I think it is human nature to make messes of things that could be simple.
By nature, even the most courageous of us use pride as a sword and shame as a shield. There are conflicts around me. In the world and even closer, that I am uncomfortable experiencing. The common thread is that everyone wants to be heard...few want to listen, and fewer still want to admit the secrets they feel make them appear less stellar than usual.
There are mysteries in our lives that we will never solve. We will turn dark corners looking for answers that no one seems interested in offering. And part of being a wizened adult means learning to accept that and move on. Let some questions be. Vague. Ambiguous. Murky.
I was an obnoxious child. The one constantly asking why. Repeatedly, until whatever it was that was bothering me, made sense. As an adult, I still struggle with this habit. I want tidy packages. I want to be able to put things away knowing I understood them, fully and completely. I found the relevance. I learned the greater point. And until I can...I can be obsessed with finding answers that people never really seem inclined to give me.
Someone mentioned to me that we get answers to everything. We just pretend we don't understand the answers that we don't like. I will concede that that happens, but I don't think it's generally that simple. At least not always.
Sometimes people give you complicated answers because they are afraid to give you the honest ones. And then everyone around us reviews, evaluates and comes up with the "answer," which is just really their personal take on the events. No more of an answer than anything else. That's not to say someone can't peg it...but ultimately...you never really know.
I just wish people learned to find the courage it takes to put themselves on the table, knowing that good bad or indifferent - you'll be exposed, but you will also be free.
Oh, how I want tidy packages.
The holidays are a challenge for the dysfunctional.
All of those lumps and bumps folks try vainly to keep under the carpet seem to go from inanimate objects to quivering masses of life and vigor as soon as we start packing away our witch hats and candy corn.
It is no different in my family. And it often makes me wonder why it causes so much distress. As soon as we see the diamond commercials and retail jingles, everyone starts chafing. All the things that bug us about our family ties start producing anxiety laden thoughts. We ponder expectations and our ability to honor them. We start avoiding the very conversations others seem desperate to initiate. Yet everyone claims to have to same goal.
"I just want us to try and have a nice holiday."
Perhaps that's the very problem. We're trying. In all the wrong ways. It's a dream we're chasing. The Miracle on 34th Street syndrome. Or maybe it's The Wiz. Who knows. Whatever image of fabled holiday scenes we hold like phantom treasures in our heads, they might be part of the issue. We're too busy trying to look like something else, we never stop to take a good hard honest look at what we truly are. Our senses are filled with holly and spice and we go mad for any semblance of fiction. No matter if any of it is true, so long as we have pictures that look convincing enough.
These events are not fabricated, prescript moments of fluffiness and perfection. They are moments. An extension of life, which is itself unpredictable, complicated and imperfect. And we, its players, equally so. How we could have such expectations of roads with no cracks is beyond me.
Perhaps the trying could be made easier if we remembered how beautiful it is, despite all the cracks and bumps and squirms, to love. Take it for what it is and make the best of it you possibly can. It might not be Miracle on 34th Street and there may be no perfect ending where everything and one falls perfectly in to place...but there is still magic tucked away if you look for it.
"Don't hide your light under a bushel basket."
I was warned about this as a young account executive at an advertising agency long ago. I was sitting in the Vice President's office on a late Friday afternoon, trying to squirm my way out of an account that would put me in a very visible position within our agency and at the client site. He'll never know how those words remained with me. Not because they were words of wisdom that changed the course of my career. Hardly. It stayed with me because it seemed to be a recurring advisement in my life that just didn't fit. I had career aspirations, but was dreadfully disinterested in any of the added attention that would potentially go with it.
I am not a big fan of tooting my own horn. It just feels appalling. And then somewhere along the way, I began to grow sickeningly annoyed with those who would seem to build their entire existence around consistently tooting their own. That feels equally appalling.
I'm not sure that this is such a noble thing, my heightened disdain for overt attention seeking behavior. After all, it takes all sorts to exist in this world if you believe in a yin & yang philosophy which I usually do. The...flamboyant entertainers of the world who relish a life that is more fiction that fact. The people behind the curtain that give the entertainers the means to shine. The fans to watch, cheer and somehow pine for a life that looks and feels "just like theirs." And then the ones that those entertainers eventually wander to, to be truly seen and tended when they've grown nauseated from their own pontificating.
