Fear

My dear Inez: Only idiots are not afraid. I am petrified all the time. I know I seem fearless to you but in reality, my heart is in my mouth far too much of the time when I stand on stage and sing my foolish songs, make smart remarks and hope they are comedy instead of slop, or tell my stories and pray I don't forget half the words. The difference between my fear and that of the cowards around us is that I do not let my forebodings stop me from moving onward. It all started when I came out of the hospital and realized that I permitted my body to rule my life. It became my excuse, my boundary and my means of getting attention even though people labeled it pity and concern. I could never go anywhere, do anything or move toward my dreams because I was always sick. True, I was in the hospital for most of that time and true I weighed less than 50 pounds. However, the day I decided that sick or well, in pain or out, I would go through the motions of living was the day I began to step not only outside my solipsism but outside the box my family had said was the only place to be. And that was also the day I began to discover just who Lynn Ruth MIller is.
If your Caroline has no trepidation when she decides to play her violin or take her clothes off, you are nurturing a fool. If she hesitates and quavers, but does not stop trying... if she is not afraid of being ridiculed, or falling short of the mark but gets up, brushes off the detritus of disapproval and looks for a new way get where she needs to go, then you are nuturing a hero.
I have often said that in the eyes of the world I am a complete failure. I never stayed in a marriage long enough to form a relationship, and I have never earned enough money to push myself above the poverty line.
BUT what I HAVE done, is take a lot of risks with my heart pounding, my stomach churning and my teeth grinding. Because of that dogged determination to forge onward I have become a person I never dreamed I could be. I am a comedian; I am a singer; I am a writer; I am a teacher; I am a person excited about my life and filled with dreams I am determined to make happen. Had I listened to the voice we all have that said, "You look like a fool," "You have no talent", "No one wants to read your writing", "You live a sterile, empty life because you have no man in it and no children to validate your presence here on earth, " I would have wept useless tears while watching television envying the lives I saw, not realizing that those lives were existences I REALLY didn't WANT to live. I got the cake, the frosting and the thrill of the taste because I pushed through the fear and continued to try. If your Caroline does that, she is a winner even when her scorecard says zero. But if she goes fearlessly ahead without any doubts then she is due for a nasty fall.
I do not think you are fearful, my dear. You are cautious and trust me, I wish I had been more cautious, when I plunged into a marriage with a man I had only known for 48 hours, when I sacrificed everything I had to drive a fifth wheel around the country, when I became a telephone Madame because I needed money and didn't want to confess to my father that his very highly educated daughter couldn't feed herself.....I could have saved myself a great deal of pain.
But on the other side of that mirror, the experiences I had, negative, debilitating and destructive as they were, made me into the me you know, the lady you think fearless, outgoing, and brazen. They made me a human being who lives every second of her life and packs it with enthusiasm. I suspect that is a good thing and I know it is the only way for me. I was 73 years old last week. I feel 21. I just fell in love for the 500th time. I am starting a new career in cabaret; I am doing different comedy and going out to entertain in senior homes. I am promoting my new book. I am scared to death
Will I lose the guy?(I should...I am ten years older than his mother) will I wow the crowd? Will I finally begin making money at the entertaining I give away so freely?
Maybe. Maybe not. But I will have given all of it my best shot and I will enjoy, nay ADORE the process of trying.

CREATING YOUR LIFE

I do not believe in letting life happen to me. I believe that I must determine where I want to be in a year, in five years, in ten... and then figure out what it will take to get there. This sounds strong and very admirable, Inez, but I assure you it has been a difficult, discouraging and all too convoluted a road to follow. Somerset Maugham said that if he knew your parents' status in life and where you were born he could predict your future. Each of us are born into a preconceived set of circumstances. The day I arrived my parents assumed I would develop normally, and want to follow my mother's pattern of life. I would learn wifely skills, absorb Jewish middle class values, marry well and live a comfortable life with my husband supporting me. I would have a lovely home with every convenience, two children who would absorb my attention for at least twenty years and then I would be a grandmother who cooked, baked and baby sat. I would read easy fiction, agree with my husband on all things and my social life would revolve around his business and social needs.
I wanted all this to happen to me because I thought that was what defined The Good Life.
I never understood why I was so restless and unhappy until by a fluke I will never understand, I began to hear hints of other worlds from high school teachers who adored me and decided to go to the University of Michigan. The world of literature, music, art and philosophy opened up to me like a glorious explosion of light and I was enchanted. I realized that inside me was a unique spark and if I did not let it shine I would surely die even as I trudged through my days doing what was not only expected by others but was my own dream as well.
I believe I made myself fail at relationships, marriages and all the domesticities, women of the fifties embraced because inside something told me I could go beyond the sink, the stove and the bedroom into magic worlds of my own creation. I could write a book. I could enrich a child. I could paint a picture, discover other cultures; I could think. Indeed, I could find my own world.
Each time I took a step toward realizing my individuality I suffered rejection, anger and scorn. When I married my first husband I began writing for The Harbus News, the newspaper for Harvard Business School students. I loved it a lot more than I loved being a wife. One day, someone saw my husband and said, "You are Lynn Treeger's husband, aren't you..." He came home and said "You will never write again."
And while I was married to him I did not write again. Instead, I bottled up my need to express myself and let my eating disorder flourish.
I will not bore you with the many other examples of how I managed to keep that little spark alive. You know most of them and everything I have accomplished was at great cost. But that cost was only to me. No one else ever suffered because of my decisions to travel the country in a fifth wheel, to take a job in Oklahoma City, to create a television show on CBS for no remuneration and hours and hours of time I should have spent earning enough money to pay my rent. Your father had a wife to please, a family to support. He could not say, "I will do what my heart dictates." He knew his job and he did it. Had he been more philosophical, he would not have hated what he was doing. He would hava found little avenues of pleasure he could take and still support his family and please his wife. Instead, he gave you an education and all the tools you needed to build a beautiful life that satisfies you and makes you grow into the human being you want to be.
YOU can live the life your father never dared to live, not because he was weak but because he was responsible. You can do what he could not because Jon supports you and this is a millenium that allows women to achieve. Do not weep for your father, my dear. Instead dare to live YOUR life always remembering that he never had the chance to test his dream. He gave you the weapons you need to that you can do it and that is his legacy.
When I die, I never want to say, "I wish I had."
I am going to say, "I'm glad I did."
Courage Inez. You can say that too...and I think you will.