It's our friend Friday again! Better today - lots. Friend Ashley from my Landmark Advanced course is here in town from Kansas City. She's here for a leadership seminar and tucked between the weekend seminar she and I will have a blast. She's the one who said, "you're going to leave me, right?" Just about an instant connection with her because she's one of the most basic, real people I've ever met - no artifice, doesn't care about looking good (even though she's beautiful). To be in her presence is to feel centered and calm and loved. I strive to be like that (she is only 29 and yet, light years ahead of me in the way she inhabits her own skin and this world).
At the end of the book Matilda, she finds love in the teacher who chooses to raise her as her own. When that happens, Matilda is freed to go about the business of living and learning and being a normal kid. Her magic power that she used to exact revenge disappears - she no longer needs it. And so it is with Sarah. I have an amazing network of friends who love me despite my prickles and a therapist who adores me like Matilda's teacher came to love her. I have family members who will never walk away from me even when I'm an ass. So it only makes sense to relinquish, in adulthood, the weapons that were a necessary protection in childhood. Like Matilda, I became a force to be reckoned with, learned early not to take shit from anyone, was a Quick Draw McGraw (do you remember that cartoon?) not hesitating an instant in counter-attacking, even when I was wrong.
Yesterday, e-mail from Dennis suggesting gently that I might want to reconsider my harsh position with my posse. Talk with Madeleine, my youngest, who said, "Yeah Mom, I can see why your feelings were hurt, but now you're just wrong. Fix this." So, me wrong? How could that be? And yet it coincidentally dovetailed with the Landmark Seminar homework for the week which was, ironically, giving up being right. So, text:
S: I'm sorry. I'm being an ass..I'm in the wrong here which is hard to admit. Forgive me. And I really AM looking forward to time with Maisy, contrary to what I may have led you to believe, if you still want that help.
L: Sweetie, you know I love you, even when you are being an ass. I loved 95% of what you wrote. I was alarmed that it could be misinterpreted and let's face it, my life is a Greek Tragedy these days without inviting risk into the mix. I appreciate your generosity in every way and it kills me to think I have ever come off as ungrateful. We need to talk more. Maybe a nice civilized glass of good wine at Stained Glass and we iron stuff out.
S: Yes!! Smooch..I can stop crying now!
L: No more crying!So, how amazing it is to be at this point in my life where it's typical for people to be set in destructive ways - to be learning new better ways of being (no old dog here!). Brought this up in the seminar last night - talked about how freeing it was to be able to admit being wrong about something. How much more like a human and less like a demigod I feel like today!! I am NOT omnipotent. I have feet of clay. I fuck up from time to time but I clean up my messes.
And that is all for today. Your challenge could be challenging any assumptions you have about yourself that are defeating, coupled with the explanation, "it's just the way I am". And I'm thinking you don't need four plus years of therapy or even Landmark to try something new. Takes humility though, and humble is hard for a lot of us. Thinking this last stretch of my life is going to be characterized by practiced humility and courage - everything else will fall into place.
Peace,
Sarah
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