I used to have endless patience for the light chasers and dreamers with quests for adulation/acceptance thinly disguised as something more spiritually palatable. Comfortable with my own relative anonymity, I'd quietly go about my business and try my best to look the other way. To an extent, I am still very much that person. But I'm human too. I'm impatient. I have high expectations of people...because I expect them to have them of me. I torture myself with my actions and the intentions behind them. Sometimes, I seem almost willing to take no action, to avoid taking the wrong one. To have this expectation that people should all sit, weigh the options, identify the truest truth of truths and THEN act, sets me up for chronic disappointment in a world that always seems to be flying by the seat of its pants.
If you ever want to know what's at the root of my snark? It's a deep frustration with the behavior, motivations and "me-filled" theatrics of people working so hard to be something other than what they truly are. Still...I know that that behavior is truly a cry for acceptance. A cry to be accepted as a fantasy version of self, because so few of us truly, deeply feel that the person we are, is good enough.
When I can stay in that place...I remain tolerant. Patient. Kind. When I get tired, I jump on my high horse of expectation and gallop around with my Queen of Hearts slice and cut delivery.
While I don't wish to (nor will I) invite many of the cast of old characters back into my life for they had their season, I will make the commitment to create meaningful relationships with those that I do want in my inner circle without judgment and with patience. My hope is that they will exercise the same in their relationship with me.
I think for 2009, I'm going to try riding my small pony around the field, with hopes real progress can be made. Something tells me, I'll cover much more road.
I have a confession to make. It's the same one many of you might admit to as well.
I google stupid shit.
No, I mean really. Sitting in front of the computer for work and then allowing little break before I settle into the same computer world each night means hours and hours and hours on the Internet. It's just too easy to find answers to the most ridiculous questions that rumble through my mind. Random, absurd and sometimes even embarrassing questions. In an effort to wean myself off of a senseless addiction to wanton and useless information...I am making a commitment to step away from the search box on questions that really don't stand to enlighten, enrich or improve my life or the lives of others. At least for the next three days. Okay...two days. Wait, 24 hours.
So, without further ado. Here are the 10 5 things I currently want to know, but refuse to google.
1. This one began on twitter last night. I was watching Shooter, when I should have been sleeping. But that's beside the point. I noticed Danny Glover appears to have braces. Danny Glover is 62. I'm wondering why a 62 year old would bother with braces. But I also realize this is none of my business.
2. There's been rumbling about Condi Rice having a new hair cut that finally flatters her. I was tempted to stop all strategic thinking when I overheard this. It took everything I had not to immediately do an image search to see what the fuss is all about. I'd be thrilled to see her lose the "duck bill shag" she wore for so many years during the Bush years.
3. Today, a dear one who shall remain anonymous (unless he reveals himself in the comments), and I were discussing the ways in which emergency rooms remove a...bug, from someone's ear. Apparently it's pretty common. I wondered how common after we discussed it.
4. What is Kool Moe Dee doing with himself? Can't remember him? Here...let me help you.
5. Does gray hair come in clusters, or just strands year over year? I won't google this because...of course *clears throat* I have no gray hair.
So by now I'm sure I'm impressed you with how lame my thoughts have been today. I've been gone nearly a month. You'd think I would have come up with something a bit more substantial than this. But...eh...it's late and turkey made me stupid.
I recall early on in the campaign race, the popular and quick rejection of Barack Obama was linked to the belief that he was arrogant. Here was a man very early in his political career in Washington taking a bold step toward leadership assuming he had the experience, the insight and the vision required to lead the United States of America. How dare he?
Throughout the primaries, people questioned everything from his choice of words, his manner of response and beefy academic track record. We were told he was an elitist. How dare he take such bold measures when he lacks the long history of some of his fellow political representatives. What gave him the right to presume he could fix what is impossibly broken in our nation?
Elitist. Arrogant. Messiah.
