BATHING IN INK

President Herbert Hoover, a self-made millionaire businessman, was so deeply and overwhelmingly depressed by the 1929 stock market crash that his Secretary of State Henry Stimson remarked that being with Hoover in cabinet meetings was like “sitting in a bath of ink”—a sad but apt description of how someone’s depression can feel as if it is soaking right into one’s pores.

I spent most of my childhood in depression (if undiagnosed and unrecognized).  My mother could barely tolerate it.  “What’s wrong with you?”  She would say with great impatience. Sometimes she would shake me as if she thought I was deliberately trying to drive her crazy.  Poor Mother.  As a child she hated when her mother got the “blues” and later was saddled with me, a traumatized and deeply troubled child.

By the grace of God, as a young adult, I became an actress which gave me the space to have and express feelings—and be applauded for doing so.  I felt safer on stage than off.  Acting led to therapy and teaching and finally The Four Principles(http://www.amazon.com/Four-Principles-Applying-Brilliant-Acting/dp/1450068197/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1336140087&sr=8-18). I do not mean to negate anyone’s means of dealing with their depression through drugs or yoga or whatever, but getting present through being with sensation has worked for me.

My problem has been not just the depression but the internalized voice that says, ‘What’s wrong with you?!”  Being depressed is bad enough, but hating myself for being depressed makes it unbearable.  Riding alongside the self-judgment is the fear of depression.  My mind takes the fear and turns it into a belief that something is indeed wrong with me not only intrinsically but physically (i.e. Lyme disease).

Lately, I’ve been feeling depressed and not really being present with it.  I was going in and out of it—fighting it, denying it, but finding myself sinking more and more into self-loathing.  This morning I went to Unity in Norwalk, CT for the Sunday Service.  As I sat down, perhaps because I felt comfortable and not judged, I was able to go deeply into the hated and feared sensations of depression.  Closing my eyes I allowed myself to fully feel.  Behind my sunglasses which I had not removed, my eyes welled up and the tears ran down my face.  It was as if I were sinking into black mud—thick, heavy mud that pulled me down into the center of it.  I surrendered to it.  At one point I sank no further.  I was suspended and stuck in black, unending mud.  Awful as that sounds, it was a relief to simply be present so completely.  I was just in it with no judgment about it.

Our musical director, Scott Coulter stood up to sing.  He has a uniquely high voice for a man.  It is rich with feeling—like an angel that knows pain.  He began singing one of David Friedman’s heart-opening songs, “Help Is on the Way” a song so full of compassion and gentleness that my tears ducts opened wider at the reminder that I am not bad or wrong for being depressed.   The tears that dripped off my chin seemed to transform the mud into ink, and though still submerged I was freer to at least swim in it.  I smiled remembering Stimson’s description of Hoover, but I was not in just a bath of ink.  I was in a sea of it.

For one mystical moment, with my eyes closed, I felt as if I had written the song I was hearing and was singing it to myself.  We were completely intertwined and I realized that  the singer needed the hearer and the hearer needed the singer—the minister needed the flock as much as the flock needed him.  I thought of FDR, who, with his great humor and energy and strength of purpose replaced Hoover—how he balanced his polio damaged legs on steel braces and pretended to walk for the sake of the American people because they needed him to be strong.  They served him as he served them.  We are One, I thought in my Walt Whitmanesque moment.

As always, releasing my self-judgment opened the floodgates that kept the feelings dammed up.  I found myself coming back—swimming up through the inky darkness back to an appreciation of being alive.  My body felt light again.

Later that afternoon, a friend called.  She was depressed and was judging herself for it.  I was able to help her get present with it.  Or was I helping myself?

STILL ALIVE AT SEVENTY FIVE

Contemplating my upcoming 75^th birthday has not been a mood enhancer to say the least.  Waking up this morning, I think, “Three quarters of a Century.  Oh, my god.  How did I get this old?”  As I approach West Hell in my mind, “You’re too old!  It’s all over!” blares on loudspeakers.  Backing out quickly, I decide instead to look at this birthday as yet another possibility for rebirth.

With that context in mind I get out of bed, go to an exercise class, and get back on the Weight Watcher wagon.  The sunny, warm day inspires me to take my camper van to my trusted RV guy to be dewinterized in preparation for some summer time camping.

