A few weeks ago, I had an epiphany. Well, maybe not an epiphany, but it was a moment where I actually paid attention to the words coming out of my mouth at the exact moment I was uttering them. I had met up for dinner with an old friend and since I was on his turf I asked him to pick the place. We walked around the neighborhood near my hotel and while I was tapping away on Yelp my friend stopped in front of a restaurant that, as luck would have it, he'd been wanting to try for quite some time. So I put my phone in my pocket and declared, "perfect!" before heading inside and motioning for him to follow. Once inside I didn't need Yelp to tell me that this was a happening place - it was packed, so packed that two would-be diners who, like us, had walked in off of the mean streets of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, were quoted a wait time of 40 minutes. My friend looked worried but then the twosome ahead of us decided that this was too much of a scene and they folded like an over-the-knee boot sitting in your closet. At their departure, I exclaimed, "perfect!", and then headed for the bar after giving the hostess our name. At the bar, adorned with mixologist gear of almost fetishtistic proportions and complexity, we ordered our fancy drinks served by our over-pierced, over-tatted, over-mustached drink specialists (apparently "bartender" is so basic) to which I responded, "perfect!". Soon, I realized that I was vomiting perfection all over the place to the servers, to busboys, to the doorman at my hotel after dinner. This was distressing, but the worst was yet to come, because later that night as my husband and I were settling into our hotel bed and going over plans for the next day, I noticed that our conversation was being carpet-bombed by "perfects" - and we'll leave and get coffee by 8am? PERFECT!...then we can get back here, pack, and grab lunch? PERFECT!...and we have cash to tip the maids already. PERFECT!!
Just what the hell is going on??
I needed to trace this contagion back to its source, but that's easier said than done. But, I had to do something because this outbreak was almost as bad as the "at the end of the day" bug that spread from think-tanks, to boardrooms, to bad reality TV shows faster than you can say "PERFECT"! So I began stalking "perfect" and what I found was enlightening and a bit scary. I started by laying a trap - I told my husband that he had to stop using "perfect." He was puzzled why I should have a problem with such a nifty word, but he played along, in as much as every time he said "PERFECT!" he held his hands up to his mouth like a 5 year old who'd been caught saying a bad word. This little experiment resulted in him noticing just how "PERFECT!" he had been making things verbally. As far as I could tell, when he was talking to me or any other close relative, he seemed to use the P-word as a means of saying, "I hear you - no, I really hear you," but also as a means to stop all further conversations about a topic, so that "perfect" meant, "we're done here so stop over thinking things." So was he using the p-word to pacify or to give assurance or both?
I also made a mental inventory of my own personal p-word use. I always use it at work, but I also become a heavy user of the p-word when I'm planning anything with my family. I use "perfect" as a means of moving things along as my family can take a looooong while to get it together so when we're on our annual family vacation, things like selecting a restaurant for lunch or deciding whether or not to take my nephews to the pool before or after breakfast become bogged down in indecisiveness. Growing up in this atmosphere was bad enough but as an adult I've lost the ability to function according to the rules of my family's dysfunction so I plan everything and then verbally pound them with "PERFECT!" as I lay out the plan for the days. When I clench my teeth and say, "PERFECT!" that's the equivalent of the airline captain and crew doing cross checks before take-off, so sit in your seat and buckle up because this plane is taking off!
But, what's so wrong with being "perfect"? First, we're humans so it's impossible to be perfect. Secondly, striving for perfection might be great when you're running a marathon, but most of life involves working in groups and demanding perfection always leaves you some pretty thin margins for things like forgiveness and perspective.
So, I'm going on a "PERFECT!" cleanse, and what a great time to start this since I haven't started my Christmas shopping yet nor have I written one Christmas card! I don't know how long it will last and I don't know what I'll discover on the other side of perfection, but I have a feeling I'll like it.
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Friday, December 11, 2015
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Getting to Know You: How to Relate to Your Relatives During the Holidays
Well, the great Thanksgiving pilgrimage has begun and as you head over the river and through the woods to your relatives, some of you may be dreading a turkey day that comes with judgmental relatives, healthy servings of shade, and conversations that rarely progress beyond "can you believe how hot/cold/icy/snowy it is today?" But, I think there's a deeper issue - how little we know our relatives. Whether you're breaking the wishbone with your blood relatives or your in-laws, it's a sure bet that you don't know as much about each other as you assume you do. And I'm not talking about your hopes and dreams and fears, I mean basic stuff like favorite food, favorite color, favorite movie.
For blood relatives who've known each other for most of their lives, the Thanksgiving table turns into a session of Mad Libs: The "remember that time..." edition. There are certain stories that make up the family mythology and the ritualistic retelling of these tales further cements the familial bond - or something like that! But, these stories sometimes don't allow for the telling of new stories and the family becomes frozen in a narrative loop that doesn't allow the characters in these stories to develop an interior life and to progress.
Crazy Uncle Duck who accidentally blew up the family barn when he was 12 years old while deep frying a turkey will always be that character, even when he's 20 and in college, when he's 27 and doing his medical school residency, and when he's 45 and is tops in his field as an orthopedic surgeon. There is comfort in hearing this story and in telling this story. But, Uncle Duck - who now goes by Ben - might hate this story, and he might wonder why the family seems disinterested in who he has become and the journey he's taken to get there.
In studying Biblical literature, the phrase "closed text" is used to describe a list of scriptural books considered to be authoritative, to which nothing more may be added. For instance, the books that comprise the Torah. In our family lives, we can become the human equivalent of "closed texts", not allowing space for the natural evolution that happens in human beings, and greeting these changes at the holiday table with scorn, disgust, derision, or dismissal.
Years ago, when I was in grad school - broke and hundreds of miles away from home - I had the best Thanksgiving of my life. It was at the Westin Copley Place with a dozen or so other grad students, a couple of whom were my friends and the rest of whom were strangers. We laughed, we talked, we ate too much and over the course of several hours we got to know each other. We were genuinely interested in learning about each other and by the end of the night new friendships were forged and established friendships were deepened.
So, starting this Thanksgiving, get to know your families. Ask them the who/what/why/where/how questions that a reporter or a stranger in an airport bar would ask. Bypass the family shorthand and truly engage with your family. If you're with your in-laws, don't let them cut their long stories short, assuming that your significant other has given you a pre-dinner briefing about who begat who and whom divorced whom. And if you're the one bringing your significant other into the family fold, let them get to know your family members one on one. Seat them next to a favorite aunt and let the two of them have a dialogue and get to know one another. It's better for your relatives to experience first-hand how wonderful your partner is and not hear about it from you. In short, don't talk about each other, rather talk to each other. The holidays are annual opportunities to check in with each other - don't miss your chance.
For blood relatives who've known each other for most of their lives, the Thanksgiving table turns into a session of Mad Libs: The "remember that time..." edition. There are certain stories that make up the family mythology and the ritualistic retelling of these tales further cements the familial bond - or something like that! But, these stories sometimes don't allow for the telling of new stories and the family becomes frozen in a narrative loop that doesn't allow the characters in these stories to develop an interior life and to progress.
Crazy Uncle Duck who accidentally blew up the family barn when he was 12 years old while deep frying a turkey will always be that character, even when he's 20 and in college, when he's 27 and doing his medical school residency, and when he's 45 and is tops in his field as an orthopedic surgeon. There is comfort in hearing this story and in telling this story. But, Uncle Duck - who now goes by Ben - might hate this story, and he might wonder why the family seems disinterested in who he has become and the journey he's taken to get there.
In studying Biblical literature, the phrase "closed text" is used to describe a list of scriptural books considered to be authoritative, to which nothing more may be added. For instance, the books that comprise the Torah. In our family lives, we can become the human equivalent of "closed texts", not allowing space for the natural evolution that happens in human beings, and greeting these changes at the holiday table with scorn, disgust, derision, or dismissal.
Years ago, when I was in grad school - broke and hundreds of miles away from home - I had the best Thanksgiving of my life. It was at the Westin Copley Place with a dozen or so other grad students, a couple of whom were my friends and the rest of whom were strangers. We laughed, we talked, we ate too much and over the course of several hours we got to know each other. We were genuinely interested in learning about each other and by the end of the night new friendships were forged and established friendships were deepened.
So, starting this Thanksgiving, get to know your families. Ask them the who/what/why/where/how questions that a reporter or a stranger in an airport bar would ask. Bypass the family shorthand and truly engage with your family. If you're with your in-laws, don't let them cut their long stories short, assuming that your significant other has given you a pre-dinner briefing about who begat who and whom divorced whom. And if you're the one bringing your significant other into the family fold, let them get to know your family members one on one. Seat them next to a favorite aunt and let the two of them have a dialogue and get to know one another. It's better for your relatives to experience first-hand how wonderful your partner is and not hear about it from you. In short, don't talk about each other, rather talk to each other. The holidays are annual opportunities to check in with each other - don't miss your chance.
Monday, July 13, 2015
Lies, Damn Lies: Why "The Bachelorette" Makes Me Mad, Not Sad
Every season "The Bachelorette" seems like it goes on waaaaaay longer than it should. With this year's "Bachelorette", Kaitlyn, the producers must be beside themselves with glee. She's the whole package: weirdly-spelled first name, bobble-head body, baby talk voice with an old-man belly laugh, overly-large teeth, she can cry with the snap of a finger, she likes to be "goofy", oh, and she likes sex. Finally, they can put to bed the delicate metaphors like "fantasy suite" and "overnights" (you know, like they're a bunch of 12 year old girls having a sleepover, complete with popcorn and Taylor Swift on the radio), and all of the other linguistic gymnastics that the writers' room agonized over for lo these many years in order to avoid directly addressing the simple chemistry when hordes of telegenic young singles combine in dreamy exotic locations supplied with liquor, hot tubs, and cameras. But this "Bachelorette" is a monster of reality TV's own making. The reality TV universe has finally turned the corner and produced its own spawn!!
Cue the scary music and the clap of thunder!
That's right, Dr. Frankenstein has been hard at work because Kaitlyn isn't real. Sure, she looks like she's made of flesh, blood and bone, but her brain was swapped out long ago for a processing system that runs on bottle caps and lip gloss. Think about it - is she really such a cool girl who is down for anything? Who's idea of a great first date involves sloppy burgers and beer in a bottle? She came to the show's producers fully-formed. She'd probably already sketched out some notes as to who her character "Kaitlyn" would be - what motivates her, what angers her, who her enemies are and what the arc of her storyline would be. I wouldn't be surprised if she was running lines with her girlfriends every night after she got home from her day job in the weeks leading up to the submission of her audition tape.
And it's not just "Kaitlyn" that's not real, just take a look at the bachelors. There's The Soulful One, The Moody One, The One Who Picks a Fight Before the Rose Ceremony, The One Who Rats Out The One Who is a Liar Who is Then Sent Home, The One Who Fools The Bachelorette But Not America - all of whom know how to cause the dreaded "drama" and all of whom think that every romantic cliche thrown up to them as a date is "amazing" as they "follow their heart" on this "journey" to, you know, "find love" and, when not handed a rose, spend their limo drive into the sunset wondering how they'll "process what's just happened." ENOUGH!!