Boston Globe Columnist Joan Vennochi posted her perspective on the precense of ego in the Obama campaign. She described Obama's mannerisms and approach as overbearing and offered him the advice that "he should think more about the impact of his ego on voters."
It would seem that in many ways, Obama's wave of popularity was not something cleverly orchestrated by his campaign team as much as it was a strong reaction from masses of Americans desire for something very different then what we've experienced in the last eight years.
Obama himself, has always seemed to distance himself from any great overtures of superiority of deservedness. His approach was to create what he created for many years in Chicago with his community organizing. A sense of connectedness among people with common problems across a vastly different landscape of color, culture, religious affiliation and political perspective. Someone skilled at bringing differing parties to the same table to create a workable solution amenable to all.
He was deemed a Messiah with great scorn mostly because his general message of tolerance, consideration of our differences with careful thought and the challenge to rise to our greatest potential as individuals and a collective was very much like the religious figures we have idolized and admired.
For a man with such ego, all I ever heard during his entire campaign was the empowerment of each of us. The urging that this change we seek happens as a collective. I heard that he would make mistakes. I heard him repeat that this was not his mission, it was ours. He did not spend hours speaking about all of his honors and feats of wonder. He merely challenged that what we have been doing, the old guard, was failing in its most critical assigment - the protection, prosperity and health of a nation.
I watched a campaign specifically speak to what we have been saying. I heard and experienced stories of people, hosts of other people. I heard him speak not of himself, but the people who loved, nurtured and inspired him. I saw him consistently demonstrating a humility that while his dreams for this country are great, his belief in the ability of the everyday person was even greater.
An ego driven approach constantly highlights and reviews old wins. An ego driven approach belittles the experience of others as insignificant. An ego driven approach makes bad choices and then works diligently to repackage them as good ones. An ego driven approach uses fear to inspire and controversy as diversion.
I'll go out on a limb and say the McCain Campaign failed very simply for the same reasons the Clinton campaign did. They were too preoccupied with why they deserved to lead when the focus should have been what the United States deserves to experience. And now I believe that any pursuit driven by ego, is bound to falter. Any pursuit driven by the desire for the greatest good, will typically prevail.
Ego makes you emotional. Defensive. Angry. Entitled. Fearful. But it's biggest detractor is its ability to muddle your vision in the times you need it most. Ego is the reflection of self. Not the reflection you see, but the one others tell you to see. To live up to it can be anxiety inducing. Many times, our politicians are not born, they are made. And they scramble during their political service trying to live up to the person they've been constructed to be.
Obama was successful and poised throughout his campaign because he resisted any efforts to make him over. He presented himself truly, as he is. Young though he may be. Politically "green" though he may be. He did not contort himself into something more palpable. He did not make himself the new Kennedy. It just so happens, the philosophies and beliefs and ideas Obama espouses are Kennedian in nature. And when political pressure has surfaced, he has not gone back in trying to hastily reinvent himself. He has stood firm, explained his position and remained willing to hear differing points of views as a true arbitrator focused on the greater good.
When you are presenting the truest version of yourself, you lose the anxiety so many others struggle to supress. When you are chasing the image of yourself, you become a dog chasing its tail. When the desire to win overrides the desire to do your best...you're fighting for a lost cause.
Here's hoping the lesson of Ego helps us all as we embark on the great assignment of change.
I'm still struggling to find all the words to describe what's in my heart and head right now. There is so much to be done, and in his address, President-Elect Obama made it clear that it is time to turn the page and move boldly into a future that we define.
I spent the night rambling, babbling and bawling on twitter. I said, as the results began to come in, that there was no place I'd rather be. And it is the truth. For every debate, every primary, I laughed, snarked and ranted with people I know, and many I don't. In this day of social media and a new chapter in America's history, I can't help but feeling like we came together in that space, understanding that we have no choice now but to evolve into something bigger, brighter and more incredible then we ever dreamed. The possibilities are endless.
Thank you Barack Obama, for giving me something to believe in, during a time when things both personally and nationally, have been anything but clear. You believed when everyone gave you every reason to doubt. I think that's infectious. Hell, I hope right now its an epidemic.
Got the matter resolved this morning, we are all good. It was a lease oversight.
That is all.