Amazing what a change in context and a lovely day can do for mood.  Singing out my open van window, I drive the 30 miles to Eddie’s place in Brookfield, Connecticut.  I’ve been there several times and I like the guy who owns it along with his dad.  He’s a good looking, middle-aged man with a sweet heart and a deeply loving relationship with a huge, old, black dog, Butch, whom he hugs frequently.

Today, I joke with him amiably as he moves around my van opening valves, replacing anode rods, filling the water tank, testing the water heater and pump, and doing things that I haven’t a clue about in the process of dewinterizing.  I feel free and happy.

At one point Eddie turns to me and quietly says, “I know I’m not supposed to ask this, but…..how old are you?”  It is a startling question particularly since my birthday has been so prominently in my mind.   Overcoming the shame that I think we have all been educated to feel about aging, I tell the truth.

“Well, in a couple of days, I’ll be 75.”

“No!”  His eyes widen in disbelief.   “You’re not 75.”

“Yep.  I hardly believe it myself, but it’s true.”

He stares at me silently for a moment, and in that moment I know that the reason he asked me my age was because he had been about to ask me for a date, and was just checking to see if I was still….marketable.

I burst out laughing as he turns back to the van’s sink to run the air out of the hot water faucet.  The air and water sputter through the faucet pipe as Eddie sputters in his own way, “Man…you’re…I….wow.  You sure don’t look 75!”

I laugh.  “Well, thank you for the best birthday present I’ve gotten so far.”

He finishes the van, does not ask me for a date, and I drive home laughing.

Realistically, Eddie spends nearly all his time in an RV sales and repair shop where he rarely, if ever, meets a single woman.  I’m something of a rarity there.  I mean he’s not in jail, but he’s also not working in a photography studio frequented by Victoria Secret models.  Still, his reaction to my age was genuine enough and, I have to admit, fun.  However, I believe the reason Eddie thought I was younger is not so much how I look, but because I was feeling so happy and alive.  And one is never too old to feel that.

So, to you my dear reader, no doubt younger than I am, hang in there.  Make each birthday a rebirth, and, as the song says, stay “young at heart.”

 

 

TO WEST HELL AND BACK

I think one of the hardest things to do in life is to be emotionally triggered and not go to West Hell with it.  West Hell, by the way, is not one of the circles of Dante’s hell.  It’s a place in my own mind where I take intense feelings and instead of just feeling them, use them to draw wrong conclusions and make really bad decisions about myself and life.  It’s not a pretty place.

I went to West Hell briefly last week.  Fortunately, I have an Inner Demeter who went down there and rescued the poor misguided Persephone in me.  In the Greek legend, Persephone, periodically lured to Hell by Hades, is rescued every spring by her mother Demeter.  It’s Mother/Daughter version of the resurrection story.

Here’s how I got my ticket to West Hell:

As I stated in my previous blog, two readings of my play Intelligent Dezyne were scheduled—Sunday night at Unity Center in Norwalk and Monday night for producer/investors at the Westport Country Playhouse.

I expected (watch out for those expectations) that the reading on Sunday night would be the “fun” one—relaxed, easy, no pressure.  I assumed (watch out for those assumptions) that it would help set up the cast for the probably less responsive audience the next night.

Sunday night was cold and raining.  Only eight people braved the weather and showed up at Unity.  I was disappointed, but we started.

The reading did not go well.  In fact, as I sat in the audience, my stomach sank as I watched.  The spare audience barely laughed.  My three-man cast, usually so good, were hitting the lines hard.  The more the audience did not laugh, the more they pushed.  The play got hammered to death.

Sitting there watching helplessly, I went to West Hell and concluded that this was one of the worst plays ever written.  I completely forgot how well it had worked with the same cast in readings and during a three week workshop run at a theater in Fairfield, CT.  Now I felt embarrassed and humiliated waiting for this ghastly evening to be over.  Managing to suppress my feelings afterwards (I’m from Indiana, after all), I took the cast out for a late night snack and pretended I was not feeling so bad.  They were aware that the reading had not gone well, and even though they knew they had been pushing, they thought it was a “bad” audience.  I did not contradict them, adding gently that this kind of performance can happen when actors know a play too well.