Look, there was a time when reality TV was authentic. They called them documentaries and they were unflinching and real. The first season of MTV's "Real World" reads more like a documentary in that it makes you deeply uncomfortable because it's so real with all of the awkwardness and that feeling when you're stuck on a full flight with a couple who are having the worst argument of their marriage, like way worse than Elaine Benes and David Putty on that episode of "Seinfeld" and minus the comedic genius of Larry David.
But now reality TV is stocked with heroes and villains who arrive fully-formed and aren't created by post-production slight of hand in the editing suite. Slowly, we, the general public, have become characters in our own reality shows. Creation of the alter ego usually begins with creating your first social media account. The profile questions - favorite films, favorite music, hobbies/interests - are all opportunities to create yourself, or recreate yourself. Some of us bring these cyber ids off of the screen and into the four dimensional world and then boomerang back to the screen - at least that's what I think Instagram is for, right? I mean if you've described yourself as a foodie then eating at a fancy restaurant having a great meal is your THANG, but it doesn't really count until you take a photo of the meal at the fancy restaurant, Instagram it out to your followers, and then tag the heck out of it so that the fancy restaurant knows that you're eating there and loving it because you're a foodie, that's what you do! We've become wedded to the weird internal storyline that appears to be guiding our lives, and we have become insistent on maintaining a narrative consistency with the characters we've created. We've made existence boring and predictable and that makes me mad - not disappointed, not sad, not angry, just MAD.
So, let's mix it up a little bit. Stop trying to be "The [fill in the blank]" and just BE.
Cue the scary music and the clap of thunder!
That's right, Dr. Frankenstein has been hard at work because Kaitlyn isn't real. Sure, she looks like she's made of flesh, blood and bone, but her brain was swapped out long ago for a processing system that runs on bottle caps and lip gloss. Think about it - is she really such a cool girl who is down for anything? Who's idea of a great first date involves sloppy burgers and beer in a bottle? She came to the show's producers fully-formed. She'd probably already sketched out some notes as to who her character "Kaitlyn" would be - what motivates her, what angers her, who her enemies are and what the arc of her storyline would be. I wouldn't be surprised if she was running lines with her girlfriends every night after she got home from her day job in the weeks leading up to the submission of her audition tape.
And it's not just "Kaitlyn" that's not real, just take a look at the bachelors. There's The Soulful One, The Moody One, The One Who Picks a Fight Before the Rose Ceremony, The One Who Rats Out The One Who is a Liar Who is Then Sent Home, The One Who Fools The Bachelorette But Not America - all of whom know how to cause the dreaded "drama" and all of whom think that every romantic cliche thrown up to them as a date is "amazing" as they "follow their heart" on this "journey" to, you know, "find love" and, when not handed a rose, spend their limo drive into the sunset wondering how they'll "process what's just happened." ENOUGH!!
Look, there was a time when reality TV was authentic. They called them documentaries and they were unflinching and real. The first season of MTV's "Real World" reads more like a documentary in that it makes you deeply uncomfortable because it's so real with all of the awkwardness and that feeling when you're stuck on a full flight with a couple who are having the worst argument of their marriage, like way worse than Elaine Benes and David Putty on that episode of "Seinfeld" and minus the comedic genius of Larry David.
But now reality TV is stocked with heroes and villains who arrive fully-formed and aren't created by post-production slight of hand in the editing suite. Slowly, we, the general public, have become characters in our own reality shows. Creation of the alter ego usually begins with creating your first social media account. The profile questions - favorite films, favorite music, hobbies/interests - are all opportunities to create yourself, or recreate yourself. Some of us bring these cyber ids off of the screen and into the four dimensional world and then boomerang back to the screen - at least that's what I think Instagram is for, right? I mean if you've described yourself as a foodie then eating at a fancy restaurant having a great meal is your THANG, but it doesn't really count until you take a photo of the meal at the fancy restaurant, Instagram it out to your followers, and then tag the heck out of it so that the fancy restaurant knows that you're eating there and loving it because you're a foodie, that's what you do! We've become wedded to the weird internal storyline that appears to be guiding our lives, and we have become insistent on maintaining a narrative consistency with the characters we've created. We've made existence boring and predictable and that makes me mad - not disappointed, not sad, not angry, just MAD.
So, let's mix it up a little bit. Stop trying to be "The [fill in the blank]" and just BE.
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Branding Your Brand New Year
Around this time, several years ago, as we were hauling the Christmas tree out to the curb and enjoying the last of the pumpkin pies, my husband and I got to talking about resolutions for the New Year. He shared with me a resolution that he and his sister had made some years before in order to jump start their fitness and exercise plans for the New Year. It was simple, yet effective: "Put the sneakers on." Those words fueled their actions. Had a tough day at work and don't feel like going to the gym for the day's workout? Well, just put the sneakers on. These were words that went beyond the vagary of most resolutions, and went into a direct action. Put the sneakers on. It was, and it is, still, pure genius.
Over the years, we've continued this tradition of branding the brand New Year. One year it was "clear the clutter," and that issued in a top to bottom effort to organize our household stuff. Another year it was "purge the circle" - ridding ourselves of toxic relationships that were dragging us down and not lifting us up. This was a hard one to execute, but the results were tremendously freeing and soul-satisfying. So what's on tap for 2015? Maybe "read more books," although Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has already claimed that with his New Year's promise to read a new book every other week, and Arianna Huffington has also pledged to read more good books. I like soup, so maybe our 2015 brand could be EAT MORE SOUP. Although that sounds more like a Campbell's Soup advertisement. "Just do it" has been done to death.
There were some years where the theme just presented itself, but this year, it's a bit of a jumble. We're being pushed and pulled into so many different directions with aging parents, our own aging bodies, and work, work, work. Never have we needed spiritual, mental and physical rejuvenation more, and never have we had so little time to achieve it. For now, though, I'll be content to stop, take a slow and deep breath, and hold onto the brief stillness of this brand new, unbranded New Year, like freshly fallen snow.
Friday, August 22, 2014
The Freshman's Guide to College Life: The Daddy Issues Edition
By now, your Facebook newsfeed is brimming with photos from proud parents of their smiling, happy children packing up and moving into their college freshmen dorms. And while my freshman year is many years behind me, I still remember that odd mixture of fear and excitement, of wariness in leaving my childhood home and my mother's arms and the joy of having a space of my own in a world about which my parents knew nothing.
But, the only person who knew less than my parents was me, and so I want to talk directly to you, college freshman. While you may have impressive technological sophistication, and while you may think that you know everything (or, a bit more than your parents), everyone has a blind spot, especially the average college freshman, and, more specifically, a freshman woman with daddy issues. Maybe your parents had a bad marriage, maybe your father was emotionally withholding, mentally abusive, or simply not around. Maybe your daddy loves his second family better, or maybe he loves his job better. It doesn't matter, because young lady, you're arriving on campus on a mission, and that mission is to be loved AT ANY COST!! If you are this woman, or if you know this woman, here are simple tips to get you safely started at college and safely out the other side.
DATING
There's nothing wrong with dating, but if you've got daddy issues you should avoid the urge to merge at least during the first half of your freshman year. Why? You'll want to focus all of your attention on your new love, even if it interferes with your studies and with your ability to make and develop friendships. Soon you'll be scheduling your meals, laundry, and classes around your 'boo as your insecurities lead you to believe that any time apart means an imminent break-up. You'll sport his fraternity sweatshirt in the dining hall and be his own personal cheerleader during intramural basketball games. Slow down, girl! Get to know yourself and enjoy your independence. And when you do start dating on campus, don't date someone who lives in your dorm as you might be too tempted to casually "bump into" them in a manner that law enforcement calls "stalking." Remember, smothering your boyfriend doesn't make your daddy love you.
BEWARE THE MALE PROFESSOR TRAP
Yep, he's an authority figure, and, sure, he looks devastating in front of the chalk board in your freshmen English seminar class, but he's too old for you and, oh, and he's your professor. It's tempting, though, to seek out the affections of an older man, a man who might be old enough to the father who didn't love you enough/at all, but he's not interested, so stop before you make a fool of yourself. So don't wear that low-cut, semi-sheer tank top to his class. Don't lean seductively over his desk in said top to ask him a burning question you have about "Beowulf" before that class starts. And don't go to his office during office hours in that tank top to get his profound thoughts on Olde English vs. modern English. At best, he'll laugh at you and send you on your way, at worst, he'll hook up with you and now both of your academic careers are in jeopardy. So, keep things professional, and maybe check and see if a female professor teaches that same class. And if that female professor has a male teaching assistant, then re-read this paragraph from the top. Remember, seducing a male authority figure doesn't make your daddy love you.
DRINKING
This is a particularly dicey subject. Unless you're at a dry campus, most socializing on a typical college campus involves a red Solo cup and a keg. I'm not naive enough to tell you to "just say no" and harp on the countless stories on binge-drinking and excessive partying on college campuses, it's just that I never really figured out why the drinking culture was so pervasive on campus. Most college kids don't get drunk because they like the taste of beer and liquor (although, Moscato wine is like liquid candy), do they? From what I've seen, it seems as if they get drunk so they can tell tall tales of their tipsy shenanigans. It's like their intoxication becomes the cover for bad behavior, and for a girl with daddy issues, booze becomes a part of her male-attention seeking arsenal. Look at me, I just pounded 8 beers in a row! Look at me, I just downed 4 vodka shots!! Look at me, I just hooked up with 3 random dudes but I'm too drunk to remember their names!!! Don't be that girl. Listen, the boys who cheered you on while you downed a fifth of rum are not your friends. If they were, they wouldn't let you do something that could cause you injury or death. And their attention doesn't make your daddy love you.
But, the only person who knew less than my parents was me, and so I want to talk directly to you, college freshman. While you may have impressive technological sophistication, and while you may think that you know everything (or, a bit more than your parents), everyone has a blind spot, especially the average college freshman, and, more specifically, a freshman woman with daddy issues. Maybe your parents had a bad marriage, maybe your father was emotionally withholding, mentally abusive, or simply not around. Maybe your daddy loves his second family better, or maybe he loves his job better. It doesn't matter, because young lady, you're arriving on campus on a mission, and that mission is to be loved AT ANY COST!! If you are this woman, or if you know this woman, here are simple tips to get you safely started at college and safely out the other side.
DATING
There's nothing wrong with dating, but if you've got daddy issues you should avoid the urge to merge at least during the first half of your freshman year. Why? You'll want to focus all of your attention on your new love, even if it interferes with your studies and with your ability to make and develop friendships. Soon you'll be scheduling your meals, laundry, and classes around your 'boo as your insecurities lead you to believe that any time apart means an imminent break-up. You'll sport his fraternity sweatshirt in the dining hall and be his own personal cheerleader during intramural basketball games. Slow down, girl! Get to know yourself and enjoy your independence. And when you do start dating on campus, don't date someone who lives in your dorm as you might be too tempted to casually "bump into" them in a manner that law enforcement calls "stalking." Remember, smothering your boyfriend doesn't make your daddy love you.
