The Gift of Indifference (Blog #977)

Today I’ve been thinking about power.

I’ll explain.

According to Caroline Myss, life is about power. To help people become aware of their own power, she often asks audience members, “Do you want my magic marker?” Of course, no one does. Think about it. Unless you have a strange fetish for Sharpies, it’s like, Whatever, lady, I don’t need your pen. I’m just fine without it. “THAT’S how you SHOULD feel when something has NO POWER over you,” she says.

Conversely, we all know what it feels like when something–or someone–HAS power over us. Yesterday I blogged about my being jealous of or wanting approval from other (in my opinion, better) swing dancers, and this is what I’m talking about, that feeling that you NEED something from someone else. If you personally don’t give a shit what some Lindy Hop guru thinks of you, good. Also, this illustrates that someone could easily HOLD POWER over me but BE A MAGIC MARKER to you. Still, even if this is the case, I guarantee there’s SOMETHING or SOMEONE you want something from, something or someone who pulls you out of your authenticity. Because that’s the deal. When you GIVE your power away to someone else, you quite literally give part of your life to them to manage for you. In the extremes this looks like being someone else’s whipping boy, bitch, or puppet, which is what the story of Pinocchio is about. At first anyone could make him do anything, but the more he listened to HIS conscience, the more REAL he became and the less others could control him.

Along these lines, how many times have you said, “I can’t, you decide”? Or, “What do YOU think I should do?”? I’m not saying it’s the end of the world to ask someone else’s opinion or advice, but when someone else says jump and you start hopping, that’s a problem. Here’s another, more specific way to dig into this. If you were going to move, change jobs, start a relationship, or, hell, go out to dinner tomorrow, whose approval would you need first? You might think this is a ridiculous question, and on one level it is. You shouldn’t need ANYONE’S approval to go to the International House of Pancakes. But on another level, we all know people who stay in miserable towns, jobs, and marriages because they’re afraid of disappointing their parents, spouses, friends, or god.

Recently I blogged about how one person can influence another (and to be clear, that influence can be positive just as well as negative), and used the example of a man my dad met in prison who introduced our family to the Old Testament Law. And whereas I could go on for days about how our lives changed thanks to this introduction, the long and the short of it is I stopped eating bacon. In terms of tonight’s conversation, I now see that I’d given my power away. Specifically, I gave up my POWER TO CHOOSE between a roast beef and ham sandwich. Instead, I let someone else (my dad’s friend, my dad, the Old Testament, God) do that for me. I did this because, as I told my chiropractor who deals with emotions today, “I was AFRAID God was going to WAX MY ASS if I didn’t obey him.”

“Wax your ass?” he said. “Now THAT would be an interesting sensation.”

At which point we both laughed.

Because this has been on my mind so much lately and because I think this is hugely important, here’s ANOTHER way to look at this issue of power. This afternoon I went to the Fort Smith Public Library for their annual rare and vintage book sale. (Y’all know I love a good book with an attractive cover.) Well, right off the bat I noticed an old set of eight illustrated books about the human body–the circulatory system, the nervous system, etc. And whereas I’m not a doctor or a biologist, I got sucked right in. The drawings are so pretty, I thought. The covers are gorgeous–pristine. And all for $35. But then I thought, You have no NEED for these, Marcus. And don’t kid yourself–you’re NEVER going to read them. So I put them down like a hot potato, browsed around the room, and ultimately walked away empty handed.

But of course I had my $35.

My point in telling this story is that we all know that googly-eyed feeling of being drawn in by a pretty object or person. This is what it feels like when your power LEAVES YOU. Again, I’m not saying it’s bad to desire something (it’s kind of fun actually), but I am saying–let’s be clear–anytime you start acting like Gollum from Lord of the Rings (I WANTS IT), you’re under a spell. If you get the thing–or person–home later and have buyer’s remorse, maybe you didn’t completely give away your power car, but you definitely gave up the wheel for a while.

My therapist says the natural state of the universe is neutral, and more and more neutrality is my goal. This looks like me being real middle-of-the-road about how much money I have, whether or not other people like me or want to take me to bed, and how the rest of the world perceives me. I have a friend in Alcoholics Anonymous who says that when thinking about people who have absolutely done you wrong, you don’t want to seething-hate them, but you don’t want to squishy-love them either. “Your goal is indifference,” they say. This is the same thing as being neutral.

You WANT them to be a magic marker.

If being indifferent sounds cold, maybe it is. My therapist says when it comes to money, she has ice water running through her veins. But what this really means is that she’s NOT ATTACHED to money or the things it can buy. That is, they have NO POWER over her. Consequently, she’s a badass business woman. So she can walk into a car dealership and, even if she adores a certain vehicle, if the price isn’t right, she can walk away. This is the gift of indifference. This is what neutrality really is, being empowered enough to not feel like you HAVE to buy the thing, take the miserable job, or do what someone else wants. It’s having YOUR power, YOUR spirit, at home in YOUR body and NOT somewhere else.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Storms don’t define us, they refine us.

