Encrypted Patterns
In Don Miguel Ruiz’ important book THE FOUR
AGREEMENTS, the third agreement is “Don’t Make Assumptions.”
This is not necessarily easy. In fact, I suspect
most of us make so many assumptions, so frequently, about so many things –
without even being aware of it – if we can get to the point where we even
question whether or not we’re making an assumption, that is gigantuous progress!
I’ll choose one particular scenario as an example.
Some people seem prone – if not to flat out road rage – to becoming easily
irritated or angry with other drivers on the road.
“Learn how to drive!” Honk, honk. “He cut me
off!!” Honk, honk, hoooonnnnk. “You a**-hole!!!” Flip the bird.
Sound familiar?
It seems to me one of the easiest places to make
assumptions is from behind the wheel. But what if the guy who cut you off in
traffic just left the airport en-route to the hospital, where his wife is in
premature labor with their first child?
Another is in hearing and reading about
celebrities. “Yeah, I’d look like that too if I made a million dollars a movie,
and had a personal trainer, and a plastic surgeon, and a nanny. (And you know
that picture was photoshopped anyhow.)”
Sound familiar?
I’ll readily admit I think there is way too much
emphasis on celebrity and physical appearance in our culture. And, of course,
anyone is going to look better after two hours in the chair with the makeup
artist and hair stylist. That said, noone can know the schedule of and demands
on another person’s time without being in that person’s life. Even the best
personal trainer can’t exercise for you. Personally, I love to exercise and
don’t feel good when I don’t. But working out two hours a day every day…? No
thanks.
Yet perhaps even more destructive than the
assumptions we make about others are those we make about ourselves.
I am not a person prone to road rage. My
tendencies lean in the opposite direction. Someone honks and my first thought
is “What did I do wrong?”
I remember once when I was in the Transformational
Voice Training Institute Apprenticeship program, in between jobs, and short on
money. My voice teacher left a voice mail asking me to call back as soon as I
could as there was something she wanted to discuss. In the moments leading up
to my return call, I felt concerned, even panicky, wondering if I had made some
colossal mistake, offended someone, or if I was behind in my studies, etc. It
turned out Linda was losing a roommate and was calling to offer me a place to
live!
Whatever experiences and socialization led to our
individual encrypted patterns (or ingrained tendencies, or old shit, or
whatever term you want to use), being aware of them is helpful. Knowing they
exist, and to look for them, can help avert assumptions and open up authentic
potential for a new way of looking at things, a new choice.
Authentically Yours,
Laura
The Stupidest Thing I Ever Said: The Duck Story
When I told my fiancé I was writing a blog post
entitled The Stupidest Thing I Ever Said, he kindly reminded me about something
else I recently said that could equally be categorized as stupid. That would be
the question: “Why is the water so wet?”
I don’t think that really counts as stupid,
though. See, we were at the park on a sunny day, about to toss a Frisbee; I
took my shoes off, and when I removed my socks they were wet. It hadn’t rained
in days and the grass looked dry. What I MEANT to say was “Why is the ground so
wet?”
So, that was really just one word coming out when
I meant another.
The duck story is another matter entirely. My
friend Natalie kindly reminded me of this today after I had made a trip to the
duck pond, as I call it. (A little man-made lake—with a fountain in the
middle—where Mallards and Canada Geese flourish and have babies, near an office
building across the street from where I work.) It has been a couple of years
since this happened and I had completely forgotten about it.
Natalie is a walking buddy and there was one
particular street where this duck couple hung out. The people in this one
particular house fed them cracked corn or something…Natalie and I saw the
couple (the ducks, not the people) several times in front of the same house.
Then one day we were walking on a different
street, several blocks away, when I spotted the same Mallards. (And here is
where I write like a novelist—and not a very good one):
“Look!”
I said, pointing. “It’s the same ducks
from that other house, way over there!”
“Sure
enough; it is!” said Natalie, smiling.
“Gosh,”
I pondered, watching the ducks waddling along, “I wonder how long it took them
to walk all the way over here.”