BEWARE THE MALE PROFESSOR TRAP
Yep, he's an authority figure, and, sure, he looks devastating in front of the chalk board in your freshmen English seminar class, but he's too old for you and, oh, and he's your professor. It's tempting, though, to seek out the affections of an older man, a man who might be old enough to the father who didn't love you enough/at all, but he's not interested, so stop before you make a fool of yourself. So don't wear that low-cut, semi-sheer tank top to his class. Don't lean seductively over his desk in said top to ask him a burning question you have about "Beowulf" before that class starts. And don't go to his office during office hours in that tank top to get his profound thoughts on Olde English vs. modern English. At best, he'll laugh at you and send you on your way, at worst, he'll hook up with you and now both of your academic careers are in jeopardy. So, keep things professional, and maybe check and see if a female professor teaches that same class. And if that female professor has a male teaching assistant, then re-read this paragraph from the top. Remember, seducing a male authority figure doesn't make your daddy love you.
DRINKING
This is a particularly dicey subject. Unless you're at a dry campus, most socializing on a typical college campus involves a red Solo cup and a keg. I'm not naive enough to tell you to "just say no" and harp on the countless stories on binge-drinking and excessive partying on college campuses, it's just that I never really figured out why the drinking culture was so pervasive on campus. Most college kids don't get drunk because they like the taste of beer and liquor (although, Moscato wine is like liquid candy), do they? From what I've seen, it seems as if they get drunk so they can tell tall tales of their tipsy shenanigans. It's like their intoxication becomes the cover for bad behavior, and for a girl with daddy issues, booze becomes a part of her male-attention seeking arsenal. Look at me, I just pounded 8 beers in a row! Look at me, I just downed 4 vodka shots!! Look at me, I just hooked up with 3 random dudes but I'm too drunk to remember their names!!! Don't be that girl. Listen, the boys who cheered you on while you downed a fifth of rum are not your friends. If they were, they wouldn't let you do something that could cause you injury or death. And their attention doesn't make your daddy love you.
Monday, February 17, 2014
What Kind of Cat Are You: Trying to Curb My BuzzFeed Quiz Addiction
Hi, my name is Shannon and I can't stop taking BuzzFeed quizzes. There, I've admitted it, and I know I'm not alone. By now, you probably know what career you should actually have, how many children you should have, when you should have gotten married, what state you actually belong in, what kind of dog you are, which Jane Austen heroine you are, and what kind of parent you are - all thanks to Jonah Peretti, the founder of BuzzFeed, and his army of editors who've made the website into the stickiest little time-waster ever! And while I appreciate all of the psychological insights that a gal can garner over a 10-question quiz, I'm curious about why these quizzes are so seductive.
It's not like they're breaking new ground. When I was in college, my friends and I would take those Cosmo quizzes more seriously than our GREs, LSATs, and MCATs. However, those Cosmo quizzes were a bit more, shall we say, frisky, in terms of their content - from what kind of girlfriend are you to what your favorite sexual position says about you. You had a feeling that a team of Cosmo psychologists were working around the clock fashioning these quizzes, which, incidentally, seemed to go on forever, and which required deep introspection. Maybe my submissive tendencies in romantic relationships were sabotaging my workplace ambitions!
By the time I entered graduate school, it was the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test that was all the rage. This was the ultimate Cosmo quiz, only this time, instead of taking the test on a Friday night with a few glasses of wine with your girlfriends in front of the TV, this one was given to you in a classroom or at work. And the results of this test had implications far beyond your antics in the bedroom. Myers-Briggs produced the ultimate "aha" moment, putting the events of the test-takers lives inside of a framework that helped them to make sense of all of their successes and failures up to that point. So maybe my fear of public speaking had nothing to do with my intelligence, after all, and could be explained by my being a hardcore Introvert! In just four letters, a diagnosis for my life could be made, and also a prescription to fix what was wrong. No more ENTJ boyfriends for this INFP girl - no way!!
Myers-Briggs, Cosmo, and now BuzzFeed, are all a variant on our need to diagnose where we are. They are a third-party observer who can assess how we're doing and if we're happy. Did we take the right job? Are we married to the right person? These quizzes are our opportunity to check in - like cheap forms of therapy. And then we share the results with each other, providing another opportunity for people to know us better. BuzzFeed may be a new technology, but within it is the oldest human need, that of intimacy through revelation. And now I'm off to find out if I'm a hipster and what font I am. Spoiler alert: I think I'm a hardcore Verdana, although I've played the harlot with Courier once or twice:)
It's not like they're breaking new ground. When I was in college, my friends and I would take those Cosmo quizzes more seriously than our GREs, LSATs, and MCATs. However, those Cosmo quizzes were a bit more, shall we say, frisky, in terms of their content - from what kind of girlfriend are you to what your favorite sexual position says about you. You had a feeling that a team of Cosmo psychologists were working around the clock fashioning these quizzes, which, incidentally, seemed to go on forever, and which required deep introspection. Maybe my submissive tendencies in romantic relationships were sabotaging my workplace ambitions!
By the time I entered graduate school, it was the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test that was all the rage. This was the ultimate Cosmo quiz, only this time, instead of taking the test on a Friday night with a few glasses of wine with your girlfriends in front of the TV, this one was given to you in a classroom or at work. And the results of this test had implications far beyond your antics in the bedroom. Myers-Briggs produced the ultimate "aha" moment, putting the events of the test-takers lives inside of a framework that helped them to make sense of all of their successes and failures up to that point. So maybe my fear of public speaking had nothing to do with my intelligence, after all, and could be explained by my being a hardcore Introvert! In just four letters, a diagnosis for my life could be made, and also a prescription to fix what was wrong. No more ENTJ boyfriends for this INFP girl - no way!!
Myers-Briggs, Cosmo, and now BuzzFeed, are all a variant on our need to diagnose where we are. They are a third-party observer who can assess how we're doing and if we're happy. Did we take the right job? Are we married to the right person? These quizzes are our opportunity to check in - like cheap forms of therapy. And then we share the results with each other, providing another opportunity for people to know us better. BuzzFeed may be a new technology, but within it is the oldest human need, that of intimacy through revelation. And now I'm off to find out if I'm a hipster and what font I am. Spoiler alert: I think I'm a hardcore Verdana, although I've played the harlot with Courier once or twice:)
Friday, December 6, 2013
Black-Shaming: Standing Up for Standing Out
"You's a fool!" "You're simple!" "You so crazy!" "You're stupid!" If you think these sound like insults, then you don't know black people, or maybe you do. These phrases are often thrown around as humorous descriptions of a person who has a different take on reality. As a black person myself, these phrases astound me and offend me, mostly because other black people have directed them at me. "Shannon, you're simple!" "Girl, you a fool!" And while they say it with laughter, usually after I've made them laugh, I've never been able to figure out the unholy mystery of why people of my own race would engage with me using words that used to describe those who were mentally impaired.
That my awareness of All Things Black is spotty, to say the least, shouldn't be a surprise. I've always existed around the fringes of Popular Black Culture (PBC), starting from childhood and my over-protective mother. I know, it's unfair to call on Dr. Freud, but this really is Mom's fault! Mom grew up in that mythical "village" that Hillary Clinton made popular years ago. Mom's village was a small town, just on the DC/Maryland line, where it seemed a relative of hers lived on virtually every street, and her elementary school and high school classmates were also her cousins. It was small town USA in a segregated America and the only people Mom saw were also the only people Mom trusted. For her, Hippies were what you saw on the news, and the March on Washington was in a land far away, even though it was only a few miles from her home! There were no giant afros (though she did have an afro wig that she'd occasionally sport at parties), and Black Power meant they had paid the electric bill on time!
Growing up, I knew Mom and Dad were counter-cultural. Mom would rock her short natural/no make-up look while the other black moms had relaxed their hair and put on Jordache Jeans, and Dad would pick us up in whatever wheezing hooptie he'd found in someone's backyard, or in one of his vans. The only labeled clothing I wore back in those days were Sears Toughskins! While my high school classmates were experimenting with hair color, multiple piercings, and expensive designer clothing and handbags and car dates with boys, I was taking piano lessons and reading and fantasizing about what the world outside of my alternate reality was really like.
I got a taste of that world in college and in graduate school, but, I took a most decidedly non-PBC course - no HBCUs or black sororities. I went where the scholarships took me and I pledged a sorority of women who were my friends, although we were more Benetton ad than "A Different World." The visits home during those college and grad school years were a series of awkward pauses. Because I really wasn't allowed to socialize during high school, I had no basis for developing friendships and extending those into adulthood. I had never developed the standardized frame of reference regarding Popular Black Culture, and I became alien, which, I guess, makes me a fool/simple/crazy/stupid?
I don't know, but I do know that there's a bit of whiplash that you develop when you're straddling the race and class lines. It's like you have levels of awareness that allow you to exist both inside and outside of an experience. It's an explosion of dozens of frames of reference, causing me to see things and evaluate situations in a myriad of different ways simultaneously. It is the source of my humor but it can also be a source of despair. I don't think this makes me unique. I think all people do this, but they choose to ignore it and opt for what's comfortable or most expedient. Right now, the world is mourning the loss of a man who thought outside of what was comfortable and did what was right. There's nothing simple about that.
That my awareness of All Things Black is spotty, to say the least, shouldn't be a surprise. I've always existed around the fringes of Popular Black Culture (PBC), starting from childhood and my over-protective mother. I know, it's unfair to call on Dr. Freud, but this really is Mom's fault! Mom grew up in that mythical "village" that Hillary Clinton made popular years ago. Mom's village was a small town, just on the DC/Maryland line, where it seemed a relative of hers lived on virtually every street, and her elementary school and high school classmates were also her cousins. It was small town USA in a segregated America and the only people Mom saw were also the only people Mom trusted. For her, Hippies were what you saw on the news, and the March on Washington was in a land far away, even though it was only a few miles from her home! There were no giant afros (though she did have an afro wig that she'd occasionally sport at parties), and Black Power meant they had paid the electric bill on time!
Growing up, I knew Mom and Dad were counter-cultural. Mom would rock her short natural/no make-up look while the other black moms had relaxed their hair and put on Jordache Jeans, and Dad would pick us up in whatever wheezing hooptie he'd found in someone's backyard, or in one of his vans. The only labeled clothing I wore back in those days were Sears Toughskins! While my high school classmates were experimenting with hair color, multiple piercings, and expensive designer clothing and handbags and car dates with boys, I was taking piano lessons and reading and fantasizing about what the world outside of my alternate reality was really like.
I got a taste of that world in college and in graduate school, but, I took a most decidedly non-PBC course - no HBCUs or black sororities. I went where the scholarships took me and I pledged a sorority of women who were my friends, although we were more Benetton ad than "A Different World." The visits home during those college and grad school years were a series of awkward pauses. Because I really wasn't allowed to socialize during high school, I had no basis for developing friendships and extending those into adulthood. I had never developed the standardized frame of reference regarding Popular Black Culture, and I became alien, which, I guess, makes me a fool/simple/crazy/stupid?
I don't know, but I do know that there's a bit of whiplash that you develop when you're straddling the race and class lines. It's like you have levels of awareness that allow you to exist both inside and outside of an experience. It's an explosion of dozens of frames of reference, causing me to see things and evaluate situations in a myriad of different ways simultaneously. It is the source of my humor but it can also be a source of despair. I don't think this makes me unique. I think all people do this, but they choose to ignore it and opt for what's comfortable or most expedient. Right now, the world is mourning the loss of a man who thought outside of what was comfortable and did what was right. There's nothing simple about that.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
No More Drama?
