Reverse Engineering Your Life

We are a culture that values working and productivity. We start our wee little ones out in kindergarten now with a full day ahead of them. Just last week my granddaughter started kindergarten and when she didn’t get off the bus when my daughter was there to pick her up, the bus driver found her asleep on the bus seat. I will admit I am ambivalent in many ways about our values and our systems. 

Just recently, I read an article that questioned if following our passion is really a good idea; is this really a way to make our way in life? The author was critical of this idea and skeptical. Maybe rightly so. We have so many messages that we are bombarded with these days, especially now with social media, it’s confusing. And with the style of writing that is becoming the norm, the quick, witty, everybody’s an expert 2 minute read, it’s hard to know really, what the person’s expertise really is.

Without really wanting to be an expert, with trusting the wisdom that I have from my emotions, from my body, this in a way, has become my expertise. I have learned that what we do does not necessarily generate the feelings that we want to feel, unless we are doing things that we are passionate about. It doesn’t even have to be doing something that we are passionate about in the short term as long as it aligns with something that we are passionate about (the outcome). 

But what our culture does, from the time we are very very young, is train us to perform. This is what our schools do, and this is the subtle value that creep into children’s minds: you are only as good as your performance. This value is within the overarching value that your time is no longer your own. You need a hug from mom, too bad, you are at school until the school day ends. Your time is not your own. Your teacher has power over you, and the power to discredit you to your parents and your peers. Your voice is small. 

And so, in the structure of school, what happens to our emotions, the way we feel? And at home, what happens to our emotions, the way we feel? Do we learn that our feelings matter, or do we continue to try to figure out how to perform in ways that will get us promoted? From one grade to the next, from one school to the next, and on and on from high school to college to the working world. And in between these transitions, how are we feeling? Good enough, smart enough, loved enough, seen, heard? 

What if we as a culture, focused more on how we felt, and less on how we think? And what if we believed that if we just left children to their curiosity and passion for learning that they would grow up just fine? Until we do that, how can we as adults change the values we've internalized about how life works, and create lives that have meaning, that support us, and that we feel passionate about?

I have become a firm believer in reverse engineering your life, this means, you decide how you want to feel, the values that are important to you, and then you let the universe fill in the blanks. I’ve done this off and on in my life and it works. I have no magic formula other than figuring out what has felt good, and what you want to feel more of. When I was newly divorced, and hadn’t worked in years and had to get a job, I had just finished my undergraduate degree at Augsburg weekend college. I had been commuting weekends from Owatonna to Minneapolis, and I loved being back in the city. And so, when I had to get a job back in Owatonna, I imagined to myself, “I want a job that feels like I did while I was at Augsburg.” I did this more wistfully than willfully, not quite knowing the power of creating how we feel. 

After a couple of terrible temp jobs, I ended up working (through the temp agency) at the front desk of a conference center owned by the University of St. Thomas, right down the road, in Owatonna. I hadn’t even known this center existed in the little town I lived in. The job was a good fit, I liked how I felt being there, even though being a receptionist was not what I envisioned. I was hired full-time and eventually promoted to the sales and marketing assistant. It was a job that I loved for most of the time I was there. 

It was actually that job, that fueled my interest in being a therapist. While there, we had life coaches and teachers come in and present seminars and teach. I was intrigued by a profession in which you could study and learn and share what you’d learned; either one on one, or in a group. That you could connect with people on a level that was not about their performance, but about their passion. 

And so, I wonder how each of us can become more connected with how we feel, and if we can conjure up in our imaginations not just where we want to be, not just a professional fit, but a professional feeling? How do you want to feel every day, how do you want to spend your days? How does someone come to believe that when they are a child and they love the sea, that they can play in the sea every day and become a marine biologist, instead of an engineer in an office? Is it ok to love your life, to value your time, to not mark your days by the time clock, but by the sunrise and sunset? How do you reverse engineer your life, to create a life that feels so good, your vacations melt right into your schedule? I believe it’s possible when we connect to our emotions, use our imaginations and trust that we can do what we want in life, being real, not performing. 

