Was talking with a good friend tonight who was expressing concern and anxiety about his job. A coworker of his is apparently on track toward possibly being fired. My friend is concerned that the boss' attention and focus will subsequently be turned on him. He is feeling insecure about his position, his standing at his job and with his boss. Nevermind that he's worked there for more than two decades, has received numerous commendations and awards for his work, or that his students love him (while they generally hate his coworker). Nevermind that he's terrific at, passionate about, and dedicated to his job.
My friend never feels the full confidence and peace of self-acceptance. Many (most) of us generally don't. I recently started reading Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach about just this subject.
I was musing about this all as I went about my evening. Another phone call I had tonight was a long conversation with my sister, discussing our mother who moved two weeks ago to a small town in Idaho in order to prepare herself for the supposed coming apocalypse that she and her friends predict will soon befall America, a result of "God's judgement." She and her friends spend their every waking moment delineating between those who they believe are in good standing with God (which is always, coincidentally, themselves) and those who they believe are not.
I've spent my life in that constant state of self-rejection - the opposite of self-acceptance, nay? - believing that I've never quite "gotten it right." Not right with God according to my mother. Not right in terms of "success" according to my father. Not right in my work. Not right with my friends. Not right (certainly) with my family. What a terribly polarized place to be. What loneliness, what self-recrimination, what reason for striving, over-thinking, hopelessness.
I was thinking this evening about my good friend, worried as he is about his boss' disfavor being turned on him. And I was thinking how my mother and her "End Times" cronies preach that "gospel" (hah - "good news" my ass) daily. They preach - and seem to relish in the thought of - God's disfavor being turned against most of us in America and the world, against all those of us who are not in the midst of their small cloister of self-righteous "purity".
God's favor. Man's favor. Who decides? Who decides when we've satisfied it or when we have not? Can we each individually ever perhaps reach a place of peace and self-acceptance, satisfied that we're our best selves at this moment and let that be good enough? Can we trust that our best can maybe be enough - enough with those who care about us... and certainly, enough with the supreme being, if there is indeed one, who made us, who supposedly loves us?
Why are we so given toward striving against ourselves and each other, instead of believing in and practicing acceptance, compassion, love?
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Bah bah black sheep
I caught the end of Oprah today, an episode about families struggling through the difficulties of raising a child with mental illness.
To a mother she was interviewing, Oprah mentioned something, a paraphrase from someone else I think, that went roughly like this:
"There is no 'black sheep' in a family. The person who is considered the 'black sheep' is usually the most sensitive person in the family and they take on all of the negative energy from everyone else in the family."
Wow, how right is that? Speaking as the 'black sheep' in my family. And speaking as one who has generally been a sponge for the negative energy of others around me. (I will never forget the moment when I realized this with clarity and certainty for the first time.) And speaking as one who has often wound up in the "scapegoat" position in dysfunctional situations.
I searched via Google, hoping to find the source of Oprah's profundity. It looks like maybe it's something from Eckhart Tolle's "The New Earth," which I have not read. But maybe I should read it. Tolle seems to talk about something called a "pain body" that feeds on pain.
Mostly this post is just about the mini revelation I had while listening to Oprah quote Tolle. I ran for my journal so I could capture the phrase before I forgot it.
Having been the "black sheep" of my family (still am, really) I definitely came out of childhood and adolescence as a giant "pain body" and have been struggling to rid myself of that pain ever since. It makes a little more sense to me, my little "aha!" moment just now, why I've had so little resilience around the happenings in my life the last two years or so in what was the most significant relationship of my life (save relationship to my parents when I was a child, which set me up for this whole mess).
It's been like someone took my pain-absorption vacuum and turned it up to high-speed or something.
I need to find a way to pull the plug out of the outlet. And throw out the container bag. And then dismantle the motor on the damn machine.
To a mother she was interviewing, Oprah mentioned something, a paraphrase from someone else I think, that went roughly like this:
"There is no 'black sheep' in a family. The person who is considered the 'black sheep' is usually the most sensitive person in the family and they take on all of the negative energy from everyone else in the family."
Wow, how right is that? Speaking as the 'black sheep' in my family. And speaking as one who has generally been a sponge for the negative energy of others around me. (I will never forget the moment when I realized this with clarity and certainty for the first time.) And speaking as one who has often wound up in the "scapegoat" position in dysfunctional situations.
I searched via Google, hoping to find the source of Oprah's profundity. It looks like maybe it's something from Eckhart Tolle's "The New Earth," which I have not read. But maybe I should read it. Tolle seems to talk about something called a "pain body" that feeds on pain.
Mostly this post is just about the mini revelation I had while listening to Oprah quote Tolle. I ran for my journal so I could capture the phrase before I forgot it.
Having been the "black sheep" of my family (still am, really) I definitely came out of childhood and adolescence as a giant "pain body" and have been struggling to rid myself of that pain ever since. It makes a little more sense to me, my little "aha!" moment just now, why I've had so little resilience around the happenings in my life the last two years or so in what was the most significant relationship of my life (save relationship to my parents when I was a child, which set me up for this whole mess).
It's been like someone took my pain-absorption vacuum and turned it up to high-speed or something.