When I turned 21 years old, I was in Rome wearing a ridiculous Versace shredded black jersey skirt I'd pick up in Milan paired with a charcoal grey cotton roll-neck JCrew sweater that I'd bummed off of one of my travel companions because I hadn't packed warm clothing for a January trip abroad. I also hadn't packed shoes that would endure days of walking through art galleries, along cobblestone streets, up smooth marble staircases, or slippery boat launches. I did, however, manage to fill up my High Sierra duffel bag to such an extent that it required two people to hoist its straps onto my shoulders. Thank God the airlines hadn't started charging baggage fees back then! Looking back, though, my packing abilities weren't what embarrassed me the most, rather it was my complete lack of awareness of the impact of my actions on those around me. And while I'm sure that I wasn't the first, or the last, twenty-one year old guilty of being a narcissist, the drama that I caused on that trip sticks with me 20 years later.
Just what do I mean by "drama", though? Well, that arbiter of modern language, The Urban Dictionary, defines "drama" as: Something women and especially teenage girls thrive on, consisting of any number of situations that have an easy solution, which would bring a fairly good outcome, but these girls choose another bad way to deal with it.
Drama has been a great friend to me. Our relationship started when I was a little girl, watching soap operas with my grandmother. "The Young & The Restless", "Search for Tomorrow", "Capitol", "As the World Turns", "Guiding Light", and "The Bold and the Beautiful" - these were our people, with their big hair, perfect teeth, and the constant drama that swirled around their lives five days a week. The mind of the soap opera character was fascinating to me, especially as it contained a blueprint for problem-solving that involved heavy use of drama. Why tell your new husband that you can't have babies when you can easily steal the baby of your rival and pass the child off as your own?? Why get a divorce when you can fake your own death and run off to an exotic island with your lover?
Life after college was all about drama. For my girlfriends and I, every phone call/brunch/happy hour/dinner was a recitation of the day's boyfriend drama/work drama/family drama/roommate drama. No detail was too trivial to be dissected by the group. You presented your case and we members of the group would pore over every detail, CSI-style. My specialty was voice inflection ("He said he HATED you, or did he say he hated you?") while others of the group were experts in security ("You didn't let him take the keys to your apartment, did you?"), health and wellness ("You need to get tested!"), and employment and benefits("How dare he break up with you and refuse to give you that promotion! You should report him to your company's HR!"). And while I can imagine my 41-year-old self seated at the table next to my 20-something self and my friends and rolling my eyes at the gathering of this brain trust, back then we never judged each other harshly, nor did we ever think of a drama-free solution to our problems ("Maybe you shouldn't be dating your married boss!").
One by one, as we moved on and matured, the drama that bonded our young, single selves to each other would seem, on the surface, to have disappeared. But, let's be real - it hasn't. We may talk a good game, declaring drama-free-zones, and telling people to "keep it moving", but who are we kidding? We may think that we've cleverly disguised our drama-seeking ways, shrouding them in self-righteous indignation, but we haven't. I once stood in line at a Starbucks to pick up my dopio espresso. The place was packed and the line of people in front of me to place an order was twenty deep, while the clump of people awaiting their drinks at the other end of the counter numbered in the teens. About 3 minutes into my waiting was when the "incident" happened - a well-dressed female customer standing nose to nose with the lone barrista processing the drink orders. Apparently, her double shot of something or other was a single shot of something or other, and as she berated the barrista, our Working Girl tried to draw the rest of us into her tirade. Great plan, unless you overlook the obvious - that her nasty little fit was occupying the attention of the lone barrista and holding up all of our orders. She failed to recognize that her drama was causing more drama, and thought, instead, that she was merely exercising her rights.
I can think of far less dramatic occurrences of drama that we all indulge in:
And ordinary people aren't the only ones indulging in drama - the recent government shutdown was ALL drama! As a nation, we seem to have an insatiable lust for drama.
So, can we really live a drama-free life? And if we can, do we want to?
Just what do I mean by "drama", though? Well, that arbiter of modern language, The Urban Dictionary, defines "drama" as: Something women and especially teenage girls thrive on, consisting of any number of situations that have an easy solution, which would bring a fairly good outcome, but these girls choose another bad way to deal with it.
Drama has been a great friend to me. Our relationship started when I was a little girl, watching soap operas with my grandmother. "The Young & The Restless", "Search for Tomorrow", "Capitol", "As the World Turns", "Guiding Light", and "The Bold and the Beautiful" - these were our people, with their big hair, perfect teeth, and the constant drama that swirled around their lives five days a week. The mind of the soap opera character was fascinating to me, especially as it contained a blueprint for problem-solving that involved heavy use of drama. Why tell your new husband that you can't have babies when you can easily steal the baby of your rival and pass the child off as your own?? Why get a divorce when you can fake your own death and run off to an exotic island with your lover?
Life after college was all about drama. For my girlfriends and I, every phone call/brunch/happy hour/dinner was a recitation of the day's boyfriend drama/work drama/family drama/roommate drama. No detail was too trivial to be dissected by the group. You presented your case and we members of the group would pore over every detail, CSI-style. My specialty was voice inflection ("He said he HATED you, or did he say he hated you?") while others of the group were experts in security ("You didn't let him take the keys to your apartment, did you?"), health and wellness ("You need to get tested!"), and employment and benefits("How dare he break up with you and refuse to give you that promotion! You should report him to your company's HR!"). And while I can imagine my 41-year-old self seated at the table next to my 20-something self and my friends and rolling my eyes at the gathering of this brain trust, back then we never judged each other harshly, nor did we ever think of a drama-free solution to our problems ("Maybe you shouldn't be dating your married boss!").
One by one, as we moved on and matured, the drama that bonded our young, single selves to each other would seem, on the surface, to have disappeared. But, let's be real - it hasn't. We may talk a good game, declaring drama-free-zones, and telling people to "keep it moving", but who are we kidding? We may think that we've cleverly disguised our drama-seeking ways, shrouding them in self-righteous indignation, but we haven't. I once stood in line at a Starbucks to pick up my dopio espresso. The place was packed and the line of people in front of me to place an order was twenty deep, while the clump of people awaiting their drinks at the other end of the counter numbered in the teens. About 3 minutes into my waiting was when the "incident" happened - a well-dressed female customer standing nose to nose with the lone barrista processing the drink orders. Apparently, her double shot of something or other was a single shot of something or other, and as she berated the barrista, our Working Girl tried to draw the rest of us into her tirade. Great plan, unless you overlook the obvious - that her nasty little fit was occupying the attention of the lone barrista and holding up all of our orders. She failed to recognize that her drama was causing more drama, and thought, instead, that she was merely exercising her rights.
I can think of far less dramatic occurrences of drama that we all indulge in:
- constantly arriving late or not showing up at all for outings with friends because of constantly overpacking your schedule.
- never having cash to pay your part of the tab because you forgot to budget in time to stop at the ATM or you're broke and won't fess up!
- loading up your credit card and never paying the bill on time.
And ordinary people aren't the only ones indulging in drama - the recent government shutdown was ALL drama! As a nation, we seem to have an insatiable lust for drama.
So, can we really live a drama-free life? And if we can, do we want to?
Thursday, May 30, 2013
The "Here We Go Again" File: Newlyweds and Reality TV
Not so long ago, in late summer of 2003, the world (well, at least the part of the world that watched MTV) was introduced to former boy-bander Nick Lachey and his wife, pop princess Jessica Simpson. She was the buxom "dumb blond" known as much for her purported virginity and controlling daddy/manager as her singing chops, and Nick was the level-headed, down to earth chap who tolerated Jessica's naivete bordering on idiocy. He laughed at her, we laughed at them, and after 41 episodes of their televised marriage (and 3 years of their ACTUAL marriage), the pair filed for divorce. And while the two have moved on to other partners, the damage was done, and soon, like lambs led to the slaughter, other couples signed up for their 15 minutes of fame and reality TV marital curse was born.
Bravo's "Real Housewives of Orange County" launched in 2006 (a.k.a. the year that Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson's divorce was finalized) and a whole new crop of husbands and wives were spilling the inner workings of their relationships on basic cable. By the end of the first season, marriages were on the brink, and now, seven years later, all of those first season Orange County marriages have ended. In fact, in successive iterations of the "Real Housewives" franchise, reality TV marriages from Beverly Hills to Atlanta to Washington, DC, New York, New Jersey and Miami have continued on the fast-track to reality TV divorce.
So, we've all learned a valuable lesson, right?
Marriage + reality TV = bad news
Apparently, I'll need to adjust the learning curve because Bravo debuted a new show called simply, "Newlyweds: The First Year" which puts four newlywed couples in front of the cameras for the first 365 days (and nights) of their marriages. There's John and Kathryn, the former independent city gal who left the mean streets of Manhattan for the life of a stay-at-home wife with a honeymoon baby on the way. Tarz and Tina - he, a tech entrepreneur and she a Bollywood actress looking to have a baby before her biological clock stops ticking. Blair and Jeff - the handsome gay couple overcoming Jeff's painful rejection by his family. And, lastly, Alaska and Kim - the A&R rep for a music label and his stylish stylist wife, torn between the east and west coasts, and struggling for control in their marriage.
So why would anyone sign up for this? What would possess two people who have committed themselves to a partnership eternal to allow cameras access to every fight, every pregnancy test, every eye roll, every empty toilet tissue roll, dirty bath towel, and unintended slight? I don't have an answer, but, for those of you with dreams of spilling the beans about your marital habits on camera, DON'T!
Look, I'm a married woman and I have lots of friends who are married, as well, and the one thing that a marriage definitely doesn't need is an audience. Your marriage is not a play, it's not a movie - if it was, you'd have better writers and your choice of actors and actresses to stand in as a body double for some of those close-ups. Like Ben Affleck's Academy Awards acceptance speech, marriage is messy, in that there generally are no clear-cut winners and losers. There is commitment and love and partnership, and they form the boundaries within which the chaos and challenges of lives lived together exist. A camera is not a silent, objective witness that can settle your domestic clashes, but the couples featured on reality TV treat the camera as such. Instead of building love and trust and good communication with each other, reality TV couples argue their case before the camera, and, once the episode airs, before the social media universe. True intimacy is destroyed as viewers line up behind Team Kim or Team Alaska.
Now, if you think that I'm anticipating an epidemic of more reality TV-induced divorces, I'm not. But, I am concerned that the bad habits of reality TV might have filtered into our everyday lives. Pay a visit to YouTube and you'll see thousands of videos in the "promposal" genre, an adolescent off-shoot of the unique proposal phenomenon that has been going full-steam over the past few years. This isn't cute - it's a cry for help that you shouldn't click to view. I'm just saying:)
Bravo's "Real Housewives of Orange County" launched in 2006 (a.k.a. the year that Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson's divorce was finalized) and a whole new crop of husbands and wives were spilling the inner workings of their relationships on basic cable. By the end of the first season, marriages were on the brink, and now, seven years later, all of those first season Orange County marriages have ended. In fact, in successive iterations of the "Real Housewives" franchise, reality TV marriages from Beverly Hills to Atlanta to Washington, DC, New York, New Jersey and Miami have continued on the fast-track to reality TV divorce.
