Right, Righteous Rightness.

I like being right. Who doesn’t? It’s our nature. It’s the way we protect the ego. And it feels so good. So of course I want to be right. I just don’t want to be known as The Person Who is Always Right. (A.k.a. “That Asshole.”)

I have to be careful. My temperament, my astrological sign and my life experience all make me tend to feel that if everyone would just please do what I think best, the whole world would operate so much more smoothly. It would be easy for me to lose the balance between “right” and “always right.”

In an attempt to steady that balance, I’ve been looking for another way to think about and articulate the right kind of “right.” I tried thinking in terms of being “righteous.” It has a nice 60s-hip, Rastafarian kind of vibe; but it feels too close to self-righteous. So lately, I have taken to using the word “rightness.” Being in rightness. Acting from a place of rightness.

What it means for me is that, whatever happens, I’m striving to respond in the best way. And not by the text-book rules. Not the way that could be upheld in a court of law. Not the way that’s technically right, defensively right, justifiably right. But the way that I know, in my heart of hearts, is right.

When I look at it in that way, I can’t help but think of a spiritual leader who famously and consistently defied religious “rules” in favor of doing what was right: Jesus. From my Sunday school days, I remember the story—and the image it created in my mind--of Jesus and the disciples, hungry wanderers, walking through the cornfields on a Sabbath. “They plucked the ears of corn and did eat, rubbing them in their hands,” says chapter 6 of the book of St. Luke.

Picking corn on a Sunday? The Pharisees were not having it. Technically Christ and his crew were harvesting and it was so totally against the rules to harvest on the Sabbath. It was against the law to heal a sick person on Sabbath, too. But He did it anyway. And did it right in the synagogue. Clearly, He wasn’t about the rules. He was all about the rightness.

The rightness is doing the best thing you can do under the circumstances. It is weighing the thing you might not really want to do, that it would be easier not to do—that no one would even blame you if you didn’t do—and doing it anyway because it’s for the highest good.

I've been struggling through a book on spiritual relationship called Why Talking is Not Enough: 8 Loving Actions That Will Transform Your Marriage. (More on that later. Or check it out for yourself at susanpage.com.) I say struggling not because the book is too dense or academic or complicated. It’s simple. It encourages you to treat your partner with rightness. To treat him with good will. To think of giving more than you focus on getting. To overlook the thing(s) about your partner that makes you angry, hurt or willing to pull each strand of hair out of your scalp piece by piece. Practice acceptance. Have some compassion.

How hard is that? Very. The easy thing is to do what seems to be in your own ego’s best interest: to get yours, to blame him, to forget that you make him want to pluck himself bald sometimes, too. It is easier to be see yourself as right than it is to set aside your resentment, anger, hurt or fear long enough to see that the other person could possibly be right, too.

But in any love relationship (and I mean any kind of love) the best thing is the thing you know, in your heart of hearts, is right. And that means being in rightness with and for everyone involved.

So when it you both know it’s his turn to wash the dishes—and he always seems to have an excuse not to do it, and then when he does he makes a mess of the job anyway, and will invariably break something or put dishes away wrong, and you have no idea what his Mama was doing when she was supposed to be teaching him how to do this one simple task—but you also know he’s stressed about his project at work and could afford to spend some time on that, rightness means you’ll bust those suds yourself. Just this once. And maybe the next time.

Victimology

“Have you given any more thought to the idea of being a victim?” my husband asks.

Said Husband and I have been deeply, heavily, excruciatingly wrapped in a series of conversations, arguments and debates about the state of our union—and muddled if sincere attempts to improve it. We haven’t broken much ground. In part, probably, because when we ask each other such questions, the response tends to be visceral and defensive and angry. How dare he ask me if I’ve thought about being a victim? Has HE thought about being a victim?

The reality is that I have thought about it. Been thinking about it. (Evidenced, in part, by the creation of the blog you’re reading.) But the whole victim thing is slippery. When you are talking about a relationship between two people, it’s hard to parse victimhood. Each person plays a part in whatever is going on. Blame is very easy to mis-place. And when you are one of the people in that relationship, it’s easy to slip into the self-righteous role of victim. For some of us, martyrdom is easiest on the ego.

What makes you a victim, then? Even if you have been assaulted or disrespected or hurt in some way, what of that did you invite or allow or provoke? Wait. Stop. Invite or provoke is too loaded. We don’t say that a woman who has been raped “provoked” it by her attire or behavior. We wouldn’t justify someone’s assault of another person by using the excuse that, “She just made me so mad I had to hit her.” AND…. And, if we’re honest, we know that there are the masochistic among us who do actually try to provoke ill-treatment. Okay, so erase invite and provoke. Too much to contend with here. But let’s deal with allow.