At home in bed, I cringed from the sensations of humiliation and shame in my body.  Horrible.   “This play sucks.  What am I going to do?!” I tossed in my bed.  “Not only am I going to be humiliated tomorrow in front of those producers, but my friend, Liz, who has put together this reading, will be humiliated, too! I should cancel the reading!”  I was sweating.  It’s hot in West Hell.

“Okay,” my Inner Demeter said.  “Just feel these feelings for a moment.  Stop these thoughts, if just for a moment.”

I did the best I could, but it was hard lying in such powerful physical sensations of shame and humiliation and fear.

“Okay,” she said after a few minutes.  “Now, let’s get a little perspective here.  It’s a play.  You weren’t mugged and beaten.’

“That’s true.” I sighed.  “But tomorrow!  Oh, god.”

“What’s the worst that can happen?”

“The producers will hate it.  I will be totally humiliated.  Liz will be humiliated.”

“So what if that happens?  Liz will deal with it.  You can’t do anything about her response.  And, truly, the producers will forget it in a day or two.  You’re just not that important in their busy lives. You will live through it. ”

I had to admit that was all true.

“Now stop these thoughts and go to sleep.”  My body had experienced the most intense sensations, and my mind drifted out of West Hell.   I actually did go to sleep.

The next morning I woke and got scared again about the upcoming reading, so I meditated.  As I calmed my mind and became present, I suddenly knew that what the cast needed was an old fashioned “Speed Through.”  I emailed them and asked if they would come to a rehearsal at 2 pm.  They got back to me with “Can we come an hour earlier at 1 pm?”

I laughed gratefully.  “Sure,” I typed.  I felt so calm and peaceful that I easily handled an unexpected logistical problem for the reading.

At the rehearsal I asked the men to speak five times faster than they were comfortable without losing communication or worrying whether laugh lines got missed.   They began.  In the first few lines the play worked again.  The urgency was back as well as the comedy.

That afternoon, the reading went very well.  The producers laughed and were highly complimentary afterward.  Michael Ross, Managing Director of the playhouse, told me that he thought the play was not only funny but very smart, which was particularly gratifying to me since the night before it had seemed like the dumbest play ever written.  All in all, it was a kind of Death and Resurrection entirely appropriate for spring.

In the past I have inwardly rolled my eyes when someone says, “It’s all good!”  But, in this case, I have to agree.  It was good that we had had that reading the night before.  It was good that so few people had been there.  I don’t know.  Did the Big Whatever have a hand in that?  Whether or not, I was very grateful that my Inner Demeter rescued my mind from West Hell so I could look at the situation with clarity and find a solution.  Thank God for the Four Principles and especially Being Present.

My hope and prayer for us all is that when strong feelings get triggered, we can stop dragging ourselves and everyone around us to West Hell where all the wrong conclusions and bad decisions get made.   Happy Spring and the joy of resurrection!

CUKUGAFB GAME

CatchUpKeepUpGetAheadFallBack.  CatchUpKeepUpGetAheadFallBack.  CatchUpKeep-UpGetAheadFallBack.

Doesn’t it seem like that’s all the Game of Life is sometimes?  If I didn’t meditate every day, I think I’d be nuts.

Briefly, this is what this Game looked like for me last week.

Tuesday through Friday. A flying trip to Florida with friends which is lovely.  I get home late Friday night.

Saturday.  A mere four days away has me scrambling to catch up again.  Mail.  152 Emails.  Bills.  Unpacking. Adding more to my dirty laundry.  Cleaning off my desk to get ready to do taxes.  Preparing for two readings of my play, Intelligent Dezyne, Sunday and Monday.

Sunday.  More emails.  Pick up stools for the reading.  Take stuff to the reading.  Set it up.  The reading.  (Talk about Fall Back—the play reading doesn’t go well at all, but we won’t dwell on that.) I take the cast out for a late snack and wine.  Go home and pray.

Monday. Meditation and moving through fear.  I get an idea about how to get the play back on track and call everyone for a rehearsal.  Meanwhile, I have to replace the woman who read the stage directions the night before but who now can’t do tonight’s reading.  The three guys and the new woman show up as I help set up the space.  We rehearse and the play is funny again.  The second reading goes very well.  A huge relief.