So, we've all learned a valuable lesson, right?
Marriage + reality TV = bad news
Apparently, I'll need to adjust the learning curve because Bravo debuted a new show called simply, "Newlyweds: The First Year" which puts four newlywed couples in front of the cameras for the first 365 days (and nights) of their marriages. There's John and Kathryn, the former independent city gal who left the mean streets of Manhattan for the life of a stay-at-home wife with a honeymoon baby on the way. Tarz and Tina - he, a tech entrepreneur and she a Bollywood actress looking to have a baby before her biological clock stops ticking. Blair and Jeff - the handsome gay couple overcoming Jeff's painful rejection by his family. And, lastly, Alaska and Kim - the A&R rep for a music label and his stylish stylist wife, torn between the east and west coasts, and struggling for control in their marriage.
So why would anyone sign up for this? What would possess two people who have committed themselves to a partnership eternal to allow cameras access to every fight, every pregnancy test, every eye roll, every empty toilet tissue roll, dirty bath towel, and unintended slight? I don't have an answer, but, for those of you with dreams of spilling the beans about your marital habits on camera, DON'T!
Look, I'm a married woman and I have lots of friends who are married, as well, and the one thing that a marriage definitely doesn't need is an audience. Your marriage is not a play, it's not a movie - if it was, you'd have better writers and your choice of actors and actresses to stand in as a body double for some of those close-ups. Like Ben Affleck's Academy Awards acceptance speech, marriage is messy, in that there generally are no clear-cut winners and losers. There is commitment and love and partnership, and they form the boundaries within which the chaos and challenges of lives lived together exist. A camera is not a silent, objective witness that can settle your domestic clashes, but the couples featured on reality TV treat the camera as such. Instead of building love and trust and good communication with each other, reality TV couples argue their case before the camera, and, once the episode airs, before the social media universe. True intimacy is destroyed as viewers line up behind Team Kim or Team Alaska.
Now, if you think that I'm anticipating an epidemic of more reality TV-induced divorces, I'm not. But, I am concerned that the bad habits of reality TV might have filtered into our everyday lives. Pay a visit to YouTube and you'll see thousands of videos in the "promposal" genre, an adolescent off-shoot of the unique proposal phenomenon that has been going full-steam over the past few years. This isn't cute - it's a cry for help that you shouldn't click to view. I'm just saying:)
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Living Life On Purpose
I'm sure that every parent who read Angelina Jolie's powerful essay in Tuesday's New York Times hugged their own children just a little bit closer. Almost every parent feels that deep sense of connection to their children, but they also feel something more all-encompassing - a deep sense of purpose. A parent might have the world's worst boss, but they tough it out in order to provide financially for their children. You might suffer a two-hour, one-way commute to work if the neighborhood in which you live is in a highly coveted school district that provides access to the special programming needs for your child. These are the choices that you make for a life lived with purpose.
As someone who is married and child-free, I used to think that all of my friends with children, living lives deprived of sleep/sex/money while raising your little ones, had it easy.You have a living, breathing reason to get out of bed every morning (and in the middle of the night, sometimes). You may hate your job/boss/commute, but you love your child, and so with that deep sense of purpose you suck it up and smile when that pint-sized person hugs you and calls you daddy/mommy. Purpose puts you on a flight with a five-year old so that you can visit Disney World and lunch with the princesses. Purpose makes you put on a pair of cargo shorts and become the den mother to your daughter's Brownie troop. Purpose makes you dash out of the house on Sunday mornings in order to get your 4-year old to the Sunday school class that she adores. Purpose, literally, puts you behind the wheel of an unflattering minivan so that can play chauffeur for your three kids and the grind of Saturday sports clinics/swim practices/ballet lessons/karate classes. Want to question your existence?? Try finding the time!
For the first 20 years of my life, I was consumed with getting into the right college and then getting into graduate school. My purpose, then, was about making my parents proud of me and having fun with my friends. But, what happens when you don't have any purpose? Well, it ain't pretty, I can tell you that. It's a bit like walking through a fog, a very dense fog.
The first time I felt this was when I was in seminary. I was single, in my early twenties, and I was discovering that a career in the clergy wasn't for me, while all around me were dozens of my classmates who were happily vibrating with purpose. I had some serious purpose-envy! I felt hollow and lost, and as my old college friends began to find their professional footing and started pairing off, my life felt more episodic and chaotic than ever. They were planning conferences and weddings and what was I doing? From there followed what looks like a parabola, with peaks of purposeful periods followed by steep valleys where I was left pondering the meaning of my life. When I met the man who is my husband, I don't know what I was more excited for - finding a man I loved who loved me, or having someone in my life who needed me. I had a renewed since of purpose in my life, but was it enough?
Over the past year I've grappled, again, with this question of purpose, so instead of looking at my friends who are parents, I looked, instead, to my unmarried and child free friends. For them, purpose takes many different pathways. Some have found their purpose in their job, working in fields that serve to benefit their community. A dear friend of mine who was trained as an actor chose to become a registered nurse, allowing him to heal body, mind and soul. Another friend is working to find the link between rogue proteins and the diseases they may cause in order to find cures for everything from heart disease to Alzheimer's. Other single friends of mine devote their free time to volunteering with outreach groups who assist those who need a helping hand, or serving on boards of nonprofit groups that seek to solve the crises of hunger or domestic violence or early education. And some find their purpose in taking care of their aging parents.
So where had I gone wrong in my search for purpose? I had assumed that purpose would just come to me, that there would be husband/children/family and, aha!, there would be my purpose. But to live life with purpose means that you live life ON purpose. Finding your purpose is not random, as I had thought. It is, instead, opening yourself to that deep feeling of love and joy that connects us each to one another. I do have purpose in my life. It might not look like it does in anyone else's life, but that's the thing about purpose - it is as unique as we are.
As someone who is married and child-free, I used to think that all of my friends with children, living lives deprived of sleep/sex/money while raising your little ones, had it easy.You have a living, breathing reason to get out of bed every morning (and in the middle of the night, sometimes). You may hate your job/boss/commute, but you love your child, and so with that deep sense of purpose you suck it up and smile when that pint-sized person hugs you and calls you daddy/mommy. Purpose puts you on a flight with a five-year old so that you can visit Disney World and lunch with the princesses. Purpose makes you put on a pair of cargo shorts and become the den mother to your daughter's Brownie troop. Purpose makes you dash out of the house on Sunday mornings in order to get your 4-year old to the Sunday school class that she adores. Purpose, literally, puts you behind the wheel of an unflattering minivan so that can play chauffeur for your three kids and the grind of Saturday sports clinics/swim practices/ballet lessons/karate classes. Want to question your existence?? Try finding the time!
For the first 20 years of my life, I was consumed with getting into the right college and then getting into graduate school. My purpose, then, was about making my parents proud of me and having fun with my friends. But, what happens when you don't have any purpose? Well, it ain't pretty, I can tell you that. It's a bit like walking through a fog, a very dense fog.
The first time I felt this was when I was in seminary. I was single, in my early twenties, and I was discovering that a career in the clergy wasn't for me, while all around me were dozens of my classmates who were happily vibrating with purpose. I had some serious purpose-envy! I felt hollow and lost, and as my old college friends began to find their professional footing and started pairing off, my life felt more episodic and chaotic than ever. They were planning conferences and weddings and what was I doing? From there followed what looks like a parabola, with peaks of purposeful periods followed by steep valleys where I was left pondering the meaning of my life. When I met the man who is my husband, I don't know what I was more excited for - finding a man I loved who loved me, or having someone in my life who needed me. I had a renewed since of purpose in my life, but was it enough?
Over the past year I've grappled, again, with this question of purpose, so instead of looking at my friends who are parents, I looked, instead, to my unmarried and child free friends. For them, purpose takes many different pathways. Some have found their purpose in their job, working in fields that serve to benefit their community. A dear friend of mine who was trained as an actor chose to become a registered nurse, allowing him to heal body, mind and soul. Another friend is working to find the link between rogue proteins and the diseases they may cause in order to find cures for everything from heart disease to Alzheimer's. Other single friends of mine devote their free time to volunteering with outreach groups who assist those who need a helping hand, or serving on boards of nonprofit groups that seek to solve the crises of hunger or domestic violence or early education. And some find their purpose in taking care of their aging parents.
So where had I gone wrong in my search for purpose? I had assumed that purpose would just come to me, that there would be husband/children/family and, aha!, there would be my purpose. But to live life with purpose means that you live life ON purpose. Finding your purpose is not random, as I had thought. It is, instead, opening yourself to that deep feeling of love and joy that connects us each to one another. I do have purpose in my life. It might not look like it does in anyone else's life, but that's the thing about purpose - it is as unique as we are.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
When Your Personal Brand Attacks
This week may have seen the second Inauguration of our country's first African-American President, but the hottest topics of the week have involved a lip-syncing controversy and a college football player's made-up girlfriend. Did Beyonce really sing the National Anthem at the President's Inauguration or did she pull a Yo Yo Ma/Obama Inauguration 1.0 and mime her singing? When did Manti Te'o, the baby-faced Heisman finalist All-American Mormon linebacker from Notre Dame, know that his former girlfriend, "Lennay", was an elaborate hoax?
For both the pop diva and the football player, there is a lot at stake, or so they think. They both built their images on the shifting sands of the personal brand. Beyonce is the consummate entertainer who is always "on point" - stylish, sassy, not a hair out of place. She is feminist empowerment in a catsuit and high heels, penning anthems that encourage women to stand up and be heard, while admonishing their boyfriends to put a ring on it. Beyonce can be tender, but she is not weak. This is her personal brand, that mental shorthand that conjures up an image in the public mind whenever her name is mentioned.
For Manti Te'o, his personal brand was that of a religious, hardworking college athlete, whose humility and goodness helped him to weather the storms of personal tragedy at the deaths of both his grandmother and his girlfriend in a 24-hour period. And while details of his courtship of this fictional girlfriend continue to be revealed, what's most interesting to me is how Te'o seemed overly committed to preserving a personal brand that seems to have existed long before he came to prominence as a college athlete. Te'o's great-great grandfather was one of the first native missionaries in the Mormon church, serving in Samoa in the early 1900s. That tradition of mission continued with Te'o's grandfather and uncle, and was joined by another tradition in Te'o family - football. Te'o's father, and several uncles, all played on championship-winning high school football teams. That Te'o would grow to become a dominant athlete with an even temper, a good heart, and a welcoming smile, then, came as no surprise to his family and to his friends. And it didn't take long to establish the Manti Te'o personal brand in the media and for a public hungry for someone displaying genuine goodness.
The problem with strong personal brands is that, at some point, the person inside of the brand becomes trapped and the brand takes control. You stop reacting and, instead, calculate what is best for the personal brand. Watching an interview with Katie Couric and Manti Te'o that aired on January 24, 2013, Couric asked Te'o if he had perpetuated the story of the phony girlfriend because the story had become "sort of a legend that you had endured this hardship and gone on to play your team and your school to victory?"
