Brave New Kitty

I have a friend who is trying to make it in stand-up comedy. The other day, he told me he was certain he’d be making his living as a comic in less than five years.

Wow.

Such brazen self-confidence has always astonished me. I don’t mean to pick on my friend. He’s just started in this field, he has a real talent for it, he’s excited, and he’s young. More importantly, he has an innate right, as do all of us, to be confident in himself. Still, his display of confidence bothered me a little bit, and I got to wondering why. Is it the foreignness of it because it’s something I’ve always struggled with (and for)? Is it envy? Or is it something else altogether?

To answer these questions, I turned once again to a book that has helped me clarify my thinking on many matters. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig wrote about the classic and the romantic views of the world. Basically, the classic view is concerned with function and technique (science), while the romantic view is concerned with form and style (art): a romanticist can ride a motorcycle, but only a classicist can fix one. Pirsig dissects these ideas in painstaking detail in an effort to understand the hostility and mend the schism that he believes has occurred between these two world views.

My theory is that self-confidence can be classic or romantic–rooted either in factual assessment or in idealized notions–with the most desirable kind containing elements of each. If you’re completely focused on facts and analysis, you miss essential emotional aspects, and if you’re completely focused on an idealized notion of your abilities, you’ll never fully develop the abilities you actually have. Thus, a good goal for developing self-confidence would be to develop skills, but also to believe in your capacity to develop skills. Both are necessary.

Few people are blessed with naturally well-rounded self-confidence. Most of us tend to err toward one extreme or the other (this is true for many other things, as well). Since the romantic view is the less analytical, more superficial of the two, it is the far more common one. And it is important–important to present yourself well, to convey positive messages to the world about your abilities and talent, to make yourself available to all the positive energy you possibly can. But this is only part of the picture. If romantic beliefs aren’t rooted in a critical assessment of ability, they’ll be too fragile to withstand the pounding of the cold, harsh world. So while both classic and romantic views are necessary for a well-rounded confidence, the classic has to come first. All romantic beliefs have to have some basis in fact, some realistic foundation upon which to rest.

There are a lot of self-help books out there claiming to have the secret to self-confidence, to believing in yourself, to all the amorphous ideals we attribute to successful people. But it is specifically because these ideals are amorphous–because they are the romantic side of the equation–that the authors are able to make the claims that they do. Most of these romantic ideas can’t be submitted to rational scrutiny or are simply refurbished statements of common sense. (In fact, if you’ve ever wondered why self-help books make sense when you read them but don’t really help you all that much, it’s because they focus on romantic intangibles, which are necessary for personal change–but not at all sufficient.) Selling self-confidence is big business; we all want more of it. But all the reading in the world can’t create confidence. It can only offer new perspectives, thereby preparing us for the real work: gaining knowledge and experience in our chosen field, which can only be gotten by the sweat of the brow. For that, there is no shortcut and no substitute.

So getting back to my friend, is his self-confidence overly romantic, not based on a firm foundation of self-analysis, hard work, and planning? The truth is I don’t know, and I suppose it’s beside the point anyway. His statement just bothered me, and the reason for that, I realized, is entirely personal (as being bothered always is!): I tend to err the other way, to the classical side. The voice in my head tells me that if I’m not an absolute expert at something, I’d better not make any claims of confidence whatsoever. It’s always seemed delusional to me when people profess unwarranted (in my opinion) confidence. This may have come from having overly critical parents or it may be a way I protect myself from rejection by not putting myself “out there” in the world. Or it may be my hyper vigilance against true believerism, this time a bit misapplied. I don’t know, but there’s definitely a balance to work toward.

Because I was trained to give up, I have had to figure out ways of taking care of myself around not giving up. In this, I don’t believe I am any different from anyone else; we all have to find ways to deal with our quirks, anxieties, and neuroses. We differ only in method.