I need to find a way to pull the plug out of the outlet. And throw out the container bag. And then dismantle the motor on the damn machine.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
To have a witness
I can't remember now which book I found this story in. When I figure it out I'll add the reference here.
"There's a scene we both love in the movie Shall We Dance? The story is about a marriage that has not so much fallen on hard times as fallen into the doldrums of routine. The wife fears her husband might be having an affair; she hires a private detective to find out what he's up to. It turns out that he's spending his Wednesday nights taking ballroom dancing lessons! She tells the detective she no longer needs his services. He is intrigued by her devotion to her husband, and they have this parting conversation:
Wife: Why is it do you think that people get married?
Detective: Passion.
Wife: No.
Detective: That's interesting because I would have taken you for a romantic. Why then?
Wife: Because we need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet. I mean what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things. The bad things. The terrible things. All of it. All the time. Every day. You're saying, "Your life will never go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness."
I will be your witness. I will be your companion.
Now that's some profound and right shit.
"There's a scene we both love in the movie Shall We Dance? The story is about a marriage that has not so much fallen on hard times as fallen into the doldrums of routine. The wife fears her husband might be having an affair; she hires a private detective to find out what he's up to. It turns out that he's spending his Wednesday nights taking ballroom dancing lessons! She tells the detective she no longer needs his services. He is intrigued by her devotion to her husband, and they have this parting conversation:
Wife: Why is it do you think that people get married?
Detective: Passion.
Wife: No.
Detective: That's interesting because I would have taken you for a romantic. Why then?
Wife: Because we need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet. I mean what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things. The bad things. The terrible things. All of it. All the time. Every day. You're saying, "Your life will never go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness."
I will be your witness. I will be your companion.
Now that's some profound and right shit.
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Monday, February 7, 2011
One bad mind-trip circle
It's awful to, day by day, miss your best friend.
Worse, to realize that they treated you like no friend at all.
It's one bad mind-trip circle to be on.
From another angle... It's useful to realize where I was (emotionally) a year ago this week: Right in the thick of watching the betrayal in all its technicolor glory. I didn't register the significance until I saw a Valentine's Day commercial on the television today. The realization is useful and constructive toward maybe cutting myself some slack. I've been telling myself for a good long while that "It's been over a year already!" But really it's only still just coming up on a year, in many ways and for all real purposes. Heck, it's only been just over two months since the last contact. (I sure hope that doesn't control the year marker!)
And I've done a lot in that year toward putting myself back together. Without the help of any king's horses or men, either, tyvm.
Still feels like there's a long, tender way to go, though. That's discouraging.
My butt is dragging a bit lately. Spirits flagging. Keep trying to walk toward the "Exit" sign on the mental merry-go-ground, but with the periodic dizziness also comes the two-step-stumble. Two steps forward, one step back. "Progress, not perfection" is maybe my new best friend.
Worse, to realize that they treated you like no friend at all.
It's one bad mind-trip circle to be on.
From another angle... It's useful to realize where I was (emotionally) a year ago this week: Right in the thick of watching the betrayal in all its technicolor glory. I didn't register the significance until I saw a Valentine's Day commercial on the television today. The realization is useful and constructive toward maybe cutting myself some slack. I've been telling myself for a good long while that "It's been over a year already!" But really it's only still just coming up on a year, in many ways and for all real purposes. Heck, it's only been just over two months since the last contact. (I sure hope that doesn't control the year marker!)
And I've done a lot in that year toward putting myself back together. Without the help of any king's horses or men, either, tyvm.
Still feels like there's a long, tender way to go, though. That's discouraging.
My butt is dragging a bit lately. Spirits flagging. Keep trying to walk toward the "Exit" sign on the mental merry-go-ground, but with the periodic dizziness also comes the two-step-stumble. Two steps forward, one step back. "Progress, not perfection" is maybe my new best friend.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
No safe place
A lot of difficult things happening lately. One of those is at my primary place of employment. The office that controls and schedules my work has become increasingly, daily, more and more adversarial toward those of us in my work position (Sign Language Interpreters). They claim that each move they make is for "budget" reasons, but... it's too complicated to try to explain here but many of the decisions they are making and the rules they keep creating seem to have little to do with the budget. We are being increasingly marginalized and the work environment has become hostile. We've had to involve the union that we were forced to join last year. We are currently feeling grateful for having been forced in, though it remains to be seen how much help the union will actually be able to provide us.
The world feels like a very hostile and unsafe place to me just now.
I get home at the end of the day feeling weary and a little anxious and sad. And I realize that I have no one in this world who is fully there for or with me through it. I have no "safe place to fall," no one on whom to lean, no one to share my concerns with, no one to help me carry the stresses. No one to play with or enjoy the other side of life, the fun things or the happy things... the reasons for doing all of the hard stuff.... either.
The world feels like a very hostile and unsafe place to me just now.
I get home at the end of the day feeling weary and a little anxious and sad. And I realize that I have no one in this world who is fully there for or with me through it. I have no "safe place to fall," no one on whom to lean, no one to share my concerns with, no one to help me carry the stresses. No one to play with or enjoy the other side of life, the fun things or the happy things... the reasons for doing all of the hard stuff.... either.
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