The personal brand has leached into the collective consciousness, and for proof, you don't have to look any further than the lowly television reality show. Pick any of the "Real Housewives" franchises and you can see the personal brand in full flower - from the sassy, finger-snapping, aggressive femme fatale to the over-botoxed, surgically-enhanced, extension-wearing man-stealer who struts around in her basic uniform of too-tight, too-short clothing, daring anyone to "disrespect" her.
Turn on "Top Chef" and the personal brand is on the menu every week. There is the sullen, over-tattooed macho bad-boy chef. There's the hipster chef, with that Owen Wilson catch in his throat who ends his sentences with a rising inflection that's supposed to be non-threatening, but is really just annoying. During this current season of the show, three chefs from former seasons were invited to participate with the new crop of cheftestants and watching them reactivating the personal brands that had become their stock in trade from past seasons was like watching someone trying on their old clothes, and discovering that they no longer fit. One returning contestant, Chef Josie, has been particularly interesting, to the point of distraction. Her gift of gab alienated fellow contestants, and caused a serious outbreak of eye-rolling that rivaled anything thrown by the First Lady to Speaker Boehner! The "Josie Show" is what it's been called on the show, but I like to call it the attack of the personal brand. At some point, the you that you've created gets in the way of the you that you are.
Maybe we've all got it wrong, and instead of trying to find the perfect quote, the perfect profile picture, or the perfect status update as a shorthanded introduction to who we are, maybe we should just be satisfied by cultivating friendships with a chosen few and perfecting those friendships. And maybe we should leave the branding to things like blue jeans and soft drinks.
For both the pop diva and the football player, there is a lot at stake, or so they think. They both built their images on the shifting sands of the personal brand. Beyonce is the consummate entertainer who is always "on point" - stylish, sassy, not a hair out of place. She is feminist empowerment in a catsuit and high heels, penning anthems that encourage women to stand up and be heard, while admonishing their boyfriends to put a ring on it. Beyonce can be tender, but she is not weak. This is her personal brand, that mental shorthand that conjures up an image in the public mind whenever her name is mentioned.
For Manti Te'o, his personal brand was that of a religious, hardworking college athlete, whose humility and goodness helped him to weather the storms of personal tragedy at the deaths of both his grandmother and his girlfriend in a 24-hour period. And while details of his courtship of this fictional girlfriend continue to be revealed, what's most interesting to me is how Te'o seemed overly committed to preserving a personal brand that seems to have existed long before he came to prominence as a college athlete. Te'o's great-great grandfather was one of the first native missionaries in the Mormon church, serving in Samoa in the early 1900s. That tradition of mission continued with Te'o's grandfather and uncle, and was joined by another tradition in Te'o family - football. Te'o's father, and several uncles, all played on championship-winning high school football teams. That Te'o would grow to become a dominant athlete with an even temper, a good heart, and a welcoming smile, then, came as no surprise to his family and to his friends. And it didn't take long to establish the Manti Te'o personal brand in the media and for a public hungry for someone displaying genuine goodness.
The problem with strong personal brands is that, at some point, the person inside of the brand becomes trapped and the brand takes control. You stop reacting and, instead, calculate what is best for the personal brand. Watching an interview with Katie Couric and Manti Te'o that aired on January 24, 2013, Couric asked Te'o if he had perpetuated the story of the phony girlfriend because the story had become "sort of a legend that you had endured this hardship and gone on to play your team and your school to victory?"
The personal brand has leached into the collective consciousness, and for proof, you don't have to look any further than the lowly television reality show. Pick any of the "Real Housewives" franchises and you can see the personal brand in full flower - from the sassy, finger-snapping, aggressive femme fatale to the over-botoxed, surgically-enhanced, extension-wearing man-stealer who struts around in her basic uniform of too-tight, too-short clothing, daring anyone to "disrespect" her.
Turn on "Top Chef" and the personal brand is on the menu every week. There is the sullen, over-tattooed macho bad-boy chef. There's the hipster chef, with that Owen Wilson catch in his throat who ends his sentences with a rising inflection that's supposed to be non-threatening, but is really just annoying. During this current season of the show, three chefs from former seasons were invited to participate with the new crop of cheftestants and watching them reactivating the personal brands that had become their stock in trade from past seasons was like watching someone trying on their old clothes, and discovering that they no longer fit. One returning contestant, Chef Josie, has been particularly interesting, to the point of distraction. Her gift of gab alienated fellow contestants, and caused a serious outbreak of eye-rolling that rivaled anything thrown by the First Lady to Speaker Boehner! The "Josie Show" is what it's been called on the show, but I like to call it the attack of the personal brand. At some point, the you that you've created gets in the way of the you that you are.
Maybe we've all got it wrong, and instead of trying to find the perfect quote, the perfect profile picture, or the perfect status update as a shorthanded introduction to who we are, maybe we should just be satisfied by cultivating friendships with a chosen few and perfecting those friendships. And maybe we should leave the branding to things like blue jeans and soft drinks.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Moving Furniture
On the night before my dad's funeral, Hurricane Sandy came ashore, with furious wind gusts and drenching rains. After the worst of the storm had passed, my husband and I went around the house assessing the damage, starting in the basement where we had taken shelter, and working our way upstairs, where we spotted water damage in the two guest rooms that lied underneath our dormer windows. It was 2am, but we quickly went into action, removing all of the contents of both rooms into the hallway and into our bedroom. One room had become a dumping ground for contents from the bachelorette pad that I had before we were married, as well as all of the odds and ends from past vacations, including dusty guide books and maps, and old music scores and photography books. I laughed at the absurdity of it all - emptying out a room I'd scarecly paid attention to on the eve of my father's funeral, but it all made sense, somehow.
I'd often taken to moving furniture around. From the time I was a little girl, I often felt the need for spacial realignment. I started out small, relocating the white quilted hamper that held my grandmother's crocheted handiwork, and my stuffed animal collection, from just behind my bedroom door to a spot in front of the window. This move would, of course, necessitate the move of my rocking chair away from the window and into the corner to the right of the window. And, because the bed and the dresser were stationary in my space plan, that meant that the rocking chair, which had been facing the side of the bed when it was in front of the window, would now have to face the door, which was a perfect diagonal.
By the time I got to college, my dorm room reconfiguration seemed to coincide with midterms and finals, and it continued at that pace through graduate school, with some additional turns after a couple of bad break-ups (heck, it beat gulping down a pint of ice cream:). After grad school, my need for space reconfiguration was synced to the seasons, and since I was living in a large studio apartment with hardwood floors, it was like conducting my life in a black box theatre where I was the cast, crew, director, and stage manager. Every time my parents would visit, they'd remark about what was different, and lend their own suggestions for future furniture remixes.
When I got married and moved into our home, I found out that not everyone likes coming home to a completely altered space. There are people in this world who, apparently, like things to stay in their place. Oh, I tried - boy, did I try! But, all that it got me was a sore back and the realization that married people furniture is far heavier than single lady furniture! It also got me into endless discussions as to why the furniture needed to be moved in the first place. Apparently, my answer - "because I felt like moving it" - was not acceptable, nor did it meet the rigorous standards of logic set forth by my husband, but it does follow the standard for emotional logic.
Moving things around changes so much - it's like walking into a new space, or making fresh discoveries about the space in which you live for 365 days of the year. When I would come back to my apartment after a day of moving around the furniture, it was like seeing my home anew, like stepping off of the plane in a new country. But, there is also something much deeper at play. Moving a chair from the window to the wall is creativity on a small scale. It is creativity that is, literally, bounded by the walls of the room. This is creativity with rules, with mental training wheels, and I had, over the years, become too scared to perform even this minimally risky task. Standing there, in the hallway on the night before Dad's funeral, I was moving furniture and I was smiling that in the midst of losing Dad, that somehow, through some divine intervention, my father had helped me find a piece of myself that I had buried.
I'd often taken to moving furniture around. From the time I was a little girl, I often felt the need for spacial realignment. I started out small, relocating the white quilted hamper that held my grandmother's crocheted handiwork, and my stuffed animal collection, from just behind my bedroom door to a spot in front of the window. This move would, of course, necessitate the move of my rocking chair away from the window and into the corner to the right of the window. And, because the bed and the dresser were stationary in my space plan, that meant that the rocking chair, which had been facing the side of the bed when it was in front of the window, would now have to face the door, which was a perfect diagonal.
By the time I got to college, my dorm room reconfiguration seemed to coincide with midterms and finals, and it continued at that pace through graduate school, with some additional turns after a couple of bad break-ups (heck, it beat gulping down a pint of ice cream:). After grad school, my need for space reconfiguration was synced to the seasons, and since I was living in a large studio apartment with hardwood floors, it was like conducting my life in a black box theatre where I was the cast, crew, director, and stage manager. Every time my parents would visit, they'd remark about what was different, and lend their own suggestions for future furniture remixes.
When I got married and moved into our home, I found out that not everyone likes coming home to a completely altered space. There are people in this world who, apparently, like things to stay in their place. Oh, I tried - boy, did I try! But, all that it got me was a sore back and the realization that married people furniture is far heavier than single lady furniture! It also got me into endless discussions as to why the furniture needed to be moved in the first place. Apparently, my answer - "because I felt like moving it" - was not acceptable, nor did it meet the rigorous standards of logic set forth by my husband, but it does follow the standard for emotional logic.
Moving things around changes so much - it's like walking into a new space, or making fresh discoveries about the space in which you live for 365 days of the year. When I would come back to my apartment after a day of moving around the furniture, it was like seeing my home anew, like stepping off of the plane in a new country. But, there is also something much deeper at play. Moving a chair from the window to the wall is creativity on a small scale. It is creativity that is, literally, bounded by the walls of the room. This is creativity with rules, with mental training wheels, and I had, over the years, become too scared to perform even this minimally risky task. Standing there, in the hallway on the night before Dad's funeral, I was moving furniture and I was smiling that in the midst of losing Dad, that somehow, through some divine intervention, my father had helped me find a piece of myself that I had buried.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Good Grief?
I am tired. More tired than I have ever been in my life. In the weeks since my father's death, I have attempted to drag my family through the holiday minefield. Thanksgiving dinner had the feel of a second funeral with all of us doing our best to give a stiff upper lip at a generic restaurant buffet. Black Friday was packed with an outing to see Christmas decorations, along with a birthday luncheon for Mom, and a Christmas tree lighting. The past few weekends have been a red and green blur, with field trips to Christmas concerts, holiday parties, and more Christmas lights. My young nephews enjoy the spectacle, and we indulge them with cookies and candy and promises of more, more, more. But, if I said that I was doing all of this just for my nephews, and just for my family, I'd be lying. In the midst of grief, I want to dig into life until I'm up to my elbows in it. I want endless days filled with noise because the quiet and the dark are just too much right now.
But, still, I'm tired. So maybe it's time that I let myself grieve. Even now, at this inconvenient time - when it would be easier to swill some eggnog, put on my Christmas sweater and get with the program. Maybe it's OK to sleep a little longer and sit out a few holiday parties. Maybe it's cool to NOT feel like Christmas shopping and maybe I can be forgiven for not having my Christmas cards signed, sealed, and delivered before Christmas Day. Maybe it's alright to be still and to face all of the fear and the pain and the doubt that grief brings to the surface. In grief, life and death come face to face with one another, and while dwelling on this fact can destroy you, denying this fact will exhaust you.