Tuesday.  As Jack Kornfield’s book title says, After the Ecstasy the Laundry.  A lot of it.  Take apart the awning that got wrecked in the wind storm last week before I went to Florida.  Put away laundry.  Clean more off desk to get ready for TAXES!

That’s just one week.  Keeping those spinning plates going in the Catch Up Keep Up Game seems endless sometimes.  Thank God for meditation.

And laughter.

And sunshine.

And, most of all, friends.

Sorry. This is a short blog because I gotta go catch up and keep up before I fall back any further.  So, where are you, my friend, in the CUKUGAFB Game?

INDULGING LITTLE ELAINE

Little Elaine

For a while I have been thinking that it is time to sell my Roadtrek camper van.  After all, I did my Around-the-US-in-three-months Great Adventure.  It was great, but I doubt that I’m going to do that again.  I’m older.  Time to sell the van.

After telling my therapist about my decision, she surprised me by expressing an interest in buying it.  Loving the van as I do, I told her that even though I am somewhat reluctant to sell it, it would make me happy to know Pallas Athena (the van is a goddess) would be going to a good home.  We made an appointment for me to bring it to her house to show to her and her husband.

As I was getting ready, something in me wasn’t feeling right.  Eh, I thought, I’ll consult the Runes.  For those of you who don’t know, Runes are an ancient “stone” spiritual guidance system.  I’ve had a set for many years and use them occasionally when I want some advice.  Weirdly, they have always been right even when I don’t like what they tell me.  Today the Runes clearly indicated that keeping the van was the thing to do.

So, I considered not selling, and that thought made me feel happy and incredibly light—so much so that later, in the grocery store, an older woman touched my arm as she passed, smiled at me, and said, “It’s good to know somebody is so happy today!”  I hadn’t realized that I was whistling a happy tune while toodling along with my grocery cart.

Who was so happy?  It was my (forgive the expression) inner child, Little Elaine.  (That’s what the E. stands for).  Because she was happy, I was happy.  Keeping the van is not logical or practical.  It’s fiscally kinda stupid, actually.  Every day it sits in my driveway it depreciates in value.  I have to service it, maintain it, wash it, pay for insurance, replace parts, and run the generator periodically.  Schlepping stuff out to the van to go camping alone at my age is onerous, and then camping itself includes a lot of physical labor.  It’s much easier to stay at home and watch videos, frankly.

But then there are the moments of peace in nature, swimming in rivers and lakes and oceans, sitting by the campfire at night looking at the stars sipping wine, not to mention just getting away from all my stuff and projects that constantly if subtly pressure me.  Away from it all even for two or three days of camping is such a relief.  As an adult I need that, but it’s Little Elaine who loves the van.  She.  Just.  Loves.  It.  It’s a doll house for her—as if it belongs more to her than to me.  When I look back, taking that trip around the US was really for Little Elaine—to bring her back to life—to mend her broken heart.  It did that.  Why not keep it for her?

But to keep it is to indulge Little Elaine.

Is that allowed?  To indulge one’s Inner Child?  I have, through the years, learned how important it is to reparent our Inner Children—to listen to them in ways that they weren’t heard, to take care of them as they were not, to let them feel instead of trying to suppress them, and to empower them instead of overpower them.  But I never thought it would be all right to actually indulge my inner child.  “Indulge” is kind of a scary word as if doing that would inevitably lead me to gluttony, sloth, and down to Hell.  Remember, “Spare the rod and spoil the child!”

Well, the hell with that.  No more beating myself up.  I’m going to experiment.  Let’s see what happens if I remove the implied “If you…” and “you will” from that sentence and take it as a commandment.  “Go ahead!  Spare the rod and spoil your inner child!”  I’ll keep the van for Little Elaine.  It’s unreasonable, but I think it is absolutely right.  After all, I’ve already bought the damn thing.  It’s a done deal.

You want to join me in my experiment?  What would you do if you spared the rod and spoiled your own Inner Child, eh?  Would you dare to do that?  Even for a day?  Come on.  I dare ya.

MY INNER ADRIAN MONK

It was a dark and stormy night.  (Yes, actually it was.)  The cold sleet and rain outside forced me to cuddle up in bed with my lap top to stream the final episode of Downton Abbey that I had saved for just such nasty weather.

