I Want To Fly Away

I’m doing better than the last time. The last time I was broke, out of work and facing the abyss. The last time I was filled with angsty angst and crawling out of my skin. I had panic anxiety, shivers and shakes and more negative thoughts than a bird watching a cat slowly climb the tree. Neither of us think we’re getting out of this but the stupid bird can at least fly. My wings were clipped a while ago.

Truly, I have forgotten what it feels like to fly. I used to know and my memory of the memory is that it was spectacular. I was watching a YouTube video of Justin Timberlake with Jimmy Fallon doing some stupid rap thing and by the time they finished tears were rolling down my cheeks. ‘Cause here’s the thing, no matter what you think of JT, that boy knows how to fly. He intensely loves to do what he does. The joy radiating off those feet, that face, is palpable. And enviable. I once felt that way. I once, a long time ago, loved my life that much. 

Then I “got real” and started making all these grown-up choices, like getting a real job that paid enough to actually live. My parent’s vision of the world came true. It was either joy or food. Freedom or a roof. Self-love or love for others. No one taught me how to have it all. And now I want it. Desperately. Before I die sort of thing.

There’s a line in the movie Gravity (spoiler alert) where one of the characters muses that everyone will die but she is going to die that day. The amazement on her face at the knowledge that what, for most of us, seems a future event can become reality in an instant. Just one thing that goes awry. One car that leaps a barrier, a cell that mutates inside us, one moment of despair and it’s our time to go.

I’m not sure I’m up to it, ya know. Dying seems like an awfully big event to attend unprepared. What if I’m over-dressed? What if I under-achieved? What if I never really lived my life? I lived A life, sure but did I live MY life? 

And if the answer to that question is no, then when will I? Is it too late? Am I fucking delusional?

I’m bi-polar, we know that, but am I out of mind as well? Do other people feel this way –that their life was never intentional? 

I’ve been doing a lot of studying as I plan to open my life coaching practice. I have named my practice TruePath because that’s what I (hope) I’m finally on and what I want others to find. Who were we meant to be when we showed up? What was to be our special contribution to this life, this community, this planet?

Here’s what I’m thinking – hey, it’s my blog – I do believe we all came here with a passion and perhaps a purpose for that passion. The passion –and the innate skills we arrived with –were supposed to lead us. And some people were led. Like JT. Or Einstein or Oppenheimer. They are rooted in the joy of their particular ability to do a particular thing that gives them a sense of completeness. Of destiny.

Some of you know my sister, right? I always thought she was born too late, into the wrong century, because her skills and her passions are all about home-making. She has the ability to take a shitty little space and make it perfect. She can cook eight courses with her eyes closed. She can –and has –sewn gorgeous dresses, including a friend’s wedding gown that looked straight out of a magazine. For a while she found a place that used these skills. But it was a degrading sort of existence and not very feminist. Her skills were appreciated but they were also “bought”. Where does she fit in today’s world? We can’t all be Martha Stewart. Or JT for that matter. Is it just a sadistic twist of fate to have a passion and no way to use it?

I’d like to hear from you readers –really I would, it would help me out a lot on my journey here. What are your passions? What was/is your destiny? Could you die tomorrow? Today?

Maybe I should just start dancing and singing again. Maybe then my mind would shut the fuck up.

 I believe more will be revealed.

I believe I will blog about it.

‘Cause this feels like destiny to me.

The Law of the Jungle

I am obsessed with this video; http://www.upworthy.com/2-monkeys-were-paid-unequally-see-what-happens-next?g=2.

If you don’t have time to watch it –it’s about two monkeys getting unequal payment (cucumbers and grapes) for doing the same task. It’s fascinating. Apparently, the idea of fairness is more organic than I had thought. What is also organic? The absolute indifference of the “rich” grape-getting monkey for her friends’ outrage.

Unfortunately, I have sat through too many conversations of grape eaters who not only have no compassion for their cucumber pals but even add an extra heap of scorn by blaming them. You can almost hear the grape monkey thinking, “Well, she’s obviously not working as hard as me. She must be doing the task wrong. She should pull herself up by her bootstraps.” 

The bootstrap argument has about as much relevance to monkeys as it does to humans.  Besides, I thought we had evolved . Not so much.

I heard that argument many times at my dinner table in upper middle-class Whittier. Yes, I grew up in the land of Nixon and yes, my father was a Republican.

I never quite got his argument or his total disdain for the poor. He had been very poor himself during the depression. Raised by a single mother after his alcoholic father had deserted her to raise two children alone. There was no social security or welfare then. No food stamps, WIC or anything to help  and I’m sure that many nights my father went to bed hungry.  You would have thought FDR would be a hero to such a man. He wasn’t. My father hated him.