When a person grows up without learning a lot of self-care tools, as I did, any adversity can feel overwhelming. This can mean you don’t handle stress well, which can mean you tend to avoid situations that may provoke it. Since creative pursuits tend to provoke a lot of stress, people without good stress-handling capabilities tend to avoid them. This is sad! Just think of all the untapped creativity there must be in the world because people would rather avoid their anxiety than express themselves.

That’s certainly how it was for me. Part of the giving up was about not knowing how to deal with the anxiety of being creative, of pursuing a goal. Because of my background, of a childhood that didn’t instill me with the strongest sense of self or self-confidence, I will probably always have anxiety around self-expression. You know: difficulty believing in myself. A heightened fear of rejection. A great amount of emotional strain around “putting myself out there.” So my choices were to avoid doing it at all, or to find ways to take care of myself around it.

It took me the first half of my life, but I found ways to do the latter: to take care of myself around it. And I think it’s worth talking about, because even to myself, it doesn’t always seem like I’m making the best effort I could be. When that happens, I have to remind myself where I came from, how much fear and anxiety I have had to overcome, and how grateful I am that I’ve made it this far. Neither of my siblings have (both bright and talented women), nor millions of the others of walking wounded on the planet.

I’m not able, like many people, to work super long hours. I tire and get overwhelmed easily. I used to berate myself for this, telling myself I was “lazy” or “lacked passion,” until I realized the sheer emotional exhaustion I get from creative work. It drains me almost beyond belief, and my way of taking care of myself around that is to not push myself too terribly hard. This does not mean, I eventually realized, that I lack passion. It merely means that I am cognizant of my own limitations. And while this may mean that I accomplish fewer things than I hope to in my career, so be it. I’m sad about that, but not fighting it seems like the best I can do so far.

I also struggle a lot with putting myself “out there.” I’ve written a lot of short stories and even a novel that have never been read by other eyes. I’ve gotten much better about dealing with that awful sense of exposure I get from sharing my work, but it can still be excruciating for me. This is a serious limitation, and I deal with it by putting out there what I can and being patient about the rest. It’s gotten so I don’t mind letters of rejections so much anymore, as the important thing, once again, is that I’m doing it at all.

Anyway, the point is that having been trained to give up, I’ve had to really work at persistence and being creative in the face of dreadful anxiety. But I’m thrilled to have gotten this far, and thrilled that I’ve found productive ways to deal with my shortcomings. That’s really the best any of us can expect, no matter where we’re at or what we’re doing.

Hold my life until I’m ready to use it
Hold my life because I just might lose it–The Replacements

Do all traits really carry hidden potential? I think so. But some are harder than others to appreciate. To get to the potential underneath them, you really have to do some digging.

I was trained to give up. Both of my parents were quitters, so I had quitting programmed into my little head before I could protest. My father was a college dropout a few times over, with a firm philosophy, which he voiced often, against overachieving. My mother had a lot of artistic talent, which she applied to all sorts of endeavors that she never stuck with. She sewed, made crafts, even took a stab at writing children’s stories. But each time she ran into difficulty, she’d shelve the project and move on to something else. Her closets were full of hopeful piles of fabric; boxes of unsold knick knacks–some very beautiful; gadgets and tools barely out of the box.

Giving up has played out in my life in predictable ways. I’ve always had a hard time persevering in the face of adversity. There aren’t a lot of things I’ve committed to or fought for in my life. It took me fifteen years to get my Bachelor’s degree, for example, and I was in my forties when I finally got around to creative writing–which I knew I wanted to do since at least high school. And I don’t want to get into the details of my relationship history, but let’s just say I was a very good breaker-upper. I’m not proud of any of this, but the truth is the truth.

Can there possibly be any hidden potential here? Is there anything other than a lifelong, uphill battle against hopelessness and low self-esteem? I think so. At least, since this is what I have to work with, I’ve learned to make the best of it.