But, still, I'm tired. So maybe it's time that I let myself grieve. Even now, at this inconvenient time - when it would be easier to swill some eggnog, put on my Christmas sweater and get with the program. Maybe it's OK to sleep a little longer and sit out a few holiday parties. Maybe it's cool to NOT feel like Christmas shopping and maybe I can be forgiven for not having my Christmas cards signed, sealed, and delivered before Christmas Day. Maybe it's alright to be still and to face all of the fear and the pain and the doubt that grief brings to the surface. In grief, life and death come face to face with one another, and while dwelling on this fact can destroy you, denying this fact will exhaust you.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
The Cast-Offs: The Strange World of the Married without Children
Last year about this time I wrote of the common misconceptions made about those who have not conceived, whether by chance or by choice. The response to that piece has been and continues to be overwhelming - from both friends and family who are squarely on the baby bandwagon, and those who for various reasons are not. The discussions reached a fever pitch this year with the release of Jennifer Westfeldt's motion picture, "Friends with Kids,"a relationship piece that put the breeding wars front and center. This year also marked my tenth wedding anniversary and my fortieth birthday, two milestone events that force an appraisal of your life whether you want to or not. Well, I'm happy to report that the state of our union is good, very good, except for the one thing that's missing - our friends!
What? You thought I was going to say a child, didn't you? But, no, we've got plenty of children - nephews and the children of our friends who have become like our nieces and nephews, thus significantly expanding the kiddie pool. We have friends who have successfully adopted, and others who are still waiting, but hopeful. And there are even friends who've been paid surprise visits by the Stork, well after they had given away the last of the onesies and forgotten how to work the breast pump. It would seem our life is teeming with children, but not our friends.
Thanks to the wonders of Facebook, we get to experience the daily highs and lows of our friends and their families. We see happy babies on bouncies, 8-year-olds in their baseball uniforms, and a tutu or two on precious little ballerinas. We hear about scouting trips and epic Girl Scout Cookie sales figures to rival Mrs. Fields. Our more tech-savvy friends get us breaking news live Tweets from the scene of paint-peeling toddler temper tantrums and showdowns in the Babies R Us parking lot with suv-driving SOBs who almost mow them down while they and their little one are attempting to walk to their car. But that's all we get.
Somewhere between labor and delivery to high school graduation (and sometimes beyond), we got cast aside. Now, to be fair, it's been well-documented that parenting comes with all sorts of trade-offs and compromises - time, sleep, you know the drill, and I know the drill because I hear about it...a lot. My husband and I would be the super-understanding couple when our new-parent friends would cancel plans/not call/not invite us to their children's birthday parties. "No problem," we'd reply, "Of course it's ok." The problem, though, is that once your friends go from new-parent to just parent, the excuses don't stop, and soon, your parent-friends are friends with other parents and not you.
There was one parent couple who were always busy with their kids' merciless, and bottomless, schedule of team sport practices, games, recitals, sleepovers, camping trips, etc, ad nauseum. If we wanted to see them, we had to contact them months in advance, and even then, those plans could be changed on a dime if there was a last-minute scheduling oversight or the sniffles. We issued our standard, "no problem," but then we found out that our superbusy parent friends were apparently NOT too busy for the parents of their children's classmates/teammates. We felt betrayed, like a jealous lover thrown over for some shiny, new thing. These were our friends, in whom we confided our thoughts and feelings, with whom we'd shared meals and memories, and to whom we'd given an abundance of benefit of the doubt. We had been moved from the A-list to the D-list on the friendship scale!
I know this isn't high school, but it certainly has the stink of high school where friendships are based on the "are you like me" index. I may not know the name of a good lactation consultant, but is that the ONLY thing two people can discuss?
So what are my options? Well, there aren't as many as you would imagine. While we do know couples who are child-less and child-free, most keep their schedules chock-a-block full, with every moment budgeted for work, volunteering, and travel. These couples are the ones who chair church committees and tirelessly perform community service (non-court ordered, I should add!!). They are on the boards of nonprofits and sing in community choirs. They have annual theatre subscriptions and love attending concerts by the local symphony orchestra, and, odds are that they've eaten at that hip new restaurant well before Yelp/Urbanspoon/Zagat has rated it. The reasons for the packed dancecard vary - for most it's a genuine interest in new experiences, but for some, there's a bit of wanting to avoid looking like they're bored or unhappy waiting for their parent-friends to call. Whatever the case, apparently our public relations masterplan has worked, because our parent-friends believe that they're doing us a favor by not calling!
Think about this, when that rare parent-friend does call or email (unprompted), what's the the thing they all say within the first 60 seconds/10 words? Is it something like "Wow, you guys are so busy!"??
Don't fall for it - it's a trap!
Implied in that statement is this: We would call you more often, but we figured since you're so busy it wouldn't matter if we called, so we don't. Get it?? It's YOUR fault that your parent-friends aren't calling. But it's not your fault, they simply don't want to be your friends anymore.
Sounds harsh? Well, it's time for some tough love. As selfless and sacrificing as parents are called to be in their role of unpaid caregiver, parenting is an extremely selfish endeavor. Parents move heaven and earth for their children and their family unit. Whatever resource they have - of time, effort, money, etc. - is used up in the service of their individual family. If there is a remainder, it must be fed back to the family unit. Society expects this, hell, society demands this. The definition of a "good parent" leaves no margin for friendships that don't do double-duty. If you're a good parent, you expose your children to numerous opportunities for enrichment - sports, music, nature, art, foreign languages, religious instruction. So you develop friendships of survival and convenience with the other moms and dads whose children are also involved in the same sports, music, nature, art, foreign language, religious instruction enrichment opportunities as your children. It's not long before the mom who your child carpools with after softball practice becomes your friend, and soon you're both sitting in the stands, swapping recipes and exchanging thoughts on the latest gossip surrounding the new ball field upgrade. And while it's great that you're making friends with a fellow traveler on your parenthood path, you're also leaving behind a friend, and a new cast-off is born. And worst of all is that you justify it by saying to yourself, "well, she's SO busy all the time, I'm sure she's got lots to do."
Here's the thing - a packed to-do list can't replace a friendship that's taken years to develop and nurture.
So what can be done? Maybe we need to go a bit "old school" with our notions of parenting and friendship. Growing up, my mom's closest friends were a mix of single, married without children, and empty-nester. When Mom wanted to see her friends, she'd pack us in the car and over to their homes we would go. My sister and I would sit reading a book or watching TV while Mom caught up with her friends. These women became my Aunties and they've remained important in my mom's life as well as the life of our family. Their enduring friendship is the model for my own friendships where the line of demarcation is not drawn at the car-seat, well, at least not by me.
I'm just saying.
What? You thought I was going to say a child, didn't you? But, no, we've got plenty of children - nephews and the children of our friends who have become like our nieces and nephews, thus significantly expanding the kiddie pool. We have friends who have successfully adopted, and others who are still waiting, but hopeful. And there are even friends who've been paid surprise visits by the Stork, well after they had given away the last of the onesies and forgotten how to work the breast pump. It would seem our life is teeming with children, but not our friends.
Thanks to the wonders of Facebook, we get to experience the daily highs and lows of our friends and their families. We see happy babies on bouncies, 8-year-olds in their baseball uniforms, and a tutu or two on precious little ballerinas. We hear about scouting trips and epic Girl Scout Cookie sales figures to rival Mrs. Fields. Our more tech-savvy friends get us breaking news live Tweets from the scene of paint-peeling toddler temper tantrums and showdowns in the Babies R Us parking lot with suv-driving SOBs who almost mow them down while they and their little one are attempting to walk to their car. But that's all we get.
Somewhere between labor and delivery to high school graduation (and sometimes beyond), we got cast aside. Now, to be fair, it's been well-documented that parenting comes with all sorts of trade-offs and compromises - time, sleep, you know the drill, and I know the drill because I hear about it...a lot. My husband and I would be the super-understanding couple when our new-parent friends would cancel plans/not call/not invite us to their children's birthday parties. "No problem," we'd reply, "Of course it's ok." The problem, though, is that once your friends go from new-parent to just parent, the excuses don't stop, and soon, your parent-friends are friends with other parents and not you.
There was one parent couple who were always busy with their kids' merciless, and bottomless, schedule of team sport practices, games, recitals, sleepovers, camping trips, etc, ad nauseum. If we wanted to see them, we had to contact them months in advance, and even then, those plans could be changed on a dime if there was a last-minute scheduling oversight or the sniffles. We issued our standard, "no problem," but then we found out that our superbusy parent friends were apparently NOT too busy for the parents of their children's classmates/teammates. We felt betrayed, like a jealous lover thrown over for some shiny, new thing. These were our friends, in whom we confided our thoughts and feelings, with whom we'd shared meals and memories, and to whom we'd given an abundance of benefit of the doubt. We had been moved from the A-list to the D-list on the friendship scale!
I know this isn't high school, but it certainly has the stink of high school where friendships are based on the "are you like me" index. I may not know the name of a good lactation consultant, but is that the ONLY thing two people can discuss?
So what are my options? Well, there aren't as many as you would imagine. While we do know couples who are child-less and child-free, most keep their schedules chock-a-block full, with every moment budgeted for work, volunteering, and travel. These couples are the ones who chair church committees and tirelessly perform community service (non-court ordered, I should add!!). They are on the boards of nonprofits and sing in community choirs. They have annual theatre subscriptions and love attending concerts by the local symphony orchestra, and, odds are that they've eaten at that hip new restaurant well before Yelp/Urbanspoon/Zagat has rated it. The reasons for the packed dancecard vary - for most it's a genuine interest in new experiences, but for some, there's a bit of wanting to avoid looking like they're bored or unhappy waiting for their parent-friends to call. Whatever the case, apparently our public relations masterplan has worked, because our parent-friends believe that they're doing us a favor by not calling!
Think about this, when that rare parent-friend does call or email (unprompted), what's the the thing they all say within the first 60 seconds/10 words? Is it something like "Wow, you guys are so busy!"??
Don't fall for it - it's a trap!
Implied in that statement is this: We would call you more often, but we figured since you're so busy it wouldn't matter if we called, so we don't. Get it?? It's YOUR fault that your parent-friends aren't calling. But it's not your fault, they simply don't want to be your friends anymore.
Sounds harsh? Well, it's time for some tough love. As selfless and sacrificing as parents are called to be in their role of unpaid caregiver, parenting is an extremely selfish endeavor. Parents move heaven and earth for their children and their family unit. Whatever resource they have - of time, effort, money, etc. - is used up in the service of their individual family. If there is a remainder, it must be fed back to the family unit. Society expects this, hell, society demands this. The definition of a "good parent" leaves no margin for friendships that don't do double-duty. If you're a good parent, you expose your children to numerous opportunities for enrichment - sports, music, nature, art, foreign languages, religious instruction. So you develop friendships of survival and convenience with the other moms and dads whose children are also involved in the same sports, music, nature, art, foreign language, religious instruction enrichment opportunities as your children. It's not long before the mom who your child carpools with after softball practice becomes your friend, and soon you're both sitting in the stands, swapping recipes and exchanging thoughts on the latest gossip surrounding the new ball field upgrade. And while it's great that you're making friends with a fellow traveler on your parenthood path, you're also leaving behind a friend, and a new cast-off is born. And worst of all is that you justify it by saying to yourself, "well, she's SO busy all the time, I'm sure she's got lots to do."