I also believe in the power of writing down the things that we want in life, and so rather than writing out the profession you want, or the things you want to accomplish, make a list of what you value and how you want to feel: 

I am in a place where the people are supportive and I feel accepted. 
The days are going by peacefully as I hear the sound of the ocean nearby. 
The people I work with are happy to be there and we combine ingenuity with collaboration. 

What's on your list? 

Risking Your Life

Sometimes in this brave new world of ours, where information is available at the click of a button--I am overwhelmed. I try to tell myself, “You know enough already.” But sometimes, my curiosity keeps pulling me, trying to find answers I already have. I picked up a yellowed, tattered copy of a book I’ve had for years now, called “Risking” by “America’s foremost common-sense psychiatrist” (David Viscott, M.D.) this morning. It was published in 1977. So many things about this book tell me it is old. Who knew psychiatrists used to use common sense instead of pills? The binding of this little paperback is cracked, the cover is stained. 

I bought this book most likely in about 1998? I remember when I read it, I was fascinated by the idea of learning how to risk. Back then, I had no idea that research would soon show that women took risks at a much lower percentage than men did. And because of this, women reap much less rewards. We are still socializing people by genders in different ways; and even though men are no longer really looked at as ‘breadwinners’ anymore, they still make more dough. 

Risking starts out with a quote by Helen Keller: Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. 

This quote, of course, is enough to make a helicopter parent explode, right? My child taking risks, having a daring adventure? But I do believe this is true, and good, and is one antidote on it’s own, to depression. 

As I flipped through the yellowed, somewhat musty smelling pages, I also came across this: When a person tries to control feelings by controlling things, his judgment becomes clouded by his incomplete understanding of his emotions. His feelings remain hidden but still exert a destructive influence on his life, which easily gets out of control.... Such a person tries to apply whatever controls he can, simply to reassure himself that he is not powerless and may persist in a self-destructive course of action even when the results seem opposite to what he claims he wants. Such people dread losing power more than anything else. That is understandable because they seek to control the outside world rather than looking at themselves and dealing with the feelings within (p. 49). 

I think most people believe that they can actually control others, and/or their outside world more than they can control, or even access, their own feelings, and this is the true struggle for most people. How do we regain access to our innermost self, our emotions, our embodied wisdom about who we are and what we want? What we believe limits what we perceive, and what we perceive directs our thoughts and behaviors. 

This means that we must first believe that our feelings have meaning, have value, and that to be able to be connected to our feelings must somehow be a priority. So many people believe that if they access their feelings it will be the undoing of them, when it fact, the opposite is true. But to change our thoughts about our feelings, about our emotions, requires a risk. Once this endeavor however is embarked upon, a whole new world opens up, and the adventure begins. 

I knew there must be a reason I've kept this musty little book. There are some gems inside. 

Good Morning

I slept so deep last night
It was like trying to climb out of a hole to wake up
The daylight stared at me
Glared at my body just lying there

I read a little of Written on the Body
and fell back to sleep again
Only this time half asleep
One ear listening for the drip of the automatic coffeemaker

I worry about my clients sometimes
this is my work now
The one who’s parents disowned her and
she is so alone in the world

The one whose beliefs about himself
are tied up in a religious system
which makes it hard to like anyone
let alone love yourself 

I wander through my mind thinking of ways to help 
I remember to sit and listen with love
open hearted
but still maybe there’s a book that will advance the cause 

Once I drink the coffee all will be better
I will be out of the dark hole of sleep
into the light of day
caffeine telling me go on go on 

Whisper of breeze
the buzz of a motorcycle
the color of the roses on my patio
brown sugar and whole milk in my coffee

The Intersection

At the intersection of race, racism, oppression and belonging. 

This is what I tell my clients, that two of our greatest needs as humans are autonomy and belonging. We need to know that we have agency, and also, that we belong. When we know we belong, and are supported in our autonomy we can feel confident to explore and express who we are. In understanding the context that much of our culture was (and still is) built on oppression, where does this leave the oppressed in fulfilling the need to belong? How can both people of color and women belong in a culture that oppresses them? 