Natalie
quizzically raised her eyebrows as she looked at me and responded, “Perhaps
they…flew?”
My reaction would have made a good movie moment.
Boy, did I feel STUPID.
God’s Honest Truth. I temporarily forgot, even
while looking directly at the wings on their bodies as they did the walking
waddle, that ducks can fly. All I could imagine, in that particular moment, was
them waddling on the sidewalks and streets all the way from Lehman Avenue to
The Street A Block Away From The Elementary School.
That’s funny.
What’s not so funny (see bubble bursted) is how we
limit our sense of our own potential in the same way.
In E-SQUARED, Pam Grout writes that the brain
receives 400 billion bits of information each second. It would take nearly
600,000 books just to print 400 billion zeros, to give you an idea of how much
information that is. Geez Louise, as my friend Nancy used to say. So what does
our brain do? It narrows down and screens to something like 2000 bits of
information per second. (Gosh, that doesn’t sound like so much, huh? Yikes!) So
what we actually choose to take in is only one-half of one-millionth of a
percent of what’s out there, as Grout says. And then she goes on to talk a lot
about neuro-pathways in the brain and how we are programmed to think a certain
way and only see certain things…and rather than get into that any further I
will simply recommend her book. It’s great.
Can I just say, well for God’s sake, no wonder I
forgot for a few minutes that ducks fly!
But I’m making a commitment to remember that I
can. Maybe not with wings, but with my spirit, my imagination, my heart,
thoughts, words and actions.
You do the same, okay? Because I’d hate to see you
waddling all the way from Lehman Avenue to The Street A Block Away From The
Elementary School, forgetting that you can fly.
Authentically Yours,
Laura
Stop Fighting Yourself
Learn to
listen to the messages your body gives you. Rest when your body feels tired.
Eat when your stomach tells you it’s empty. Drink when your throat feels dry.
Cry when your eyes sting with tears. Laugh when you’re bursting with happiness.
Dance when your feet feel the urge to move.
–from MOMENTS FOR MYSELF, a calendar by Blessings Unlimited
Stop fighting yourself. You know what you need.
Authentically Yours,
Laura
Express in the World What is Held in Your Heart:
Part Four
In FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE NORTH, Martha Beck
examines how when the essential self and social self are not communicating and
working in conjunction with each other (which is likely true of virtually all
human beings to a certain extent) inner and outer conflict result. This is from
chapter 1: The Disconnected Self.
Melvin
worked as a middle manager at IBM and a miserable middle manager Melvin made.
If clinical depression had a phone voice, it would sound just like Melvin’s did
the morning he called me to see if I could take him on as a client. He’d been
feeling sort of flat and listless for a while, he said – no big deal, just the
past couple of decades.
After checking into Melvin’s current life, and if
he might be a good potential client (because she doesn’t want to waste their
money and time if not) Beck got to some of the questions which really interest
her. These questions are like: When you were a kid, did you have an imaginary friend?
Is there anything you do regularly in which you find time passing without your
noticing? Tell me everything you can remember about the best meal you ever had
in your life.
Melvin didn’t realize he would need to answer such
questions, didn’t feel prepared, and decided to hang up the phone. Beck never
heard from him again.
He couldn’t answer the questions because he didn’t
know. His essential self, the one who knew what he loved and wanted to do by
the time he was in about second grade, was so disconnected from his social self
– the one who presents in the world – that the two weren’t talking to each
other or on the same page about how to move forward in life.
I don’t know about you, but I really like the idea
of my essential and social selves speaking to one another regularly. Let’s get
the game on!
Authentically Yours,
Laura
Express in the World What is Held in Your Heart:
Part Three
In THE BOOK OF AWAKENING (I am reading one
reflection per day this entire year), Mark Nepo speaks regularly of the need to
be honest about one’s own feelings (whether it be sad, angry, hurt, light
hearted, filled with love) to ourselves and to others. To voice,
compassionately, what one is truly feeling inside. To express the truth of who
we internally are, instead of creating a facade to present to the world.