I am sad when it is over—not only because there won’t be any more Downton Abbey episodes to watch but because poor Bates is going to spend his life in prison.  I can’t go to sleep with all that sadness and worry, so I stream another episode of Monk.  Having recently discovered this series for myself, I’m grateful to have eight seasons to work through.  Not actually having a television set, I’m a little behind everyone else on some series, but I like being able to watch them sequentially.  Plus, I can watch the forty two minutes of these so-called hour shows without having to wade through the added eighteen minutes of commercials.

In this episode, Monk has found himself on a jury.  The initial vote is eleven guilty with Monk’s vote the only not guilty one.  The jurors are annoyed with him, of course, but in the next half hour or so, Monk is able to prove that the defendant is not guilty and convinces all the other jurors to change their votes.

I decided that (fictional or not) I’m hiring Monk as my Inner Private Eye.  I need him.  My inner jury always jumps to the conclusion that I am guilty no matter what.  And the Judge!  That one always seems to get out of bed on the wrong side.  The punishments way outweigh the crime!  Mere misdemeanors are slammed with a capital punishment sentence.

The crime:  Not thin enough.  The foreman reads the verdict:  Guilty.  The Judge bangs the gavel down and pronounces the punishment; “House arrest for life until you lose those ten pounds!”    (And I’m not allowed to buy any new clothes either—except for coats and moo moos.)

I seem to end up in this nightmare Kafkaesque court often.

“Doesn’t exercise enough!”

“Blogs are (too long, too short, too dull, too stupid)!”

“Hasn’t saved the world!”

Basically, all my crimes come down to not being good enough.   Oh, guilty, guilty, guilty.   Bang, bang, bang.

So, I’m relieved to have hired Monk to be Inner Detective to prove my innocence.

Once I’m off the courtroom docket, I’m sending him over to Downton Abbey to help out poor Bates.  The man is innocent, by God, and if anyone can prove it, Monk can!

If you need help, send for Monk.  He never loses.  He’s never wrong.

EXHAUSTION

I had fallen over on my left side in the middle of meditating.  Lying on the rug I looked through the glass patio doors at the bare branches of the trees whipping in the wind.  The wild movement contrasted my inability to move.  Once more, as had often happened in the past week, I was overwhelmed with exhaustion and aches in my body.  These were familiar and hated sensations going back to childhood but fed in the last ten years by a kind of cruel partnership with Lyme disease.  If I were to invent a disease that mimicked the worst feelings of my childhood, it would be Lyme disease.  I felt the aches in my neck and my back, the heaviness in my body, and the black mood thinking I had no choice but to go back on antibiotics.  I felt so deeply ill.

In my meditations in the past few days I had been asking for healing for this exhaustion.  There are so many documented cases of spontaneous physical healings like Myrtle Fillmore’s who cured herself “miraculously” of tuberculosis and was one of the founders of the Unity.  So I believe that kind of healing is possible—for other people—not for me.  In the meditations, I would hear, “All it takes is a mustard grain of faith, Katherine.”

But lying on my living room rug looking out at the wind, I only had faith that I was truly ill.  I felt so wretched in my body that I prayed, “God, help me.  I really cannot bear these feelings.’”

The phone rang.  Oddly, it was in my pocket.  I rarely carry my phone around the house, and I had forgotten I had put it in my pocket.  Had it not been right there, I would never have answered it.  I could not have risen from the floor to go get it.  My head still resting on the floor, I put the ear piece on my other ear and said, “Hello.”

It was Jeffrey, a friend/former student.  He asked me how I was.  I was honest.  “I’m lying on the floor exhausted.”  He said he could hear it in my voice.  He asked me if I wanted to “Get Present.”  Although the last thing I wanted to do was go even more deeply into what I was feeling, I said, “Yes.”  After all, I am the teacher who had trained him and many others in the Getting Present process.  I am the seminar leader who has taught this process for twenty years.  I could hardly say, “No.”  So, reluctantly (remember I am God’s Reluctant Debutante), I said, “Yes.”

I was afraid that what I was feeling would scare him.  It sure as hell scared me.  I said, “I feel so awful right now that it would be a relief to die.  Really my mind is just screaming, ‘Get me out of this body.  Get me out of here!’”

