MANIFESTING YOUR DESTINY

The old cliche, "Thinking Makes It So, just might be right on the money. I have been cheated and misused by contractors for so long that I have come to expect that I will be over-charged,and get half as much result for twice as much money. Indeed that is just what has happened to me for the past ten years to the tune of over 90,000 dollars. I became afraid to hire any contractor for any job and started asking my male friends to deal with these men. The result was that indeed I did get the work I wanted finished to the satisfaction OF THE MEN I REQUESTED TO HELP ME and I had no recourse for complaint if the people they hired did an unsatisfactory job. I have been waiting for over a year to install two skylights in my kitchen. The original contractor walked out on me after taking over $10,000.00 and creating a mess that caused hysterics in the city building department where I was fined hundreds of dollars and my construction was stalled for six months in retaliation. The man I asked to supervise getting my house back in shape was absolutely marvelous but not cheap. He was determined to give all my different jobs to his friends. He didn't know anyone who would put in my skylights and so they remained in my backyard gathering dust. It occurred to me that if I wanted to get those things installed I would have to bite the bullet and call on someone to do it myself. I would have to prove that I did not HAVE to be a target or a victim unless I allowed it to happen. I told myself "I will get a proper estimate; I will get the job done from someone reputable and not try to get the cheapest contractor. I will not plead poverty nor will I try to be his best friend and solve all his problems."
And for once, I listened to myself. The job was done, the skylight is in and the cost was $200.00 below estimate because for the first time in my career of dealing with construction people, I found an honest man and I made a business deal.
They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
Well I disproved that cliche as well.

bull shit yes, and yet...

I have been convinced that an after-life is the kind of placebo Christians have dreamed up to comfort themselves or keep their sorry asses in check.
As for near-death experiences: I think the light at the end of the tunnel is the result of a few brain cells lingering in the after-glow of dying. After that, it is darkness visible, the big nada, the big black hole of where we came from. I have been a skeptic since puberty and........ well, then I end up with an old-soul son who has been telling me about his "previous lives" since he was 3. As I have told on this blog, thoughts of dying gave me allergies when I was 9 but my son, who is 9 now told me this in the car the other day after I asked him if he was ever afraid of dying:
"No mom, not one bit..."
"So it does not keep you awake at night?" I asked him, wondering what koolaid he'd been drinking.
"Mom," he said then, 100% convinced of himself, "I am not afraid mom, because I know it is not the end. Trust me: I have been there..."

Bullshit?! Yes. But not in the world according to William...

IS IT ALL BULL SHIT?

I just got a birthday card that shows a little girl looking up at God and asking WHAT IF IT'S ALL BULL SHIT?
I have been thinking about that phrase and perhaps in an existentialist way it IS all bull shit. We care so much; we do so little; we hate; we love; we work to achieve and fail to accomplish, we win prizes, we lose face and what does it all amount to in the long run? I guess if you believe as I do that when you are dead, you are dead and when a thing has happened it has not happened for any reason greater than that it did happen, you lose the sense of a greater meaning to life.
I guess it all IS a lot of bull shit in the cosmic sense but in the moment to moment of life it is not.... at least not for me. I am living today and loving it or sometimes wishing today would hurry up and be tomorrow. I am building every today to make a better tomorrow FOR ME not for the world not for my next life and not to make up for the lives I lived badly
I am not sure this is a good thing but I am pretty sure it is what is.
Would I feel differently if I were in a relationship. Would I feel differently if I had children? I don't know. But for me, single and surviving, the only thing that really matters is the now I have and the now I prepare for tomorrow.

opposites

Lynn Ruth,

You raise an interesting point. Maybe our world would not be interesting anymore if there were only good?

With all the cloning that's going on, man may well have a shot at immortality but would immortality be fun? I think Jonathan Swift wrote something marvellous about that in the Tale of a Tub-- if we were to grow old forever while the world renews itself and we don't necessarily grow with it, would that be joyous? Immortality, having to become old with no relief of dying, might be a tremendous chore and who wants to be in diapers for centuries to come?

