I have come to the conclusion that (as I am apt to do) I have crossed the line into buying too deeply into my own bullshit. Not that love and compassion and the need for human connections and serving each other is bullshit. It's all very real and true and I believe in all of it absolutely and without reservation. But I am prone to Taking Myself Too Seriously Syndrome and it's about time I called myself on it.
The crux of it is that I've been feeling for a while now that most of my relationships are unbalanced in some way: the two-way street doesn't flow with equal force in both directions. Problematic, for a dyed-in-the-wool idealist like me. But I talked myself down from it! I really did! I was all,
"Self. Nothing is perfect, Self. You have to look at flow over time, Self, and I'm sure that over time everything shakes out even, so don't get so upset. Relax. Go with it."
The first remarkable thing is that this ridiculous pep-talk actually worked. It's possible that the actual language I used when talking to myself in my head was somewhat different from the words above, but the gist was the same, and no one really wants to know how pretentious and pedantic I am to myself in my own head. It's positively precious, how hoity-toity my tone can get. I probably don't need to tell you that, dear Reader, since you're reading this and you know perfectly well how pretentious I am.
But over days and weeks of meditating on the concept of flow and time, I came to what I thought was a very determined peace with the fact of lopsidedness in relationships. I was OK. I was on an even keel.
It didn't last, clearly, or I would have nothing to write about. Everything is fodder for more words, dripping from my fingers like lovely and useless petunias. (Gilded lilies? I can't decide whether I prefer the continued alliteration, or the hilariously arcane allusion.)
But I've been snippy and mean and generally uncomfortable for a few days (sorry, Mom/Dad/Baby) and last night (yesterday? last week? It's hard to know whether the moment of epiphany occurs at the moment of verbalization or some time before that) I realized that I'm still struggling with the idea of all my lopsided relationships.
You see, I am unbelievably, unutterably, indescribably lucky. I am privileged beyond your wildest imaginings to have really amazing, awesome, awe-inspiring people in my life. These people are also ridiculously generous with me. I have been plagued by the sense that I am getting so much more from them than I am giving them, and that makes me so uncomfortable I can't deal with it. In fact, it makes me so uncomfortable I become a raging anger ball and kind of (a little bit) a bitch.
This is selfishness. I'm only ok with lopsided relationships if I get to play the martyr, be the selfless giving monolith? Not cool. Not cool at all. I believe absolutely in the power and the value of love and compassion and serving others. But it goes too far when you won't let other people have compassion for you, or love you, or serve you. Because if the purpose of a life is to do these things for other people, you're denying other people purpose by refusing their generosity.
Not ok, Self. Not. At. All. Knock it off, raging megalomania.
Why am I so uncomfortable? Because I don't credit the idea that me, myself, is enough for my friends the way that they, themselves, are enough for me. This kind of thinking denies these amazing, wonderful people that I love so dearly any agency. They don't get to make determinations for themselves; my determination of "not good enough" or "not enough" or even "lopsided" supercedes whatever they feel. Everyone is an adult capable of managing their own lives; I do believe this. So if they feel cheated by me, they'll tell me or they'll drop me, and until such a thing happens, I have got to stop worrying. I have got to let go of the idea that I'm getting more than my share, because my "share" is whatever is willingly given. The more we all share, the more there is to go around.
Flow is a multi-directional thing. And my perspective is not the only perspective. And if I'm going to love the whole world, I have to let the whole world love me, too. I have to let go, and just go with the flow.
Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts
Friday, May 18, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
Even-Keeled I Am Not.
I'm a little bi-polar. Note bene: I don't mean that I've seen a psychiatrist and have a diagnosis in my permanent medical file or ought to be on a lot of medications. I have a friend who is actually bipolar, and I'm not that. What I mean is, more so than the average person, my emotional state goes up and comes down with very little regard paid to external stimuli. Happy things will make me happy, and sad things will make me sad, but sometimes happy things make me less happy because I'm in the nadir of my natural emotive cycle and sometimes sad things make me less sad because I'm sitting pretty atop the zenith of that cycle.
When I'm "up" (which ought not to be confused with happy, because they're not really the same thing) I am fast. I talk faster by at least a factor of three, and sometimes as high as a factor of ten. I am wittier; my brain moves fast enough for me to come up with those charmingly barbed bon mots that we all love Violet Grantham for. I am constantly looking for new stimulation when I'm up. I meet new people at an alarmingly high rate. Sometimes I take reasonably alarming risks. I feel invulnerable, you see, so I can totally split that hash joint with some random man who is completely unconcerned by the fact that I cannot understand him outside the tiny dive bar in a city where I don't speak the language. Nothing will happen. I am fast, I am quick, I am capable and I'll get myself out of whatever happens. Nothing's going to happen anyway.
(In my defense, nothing ever has happened. For the record.)