I started dating my ex-husband, who is black, in the late seventies. I was all of maybe 18, when one day my older brother came into my bedroom to talk to me. My brothers never really talked to me; they teased me, but we didn't talk. He brought up the fact that I was dating a black guy, and he was nervous talking about it, he was trying to be protective, and this is what he told me, “If you keep dating him, no white guys will ever date you.” Another brother tried to be humorous about it, "It's ok with me, I hate everybody anyway." 

I was hurt and angry and confused and not even sure who to talk to about this. If I talked to my girlfriends, they might agree with my brother; if I talked to my boyfriend, I might hurt his feelings. I already knew that to talk to my parents just would make me feel more confused, they were always in their own worlds. I was certain that we were in a modern era, certain that nobody could really still be a crazy bigot. The world loved Jimi Hendrix, didn't they? It was a crazy person who shot MLK, right? I had no idea of patriarchy, or hierarchy, or historical racism, and how could I? They certainly weren't teaching it in school, even if they were teaching noblesse oblige and strained tolerance. 

And so now, we have Rachel Dolezal, and nobody quite seems to know what to make of her, but you know, I kinda get it. She was raised in this space of having adopted siblings into what might quite be a horrible mess of a family. She was raised by white parents who probably knew as little as any other white people what historical racism and micro-aggressions are about. Because so few people understand the significance of attachment theory in adoption, most adoptive parents have no idea of the the obstacles to creating a sense of belonging in children who have been taken from their birth parents. 

So, where does Rachel belong? She’s created a life and a persona that felt as close as right to her as she could get; she’s found that she is stuck in a corner of oppression and non-understanding that comes from being a white woman in America. I think it is notable that in our history, black men got the right to vote before white women. I think it seems unseemly and unthinkable for many white women to admit that they feel oppressed; because, after all, they are white. But oppression is oppression and it doesn’t feel like belonging. I sometimes think that what my ex and I had in common was the unspoken feeling of being oppressed. 

Where do stories of mixed race belong? How do we tell them, and is it safe to tell them? I ask myself this still. White people tell the stories because they have the privilege, their voices demand attention. I've made my life and my peace with crossing color lines; I am a white woman with children who are both black and white. People have ‘accused’ me of having adopted my children, people have asked me what my kids ‘are,’ people have come up to us and started speaking Spanish. People can wonder who and what we are, but I hope that because I have tried to foster both autonomy and belonging in my family, we are people who love and support each other first, and our bloodlines and DNA come second. There is racism and oppression in our American culture, but we can choose to live in places where the dominant culture is not our culture--and how we present to the outside world really doesn't matter. When the culture we live in, is woven of oppression and lies, how do we tell our truth? 

Memorial Day After

I always think that when there’s a holiday (like Memorial Day), I’m going to feel really rested afterwards, and that I’m going to somehow get caught up on everything, yes everything! And then I wake up on the Tuesday afterwards and I’m still not caught up on everything, and I wonder why I still think that this is a possibility. There is no catching up in life and I’ve realized that when I’m working I’m not riding bike and when I’m reading in my free time I’m not taking sailing lessons and when I’m shopping I’m not traveling. 

Someone sent me an article today that said when we talk to ourselves if we use our first names (instead of pronouns) we are more likely to be successful. So, here I go, Theresa, you need to walk more dear, you need to work less (and less, and less) and you must make time to travel, and of course do yoga everyday. There, now I’ll wait for this life to emerge. 

Yesterday I decided to go on the last leg of my ex’s yearly Memorial Day cemetery and gravesite visit along with my youngest daughter. My ex honors his ancestors in a way I can’t help but admire. Most of the time I still cannot understand his choices or the way he shows up in relationship, but he is my daughters’ father and I once loved him dearly. And so even though I’ve been angry at him for not being the father I’d want him to be, I went with Megan and her dad, and his long-time friend to Lakewood Cemetery to visit a few of his relative’s graves, and then we literally swung around to the other side of the cemetery and stopped to find my dad’s grave. I was unprepared with no flowers and no flag. 