Death would creep me out when I was 9, but at 39 I have mellowed and death seems less threatening. Plus we need death maybe, the opposite of life, to remind ourselves we have to love life because we have so little of it?!

SELF IMAGES

We all have a picture of ourselves that makes us comfortable and that picture in our heads is not always correct. Whenever someone says or does something that makes us doubt our veracity we fight to redraw ourselves in their eyes the way into the image we want them to perceive. I have been thinking about why Rene was so determined to fight for that car when she has plenty of money to pay for it. It occurs to me that she sees herself as a kind, generous and charitable person and losing that case with me put her in a bad light IN HER EYES. She couldnt handle it. Perhaps that is what unleashed all the terrible manipulation and lying that made me her victim and her the victor.
The tragedy for me and the disillusionment is that it worked. Evil does triumph and it prospers. No one can convince me that Rene will have one bad moment from cheating me the way she did. She will drive the car and enjoy it satisfied that she got away with paying &1400 dollars for a $5400 car.
There is a movie out about Edward R. Murrow called Good Night and Good Luck that talks about the importance of fighting for our principles. We all have very deeply ingrained standards of right and wrong and we all believe that WE live up to those standards no matter what happens to us.
I think in Rene's case when it was proven (in the initial case that I won) that she was not the sweet generous fair human being she thought she was, she felt her entire persona was at stake and so she did a successful over-kill, stamping out the evidence that she cheats, lies and will stoop to anything to preserve her own picture of who she thinks she is.
Are we all that short sighted?
Perhaps, she isn't shortsighted at all. Perhaps she is just being human.

And that brings us to the judge that overturned a verdict based on hearsay evidence and his own gutfeeling that I was lying. What was HIS problem? Did he hate the elderly. Did I remind him of his Mother?
Did he have a thing for tall fat blonds?
I have no idea what made him abandon the clear rules of law that way.
I can only hope when the case is reviewed someone else sees what he did and reverses the judgement
That would reinstate my belief in the utlimate justice of the system....but I wonder if that would be enough.
I see so much injustice that is overlooked and rationalized in our country and it sickens me. Crying out seems to do nothing to stop it. I look at all those black people in New Orleans left behind while the affluent got away from Katrina and say, "God, where ARE you?
Why do so many people believe you are there when you only help the rich, the powerful and the cruel?"
Again, no answers.
I know that I sincerely believe I have never intentionally hurt someone else but I suspect I have very often destroyed another persons self image. The Jews have just observed a day when they search their hearts to uncover any sins they have done to others and make reparations. Perhaps we should all take a day to take stock of our good intentions and try to repair the detours we took. To me, if we didn't KNOW we were hurting another we can be forgiven but maybe that is too generous.
So it comes down to this: If I were God would I get rid of the crooks, the cheaters, the murderers, and perhaps the majority of the people because they say, "Oh what can it hurt? It's just a little thing.... or I needed that money, that thing, that feeling of success...."
It would make it a very empty world wouldn't it?

love is?!