One day several years into my sobriety, after yet another breakup, it occurred to me that I’d been sober longer than any relationship I’d ever had. This thought amazed me, and I realized that, for the first time in my life, I’d shown some tenacity. I’d committed to my sobriety, and thus my healing and personal growth, as I’d never committed to anything before.

This meant that I was, contrary to my darkest beliefs, capable of staying a course with something, of not giving up, of being passionate beyond just mouthing the words. I’d first committed to addiction, then to sobriety, I realized, because I felt so awful about myself, and my primary passion–perhaps the only passion possible in such circumstances–was to ease those awful feelings. Which makes perfect sense, because the natural human inclination when feeling bad is to feel better. Since I always felt bad, I was always focused on feeling better. There wasn’t a lot of energy left for anything else until I figured out better ways of taking care of myself. In a very real sense, I was finally able to come up for air, look around, and see what the world had to offer.

Once I realized how passionate I was about feeling better, I was able to better understand how healing, or lack thereof, had affected my life. Maybe I’d never stayed the course with a relationship, I reasoned, because none of the people I’d been with were right for me. And maybe I hadn’t finished college, I thought, because I hadn’t found a study I truly loved. Upon further analysis, both of these things proved to be absolutely true, as did many other things in my life.

In a roundabout and very skewed way, giving up and not committing were ways I had learned to take care of myself. On some level, I knew I didn’t have the skills to make good choices, so I refrained from making any at all until I was able to do a decent job of it. Without realizing it, I had sort of put my life on hold until I was ready to live it in a way that fit my values.

Sadly, it’s also true that I gave up because it was the best I could do for myself, having reached adulthood with no better tools to deal with life. I had to figure out a lot of stuff on my own, and I wish that weren’t the case, but it is, as it is for so many of the walking wounded in the world. If you’re one of them (and we all are, to some degree), learning to see the lemonade it’s possible to make with the lemons is a healthy way to deal with it. And even if you can’t find a way to see your personal adversity as a positive, you still have to deal with the cards you were dealt. The only real choice is to start sometime, or not start at all.

I’ve come to believe that, in one way or another, everything we do is an attempt at self-care. Some have just learned to make better choices than others. Seeing human behavior in this light makes everything understandable, and everything forgivable. Without my unique personal history, I may never have figured this out, and even though I’d had my life on hold for way too long, I’m grateful for the awareness, and grateful that I’m not on hold anymore.

The holidays are always a weird time of year for me (I’ve written about this here). I don’t get debilitatingly depressed like I used to (and I’m grateful for that!), and I’ve even found ways to enjoy the holidays on my own terms. Even so, it’s just a weird, weird, weird time of year. When I’m least expecting it, things come up and whack me on the nose, and I’m still blindsided, every single time. “I was doing so great,” I think. “Where the heck did that come from?”

For example, the evening before Thanksgiving, I was making a pumpkin pie, and when Jim made a comment about pre-baking the crust, I suddenly felt like a complete idiot for not having considered what he said myself, before I’d started making the pie. But it wasn’t just that I felt like an idiot. A wave of utter hopelessness washed over me. First I snapped at him for not suggesting it sooner, when I “could have done something about it.” When that annoyed him, I dropped everything to run to the bedroom and sob into my pillow. Throughout the whole unpretty scene, I knew I was overreacting. I even knew why: I associate baking and holiday meals with my family, and that always wakes up the undercurrents of sadness and little-kid anxiety that still reside deep inside me. The good news is that I was able, after a few self-indulgent minutes (which I’ve learned to grant myself in these situations), to bring myself back to the present, apologize to Jim, and carry on with the pie making. As it turned out, my own idea worked just fine, and we had one of the best pies ever.

I’m usually able to catch myself nowadays before these post-traumatic stress reactions blow up. And that is huge. But during the holidays, I’ve found that no matter how many years pass, I’m still much more vulnerable to these episodes than at other times of the year. And I think this is a fairly common thing for people who grew up in families like mine. The best I can do is own up to it as soon as I’m able, and apologize when I fall short of that.

