For What It’s Worth

“Something’s happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear…”

With all due respect to Steven Stills, I know exactly what’s happening here. I am unemployed! Arghhh. I took the leap into the abyss. I am free fallin’.  Swinging without a net. What other clichés are there? Oh yeah - I am up shit creek without a paddle.

Who in their right mind, at 60, would quit their job? Just because someone was abusive and bossy?  Thus begins the committee in my head that speaks to me in my father’s voice. Work isn’t supposed to be fun. Who told you you were supposed to be happy? Life is shit and then you die.

But Daddy-o, I try to tell him, I am not in my right mind, never have been, never will be. Oh, yeah, I faked it for a good 40- 50 years but it exhausted me. Exhausted. When is it okay to be myself? When is it okay to say No to crapola? When is it time to say

I am worth MORE!

Taking my 22 year old sophisticatedly cynical son to work this morning I heard my dead father speaking. “Why aren’t you looking for a job?” Aside from the fact that he doesn’t know shit about what I do with my time, I have been looking. Not applying, but looking. No, not true, I did have an interview to be a vet assistant for $9.15 an hour. Uhhh, no. Surely, I am with more than $9.15? $10? $20? What exactly am I worth?

I told him I was waiting for the next right thing.

I know on the “open market” I have very few sought-after skills. I don’t type well. I don’t know how to do any math past Algebra. (Hey, before you judge remember the last time I took a math class was 1967!) I am not “eager, money-driven, competitive with an edge.” This is what they are looking for. I’m telling you it’s like The Hunger Games out here.  Who would you kill for a chance to make mega-commissions selling insurance, gadgets, clothing , cars, yourself?

There is an ad on Craigslist for a “Telephone Entertainer.” Hmmmm, I wonder what that entails? I’ve been told I’m very entertaining on the phone. That was my secret to car deal success, make ‘em laugh. Somehow I’m not sure they would be willing to pay me the big bucks just for making folks laugh. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it’s a little more … creative than that. Know what I mean, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Still, it is a “stay-at-home” job and I could tell people I’m in show biz.. Maybe I should consider it.

Back to cynical Joe in the car. I told him I was waiting for my Higher Power to show me what’s next. Talk about making someone laugh! He told me religion and spirituality are STUPID! I nodded and didn’t argue. How you going to argue that? Religion is stupid and evil and well, not a good thing for people or the planet. But I know I have a Higher Power, otherwise I’d be dead by now. Or married to that dentist in Ft. Wayne. Someone’s been steering the ship. Well, sometimes. I do tend to take over the pilot seat a little too much. I like to be involved. That’s what I tell myself. But the truth is I am very uncomfortable being still. And it’s not just my ADD, it’s my POSS (piece of shit syndrome.)

When I’m still it’s not the loving embrace of serenity that caresses me, it’s the certainty that doom is imminent and it will all be my fault. I’m not sure what I did wrong (being born with a vagina?) but I know it’s something to do with my epic, intrinsic, undeniable crappiness. I’m just not worth any better. Bottom line. I’m not worth it.

I went to a meeting last week. The topic was solutions but it devolved into a discussion of fear. How to deal with fear. Seems like everyone has a heap and some to spare. We’re scare of other people, poverty, death, bad movies and most of all, the still small voice that tells us we are getting only what we’re worth. And that ain’t much, baby! 

. What struck me about all the fear talk is that we were all sitting in a 12 Step meeting. With the steps plastered everywhere. Don’t we profess –in Step 2 –that we Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.  And then we turn our will and our life over to the CARE of that power.

The CARE, not the derision. Not the sadistic tendencies of lesser gods. And certainly not our well-meaning but broken parents. They didn’t know any better but you know, I sometimes think they should have. Didn’t they see it in our faces? The shame, the fear, the disgust? 

It ultimately doesn’t matter except like Alien they are implanted deep in our bodies. Their words are said in OUR voices now. Their thoughts are my core belief’s; about the world, about other people and especially about my worth.

You may not know this but I was a pretty good actress in High School. I won awards. I did. Oh, I know it’s not the same as winning awards for sports or anything but it wasn’t nothing. A greater God would have spurred me to the next step. My father gave me two incredible pieces of wisdom; 1. Don’t declare a major in college, it will make it easier for you to slip into whatever your husband likes and 2. Become a “gal Friday.” 

I’m not even going to comment on that. I don’t need to, right? The Absolute absurdity is painfully obvious. 

My point –oh, there is one, just wait for it – is that I now have the choice of who I let into my mind. Will it be the old, sabotaging, belittling voice of smallness or the whispers of a Higher Power who CARES for me. Cares enough to say I’m worth more than the wage I am paid. More than the men who have left me. More than the wrinkles on my face. I am worth … well … I’m worth whatever I want. I am worth my heart’s desire.

 I am worth the wait.

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.