Lynn Ruth,

As always I could not agree more with what you have to tell us. I grew up in a fairly conventional family and because of that I always thought, growing up, that love would arrive in my life like a highschool diploma-- a thing that would just be there when I was ready for it. But I dreaded it, too, for I saw all those pimplefaced boys, the jocks, the jerks, the dorks and...most of them did not read books. For a long time I preferred books to boys because they had so much more to tell me.
When I reached my twenties and went to university I was again appalled by the boys I saw around me: the drinkers, the frat boys, the promiscuous ones (it is not fair that we do not have a male version for the word "slut"), and so on and so forth. Give me a book any time, I remember thinking. My mother was getting worried because I never dated anyone. I felt it was none of her business to ask so I told her I was a dyke, which shut her up. I was not a lesbian because I was not interested in girls either. But it nonetheless put pressure on me-- that invisible pressure of society, that sickly sense of having to conform. Of course I had my own doubts but I tried to live my life the best I could. I also decided to stop looking, believing that Mr Rights and Prince Charmings were an illusion, a Hollywood invention, a cheap romantic fable that tricked us into believing that true happiness lies in the finding of true love.
It was when I stopped looking and signed up for a year of grad school in Chapel Hill, my first year abroad, that I ran into an American in The Hague who swept me off my feet. Sensitive, sweet, tall, trusting and full of humor and good laughs. Our first kiss happened a week before I was taking off for the States. He stayed behind in Holland, where he worked. We continued on a long journey of long-distance phone calls, letters and incredible airport reunions...and reader, I married him...maybe the only one I could have ever married because I have not seen/met anyone like him again, after that.
But what I really want to say is that I agree with Lynn Ruth-- relationships, marriages (the bad ones) have become like commodities. And for a relationship/love to work, it can't be a commodity, or be there when we need or demand it. A relationship starts and begins with the love for the other. It is the circle of the wedding ring.
In our fast culture where we can have everything on demand, we get, if we don't watch out, an inflated sense of self. I find a lot of people around me way too self-obsessed and self-involved and those people, I am sorry to say, do not make good lovers, or relationship/marriage material (or even friends for that matter). Love has many dimensions and colors but you can only enjoy them if you are prepared to deny yourself a little and make yourself vulnerable to the other. The other has to do the same for it to work. I am blessed to have found a guy like Jon, but you know what, I would also have been blessed if I had to live my life alone. After all, romantic love is only 1/10th of the total experience...

WANTING A SOMEONE

I have spoken to three women in the past few weeks who say "I would just love to find a man to be with me."
The truth is that they only want this person to be there whenTHEY want him.
My dear friend Alan is in the same plight. He wants a woman to love. But he wants her on HIS terms; quiet when he is reading, hungry when he wants dinner, there when he wants to go to a concert or a play.
I sometimes think that people who say they want a relationship have their heads in a cloud of unreality. You cannot want a partner until you have found someone who means so much to you that your needs are his (or hers).
My friend Nancy said, "I would love one person to be with all the time, but when I think of what it would involve, I am not sure I want to pay the price."
And the longer you are alone, the higher that price. Independent people make their own decisions. They decide automatically what time to get up, retire, eat dinner, when to entertain themselves, when to entertain others. When they want companionship, they pick up the telephone.
How would it feel to suddenly not have the power to make the smallest decision...when to take a shower...when to take a walk...when to have it quiet...when to dance...depend on another's whim?
I have often written that I missed out on a huge segment of the human experience because I am single and childless but when I see these people fooling themselves into imagining a partner who would be no more than a puppet they could have when they were lonesome or their feet were cold but that this same partner would fade into the woodowork, be out of the house, busy in the office ONLY when he/she was in the way...
This is not a real desire. This is the fantasy movies and books tell us can be real.
My darling friend Bob says love is when you want to be in the same room with the other just because she is there.
I have felt that way often but (and this is the key) not with the same person for any length of time.
Perhaps I have missed what it is to be human in many ways but on the other hand perhaps I have had more of an opportunity to BECOME the fullest kind of human I can be because no one else's needs have blocked mine.
It's all in how you look at it.
Or is it?

OTHER LIVES

Inez always says her son William is an old soul and my friend Joanna says that often we return to this earth to finish up all the things we have left undone. I cannot recall a time that I felt a child. I often felt helpless and confused, but I have always felt I understood the implication of the things that happened to me and saw the bigger picture in life's events.
I have been thinking now about the way things have begun to happen that I set the stage for so many, many years ago. I am first a writer and always have been. Through my life it seems I have strayed from that goal with my marriages, my teaching, my art, my comedy and my travels. Now I realize that all those experiences are what I need to draw upon to give my writing a richer dimensions.
I am now working on my one woman show which is a composite of my favorite stories from the two THOUGHTS books. I realize that the audience I will have are those who enjoyed my first books, laughed at my comedy, attended my classes in art, writing and nonsense, wondered at my paintings and were part of my struggles to survive in a world so hostile to single women.
The "mistakes" I thought I made; the roads I felt led no where; all are coming together now and I realize that they have become the fabric that is me.
I cannot say that I have come back as another person...but rather that if I did indeed have previous lives... I have returned to continue being what I need to be.
This is far harder than one would think. First, one must discover what that need is.
For me there has never been a doubt. I need to write. I need to have something worthwhile to write about. I need to be read.
So many things we do prevent us from moving toward our destiny... for me the worst setbacks were the two failed attempts at marriage which I wanted so desperately, and my eating disorder which swallowed up 20 years of my life. I now realize that I am the kind of person that must tread my path alone. It is my way. No one can share it.
Perhaps the answer to all this is that there are no answers. We are all moving toward something and often we cannot see where we are going. If Joanna is right we die before we get there and return to continue the journey.
Again, no answers.