I could understand my mother hating FDR a little better. After all her father had owned an Oldsmobile dealership during the depression and not everyone was poor. No, there were fat cats (almost the exact same ones as today) who could still buy a luxury car like an Oldsmobile. I doubt my mother was ever hungry a day in her life. For food.  And as we can see in the video, the rich monkeys don’t much care about the plight of their unfairly treated brethren. “Let them eat cucumber” the greedy little Marie Antoinette would say if she could. It was my mother’s grapes FDR was trying to share.

The irony of course, because life always provides us with ironic lessons, is that my father’s “bootstraps” said G.I. Bill on them and my mother is now completely living on welfare and medicare after having blown her money on 137 cats. (Please see earlier blog “It’s All in the Family” for that gripping tale.) How’s old FDR looking to you now, Mom? 

I believe what separates us from the animals is not intelligence but compassion.  Humans have the capacity to feel for others outside themselves, to walk in another humans shoes, to “do unto others.” Why some people develop it and others don’t is a mystery. I think the myth of American Individualism takes a lot of the blame, as does our national disdain for being “soft.” Brute strength is our national pastime. If you don’t believe me check out sales of steroids. Or how many gyms promise to “pump you up!” 

Even though the Christian religion is all about helping the poor there doesn’t seem to be a lot of action in that direction. It confuses me even more than my atheist father did. Christians say they believe in a deity called Jesus who was a poor carpenter. He extolled his followers to give up all they had to follow him. I don’t think he was speaking to just the 12 disciples, I think he was telling everyone that if you want to be a true disciple of his you had to shed the outer skin of wealth.  I don’t need to tell you that’s not the official policy of most churches, right? Instead of spending their wealth on digging wells in Africa or sending food to the Sudan, they build mega churches with comfortable seats, state-of-the-art sound systems replete with golden idols. I doubt Jesus would come in these churches, temples and cathedrals and say, “Yup, this is what I had in mind.” 

Perhaps Americans are already too full of grapes to feel compassion. For true compassion comes from suffering. Not just suffering but the recognition that you are suffering. Then comes the important thought – if it feels shitty to me to suffer it must feel shitty to others to suffer, perhaps I can help them. That aha moment when you realize that suffering and inequity is NOT caused by a single person and his or her deficient boot straps but by circumstances beyond his control. By birthplace, color of skin, size, physical and mental health and mostly by class.  My father was a poor boy who became rich –but NOT by himself. He had help even if he would never admit it.

The irony, again, is that by the society raising my father from poor to rich it helped itself. By going to college and becoming a white collar worker my father repaid that GI Bill many times over by simply paying taxes on a larger income. He helped fuel the bustling 1950’s economy by buying stuff, investing and raising a family who also had a better chance to do the same. It wasn’t even altruism, it was good economics!

Still, I believe FDR was not motivated by anything other than compassion. He was one of the rare rich people who cared that his fellow monkeys only had cucumbers. The fact that he was suffering a debilitating and painful disease may have had something to do with it. He joined the ranks of Siddhartha and Gandhi –also of wealthier families, who shed their wealth to follow the path of love and compassion. 

Irony. It’s coming. Siddhartha was a Buddhist and Gandhi a Hindu. Neither was a Christian and yet they embodied the teachings of Jesus in a way Jimmy Swaggert and his ilk never could or would.

“What in hell does any of this have to do with you, Nancy, and your crazy brain?” you ask if you’re still reading.

I’ll tell you. My crazy brain is either a gift or a curse. It depends on how I use it. I can be bitter and sad (which I am sometimes) or I can see it as a conduit to reach other people. Maybe touch their similar suffering. Ease it a tiny bit by showing them they are not alone. Or deficient. Or to blame. 

We got the short end of the sanity stick. Full stop. How we view it is up to us.

 What we do with it is up to us. Me? I’m gonna talk about it.

And pass the grapes.

I Ego, Therefore I Am

I went out for a lovely dinner last night.  It was lovely for many reasons; the food was good, we sat outside on a clear summer evening and my friend was paying. Now anyone with any sense of propriety knows you don’t argue with the person paying the bill. This is standard etiquette, right? But having grown up in a barn, fallen off a turnip truck and been absent when God handed out sense (all things I have been accused of over the years) I proceeded to take my patron for a jolly ride into Nancyland.