This year, an interesting thing happened after the pumpkin pie incident. I was able to step back and look at the situation objectively, with curiosity rather condemnation, more quickly than I’ve been able to in the past. By so doing, I pinpointed a very specific thing I was feeling sad about, which is that I don’t have the kind of parents who pass on wisdom to their kids.

As silly as this might sound, I realized I was really grieving. Which was odd, because I’ve always mourned not having the kind of dad I can go to for career advice or help moving, or the kind of mom who could give me sound words on relationships or stay with me when I was sick. I thought I’d accepted it a long time ago. This was different, though. In the past, it was a vague, all-encompassing sadness. This time, it felt very concrete. I identified a sense of loss I hadn’t identified before. What was this? Where did it come from? And how was it different? These seemed like important questions to ponder.

Here’s what I’ve figured out so far. My mother was a fantastic cook, and cooking has always been one of the few ways I had felt connected to her, and she to me. But even that connection, which was real and tangible, was, at the same time, so tenuous and poorly nurtured. When I look through my recipe box, I see a collection of recipes, in her handwriting, haphazardly and carelessly thrown together. My favorite dinner roll recipe, for example, was missing the eggs; I had to find a similar recipe in a cookbook and guesstimate the right number, which I then wrote in on the recipe. When I came across this recipe last week (as I usually only bake around the holidays), my own handwriting jumped out at me like a hurtful comment. And the recipe for one of my favorite Christmas cookies contained just a list of ingredients, with no mixing or baking instructions. Because this recipe contains hard-cooked egg yolks, a unique ingredient, it’s not as simple as following a recipe for other roll-out cookies. But even if it were, is that really the point?

I thought to myself, how could she not have known this? Or, having known, how could she not have cared? Did I matter so little to her that she couldn’t be bothered even with this, one of the few things we shared a love of? And the pain of that, that feeling of dismissal and unimportance, cuts to my core. Oh, I know it’s just the way she was, that her mother before her was much the same way–not careful about things–and that it’s really nothing I need to take personally. But there’s a five year old living inside of me who doesn’t know any better. To her, everything is personal. And she’s the one who breaks down and sobs and feels totally unlovable when her pie-making abilities are questioned, because her mother never took the time to show her how to do it properly, even though she easily could have.

This probably all sounds a bit self-pitying. I suppose that’s the five year old talking, too. But she (the five year old) really is a victim, having been a captive participant in that early dance. And the only way for her to get past it is to give it a voice. Even after all this time, that small part of me needs to speak her truth, as unpretty as I sometimes find it. In fact, that’s probably why I still tend to fight it and squelch it, which also explains why it occasionally sideswipes me so unexpectedly: I don’t like being reminded how frightened and vulnerable and small I can still feel.

Even after all this time, stuff is still bubbling to the surface. Even after all this time, the holidays are still an “opportunity for growth” for me. And as hard as that can still be to accept, the pie crust incident of ’09 made it startlingly clear that fighting it only delays the inevitable and keeps me in the weirdest place of all: stuck in the past, yet glaringly unaware of it.

Once again, a general truth put to closer scrutiny reveals heretofore unidentified feelings. I don’t have those kind of parents became I don’t have those kind of parents, and wow, I’m still healing because of it.

Awareness. Not the Christmas gift I was looking for, but I’ll take it.

To understand all is to forgive all. – French proverb

When I was a kid, my mother was always acting like a victim. She would sigh deeply and whimper and wring her hands, and she was always complaining about different maladies, some real, some imagined. One time she pretended to be unconscious just to see what I would do. I spoke to her and she didn’t respond, so I tried to wake her up and she didn’t respond, so I ignored her, and what do you know, she “came to” on her own a few minutes later, saying “What happened?” in a tiny little voice, which I also didn’t respond to.

