I forget it's even there. But at times when I get halfway clear in my mind, there it is again, and it seems it's never stopped, like a whining or a dull roar, a convection current. Not like a calling or a whisper or anything so articulate. It's just like...an engine rumbling. And it wants something. But what?
I have arrived at the theory that this hunger is not, in fact, bad. Not something to be run from or squashed or stuffed full of high-fructose snacks. Perhaps this hunger, this longing or wanting or what have you, is the feeling of being alive. It's what leads us to desire and seek and move forward in life. Move toward, hopefully, more than away from. It makes me think of the Wupatki Pueblo blowhole. It's this hole, right, naturally occuring in the ground, which for vaguely mysterious geologic reasons, is always blowing a refreshing stream of air up from deep within the earth. I understand the Pueblos ascribed great spiritual significance to it. So - the desire is the rushing air, right, and the idea is not to dig down to find its origin, or try to follow it up to where it dissipates, but just to stand above it and be like, "My, this is rather exhilarating, isn't it." It doesn't lead to anywhere specific. Its source is too deep to fathom. It's just like, there. But not ignorable. Worthy of wonder and symbolizing great cosmic mysteries.
That sort of gets at what I'm getting at. But it will never be gotten at fully, because if it were completely wrapped up tight and understood, what point would there be to keep writing, keep reading, keep waking up in the morning to find out what crazy kooky thing will happen next? Some people might call it a spiritual calling, or the God-shaped hole in the heart, or the creative urge, or the life force, or whatever. And that's cool. It's probably all of those things. I think I'm most comfortable calling it a hunger for meaning, and maybe some other stuff too.
One place to which I have followed this inexplicable hunger is the Celebrant Institute, where I'm learning how to plan and officiate at non-denominational wedding ceremonies. The wedding part was kind of an odd choice for me because generally I'm not like, huge on the whole idea of marriage. It seems like nowadays when fifty per cent of the population is divorced and people get married three and four and seven times, how much does a wedding really mean? This was something I really struggled with, until I had an epiphany: I don't really need to know! I'm going to be an officiant, not some kind of all-knowing marriage guru. Rather than coming to couples as if I have all the answers, I can let them teach me a thing or two about what love means, how it looks, from whence within the majesty of the human heart it comes.
So those two things, in a nutshell, is where the idea for this blog comes from. I want to talk about the impulse to do, well, anything really - the hunger. And I want to record what I learn about this thing we call love, four short letters that belie its breadth and depth and all around bigness. So there you have it: hunger, and love. Love and hunger.
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