She’d been sharing her love for The Law of Attraction and telling me about how she prayed every day to have calm clients and a wonderful, peaceful day. My inner-contrarian wanted to shout “but that’s all bull-shit” in that tactful and sensitive way I have about me.  Instead I asked if it had worked, had all her client’s been calm that day? What about the next day? ‘Cause if all I had to do was pray to get what I want, if it actually works, then whoo-hoo, I’ll be rolling in millions and having sex with Ewan McGregor tonight!

Wouldn’t we all love to have the magic formula for controlling our outcomes? Wouldn’t it be great if we got exactly what we asked for? Uh, no. My two year old longed to play in the street. He thought it was absolutely the Best place for him. Did I listen to his pleas and prayers? Uh, No. The streets are a dangerous place to play in and so is life.

I believe that in the cosmic scheme of things I am two years old. I long to play in the street, have my cake and eat it too and have sex with Ewan McGregor (I am a sexually precocious two-year-old.) Luckily, I have a Higher Parent who says no (let’s call her Mimi) and if I am smart I listen to Mimi. If not –giant trucks roll over my life.

But Nancy, you say, you’re a 12 stepper, doesn’t your 11^th step tell you to pray and meditate to a higher power? Why yes it does, you clever person you. But finish the step –it tells me to “pray for knowledge of Mimi’s will for me and the power to carry that out.” (Not all the signs say Mimi, but you get the drift.)

My job is to put aside my Ego, my “want-a-nator” and ask what Mimi wants for me and power to do that shit. But, you ask again because you weren’t born yesterday, on a turnip truck or in a barn and so have the natural skepticism of the discerning mature adult, what if Mimi wants you to do something you find boring? That would be a problem, I agree. 

But Mimi wants what’s BEST for me, not what’s easy. I trust Mimi and not out of “faith” but because of the cold, hard facts. The life my ego chose for me was not so good. My ego still wants to lead me a merry dance and it never ends well. When I listen to Mimi I cruise the Wu Wei with Pooh on my way to happiness. (For those not getting the last reference please read “The Tao of Pooh” it will clear a lot of things up.)

In Taoisn the Wu Wei means “without doing, causing or making”. It means, to me, flowing With the river instead of Pushing the river. I have a black belt in river pushing, making things go MY WAY!! I want it so I will MAKE it happen.  And though as a member of the human race it is very difficult to admit this, I am usually wrong. Not that I didn’t learn something from my three failed marriages, my bankruptcy’s, losing my house, my car and my shit (literal and figurative). I did learn valuable lessons. The biggest one; don’t listen to Nancy, she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

 Does it mean I no longer make ego mistakes? Au contraire mon ami, it just means I recognize it a little earlier than I used to. It now takes 4 days to recognize my ego at play rather than 4 years. In other words, I no longer marry the mistake.

Recent example; the web series. I pushed that river right around the bend. Did it work? Nope. Not even close. I’ve been down about it, can’t lie, but then I realized I didn’t really like shooting film stuff. I love the thrill of an audience. I want to make people laugh, cry, think and be there while they do it. So why did I push so hard to make the web series happen? Ego. Pure and simple. I thought more people would see it, I would be discovered, ink a 3 picture development deal, move to LA and have sex with Ewan McGregor. 

In other words, I had no Good reason to do it. I didn’t like filming it. I didn’t like writing it in choppy segments. It wasn’t giving me joy.

That’s how I can tell if my Ego is running things or if Mimi is. Mimi is a lot of fun. She gives me joy and passion. My Ego gives me hurt feelings, massive fuck-ups and bruised –well –egos. When I’m cruising the Wu Wei things fall into place. It’s like magic and we all love magic, right?

Recent example; I’ve been thinking, seriously, about becoming a Life Coach so I started asking Mimi for some sign about what was next for me. I’m pretty demanding of Mimi but she doesn’t seem to care, she indulges my little whims, my need to have proof of her existence.  So I do my 11^th step prayer work, ask for knowledge and let it go.

So I’m looking for some sign about the coaching thing but instead on Sunday, one of the guys I work with tells me he wants to stake me in putting together a dinner theater here in Wilsonville. He wants to know if $20,000 would be enough. He’s serious. Now Mimi (and Boyce) could just be yanking my chain but hey, if that ain’t a sign, I don’t know what is. And as I told my friend last night I could not have planned to start a theater company this way. Can you imagine if I had told any of you that my plan was to start a theater company but working at a Toyota dealership where I would meet a guy who loved the theater and wanted to give me money. You would have rolled your eyes. Am I right? I’m right. I would too.

So he wants to do something for Christmas. Anybody got some good ideas? Bonus points if it includes me having sex with Ewan McGregor.