Helicopter Parents

Lynn Ruth, it is hard to respond to your previous post. Although I am a parent myself, I don't know how I would react if my daughter ended up walking the same path.

However, I do feel that our generation is, in a sense, overinvolved; we are the so-called helicopter parents who, when things go wrong, helicopter in to do a rescue mission. There is something like personal responsibility and learning that certain actions have consequences even when you're 6. Children sometimes need to fall on their face to change certain behaviors and as parents, however difficult, we have to let go and see them fall rather than catching them before they hit the ground. My own parents were underinvolved and look how great I turned out (please add irony here). I have told people this story before but my parents said to me: "there's only three things we want you to do: finish highschool, take dancing lessons (yes they were very nineteenth century, bless their hearts) and get your driver's licence...other than that, you're on your own, kid." I can't say we ended up badly and certainly not dysfunctional (and there were 4 of us).

The daughter in your story has turned into a robot and it seems like she can't think for herself anymore. "Teach me how to do it myself," Maria Montessori wrote-- as helicopter parents we do it all for them and there are no lessons in that.

On that note, I'll tell you what happened to William and me. Last year William was in 3rd grade and the teacher wrote a letter at the beginning of the year that third grade was the year of facing up to personal responsibility. She wrote something to the effect of: "If you forget to bring your homework to school don't blame your mom for not putting it in your backpack." I read that and I said, yeah way to go!!!
Days go by and William can't find his homework folder one night. He's looking everywhere but finds nothing. It was getting late so William went to bed and went to school the next day. After I arrive at my office, I pull out the folders from my bag and out falls William's folder, which had the same color as one of my folders. I e-mailed the teacher to tell her. Her response: "Did you happen to find my folder, too?"

As for your friend: I don't have all the answers-- god knows what I would do if I were in her shoes, but maybe it is our love sometimes that gets in the way of what is best for the child

