Knowing Thyself

This is how it started. Checking friends' blogs one day, I came across an online quiz to figure out which Jane Austen heroine I am on one of Allison Eddy-Blouin's blogs. What fun! (For other Austenophiles, see www.strangegirl.com/emma/quiz.ph.) So I took the quiz and turned out to be Elinor Dashwood. I sent the link to Gillian, another professed lover of Austen, and she took the quiz, ending up another heroine. Unlike me who can barely remember the character Elinor Dashwood, Gillian clearly remembered her heroine and what she disliked about her.

I thought about conversations I had recently with my boss, with old friends, with close friends, sitting down with them, putting work aside and talking deeply about personal struggles and joys. I am so impressed with the importance of putting the public face aside, of really getting into another person's character. And I realized that my tendency with books, movies, my fictional writing, real life events and friends is to skip over the characters (as if they were secondary and not, as so many writing teachers have adamantly stated, primary) and wrangle with the big message, the overarching theme. I didn't remember Elinor Dashwood because I wasn't interest in her - I was interested in "the point" of the story.

I went to graduate school with the - mostly - unconscious goal of saving the world through education. My great plan was to finish my degree, enter the world of education policy, and become a great pioneer in education reformation. Near the end of my studies, I realized that as important as policies can be in a framework, what really matters in education is what happens when a teacher enters the classroom, closes the door and leads the class - it's the one-on-one, individualized, person-to-person interaction that is most important. Six years down the road, I'm still puzzling this out, finally starting to focus less on the framework (what does it all mean? what is the theme? what lesson can I draw?) and more on my friends' hearts, who each person is today, now.

There are so many reasons I tend toward analyzing and synthesizing stories (realy and fictional) - my Myers-Briggs personality (INTJ), my family circumstances, my desire to get a message to learn from, my college training, my community, my fear of big emotions. For quite a while, tending towards the intellectual rather than the heart was a survival skill through times when I was not yet equipped with emotional skills to do anything else. And like so many bad habits, I just wasn't ready to do otherwise. Sometimes it just takes a crisis (or four) to knock us over.

I find great joy in what I've termed my new addiction - getting behind the public face to hear my friends. I also have great sadness in those friends I've had and who I passed up this chance with. There are one or two in particular who tried so hard to get behind my wall, to call me out, to give me the chance to be emotionally naked, who I rejected. I wasn't ready. I have been blessed recently to have the chance to talk to old friends and those friends I've known for some time and to deepen our friendship, to take the wall down and meet in familiar and foreign places.

I have been so surprised - now at 33 years old - about how much there still is to learn about myself. How much I thought I really knew me!

A New Addiction

There is an insurance ad on television in which a woman pulls a man back from crossing the street, the man helps another person, and that person helps another person and so on until the orginal woman is helped and she again pulls the original man back. The premise is the same as the movie, "Pay It Forward," the possibility of making the world a better place by responding to a good deed by doing a good deed to someone else.

In the last year or so, I have been interested in the power of paying forward something provided to me - an incredible friend, so good at being present, who sat with me, talked with me, asked me hard and intuitive questions to draw me out. A few Sundays ago, a guest minister spoke at my church on the Bible's injunction to be perfect like God. He described his own efforts as a child and adolescent to maintain a facade of perfection, perfection itself being unattainable, even as he routinely made mistakes. He said that 91% of 18-21 year olds describe the church as hypocritical. Interestingly, the word hypocrit comes from the Greek word for Greek actors, those who act. We wrestle with how to be perfect when we are so insanely imperfect and a defense mechanism of pretending things are perfect when things are so insanely imperfect.

I have a natural affinity to southerners - I married one, I hung out with almost solely southerners in New York, of all places, and three of my closest girl friends are from or were raised in the South. I'm not sure what it is I love, but there's something there. In the time I lived in Alabama and Mississippi, I certainly came to understand the invisible boundaries among individuals and the unspoken rules about how close to become with some people. On my trip to Florida last summer, I was again immersed in Southern culture and came across one type of Southern mother - the unflappable, beautiful, perfect mother who wants to know where I'm from, what church I go to and how old my children are. And absolutely nothing else, thank you very much, would you like some sweet tea?

Our public face has an interesting effect on people. It protects us from others getting in but also protects us from having to go there with people. When we can take this mask off, when we share intimate emotions with others, - that can seem so scarey and big to us - when we are real and authentic with others in all its bright goodness and badness, it gives others permission to take their mask off (the power of this on our children!) and, sometimes felt as a threat, asks others to take off theirs. We put up a huge welcome sign. And when others can take their mask off, know they have a place to perch, what amazing things come to light - new dreams, goals, revelations of tormenting events and brilliant moments . . . a better understanding of ourselves.

