Tag: self-respect

Faking Adulthood

Boy, did I try too hard when I was young.

When you operate in life with low self-esteem, you are always trying to prove yourself. Constantly and to anyone who floats into your life and consciousness.

You are always trying to get people to believe you are worthy of their attention, love, care, inclusion.

When you have low self-esteem, this is very hard to do.

It is hard to sell someone on something you don’t really believe yourself. It is hard when you are filled with dark imaginings and can only dream of having light and love in your life.

I am not fully conversant in how one goes about building self-esteem. I believe it is an individual journey. But I know a lot about tearing one’s self down and tossing it in the junk heap.

It’s rather simple actually.

You just have to stop caring about yourself.

For years, I went out into the world with the firm belief that I didn’t matter. To counter this belief, I was very serious about just about everything. I needed to instill gravitas where I had none.

I loaded my pockets with metaphorical beach rocks. I was very serious. Very grown up. when I was still a child.

It was an odd form of self soothing and comfort. If I didn’t matter, I reckoned, then whatever hurt someone committed against me would barely register on my own internal emotional pain meter.

It did on some level, of course. But the felt impact usually wasn’t strong enough for me to stop what I was doing (or what was being done to me), stand up, turn around, face the perpetrator and simply say, “No. I will not be treated this way.”

I shudder at the irony of how simple that would have been. How other girls could do it without blinking an eye. The mothered daughters.

But that was my concocted game face. I wasn’t like “other girls” so didn’t need (or deserve) what they took for granted. (More another time on how feeling “special” creates a weird sense of entitlement and license.)

When my self-esteem started to develop, a lot of bad things stopped happening and started turning around.

Wayne Dyer famously said: “You teach people how to treat you.” My life started turning around when I decided that I deserved better treatment than I was accustomed to. I was the author and the pen.

It took practice and courage but, eventually, it worked like magic. Such is the trajectory of healing and growth. Glad I am here instead of still being there.

Imagine how validating it was to discover Aldous Huxley felt similarly in his youth. We are advised to walk lightly in this Earth. We are of it but we are also spiritual entities of light and love.

If we but allow those qualities to represent us in our day-to-day life.

Avoid the quicksand.

It’s dark because you are trying too hard.

Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.

Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.

Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.

Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.

When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.

No rhetoric, no tremolos,

no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.

And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.

Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.

There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,

trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.

That’s why you must walk so lightly.

Lightly my darling,

on tiptoes and no luggage,

not even a sponge bag,

completely unencumbered.

Aldous Huxley

(Book: Island [ad] https://amzn.to/3SeAC9P)

No

no

is a necessary magic

no

draws a circle around you with chalk and says

i have given enough

— boundaries

McKayla Robbins

If we are lucky we learn this early. Most don’t. Life mostly makes it impossible to learn this early. We want and need too much. There is little way of knowing early in life that we are the most important audience we are ever going to have.

In youth, we are still searching and experimenting. There is too much competition for our time and love and enthusiasm and strength. There are too many people who want to take advantage of those precious qualities. And do.

I sometimes believe there is nothing new under the sun. The trouble is we are unlikely to learn that until we have invested a great number of years and a great amount of energy in coming to that realization.

Life for the most part is an endless cycle of learning and changing. If we’re lucky. Life’s bits are doled out in manageable portions in accordance with our age and stage and ability to handle what is thrown at us and what comes up in our path. Again, if we’re lucky.

I have learned that saying “no” can be the profoundest statement of self-respect and respect for others. I once read of an author after a book reading who was offered a fan’s manuscript.

The fan wanted feedback on her writing and jumped on the chance to take advantage of the opportunity. The author politely and firmly declined: “Honey, I will never have time to read your manuscript. You’ll have to find someone else.”

That anecdote resonated with respect for me. Did she hurt the fan’s feelings? Probably. Maybe she even shocked her a little. Shocked her because the automatic knee jerk response in society from most people is to feign interest and accept such an offering without objection.

The manuscript might be heaved in the waste bin minutes later but they have greased the wheels of polite social discourse. And diminished their own integrity and self-respect in the process.

I love that story. I could only hope I could hold myself to such a high standard in a similar setting. I am sick of people who pander and strive to protect “someone else’s feelings.”

I am not suggesting we go out of our way to gratuitously hurt or insult people. But this anecdote is different. The author was asked directly to do something she did not want to do. So she said “no”.

It injected a necessary dose of reality in that aspiring-fan-cum-author. Not a pleasant experience but also not devastating. Just real. A win for everyone from where I sit.

There are no shortcuts in life really. If you circumvent the apprenticeship and required stages of trying and failing and learning from your mistakes and trying again and again until something begins working with greater frequency, you give yourself short shrift.

I sometimes think of kids born to money who make nothing of themselves or their lives because they never really had to work all that hard for anything. What comes easily is never appreciated as much as what we have fought for and worked hard for.

It has to do with investment of time, energy and love. It is the pursuit of what is inside you that really matters to you. The happiest people have listened and followed the dictates of that still, small voice within. It is still an elusive goal for most people. There is often way too much noise and distraction that drowns out the nudging of our own inner direction.