When I'm down, I am slow. I speak slower than average. It takes me whole seconds to find the words I mean to say. I do not want to meet people. I want to lie in my bed. I want to watch movies that I have already seen again. I want to reread favorite novels. I become a worrier, half-way convinced that the roof over my head is going to collapse at any moment. And I become defeatist, because I am convinced that while the roof is going to cave and crush me, there is nothing I can do about it. Going outside would be too much effort, you see, and my bed isn't outside, anyway. I have no energy for getting out of the way of whatever impending disaster my worry-wort brain has settled upon.
(In the interest of fairness, none of the disasters I've predicted when low have happened, either.)
There are people that only know me when I'm up. They met me when I'm up, and I only see them when I'm up and flitting about like a manic social butterfly with my tiny butterfly feet in every pie I can spy. There are lots of these people. It's not really personal that they only know me manic, it's just that when I'm low, I tend to sit in bed. Not a lot of opportunity for social interaction when you're sitting in your bed, you know?
There are a few people, one or two, here and there, that only know me when I'm down. I can only imagine what they think my life is like. I count myself blessed beyond measure to have these people, even though most of the time I don't think about them at all.
And as I get older, there is an ever-growing number of people that know me both up and down. Anyone that knows me long enough is likely to come to the conclusion that I'm a little bi-polar. The longer someone knows me, the more likely they are to realize the full magnitude and interpersonal impact of my brain chemistry. I now know people that I've known for more of my life than I've not known them. This makes me feel old, a little, but it also is an amazingly affirming realization. People have decided to keep in their life for this long. They've done this even though I'm a little bipolar, and can't be easy to deal.
But I wonder, in these stretches of worrying and defeat and solitude, how all this up and down makes me appear. I'm horrifyingly image-conscious, when you come right down to it. I care very much how people see me and what they think; I put enormous and disturbing amounts of energy into cultivating public personas that are agreeable and likable and desireable. Or, rather, I do all that when I'm up. When I'm down, I don't have the energy, and so I withdraw from the world, and I often wonder what these absences say to people. It's impossible to determine how absence and silence affect perception, because in order to find out you'd have to appear and ask, breaking the absence and the silence.
Because I only stop to think about it when I'm low, I imagine that these retreats must make me seem unhinged, unreliable, flaky, flighty, unable to control myself. Something unflattering and damaging, to be sure.
I spent about three weeks, recently, UP. I was ON. I was HOT. It was great. It lasted forever.
Well, not forever, because I haven't left my house except to go to work or the grocery store since last Wednesday.
I fend off absolute despair by reminding myself, in mantra-like repetitions, that my emotional cycle is a cycle and I'll not be this tired, this uninterested, this uninteresting, this irritable forever. Acceptance really is the best check on anything. Accepting that I'm a little bipolar helps to moderate the lows. I have yet to figure out how to moderate my highs; I don't really want to, I guess. I suppose that feeling invulnerable will get me in trouble some day, but it hasn't yet. So why bother?
Maybe that's just the lows talking. Probably.
When I'm "up" (which ought not to be confused with happy, because they're not really the same thing) I am fast. I talk faster by at least a factor of three, and sometimes as high as a factor of ten. I am wittier; my brain moves fast enough for me to come up with those charmingly barbed bon mots that we all love Violet Grantham for. I am constantly looking for new stimulation when I'm up. I meet new people at an alarmingly high rate. Sometimes I take reasonably alarming risks. I feel invulnerable, you see, so I can totally split that hash joint with some random man who is completely unconcerned by the fact that I cannot understand him outside the tiny dive bar in a city where I don't speak the language. Nothing will happen. I am fast, I am quick, I am capable and I'll get myself out of whatever happens. Nothing's going to happen anyway.
(In my defense, nothing ever has happened. For the record.)
When I'm down, I am slow. I speak slower than average. It takes me whole seconds to find the words I mean to say. I do not want to meet people. I want to lie in my bed. I want to watch movies that I have already seen again. I want to reread favorite novels. I become a worrier, half-way convinced that the roof over my head is going to collapse at any moment. And I become defeatist, because I am convinced that while the roof is going to cave and crush me, there is nothing I can do about it. Going outside would be too much effort, you see, and my bed isn't outside, anyway. I have no energy for getting out of the way of whatever impending disaster my worry-wort brain has settled upon.
(In the interest of fairness, none of the disasters I've predicted when low have happened, either.)
There are people that only know me when I'm up. They met me when I'm up, and I only see them when I'm up and flitting about like a manic social butterfly with my tiny butterfly feet in every pie I can spy. There are lots of these people. It's not really personal that they only know me manic, it's just that when I'm low, I tend to sit in bed. Not a lot of opportunity for social interaction when you're sitting in your bed, you know?