He said very gently, “So what are you feeling in your body?”  I described the aching in my neck and back, the sick feeling in my stomach, and the weight that felt as if I had landed on a planet with thirty times the gravity of Earth.  None of the feelings were extreme, but my mind hated these feelings…an old, old hatred that went back to god knows where—a deep fear of these sensations of exhaustion and blackness.

But, Jeffrey was compassionate and calm as he kept me focused on the sensations.  “Oh, god, Jeffrey, truly, I would rather be dead than feel these feelings.  If I could die right now, I wouldn’t mind at all.  I just want to melt.”

“So, go ahead.  Melt.”  I turned over on my back on the carpet wishing I could melt, but my body felt too too solid like Hamlet’s.  It would not melt.  I suddenly felt sorry for my mind—for how much it hated these feelings—for how difficult these feelings were for my poor brain.  It was a strange moment.  I don’t think I have ever felt sympathy for my own mind, but I did.  I actually cried for my mind.

Jeffrey asked me if I would be willing to stay with my sensations for a count of five….just to feel them and not try to change them.  Often, when helping students or workshop participants experience difficult sensations, I have asked them to stay present with them for eight seconds without falling off or losing their hats.  I call it “Riding the Bronco”— Maybe Jeffrey felt five seconds was about all I could take.  Didn’t matter.  He counted slowly.

I was still lying on the rug when he said “Five.”  The horrible sensations had (miraculously to me) shifted and were replaced by an overwhelming feeling of gratitude—that Jeffrey had telephoned me just at the moment he had—that he was so compassionate and calm—that The Big Whatever had given me this process.

I sat up and we talked for a bit more as I thanked him. I felt so much better.  The exhaustion was totally gone—along with the aches and pains and depression.  It amazed me since I had done nothing but Get Present with my sensations.  Of course, I still had no idea whether the exhaustion was caused by Lyme, my childhood, or something throwing my body chemistry out of whack.  I didn’t really care.  I was just glad it was gone.

Because I needed to get ready for a meeting, I had to end our call quickly and get in the shower.  It was while standing in the warm spray that I realized what the exhaustion had been trying to tell me.  My mind had been so busy hating and resisting that I couldn’t get the message.  Without noticing, I had fallen once more into an old, old pattern of trying to force my will on a problem and had stopped listening to my GPS (God’s Planning System).

It was saying LET GO.  If you don’t know where to go or what to do, stop struggling.  Wait.  Listen.  And above all LET GO AND TRUST.

Oh.  That.

A SHOCKING TABOO

As I dried off from my shower this morning, I was mentally perusing my uninspiring wardrobe for something to wear to a meeting with three friends.  The clothing that I wore yesterday was still strewn around my bedroom and as I reached for this convenient outfit, my hand stopped.  Oh. I can’t wear these things!   I wore these things yesterday at another event which happened to have included the same three women I’m meeting today!  One does not wear the same outfit two days in a row…even if the clothes are not dirty or smelly or in need of freshening up in any way.

Why not?  I thought.  Where did I acquire that taboo?  Oh, yes.  High school.  That’s where it was.  The rule then may have even extended to a week.  One does not wear the same clothes in the same week.  I have no idea if this holds true in Brand conscious high schools of America today, but I certainly inculcated this rule into my mental file of taboos.

I reached for the clothes anyway.  The hell with it.  They’re not dirty.  I didn’t sweat or roll around in the mud in them, so I put them on.  What’s the worst that can happen?  I imagine the meeting and leaving the room for some reason; the women all turn to one another and say things like, “Did you see what she’s wearing!”

“Yes!  It’s exactly the same thing she had on yesterday!”

“Do you suppose she’s wearing the same underwear?!”  (No.  Emphatically no, but I’m not there to defend myself.)

They go on.  “I wonder if she knows she’s wearing the same thing?”

“Maybe not.  She’s getting up there you know.  That sort of thing may happen with age.”  And they all cross themselves simultaneously in spite of the fact that they’re all lapsed Catholics.

Well, the hell with them.  I shall try to be civil when they arrive but it may be difficult knowing what snide, gossipy, so-called friends they have turned out to be.

Wait a minute.  I must not let my imagination run away with me like the guy who needed to borrow a neighbor’s saw.  As he walked over he imagined the neighbor being selfish and refusing. By the time the neighbor opened the door, the guy said, “Screw you and your saw” and socked him.