Being at this place always fills me with tears and memories and loss. My dad was there for me in ways that set the bar of being a dad, that set the bar for me being a mom. He supported 10 people (including himself) and made a good life for us, and when I was a single mom, when I was so overwhelmed that I’m even now just processing many of the emotions I didn’t know how to feel then, he showed up and mowed my lawn and gave me advice. And so, when my spirit flagged, I told myself over and over, that if he could support 10 people, I could support 5--my 3 girls, my grandson, and myself--and I did. 

This didn’t mean that there weren’t casualties of mostly an emotional kind, when my girls were young. I really didn’t have the skills or the energy to be emotionally present most of the time. I didn’t know how not to feel abandoned and angry, or how to actually feel those things and not believe what I thought they told me about life. I didn’t know what I know now, and that makes me sad that I couldn’t give more tools to my daughters, because as a parent, I want to give them so many things. 

I have to stop though, and start with now, with today, and trust that the past gave us all enough. The strange thing about emotions though, is that they stay present with us from the past until we sit with them, invite them in and politely thank them for their message, and this takes time. Sometimes the hard truth is that the people we love leave us in places we never thought we’d be, alone and bewildered, and from there, we find a way.  

Be Longing

I find it interesting that the words be and longing together form the word belonging. Because I think that two of our most important imperatives of being human are to be, and to belong. And in belonging, there is the longing to belong. We exist to be and to belong. And this is enough. We may strive for more, for achievements, for stuff, for adventure, but really all we can ever do is be and belong, wherever we are, and when we are not in a state of being or belonging, there is longing. 

From the Trenches

Sometimes (well a lot) lately, I ask myself, “How come I'm not writing?” I stare at the screen and do actually wonder that. It’s not that I’m not thinking about things that I possibly could write about, it’s just that it seems like the things on my mind would take too long to write about, or be too involved to try to explain in a blog post. Things like why I’m frustrated with all the talk (again) about race. I wonder if there’s an algorithm to topics that tend to trend in the news.

 It does take me back to my younger self, who simply just fell in love with someone with beautiful brown eyes, and beautiful brown skin. We can make it more than that, a statement of bravery, or of social activism, but really, it wasn’t more than that. It seemed like more than that, when people asked stupid shit like, “What about the kids?” Before I even had kids. It seemed like more than that when people would look at us together for too long a time, but really, it wasn’t. 

Not that we shouldn't talk about things, about stuff, but that I’ve been in so many ‘talks’ about ‘difficult’ topics that never really seemed to go anywhere, or I end up trying to give my perspective, as a white person living in a white culture, in a non-white family, and this, like the stories I want to tell, seems to be too long and winding a story to tell.

I'm also thinking about poverty and prosperity, and how we want to pull people up out of poverty, but not too much, not too far, not into prosperity, because then they might just somehow end up one of the 1% and then that, we know would be bad, very bad. We have weird ideas about money in our culture, and I don't want to think those weird ideas anymore. I just want to make money and pay off my student loan debt, so I don't have to think about that anymore either. Or if I do think about it, it's with gratitude for opportunity. I don’t want to rail against the system of education that figured out a way to get guaranteed money and put us all in debt. I really don’t. 

That comes too close for comfort to where I was; working at a Catholic university where hindsight affords me some clarity and hilarity at that world. I see so clearly the hierarchy, the way pay correlated (mostly) with advancement of degrees, unless of course you were part of the clergy, and if not part of the clergy, part of the belief system of the good patron saint. So, here I go, into anger and resentment, what I’ve been trying to avoid for the most part, at the hypocrisy of gentle folk. Maybe I can shift it into just sadness and disillusionment, there, that feels better. 

Sort of. I have more stories to tell, but I’m just coasting a bit now. Megan is having free rein to buy and cook whatever she wants and I’m eating like a queen. She makes granola whenever we run out! How amazing is that? I’ve found that I can shop at Nordstrom’s Rack online!!! Again, how cool is it to get new clothes in the mail at a fraction of the cost to pay to fight my way to Mall of America on a Sunday afternoon? I don’t have to experience that creepy “the building is swaying” feeling, nor worry about terrorist attacks to dress well. The world is turning out to be more than ok, I think. And I might just be able to leave the past alone, one day.