To this day, I get irrationally annoyed when people make obvious plays for sympathy. But I’ve come to understand that my annoyance is more about my past than about anything anyone happens to be doing. More importantly, I’ve come to understand that people who behave this way do so out of a sense of helplessness, and that they deserve kindness, not contempt. Like my mother, they feel lost and out-of-control of their lives, and the only thing they know to do about it–try to get sympathy–isn’t very effective, and certainly isn’t going to help them solve the problem.And that’s really sad.

It’s tough to not have opinions, sometimes negative ones, about some of the choices people make. In fact, I would submit that it is impossible. When you watch people you love mired in addiction or jumping from bad relationship to bad relationship, how can you not have an opinion? And if there are children involved, how can there not be some anger? And yes, some judgment? Of course there’s going to be.

In fact, I would go so far as to submit that such judgment is healthy and desirable. People need to develop a good sense of judgment if they are to make good decisions for themselves; it’s one of the defining characteristics of mature thinking. Further, I would submit that it is impossible not to have judgments, as long as we have functioning brains, and that it is an exercise in futility to try.

Yet there’s this common thinking that it’s bad to judge, and that if we do so, we’re unkind people. Ideas like multicultural diversity and egalitarianism, while creating tolerance for those different than ourselves, have also ushered in an age of what I’ll call, for lack of a better term, unwillingness to discern. People are afraid that if they take a stand, they’ll look like bigots, hypocrites, or worse.

This is completely backwards. Passing judgment is not only natural and necessary, it is also the beginning of forgiveness.

How can that be, you may ask. Passing judgment the beginning of forgiveness? That‘s what seems completely backwards. But judgment–that is, discernment–is how we understand the world, and understanding is the beginning of forgiveness. There can be no forgiveness without understanding. So the better we are at judgment/discernment, the better we become at forgiving. They go hand in hand.

My story about my mother is a good example. As a kid, I only knew I felt angry and embarrassed when she sought attention as she did. But as an adult, with the benefit of having to come to terms with my own neediness and feelings of powerlessness, I was able to see her for the broken, unhappy person she was. Only then could I move past my anger and feel true compassion. And this is true for everybody and everything. Once you understand why somebody does something, it’s almost impossible to not feel compassion, mostly because the truth we come to understand is that we’re all motivated by the same basic things. In the broadest sense, we’re all looking for love, recognition, and connection. It’s just that some people have developed better skills for finding these, while others are just limping along, carrying emotional burdens that don’t leave them a lot of free time to figure any of this stuff out. That’s how it was for my mother, and even though she died almost a decade ago, my heart still aches for her. Not to say that I don’t still get angry sometimes when I think about it, because I do. But so what: I can honor my anger and still have compassion for her suffering. That’s another mark of mature thinking.

Judgment might seem like a weird way to get to forgiveness, but it’s really the only way there is. And there is another important caveat here, which is that forgiveness does not mean you ignore bad behavior. You must, must, must hold people accountable for their actions. There is no kindness, no compassion, in letting people get away with bad behavior. Letting things go undiscussed causes rifts and resentments, and it is almost impossible to get to understanding and forgiveness from such a place. Hold people (including yourself) accountable with as much kindness as you can muster, but hold them accountable.

Finally: when I use the word judgment, you need to wipe from your mind the image of a shrewish woman passing sentence on her husband, children, and neighbors–this is not judgment so much as it is bolstering a fragile ego by denigrating others. Remember that judgment is about discernment, about how you make your way in the world to the best of your ability, about how you make decisions. If you aren’t clear on this, you’ll never be as fully equipped as you could be to understand the world and other people and thus, you’ll never be as fully capable of forgiveness, either.

Opinions and judgments are essential to survival, there’s no getting around that. Sometimes they spill over into choices other people are making. That’s okay, as long as you’re working toward understanding. That’s the best any of us can do, for others and for ourselves.