No, of course my friends won’t actually care.  They may not even notice.  I may ask them—or not.  No need to expose my breach of acceptable behavior unnecessarily.

Why is it that the same taboo does not apply to wearing jeans?  Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it’s all right to wear jeans for more than one or two or even three days in a row—as if they don’t get dirty or don’t count in the must-change-your-clothing-every-day rule.  I’m going to have to survey this.  I confess I wear my jeans until it somehow occurs to me to wash them.  I think when they begin to feel too loose—not because I have lost weight, but because there is a stretchiness to the material that gives and gives over use.  Immediately after a washing they let me know in no uncertain terms that I do have more weight to lose after all.

But back to taboos.  We have so many that we are not aware of.  I remember once thinking that of all the taboos, there is one that no one will break—ever—and that is taking a dump in public.  Unfortunately, that belief and taboo was shockingly shattered during lunch hour one sunny day as I walked through New York City’s tony Fifth Avenue shopping district. A man in front of me pulled down his pants and actually took a big dump right in the middle of the sidewalk.  I stopped behind him astonished, standing there with my mouth agape in disbelief as every other person walking by simply ignored him.  That’s New York City where anything and everything can and does happen.

Well, here I am—dressed in the same red sweater and black pants that I wore yesterday (albeit with clean underwear) readying myself to break my long-held taboo and face the consequences.  Will I lose my friends?  Or shall I go on to break bigger and bigger taboos until one sunny day I find myself on Fifth Avenue and….Oh, god.  Maybe I should just change my clothes.

GOALS SCHMOALS

I have always hated writing down goals.  It made me tired and grumpy—especially when I had to add a “Date Completed By”—like “I’m going to have my book on the best seller list by August 2012.”   That really annoyed me.  “Visualize yourself in 5 years.”  Loathed that.  I just hoped to be alive and healthy in five years.

I know.  Everyone says it’s very important to set goals and put a time frame around them, but that never worked for me.  It seems to me that all the best things in my life have come to me unexpectedly—out of the blue—without my visualizing them: my acting career, all the stray animals that found me, my home, and much more.  And, frankly, not only did I not visualize those things, I resisted them tooth and nail when they showed up.

On the other hand, when I have tried to set goals by writing them down—especially ones that had to do with getting my work out into the world, I have failed.  My friends might argue with me about that, because, after all, I have accomplished a lot—somehow:  renovating my house, writing books and plays, going on my solo camper van trip around the US.  But I didn’t write any of those things down.  I just DID them because I wanted to.

It’s when I consciously wrote goals down that I got into trouble.  Just the idea set me frowning and twisting my mouth into an unattractive scowl, feeling burdened, depressed and hopeless.

Today, I discovered why.

This morning I went to the second meeting of a Heart’s Desire workshop led by a lovely woman, Tanya Murphy, at Unity Center in Norwalk.  Of course, today’s focus was Goal Setting.  I looked at the piece of paper with all the little boxes and places to set goals and dates with a small sigh.  Here we go.  I can’t do this.  I’m not good at this.

Tanya used a metaphor:  “Goal Setting is just like setting your GPS, telling it where you want to go.  When you get off course, your GPS will recalculate without judgment.”

And suddenly, I realized what has been wrong in the past with my goal setting!  When I wrote a goal down, it never occurred to me to “set the GPS” and listen for instructions.  Once I wrote down a goal and set the “Date to Be Completed,” instead of approaching things as I normally do—one step at a time, I changed.  Energetically I’d turn into Sisyphus, my goal an impossibly heavy boulder I would have to push up the mountain alone.  I would force my will on this boulder feeling an urgency that destroyed any relaxation, trust, or fun regarding the goal.

It was as if I’d run out to my car having decided to go to Oregon and start driving furiously—down any old road, making turns higgledee piggledee in a frenzy to get somewhere without actually setting my GPS and listening to it.  Often, I would end up right back where I started—exhausted and burned out—and, give up that goal.  Trust.  Fun.  Relaxation.  All those were lost the moment I wrote down my goals.

Oh, I thought, as I picked up the paper with the little boxes and lines.  What if I let go of feeling I have to force my will on these goals?  When I went around the US in my camper van last year, my unwritten goal was to circle from coast to coast returning home in three months.  And I did just that by listening to the real GPS and following where The Energy told me to go every day.  It all worked out perfectly.  I went places I could never have imagined or planned along the way and made it home three months later almost to the day.