There are a few people, one or two, here and there, that only know me when I'm down. I can only imagine what they think my life is like. I count myself blessed beyond measure to have these people, even though most of the time I don't think about them at all.
And as I get older, there is an ever-growing number of people that know me both up and down. Anyone that knows me long enough is likely to come to the conclusion that I'm a little bi-polar. The longer someone knows me, the more likely they are to realize the full magnitude and interpersonal impact of my brain chemistry. I now know people that I've known for more of my life than I've not known them. This makes me feel old, a little, but it also is an amazingly affirming realization. People have decided to keep in their life for this long. They've done this even though I'm a little bipolar, and can't be easy to deal.
But I wonder, in these stretches of worrying and defeat and solitude, how all this up and down makes me appear. I'm horrifyingly image-conscious, when you come right down to it. I care very much how people see me and what they think; I put enormous and disturbing amounts of energy into cultivating public personas that are agreeable and likable and desireable. Or, rather, I do all that when I'm up. When I'm down, I don't have the energy, and so I withdraw from the world, and I often wonder what these absences say to people. It's impossible to determine how absence and silence affect perception, because in order to find out you'd have to appear and ask, breaking the absence and the silence.
Because I only stop to think about it when I'm low, I imagine that these retreats must make me seem unhinged, unreliable, flaky, flighty, unable to control myself. Something unflattering and damaging, to be sure.
I spent about three weeks, recently, UP. I was ON. I was HOT. It was great. It lasted forever.
Well, not forever, because I haven't left my house except to go to work or the grocery store since last Wednesday.
I fend off absolute despair by reminding myself, in mantra-like repetitions, that my emotional cycle is a cycle and I'll not be this tired, this uninterested, this uninteresting, this irritable forever. Acceptance really is the best check on anything. Accepting that I'm a little bipolar helps to moderate the lows. I have yet to figure out how to moderate my highs; I don't really want to, I guess. I suppose that feeling invulnerable will get me in trouble some day, but it hasn't yet. So why bother?
Maybe that's just the lows talking. Probably.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Rejection is a Lesson
I think the hardest lesson in compassion is this: accepting that not everyone will want you. And, that's ok.
My struggles with trust and intimacy remain ongoing, and probably will for the rest of my life. These are not things that you ever stop really wrestling with, once you've started. Maybe they'll simmer on the backburner more often as years go by and I become more comfortable with the terrifying notion of letting someone else in on my life, but they'll still need to be revisited. I know this, I've known this, I was prepared for this.
What I was not fully prepared for was rejection. In my hubris and megalomania, I glossed over the fact that other people are people and will have feelings and ideas of their own, and needs and wants of their own, and I am not guaranteed to be something that anyone else either desires or needs. In fact, odds are I will not be someone that even most people want or need in their life.
It makes perfect sense, when I see it in black-and-white like that.
But still, but still, but still.
When you're struggling through just the idea of letting your guard down, it's really hard to do it and then be rejected. It's really hard to let someone in only to have them walk right back out. It hurts. A lot.
But hurt is not a reason to lash out. Sadness is not a reason to stop exercising compassion. Other people get to do what they need to do, and be with the people they need to be with, in order to make their own lives better, in order to round out their own internal spaces. Other people, also, get to build airy light palaces in their hearts and minds and populate those glass castles with the people that bring them the most joy.
And I don't get to assert that I have to be one of those people, simply because I want to be.
And if I want to bring someone deep into the heart of my airy light glass castle, but they'd prefer I remain in the outer ring of theirs, I don't get to smash things because I'm not getting my way. Compassion is being there for people in the ways that they want, and the ways that they need, at the times of their choosing. I get to make my choices, yes, but others get to make their own, and if there's a mismatch or a disconnect, compassion demands that we continue to do what we have done, even if we wanted more.
Rejection is the right of every person. Every person is self-determining. And no matter how much it aches, respect for those determinations is the heart of compassion. Self-determination is not an excuse for wretched self-centeredness.
My palace is dimmed, but I'll find another way to light it up. And in the meantime, I will not throw stones. I will practice compassion.
My struggles with trust and intimacy remain ongoing, and probably will for the rest of my life. These are not things that you ever stop really wrestling with, once you've started. Maybe they'll simmer on the backburner more often as years go by and I become more comfortable with the terrifying notion of letting someone else in on my life, but they'll still need to be revisited. I know this, I've known this, I was prepared for this.
What I was not fully prepared for was rejection. In my hubris and megalomania, I glossed over the fact that other people are people and will have feelings and ideas of their own, and needs and wants of their own, and I am not guaranteed to be something that anyone else either desires or needs. In fact, odds are I will not be someone that even most people want or need in their life.
It makes perfect sense, when I see it in black-and-white like that.
But still, but still, but still.