My writing is not as poetic as Nepo’s. He words
things like this:
As the sun
cannot withhold its light, we cannot what feels real. As the Earth keeps going
by turning itself toward the light day after day, we have no choice, despite
all forms of etiquette and training, but to keep turning toward what we feel is
real. Otherwise, we become cold little planets spinning in the dark.
Don’t withhold your light. Share it.
Authentically Yours,
Laura
Express in the World What is Held in Your Heart:
Part Two
In THE WISDOM OF MENOPAUSE, Christiane Northrup
describes not only the physical, but also mental, emotional and spiritual
changes a woman goes through in mid-life during perimenopause and menopause.
This must be the Menopause Bible of the world – it is almost exhaustingly
detailed in health related areas (hormones, bones, thyroid function, etc.) of
the physical body.
Where the theme aligns with the other books is how
in mid-life (which I can vouch for from my own experience) women are simply not
willing to put up with crap anymore. Divorces tend to happen during this phase,
after years and years of marriage. I personally know two women who have
divorced their respective spouses after having been together for around two
decades. Both are just a few years younger than I am.
After years of putting their own desires on hold
to raise families, provide emotional or other types of support for spouses,
keep the household running smoothly, etc., there comes a time. A time when hormones
are changing, it’s not about nesting anymore, and a woman simply must start
saying “no” to the demands of others and “yes” to those from deep within herself
to take care of her own needs.
Early on in the book, Northrup describes a
gentleman who was utterly shocked when his wife uncharacteristically stood up
and threw a plate of roast leg of lamb (or some such thing) right out the
window at the dinner table. He blamed her “craziness” on hormones and the
emotional charge of her change of life. More likely accurate is his wife –
after years of simmering frustration and anger – simply reached a boiling point
wherein enough was enough and she simply wasn’t going to keep playing her prescribed
role anymore.
If the woman doesn’t change, she will wind up
miserable and ill, and noone around her will be happy either. So either the
marriage stays the same with everyone miserable until death does someone part,
it changes, or it ends.
This transition is an opportunity to move into a
new future, with clear intentions and nurturing of self. I say CHEERS to that!
Authentically Yours,
Laura
Express in the World What is Held in Your Heart:
Part One
I used to be a finish-one-book-before-starting-another
kind of gal. I’m not anymore. Often I like to have one fiction and at least one
non-fiction book (more and more on my Nook) going at the same time. Now I
prefer to spread my attention around a bit, yet focus on each directly while I
am there. In fact, I am reading more books right now than I remember ever
reading all at once before.
And I am struck by how the same theme keeps surfacing
in different formats, by different authors. It goes something like this: Let
your outer and inner lives be congruent. Express in the world what is held with
love in your heart. You knew what you wanted when you were 7 years old; don’t
let the world stop you from recovering and doing it now.
With all this richness, a four part series has
presented itself! Here is part one.
In THE VEIN OF GOLD, Julia Cameron describes how
she nabbed the title and concept from interviewing the now deceased brilliant
film director Martin Ritt. Here is my paraphrase of what Cameron wrote: It was Ritt who directed NORMA RAE, the film
that changed our impression of Sally Field from Gidget to an actress of depth
and stature. Ritt had a theory about actors and brilliance. He called it the
vein of gold. He said that all actors have a certain territory, a certain
range, they were born to play, and that is their vein of gold. If you cast an
actor within that range they will always give you a brilliant performance. As a
writer-director myself, years afterwards, I found my mind circling back to Ritt
and his theory. I saw evidence of its validity everywhere, and not just among
actors.
I have noticed the same thing, within myself and in
observing others. Some things we feel like we “have” to do. Some tickle our
interest and we think we wanna try. Others we feel we “must”, or we aren’t
truly living.
Should is
how others want us to show up in the world—how we’re supposed to
think, what we ought to say, what we should or shouldn’t
do… Must is different—there aren’t options and we don’t have a choice. Must is
who we are, what we believe and what we do when we are alone with our truest,
most authentic self. –elle luna.
I send cheers and congratulations to all who
choose to mine their inner vein of gold, who decide to live in the must.
Authentically Yours,
Laura