Culture: 1. Breeding, education, sophistication. 2. The ideas and values of a people. — Dictionary.com

Recently, due to miscellaneous circumstances that don’t have a lot to do with each other, I’ve been getting a lot of culture in my life. In less than a month, I’ve seen New York City for the first time (which was a culture shock of the most wonderful variety!), I’ve seen some of the greatest works of art known to man, and I’ve been to two classical music concerts and a live stand-up comedy show. It’s the busiest month I’ve had in a long time, but also one of the most exhilarating. It got me thinking about how important culture is to my sense of well-being.

When people talk about nurturing the soul/spirit, it’s usually associated with “getting out in nature” or “getting away from it all.” No doubt, spending time in nature is important. I’ve had some of my most uplifting moments while listening to the waves on Lake Superior or gazing into the billowing night forest. I am in no way diminishing the necessity of immersion in the beauty of nature. But I’ve come to realize that culture is important, too, because it’s just as soul-nourishing as nature, although in very different ways.

By culture, I suppose I mean–and I had to think about this–appreciating mankind’s creative capacity. This is different from entertainment in that when entertaining ourselves, as with watching television or going to a movie, we aren’t compelled to think about things any differently than we do in our everyday existence. The couch or even the local movie theater is a comfort zone, and being in one’s comfort zone makes it difficult to overcome the inertia of our normal way of seeing the world. It happens, but it isn’t the norm.

When you travel to other parts of the country or world, or visit an art museum, or attend a live performance, you put yourself in a position to be shaken out of your complacency. You are actively seeking to be stimulated in a way that makes you think about your life differently. You are making an effort to understand how other people view the world, to expand your horizons. You may not frame it that way, particularly if the culture is something like stand-up comedy, but that’s what you’re doing.

How does culture do this? That’s a complicated question. People have been trying to define art for centuries, to explain how and why something is art and something else is not. Some schools of thought are that art lies solely in the creation itself; others say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and others maintain that the observer must know the artist’s mind to fully appreciate his work. I think all of these are true, but not exclusive, ideas: each has a validity and logic and allows appreciation on different levels. Beyond that, I don’t have an answer. What I do know is that there is something sublime about human creativity, whether making or observing. Creativity seems to be part of our spiritual calling, our cry to the Universe that we exist and that we matter. It’s an innate drive we all have, and I think that when we gaze upon great creations, or listen to great music, or watch people put their creativity on display to no end other than its own sake, a sort of magic occurs, a connection between people, often strangers, that wasn’t there before. And this connection is of the highest order. It takes place between two people who have recognized and responded to one of the noblest aspects of humanity. I think when you’ve had such a lofty experience, you never see the world in quite the same way again. The transformation might be big or it might be small, but if you’ve ever felt your spirit lifted by human creativity, you know it’s a feeling that stays with you for the rest of your life, in one way or another.

I’ve always been aware of this, of course-on some level, everybody is. I just hadn’t given it a lot of thought before, and probably wouldn’t have now if I hadn’t had so much cultural exposure, of such a variety, in such a short time. It was this inundation that made me step back, compare and contrast, and really consider the role of art–and its appreciation, which I’m calling culture–in my life. Culture not only puts me in contact with beautiful things, it reminds me of the greatest and most wonderful achievements man is capable of. And in so doing, it reminds me that I, too, have a creative spirit calling for fruition, and that humanity, at its best, is very good indeed.

This is important to recognize, every bit as important as enjoying the beauty of nature. And if you live in a city, as I do, it’s actually easier to expose yourself to culture than to nature. So I’ve decided to make culture a regular habit. At least once a month, I’m going to go to a museum or live performance, whether it be music, theater, or comedy, and I’m going to develop my appreciation for the creative process. Because there is something god-like (whatever that means) in our capacity to create, something transformative. To recognize that is not only to recognize the best in humanity, but the best in ourselves. The capacity to create exists within every human being, so to better appreciate it is to better appreciate ourselves. I’ve always known this intuitively, but I’m glad I have more clarity now about what a truly significant thing it is.

That, in a nutshell, is what culture does for you.