It a distressingly common tragedy.

I am getting better at “no.” I am getting better at saying “no” with love and kindness. I am getting better at recognizing what is worth pursuing and what is worth turning down. For me. The paths I do pick usually reflect some inner urging or passion or preoccupation. Those pursuits usually work out better than pursuits I have taken on half-heartedly.

So thank you for dropping by and checking in here today. Thank you for saying “yes” to what I put out there in the world. There is no expectation from any of you to do so. Just gratitude.

If it should happen one day up the road at a reading I have just given, you wish to gift me with your book length manuscript for my review and comments, remember this post. I will be honest enough to tell you (I hope) that I likely won’t read what you have written and you are best to try another tactic.

I hope I am kind and polite but firm. I hope you will recognize it is an expression of honesty and respect – both for you and for me.

Shot Down

I wish I was spiritually evolved enough to roll with life’s punches and “see the lesson” in them as they hit. I am not. I ruminate more than I should over woundings and insults whether they are hurled intentionally or not.

The house build behind us is moving forward. I did everything I could to intervene and stop it. I stalled it by a month but my overall attempt has failed. The house markers have been set in the ground. A white pickup truck with an engineering logo on its side doors regularly visits the property no doubt finalizing the build strategy. The Wildlife Commission wrote an email this week to say there is no gopher tortoise violation on the “subject property” as I had hoped.

The die – as they say – appear to have been cast.

Part of me thinks this is instant karma. Punishment from the Universe for cutting a real estate agent we’d been working with – no binding contract but more of an implicit arrangement – out of the closing. We had to move fast and efficiently to get the house, I reckoned. Part of me knows I am rationalizing.

Fear-based thinking. Again.

There was a something that lingered in the air above this house deal though. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. That may sound a little too flakey for most of you. It is too flakey and “oooie, oooie” for me to take seriously. But I wonder.

I think of all the ways in which this development could be worse. I think of the chaos and upheaval of Israelis and Palestinians preparing for the savagery of war. I reflect on seeing an arm uncovered in the rubble of that Gaza hospital and the horrible news that will be delivered to a family. Many families in this case. I think about Ukrainians returning to where their family homes once stood and learn they have been obliterated by bombs.

My troubles are so small by comparison. Miniscule. But they are my troubles. I feel I need to stand up for them and give them their emotional due. I spent years ignoring and diminishing hurtful events in my life. They just backed up inside of me.

I would explode disproportionately when some other minor insult triggered the backed up, unhealed hurt inside of me. The earlier hurt hadn’t been dealt with so it could dissipate. It had merely gone underground waiting to rear its ugly head when triggered – usually by a more minor threat by a relatively innocent bystander.

It is common for people to ignore or diminish troubles of others when those troubles don’t affect them personally. There is a human tendency to feel a sense of sympathy and concern about others’ misfortunes and an equal measure of relief because it isn’t happening to them.

We all encounter problems on our journey in life. Mostly we are thankful when someone else’s tragedy does not touch our own life. When tragedy does strike us, we pray for the grace and strength to face and overcome it. It is one of life’s toughest learnings.

People are not comfortable generally with strong feelings. Either their own or someone else’s. We like our shared illusion of a calm and stable society.

If strong feelings were easily accepted and as easily processed, the booze and illicit drug business would collapse. Angry people are called “hysterical” unless the listener has buy-in with the issue people are angry about. I think of Trump and his legions of followers who eagerly slurp up his incessant brand of outrage over hard done by “patriots” like him.

It is so automatic to shush a child who is crying healing tears. It is common to accuse a woman of “being dramatic” when a sudden, inconceivable loss bends her in half convulsed in tears. Or her husband has beaten her senseless and is holding her children hostage in a bitter custody case.

Unbelievably, Alex Jones accused grieving Sandy Hook parents of delusion when their children were mowed down by a madman toting an AR-15. Jones finally came to justice but not before numerous grieving parents were tortured and belittled by Jones’ ardent followers.

The insinuation of grief creeps slowly into our lives. It is easier to manage when we are young, we reason, because we are more resilient. We can certainly move on faster. When we’re older, the processing of grief is usually more internal. “Stiff, upper lip” syndrome comes into play.

Loss is a fact of life. Some losses we can easily identify and readily relate to. Other losses are more personal and nuanced. How we learn to handle loss is spread across a very wide continuum.

So I accept that I am on a grieving path. For trees. And a view. And a dream of peace and solitude that will soon be irrevocably shattered. Does it matter in the grand scheme of things? Of course not. But does it matter to me? Absolutely.

I have learned that self-love and self-respect means owning all of our feelings and failings and giving them their due until they have been integrated into your heart and psyche. Life is not an endless series of “happy, happy, happy.” I challenge anyone to show me someone whose life is.

Change is inevitable and pain is manageable. I take this recent loss as another opportunity to apply what I’ve learned about managing disappointment. And of course, I wish I didn’t have to. I’m only human, after all.