When you're struggling through just the idea of letting your guard down, it's really hard to do it and then be rejected. It's really hard to let someone in only to have them walk right back out. It hurts. A lot.
But hurt is not a reason to lash out. Sadness is not a reason to stop exercising compassion. Other people get to do what they need to do, and be with the people they need to be with, in order to make their own lives better, in order to round out their own internal spaces. Other people, also, get to build airy light palaces in their hearts and minds and populate those glass castles with the people that bring them the most joy.
And I don't get to assert that I have to be one of those people, simply because I want to be.
And if I want to bring someone deep into the heart of my airy light glass castle, but they'd prefer I remain in the outer ring of theirs, I don't get to smash things because I'm not getting my way. Compassion is being there for people in the ways that they want, and the ways that they need, at the times of their choosing. I get to make my choices, yes, but others get to make their own, and if there's a mismatch or a disconnect, compassion demands that we continue to do what we have done, even if we wanted more.
Rejection is the right of every person. Every person is self-determining. And no matter how much it aches, respect for those determinations is the heart of compassion. Self-determination is not an excuse for wretched self-centeredness.
My palace is dimmed, but I'll find another way to light it up. And in the meantime, I will not throw stones. I will practice compassion.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
With A Little Help
I have amazing friends. I don't think I've ever taken time to publicly give thanks to all of my amazing, awesome, funny, beautiful, kind-hearted, clever, creative friends.
So let's do that, shall we?
I love my friends. I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet and know truly wonderful people. I have been granted the grace of surrounding myself with good, interesting, artistic people. My friends are amazing and do amazing things. My friends write stories and prose poetry. My friends take pictures. My friends are artists and illustrators. My friends write about music and dream of opening patisseries. My friends are nuclear technicians and labor organizers. My friends design clothes. My friends run for office when they just can't stand how terribly awry things are going. My friends get quoted in articles about developing social networks for social activists. My friends defend children charged with crimes, and write books about history. My friends are encyclopedic pop-culture cranks.
I have great friends.
But beyond all the amazing things my friends DO, my friends are all amazing people.
Which is not to say we're all perfect. No one's perfect, not even my wild, amazing, eclectic bunch of friends. But we're all good. Basically. We all want good things, for each other and ourselves and everyone else in the world, too. We all want a better world. And because my friends are so amazing and creative, they are all making that better world in their own amazing, beautiful, perfect ways.
But beyond all the amazing things my friends do, and the amazing people they all are, the thing that I am most grateful for today is that my friends are my friends. They are people that I can drink with on a schoolnight. I can have involved conversations about totem vegetables with my friends. They will try headcheese with me. They will give me tips on turning my life into a Wes Anderson movie (that are actually very helpful). They will watch The Young Ones with me, warm on a couch and content to just gape at the screen and ask, "What the fuck is going on."
My friends are good friends. They listen and laugh and sigh and make every day so much better than any day has any right to be. Except that every day, for everyone, should have such good friends in it. My friends gift me with giggles and thoughts and ideas and inspirations and hugs every day. I have the best friends. Everyone should have friends like this.
Here's to my amazing, wonderful, beautiful friends. And yours, too!
So let's do that, shall we?
I love my friends. I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet and know truly wonderful people. I have been granted the grace of surrounding myself with good, interesting, artistic people. My friends are amazing and do amazing things. My friends write stories and prose poetry. My friends take pictures. My friends are artists and illustrators. My friends write about music and dream of opening patisseries. My friends are nuclear technicians and labor organizers. My friends design clothes. My friends run for office when they just can't stand how terribly awry things are going. My friends get quoted in articles about developing social networks for social activists. My friends defend children charged with crimes, and write books about history. My friends are encyclopedic pop-culture cranks.
I have great friends.
But beyond all the amazing things my friends DO, my friends are all amazing people.
Which is not to say we're all perfect. No one's perfect, not even my wild, amazing, eclectic bunch of friends. But we're all good. Basically. We all want good things, for each other and ourselves and everyone else in the world, too. We all want a better world. And because my friends are so amazing and creative, they are all making that better world in their own amazing, beautiful, perfect ways.
But beyond all the amazing things my friends do, and the amazing people they all are, the thing that I am most grateful for today is that my friends are my friends. They are people that I can drink with on a schoolnight. I can have involved conversations about totem vegetables with my friends. They will try headcheese with me. They will give me tips on turning my life into a Wes Anderson movie (that are actually very helpful). They will watch The Young Ones with me, warm on a couch and content to just gape at the screen and ask, "What the fuck is going on."
My friends are good friends. They listen and laugh and sigh and make every day so much better than any day has any right to be. Except that every day, for everyone, should have such good friends in it. My friends gift me with giggles and thoughts and ideas and inspirations and hugs every day. I have the best friends. Everyone should have friends like this.
Here's to my amazing, wonderful, beautiful friends. And yours, too!
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