I told Tanya about my realization re: goal setting adding, “I love your metaphor.  I’m going to put my goals in the GPS and listen for The Big Whatever’s instructions,” and then blurted out, “GPS!  God’s Planning System!”

She laughed delightedly.  “Oh, can I borrow that name?!”

“Sure,” I smiled, “If I can borrow your metaphor.”

So, here I go.  One mile at a time.  When it’s time to do something different The Big Whatever will let me know what it is.

How about you?  Know where you want to go?  Have you set your GPS?  And are you listening to it—trusting that you will get there in good time?

A SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT

That got your attention, didn’t it?

The word “Shocking” I have noticed, headlines articles about stuff that is no more shocking than the content of antioxidants in blueberries.  I have learned not to read any article with the word “shocking” or any other incendiary word in the title.

Oddly, when the news is truly shocking, the headlines are deadpan.  “Woman’s Mutilated Body Found.”  Of course, the body could be some poor unfortunate woman in the Ukraine, but still one reads the article.  I can’t think of a morning when there isn’t some article about a missing/abducted/dead woman or child.

The news.  Everybody’s mad at the way news is reported, so mad that when Gingrich slams an interviewer for a question about his past, the audience gives him a standing ovation and runs out to vote for him.  That’s how mad they are.  (At least that’s my hopeful take on why he swept South Carolina.  He lost big in Florida, didn’t he?)  The right wing hates the liberal reporters.  The liberals rail at Fox News.

I don’t watch the news on television.  In fact, get ready for this, I haven’t had a TV for 30 years and don’t miss it at all.  My computer suffices for news, movies, documentaries, and articles.

Many years ago I went home and sat with my mother while she watched the news on her TV.  I hadn’t seen it on TV for years already.  There was report after report of murders and robberies and rapes, and finally, they showed a truly shocking video of a toddler falling to his death out a window.  I gasped and looked at my mother.  She had no expression on her face.  “How can you watch this stuff?”  I asked.

“I like to get the news,” she said coolly.  My senses were then dulled by sports reporting ending the hour with some bit of “human interest” fluff to help us recover, I suppose, and ease the digestion of dinner.

Of course, disasters must be reported and are news, but disasters don’t include a very long follow up—which I believe is really part of the news.  An interview on NPR was enlightening about the fact that there seems to be a fifteen day limit to news reporting—for example, the tsunami and the nuclear melt down in Japan.  After the first fifteen days we heard little about it, even though the problems were—and still are quite severe.  Also, information about the clean up and difficulties with Katrina and New Orleans faded away after about fifteen days.  Apparently, when there are no more dead bodies, the news about these events disappears.

I get very fed up with disasters, individual rapes, murders, and robberies, the battles of politicians, and the shenanigans of celebrities.   I want to know what people are doing to improve our world.  Once a year Time Magazine devotes an issue to the 100 most important people.  It’s inspiring, but I want to read about them more than once a year.  So, what do I do except complain about the news?

During my meditation, a small voice said to me, “Katherine, every day, in the morning, after answering emails, while you drink your second cup of tea, go to http://www.ted.com, pick an eighteen minute video and invest your tea time in watching what people are doing to improve the world.” What a good idea.

So, I made another cup of tea, climbed back into bed, and watched a video by Bilal Bomani: Plant fuels that could power a jet, a NASA program that is extremely green and attempts to create a self-sustaining ecosystem with algae plus salt water that produces biofuels without wasting arable land or fresh water.  Fish poo is somehow important to this effort which I find charming.

The next day I watched a movie star handsome Danish architect, Bjarke Ingels talk about his very playful and inventive designs, including one for a ski slope built atop a waste processing plant.

Today I watched Bill Doyle present a new approach to cancer, called Tumor Treating Fields using electric fields to interrupt cancer cell division.  Two patients surviving long beyond their diagnoses were shown on videos.  The treatment has none of the side effects of chemo or radiation treatments.  How heartening that was!

I think I shall watch one every day.  The Ted Talks give me something to look forward to in the morning besides dead bodies and shocking blueberries.

I offer these 18 minute pick me ups to you, and if you have any other suggestions for enlightening news, please let me know.