PARENTS' RIGHTS

My friends Mary and Art have an only child, Christine whom they have boasted about to anyone who would listen for her immense talent, beauty, wisdom and intelligence since I met them about 6 years ago. Christine is indeed a beautiful marvelous child who rarely put forth any special effort to achieve anything and because of that did not excel at any of the things her proud parents exposed her to, such as piano, voice, dance, gymnastics. She was good. She had talent. But always according to Mary, she could have done better.
To my surprise, perhaps 2 years ago when Christine was 16, Mary called to tell me that her model child had a severe eating disorder, was addicted to several kinds of dope (speed? crack? I am ignorant about these matters) lying about her activities and failing school. Mary began to search her child's room, check her cell phone for messages and calls, drive her to school and monitor the child as if she were a criminal .....but all to no avail. Christine managed to get the substances she wanted, experiment with sex, ignore school and mutilate herself with self induced piercings, cuts and bruises.
There were other hints that trouble was afoot with Christine. Mary was so worried that she wouldn't be accepted at a premium college that she hired a specialist to find the right school and pave the way for Christine to get into a "good" school even if she didnt have a good grade average. Then suddenly whatever bubble there was burst and Mary sent Christine to a full blown addiction rehab program at Kaiser that failed. We spoke several times during all this and then she sent her daughter to a full time facility in Scotts Valley. After a few months there, Christine was sent home because she had purged when all that instiution dealt with was drug addiction.
There was no doubt that Mary was and is very angry at Christine for taking so much of her time and making her go to parental counseling, travel all over the state and now country to visit her and in general monoplize all of her energies when Mary is very devoted to her business and is a creative high powered exective in the firm she created.
Mary often showed me Christine's letters and they all sounded as if the child was brainwashed reciting the accepted phrases: I am responsible for all this; I made poor choices; I love my parents; I am sorry; I have the power to stop taking drugs; I want to be well.
Christine was sent to Vallejo where I visited her and I saw a wasted, unhappy, trapped child. I don't believe I have ever seen anything quite so horrible to me. Here was a human being not allowed to walk outside, not allowed to wear shoes so she wouldnt run away, not allowed to contact any friends she had made, forced into a children's ward with no music, no books and no life.
Mary hired a special expensive firm to find the "right" place for Chirstine where she could be rehabilitated and make up her high school credits so she could go to college and she found one in Texas where Christine is now. No one can write her but Mary visits her once each month. When Christine turned 18 she tried to leave the place and everyone, her parents, aunts, grandparents, the school authorities and personnel swooped down on her and talked her into staying the remaining year of this 18 month program. Because she was afraid she would forget her promises to all these insistent people who knew what was best for her, Christine stopped wearing conventional clothes and is now wearing the orange jumpsuit the school requires when they first arrive so they can be apprehended if they run away.
Again Mary showed me a letter from Christine telling her how happy she was, how much she loved everybody and assuring her mother that she trusted in God and was achieving all the wonderful things Mary had wanted for her. She is singing in a choir, she is marvelous at debate, her grades are superb ; she is beautiful ;she loves where she is ; she is grateful to her parents etc etc.
I came home from this last status report and I realized that Mary and that school's regime have erased Christine and are now determined to model a clone of the real child into what they want her to be.
My question here is do they have that right?
Once a child is formed do parents have the right to mold that youngster into what they believe is an acceptable personality?
Christine was obviously destroying herself. She obviously needed help. But to me what she needed most is motivation to live her own life and a definition of her own as to what that life should hold.
I have no answers here except the uneasy feeling I have that Christine's inalienable right to be herself has been violated somehow and that a lot of people are playing God with her forcing her into their mold of a "good girl".
What happened to love? What happened to accepting a person for what she is because what she is, is unique and beautiful.
Love is a word I hear over and over again from Mary and in Christine s letters but I don't believe either one knows what that involves. Mary has decided to mold Christine into the child she wants to be her daughter. Christine wants to ease the pain she feels and is parroting the right mantras but I wonder if any of this is her own truth.
Have they found the right answer?Is this what you do to people with addictive behavior?
I just dont know.

in the grand scheme of things...and about writing the truth

You gave up, you say, and the establishment has won, you say

but in the grand scheme of things,

Renee has lost.

The older I get, the more confused I am about purpose, destiny and the right way to live. Most of the time I feel inadequate and weak but I think or rather I hope I know the difference between right and wrong. What happened to you, Lynn Ruth, was wrong...a horrible failure of a system that rewarded evil and dishonesty...but life is full of instances where we feel robbed, cheated and betrayed. It does not mean we have to give up on living or trying to restore our confidence to believe and trust again. I know you can do it, Lynn Ruth, because it is who you are...

What else is new on your end?

Here all is well. I am trying to figure out how I can time box my time better so I don't feel so frustrated by running out of time. Work has been busy and it has given me little time to write, or even express myself, however mundanely or trivially, in this blog. I sent you the story which Colleen used for her new website the Hot Flash Cafe. I cringed when I read it myself. It needed another edit but it is online now, for everyone to read. It's the most honest and embarrassing story I ever wrote about myself but I think in writing we have to be as honest as we can because if we don't or can't we might as well pack up and call it a day. Funny, btw, how honesty in court does not pay but if you're dishonest in your writing, the reader will notice very quickly and stop reading. Hemingway said that every reader, however inexperienced, has a bullshit detector. Of course Hemmy was a compulsive liar and bulshitter extraordinaire but then he was a good liar, too, and ultimately he came to live his lies, so that in a sense he might have thought he was telling the truth. The slanted truth, as Emily Dickinson put it. We all slant the truth, come to think of it-- self-censorship? Do you show your most vulnerable self? I know I do and I know I don't...

But don't give up on yourself Lynn Ruth-- but let's give up on Renee