Here's the thing - a packed to-do list can't replace a friendship that's taken years to develop and nurture.
So what can be done? Maybe we need to go a bit "old school" with our notions of parenting and friendship. Growing up, my mom's closest friends were a mix of single, married without children, and empty-nester. When Mom wanted to see her friends, she'd pack us in the car and over to their homes we would go. My sister and I would sit reading a book or watching TV while Mom caught up with her friends. These women became my Aunties and they've remained important in my mom's life as well as the life of our family. Their enduring friendship is the model for my own friendships where the line of demarcation is not drawn at the car-seat, well, at least not by me.
I'm just saying.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Have You Had Enough of "Good Enough"?
The other day as I was flipping through the mail, I spotted my college alumni magazine. Page after page, in full color, were the stories of CEOs, scientists, and others who'd met with success in their post-collegiate lives. There were also the new brides and grooms surrounded by their alumni bridesmaids and groomsmen, and the parade of babies sporting their "future alumni" onesies. Some of the faces were familiar to me, as I remembered them sprinting across the campus plaza, sporting nasty plaid flannel pajama bottoms, a college sweatshirt, and a backpack, en route to the dining hall before they closed up the breakfast service for the morning. For most of us, college was an intense time - filled with some of the best times of our lives, and the worst. It was all extremes in college as we sorted through the perils of young adulthood and a future which seemed fat with possibility. At every turn, our parents and professors seemed to always be talking about our "potential", this nebulous, formless blob of endless pathways.
After graduation, "potential" pops up again, as parents try to steer the young graduate into a graduate school program or the world of work. This time, though, instead of exploring your "potential", as you were encouraged to do in the halcyon days of campus life, your "potential" has an expiration date. "Don't waste your potential" becomes the battle cry, and soon you hear the clock ticking down the years, months, weeks, and days until your "potential" withers and dies, usually around the time of your 30th birthday or the arrival of your first child, and then it's time to crown the next, new crop of children with the burden of "potential".
I don't know about you, but it seems odd to me that we, as humans, can see potential so clearly in the young, while confining our older selves to lives that are good enough. I watched my parents do this - sacrifice themselves to the Goddess of Potential residing in my childhood body. I had piano lessons and voice lessons and ballet lessons and my mom had endless hours driving me around and waiting for me. The dreams she'd had for herself were, instead, placed upon my seven-year-old shoulders and Mom lived a good enough life in order to give me an extraordinary start.
The Good Enough Life seems to be thriving, still, with a steadily growing membership. It's appeal is understandable, because the Good Enough Life seems effortless. There aren't many surprises in the Good Enough Life, there are only routine and repetition - the evil twins of existence who slap down anything that smacks of adventure and creativity. Maybe it's time for something more than good enough?
Now, I'm not going to go all Oprah on you and demand that you "live your best life now." It's hard for me to imagine that someone with billions of dollars doesn't have the means to live her best life! So think of me as a Local Oprah, who's got credit card bills, a pile of laundry, and a stack of newspapers she has to remember to put out for the Monday recycling pick-up, and believe me when I tell you that if you want something more than the good enough you have then you have to do it.
Living beyond good enough means doesn't mean living beyond your means, rather it means transcending your means. If you're the carpool mom, and the pick up the dry cleaning mom, and the cook breakfast/lunch/dinner mom who loved drawing and painting before she was a mother, than push beyond good enough and enroll in an art class. Don't have the money for an art class? Then make a space in your garage or your basement or your kitchen and just do it. Set a boundary for yourself that's kid-free/chore-free/worry-free and go beyond your good enough. Demand this for yourself.
Living beyond the good enough also means ending the excuses. How many times have you uttered the phrase "I can't...because" either mentally or out loud in a day? For the good enough life, this phrase is its motto. I can't take a tap dance class because my husband won't pick up the kids from soccer. I can't write for an hour a day because I have to work late. I can't volunteer at a mission because no one will cook dinner for my family. Eliminate this phrase, and, instead, focus your energy on figuring out how you can!
And, by the way, you might want to also drop the phrase "I used to" from your vocabulary, too. Free yourself from what you used to do, and who you used to be. I used to be skinny and I used to have hair that was not grey. You can twist yourself into knots over "used to", and that sort of navel-gazing is just fine for the good enough life because it drains you and defeats you, and soon, you're saying, "I can't...because."
This is a way of thinking that goes beyond the big, bad scary Potential. In fact, what I'm advocating may seem puny when compared to the grandeur of untapped, raw Potential, but some of the things that have defined me were these small moments when I was stepping outside of the good enough life. So, have you had enough of good enough? I'm just saying.
After graduation, "potential" pops up again, as parents try to steer the young graduate into a graduate school program or the world of work. This time, though, instead of exploring your "potential", as you were encouraged to do in the halcyon days of campus life, your "potential" has an expiration date. "Don't waste your potential" becomes the battle cry, and soon you hear the clock ticking down the years, months, weeks, and days until your "potential" withers and dies, usually around the time of your 30th birthday or the arrival of your first child, and then it's time to crown the next, new crop of children with the burden of "potential".
I don't know about you, but it seems odd to me that we, as humans, can see potential so clearly in the young, while confining our older selves to lives that are good enough. I watched my parents do this - sacrifice themselves to the Goddess of Potential residing in my childhood body. I had piano lessons and voice lessons and ballet lessons and my mom had endless hours driving me around and waiting for me. The dreams she'd had for herself were, instead, placed upon my seven-year-old shoulders and Mom lived a good enough life in order to give me an extraordinary start.
The Good Enough Life seems to be thriving, still, with a steadily growing membership. It's appeal is understandable, because the Good Enough Life seems effortless. There aren't many surprises in the Good Enough Life, there are only routine and repetition - the evil twins of existence who slap down anything that smacks of adventure and creativity. Maybe it's time for something more than good enough?
Now, I'm not going to go all Oprah on you and demand that you "live your best life now." It's hard for me to imagine that someone with billions of dollars doesn't have the means to live her best life! So think of me as a Local Oprah, who's got credit card bills, a pile of laundry, and a stack of newspapers she has to remember to put out for the Monday recycling pick-up, and believe me when I tell you that if you want something more than the good enough you have then you have to do it.
Living beyond good enough means doesn't mean living beyond your means, rather it means transcending your means. If you're the carpool mom, and the pick up the dry cleaning mom, and the cook breakfast/lunch/dinner mom who loved drawing and painting before she was a mother, than push beyond good enough and enroll in an art class. Don't have the money for an art class? Then make a space in your garage or your basement or your kitchen and just do it. Set a boundary for yourself that's kid-free/chore-free/worry-free and go beyond your good enough. Demand this for yourself.
Living beyond the good enough also means ending the excuses. How many times have you uttered the phrase "I can't...because" either mentally or out loud in a day? For the good enough life, this phrase is its motto. I can't take a tap dance class because my husband won't pick up the kids from soccer. I can't write for an hour a day because I have to work late. I can't volunteer at a mission because no one will cook dinner for my family. Eliminate this phrase, and, instead, focus your energy on figuring out how you can!
And, by the way, you might want to also drop the phrase "I used to" from your vocabulary, too. Free yourself from what you used to do, and who you used to be. I used to be skinny and I used to have hair that was not grey. You can twist yourself into knots over "used to", and that sort of navel-gazing is just fine for the good enough life because it drains you and defeats you, and soon, you're saying, "I can't...because."
This is a way of thinking that goes beyond the big, bad scary Potential. In fact, what I'm advocating may seem puny when compared to the grandeur of untapped, raw Potential, but some of the things that have defined me were these small moments when I was stepping outside of the good enough life. So, have you had enough of good enough? I'm just saying.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
The Winter of Our Discontent
Have you ever had that feeling of gray? Where all is routine, even down to the clothing you wear, the food that you eat, and the route that you take to work? Those gray days - where even buying a little trifle to lighten your mood has no effect? Some people chalk it up to the winter weather and its sustained periods of snow and cold and gray skies. But, it feels as if I've tapped into a mood that's not my own. All around me, at the grocery store, in the churchyard, and at the coffee shop, everywhere, there seems to be this grayness. This Great Recession has put this country into one bad mood-swing, so much so that it's triggering a Great Depression 2.0 - the Mental Health Edition.
Apparently, I'm not the only one taking notice. Last fall in Orlando, Florida, a campaign entitled, "It's Okay to Get Help" launched in order to help the growing numbers of Central Floridians experiencing mental health crises triggered by the tough economy.
So, is it possible for an entire country to be in a bad mood?
I'm starting to think that the answer to that question is HELL YES! So, what can we do, as a country, to "get our happy back"? I'm Just Saying has a few ideas:
Apparently, I'm not the only one taking notice. Last fall in Orlando, Florida, a campaign entitled, "It's Okay to Get Help" launched in order to help the growing numbers of Central Floridians experiencing mental health crises triggered by the tough economy.
So, is it possible for an entire country to be in a bad mood?
I'm starting to think that the answer to that question is HELL YES! So, what can we do, as a country, to "get our happy back"? I'm Just Saying has a few ideas:
- Stop moaning and start moving: If life is kicking you while you're down, then there's no better time to pack up your bags and move closer to the ocean or into the mountains or into that stone cottage in the foothills of Appalachia that you fantasized about while working in that grey, soul-less cubicle before you were downsized. It's time for the Great Migration 2011! Always wanted to trade in your snow shovel for flip-flops and a questionable tan line? Then get thee gone to Florida - I hear you can buy a condo for a song!! Sometimes, new beginnings come from an abrupt stop.
- Stop watching news talk/opinion shows: Notice, I didn't say stop watching THE NEWS, rather stop watching news talk shows. So leave the Becks, Maddows, Bill-Os, Andersons, Parkers-Spitzers, and, instead, just get the news, unsullied with opinion. These shows only make you angrier, more frustrated, or plain old sad. Leave them to their rants, and their take on things. Think for yourself. Oh, and this goes for fake-news shows as well, so give a long, inappropriate kiss goodbye to the Daily Show and to Bill Maher. Real people aren't left or right!
- Stop making reality show stars/contestants/lab experiments your role models: Just last week, one of the starts of MTV's "The Hills" finally 'fessed up that the bulk of the show was scripted!! Would that they had made this stunning admission years earlier and maybe the world would have spared the likes of Kelly Catrone, the entire cast of "Jersey Shore", and the pantheon of noxious reality stars crowding the entertainment firmament! Applicants are still pouring in for every new reality show concept. And much like the nuclear arms race, contestants must go big or go home - usually during some heart-pounding conclusion in the final 3 minutes of the show. Here's the deal - if you're a 14 year old girl who's pregnant, then odds are you're not getting a show on MTV. If you wear wigs and date married men, Andy Cohen from Bravo TV ain't picking up the phone to get you on the couch as one of his stable (get it, because of the weaves???) of so-called "Bravo-leberties".
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