My good friend helped me to take my mask off - a scary process that started when I had to sit with friends, though not close friends, from church and discuss my marriage as a part of church discipline (perhaps I could have resisted but really, I was ready for the mask to come off). At first, being that honest was felt violating - not because it was but because of my fears. Good friends held me up, and I've found taking off my mask to be infectious and addicting. In the right place, a mask is protecting (it's how one survives in New York City) and in the wrong place, a mask can be a death mask.

I have never read Ayn Rand (through a strange twist of logic, because I was once told my a teacher that I have to read her when I'm young to understand her, I got to be older and belived I was suddenly too old. So I never read her. Pshaw! What kind of book of any worth is that?!), but recently read this quote by her, "Civilization is the progress of a society towards privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." We are never in civilization free from other people, and I don't want total privacy - I can hide so many things in privacy and can turn quite prunish and self-slaying in my own closet. Certainly, I want reasonable privacy (I don't want my phones tapped!), but I always want to have those friends with whom I can be emotionally naked, those friends who invade my privacy to check on me and to show me their hearts, those friends who are my protection in a storm that tears away many of my leaves, those friends that show me the new leaves I hadn't realized were there.

Buds and Roots

My friend, Maraiya, recently asked me what happened to all the hot dogs I had in my freezer. We sold some of the 40 piece packages to friends. The rest came to a wonderful end, being donated to our local food bank. I think they weighed in at 19 pounds. That is also funny, 19 pounds of hot dog.

I often get asked for updates on how I am doing. At times, my old desire to not be seen kicks in, and I want people to stop asking. With close friends, though, it is a good time to really stop and think about where I am. A few weeks ago, I was talking to some co-workers, and one of them joked with me, "You better watch these two," pointing to the two other women in the room, "they'll be trying to hook you up with someone." I felt panicked at the idea and buried my face in my hands. One of the women - so compassionate and empathetic, a professional and born therapist - said, "Oh, she's not ready." Often I am asked not only how I'm doing but how I am feeling about Michael. I realized on my drive home that day that I wasn't ready for a relatinship with anyone. The questions center around whether I want to be with Michael or, if not him, what I want in another person. But my heart isn't ready to answer the question. I have felt relief since I understood this and peace in being alone, allowing myself to open up in this new space.

My therapist reminded me a week ago that it is more difficult to remember ourselves in relationships - we get tangled up in what another wants and needs, thinks about what we want and need, how to do what we both want and need, disappointment and hurt when needs and wants are not met. I married fairly young at 22 and had a 10 year anniversary last year. In those 10 years, I forgot how much I love to travel - to just go, to see new places, to return to familiar places and explore. I love the liminoid experience of getting out of my normal routine. I forgot many old and precious relationships, not putting forth the effort to keep them up. I have realized in the last month that I love to snowshoe - my last trip ended in such euphoria that I apologized to my fellow snowshoer for talking so much. I remembered again my waxing and waning passion for understanding how to light a young person's fire for education, especially young people who have not only failed in the traditional public school system but who have been hurt by that system, and how to turn that fire for education into an amazing future. I have realized that my ease in administration - organization, delegation, analyzing and synthesizing, managing details (nerdy me - I get almost as excited about strategic planning and organizaitonal analysis as I do about social justice) - are a gift. I remembered how much I love to talk about books and philosophical ideas with those I love. There is more to come in rediscovering myself at 33. I remembered the most important reason for my four years of college, love of wisdom, discovering truth and how to live authentically.

Certainly, there are new feelings of lonliness, emotional and physical, new feelings of loss, new struggles with what this busted relationship will have to look like because there are kids involved. There are the days - as recently as last week when I had a fever for 48 hours - when I feel like I have failed at everything, am a terrible mother (fueled by the survival need for them to watch the idiot box for two and a half hours because I was too ill to do anything else - Asher loved it, of course), that I can't do everything set before me (the list keeps me up - curse the list!), and that I surely should just be locked up. Ah. . . new discoveries.

I spent this weekend in Ft. Collins with my close friend, Amy. There is a couple in her church whose marriage is in somewhat similar circumstances as mine. The wife is currently in Nashville with a friend, sorting out whether she wants to stay in her marriage after a quick and passtionate emotional affair and close call with a full affair. I saw her husband and two young kids at church. Even with his smiles and hellos, I could - imaginary, perhaps - feel his pain. I recognized the stunned look. I remembered the first weekend I went to church after I made discoveries about my marriage. I felt exposed, unsure how to act around all these people who new my dirt and who were unsure how to act around me, and at the bottom feelt so deeply sad that I thought I would never stop crying. There are those deep areas still - that slightly hollow look in the eyes - between the branches. But, amazingly, there are new buds, an appreciation of the water and nutrients my roots drew in the winter.