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Let’s Talk about Poop (Blog #819)

This morning I mowed my parents’ lawn, and because the grass was both thick and damp, made an absolute mess of myself. You should have seen my legs. They looked like they belonged to someone of a different nationality. I had my shirt off, and even my back was covered in filth. Afterwards, when I was in the shower, the water slowly washed it all away. For a moment the dirt, mud, and grass swirled around the shower drain then eventually went to live somewhere else, somewhere other than my body.

Last night I redecorated my room because yesterday afternoon I bought a new (to me) statue at an antique store and wanted to display it. As I mentioned in last night’s blog, finding a place to put the statue led to rearranging almost everything on the piece of furniture where the statue now sits. This “moving around” process has continued today. After I mowed the lawn and took a shower, I combed through all of my on-display possessions in an attempt to listen to the voice inside me that was telling me it was time to “purge,” to clean up my room like I’d just cleaned up my body. And whereas when it was all over I’d gathered up a handful of books to donate to a local library, I first had an internal struggle.

My “purge” voice said, “Get rid of that book. You don’t need it. Let someone else enjoy it.”

Then my “hold on” voice said, “But it’s pretty. It has a nice cover. I like it.”

Then my “scarcity” voice said, “What if we NEED it later? What if we never find another book like it? What if there’s NOT ENOUGH?”

Finally, Marcus at the Head of the Table made a decision. “We’re getting rid of that book,” I said. “End of discussion.”

Honestly, I was almost swayed by my “hold on” voice. I’ve let go of a lot over the last few years–most of my worldly possessions and not a few relationships. Haven’t I given up enough already? Can’t I hold on to a book if I want to?

Well, yes and no.

I’ll explain.

Our souls don’t cling to A Thing.

I have a lot of possessions that I like and enjoy but am not “attached” to. This means my butt might pucker a little if someone were to break or steal them, but, by the end of the day, I could gladly part with them. However, there are certain items that part of me clings to, that like Gollum in The Hobbit says, “We needs it.” This is when I absolutely know the best thing to do is buckle down and balls-to-the-wall set it free. Because we’re born into this life with nothing, and we leave with nothing, and I’ll be damned if a book or any other physical possession is going to turn me into a “hanger-on-er.” Our souls arrive free, and they leave free. They don’t cling to A Thing.

Byron Katie says that “letting go is sometimes experienced as sadness,” but that ultimately the sadness you feel isn’t about letting go of any possession (or person), but rather about letting go of your beliefs–the belief that you NEED something (or someone), the belief that you’re more or less because you have it (or them) or not. Yesterday I said that because everything in life is connected, changing one thing means changing everything. This applies to physical, outer-world changes, and especially to non-physical, inner-world changes, or–beliefs. As Katie would say, the letting go of a belief is the letting go of “a whole world.”

So of course you’d be sad.

Last night I went to dinner with my friend Kate and her four-year-old son. We all rode to the restaurant together, and at some point during the ride Kate’s son–out of the blue and unprovoked–said, “Marcus, let’s talk about poop.” Kate and I laughed, and I said, “Okay, let’s talk about poop.” Later I told Kate, “That’s going to be the name of a blog post,” and it’s pretty much been all I’ve been able to think about today, mostly because poop is the perfect metaphor for letting go and getting rid of that which no longer serves you. Sooner or later, you gotta do it. If you don’t, you’re gonna have a problem.

So get this shit. (See what I did there?) Today Kate’s husband, Aaron, posted a meme about that feeling you get when you’re ALMOST HOME but losing the “I gotta go number two” battle. I’ll spare you the visual details, but my initial reaction to his bathroom humor was the same as Aaron’s Mom, who said, “That’s really GROSS.” Well, Aaron, ever the comedian, responded, “The truth is gross, Mom.”

Amen. Truer words were never spoken.

In my adventures in mental health and personal and spiritual growth, the truth is nasty, filthy, a monster, and rarely fun. Like poop, it’s anything but cute. What I mean is that it’s hard as hell to get honest with yourself and others. Since starting this journey, I’ve had more difficult conversations with people I love or have loved than I care to recount. Often these conversations looked like confrontations, confrontations I either started or was on the receiving end of. My therapist says, “Is it fun to have these talks? No. Would I rather talk about something trivial? Yes. But uncomfortable, truthful conversations are the foundation or healthy relationships.”

In my experience, although I wish there were another way, this is accurate. For years, decades, I tried to hold on to my secrets until they were finally too much and I got the courage to tell my therapist, my friends, and family, “Let’s talk about poop. Let’s talk about the shit in our lives.” Again, these hard conversations, as well as letting go and changing, aren’t pleasant, but they’re the only reliable ways I’ve found to produce inner peace, further self-acceptance, and foster true connection with others. This is something Jesus forgot to say directly, that the truth will set you free–you’ll like the results–but you ain’t gonna like the process.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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If you want to become who you were meant to be, it's absolutely necessary to shed your old skin. Sure it might be sad to say goodbye--to your old phone, to your old beliefs, anything that helped get you this far--but you've got to let go in order to make room for something new.

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