Allowing something to happen that is hurtful or wrong, falls in that also slippery concept of the-lines-that-must-not-be-crossed. We all have these boundaries. (Some of us set them far from us and guard them too fiercely; others make weak, wobbly fences that we guard not fiercely enough.) And these boundaries will be approached and possibly breached, somewhere, somehow. The issue, then, is how we respond. What we do. How quickly we do it. How well we assess the damage and how we repair the breach. And—here’s where the victim thing comes in: How do we think of ourselves and the other person and the situation afterward?

What keeps us in victim mode: If we continue to focus on “how dare you?” If we keep looking at and lamenting the hole in the wall without doing anything to address it. Or if we mix up tons of quick-dry cement and build a higher, thicker, more impenetrable wall–where nothing can get in, but nothing can get out, either. (Yeah, it’s smart to fix your fence—but it needs to be one that you can see—and see your way—out of.)

A less victimized way of thinking is, “Why did that person think he should approach me this way? Are my boundaries clearly defined? What sign can I erect to indicate that my borders are not to be breached? How do I plan to respond if the breach is attempted again?

One of my computer dictionary definitions of victim is “someone who experiences misfortune and feels helpless to do anything about it.” For me, victimhood lies not in the misfortune, but in that feeling of helplessness. But I like to believe helplessness is only that—a feeling. Ultimately, we are never truly without help. We possess resources. We can gather information and support. There are hands outstretched. There is Spirit guiding us. And, most importantly, we have the strength of our own will, wisdom and motherwit. When we know that and when we own it, victimhood is out of the question.

The Fiction of Potential

We weeded and turned over the earth, mixing in manure and compost until the garden spot was black, rich and fecund. Then Little Bitty and I carefully sowed string bean seeds. Within days, they sprouted, strong and green. The tomato vines surged up and spread before I had a chance to stake them. The squash leaves were as big as my hand, their blossoms bright with potential.

Since then, one of the squash plants yielded a single yellow crookneck—then the leaves turned moldy and the vine split and rotted at the root. From three long rows of string beans I pulled one handful of beans—not enough for a meal. I got three plum tomatoes off the overgrown vine; the other plant dried up from the ground up. A few stunted green tomatoes are clinging futilely to the brittle, brown vine, but they have no way to pull nourishment from the soil.

It is sad to see. But sadder, still, is the nagging thought that my fruitless garden is a metaphor for my life. I am a woman of ideas. Lots and lots of ideas. Good ideas—for myself, for my career, for my partner and my child and my friends. “We could do this!” “You could do that!” “Isn’t this brilliant?” “Let’s try….” “Let’s start….” “Let’s do….”

The attic is full of boxes with concepts for novels, lyrics to songs, article ideas, beginnings of business plans. A publishable thesis manuscript, unpublished. Three issues of a lovely newsletter, now defunct. Just over my head—nestled into fluffy, itchy, pink insulation—live boxes and boxes of potential. My potential. Defunct. Fruitless.

Carolyn Hax, in her take-no-prisoners syndicated advice column, recently wrote: "Potential is fiction."

Fiction? Potential is something we hold up like a candle to light our way. We hire it. We vote for it. We marry it. We give birth to it—and nurture it with our whole hearts. Because we have been taught to believe in possibility. We have learned to believe that “may” or “might” or “could” or “should” is enough to stand on.

But in the movie Amistad, there is a scene in which Djimon Hounsou’s character— the enslaved Mende, Sengbe Pieh—is told by his American lawyer that something that “should” have secured their legal victory and freed Sengbe to return home to Africa, didn’t. Sengbe shouts in frustration, “What is this word ‘should’?” There was no translation for it in his language, he said. Either something happened or it didn’t.

And that is not fiction. We do or we don't do. We bear fruit or we don't. It doesn't matter how green the string bean plants are if there is nothing on them we can eat.

Potential is the story we tell ourselves so that we can sleep at night. Frankly, I’d rather stay awake if it means that I am doing something instead of making dreams that will disappear in the light of morning. I want to do more than just send up green leaves. I want to flower! What would it take for me to finally, decidedly bear fruit?

I have to admit that I am only a potential gardener. Once my vegetable plants were sturdily in the ground, I left them to their own devices. Though it has been scorchingly hot, I wouldn’t break the rules and cheat the water restrictions in our drought-stricken city. My approach to organic gardening is to leave it to The Gardener. I could have done more to nourish the plants and protect them from parasites and blight. I could do more for myself.

My first step is to step away from the notion that potential is something I can stand on. I have to remember what Iyanla Vanzant wrote: “There is nothing between doing and not doing that can be trusted.” Between doing and not doing lies the quicksand of potential. And that's no place from which anything can grow.

The Best Worst-Case Scenario.

I wish I could remember who originated the concept. It was years ago when I first read about it in Ladies Home Journal or some supermarket women’s magazine. The advice was that, when you’re faced with a difficult situation, ask yourself: What is the worst thing that could happen? Then, once you’ve got that worst-case scenario in mind, ask yourself another question: If the worst thing did happen, what would I do?

It’s brilliant, because A) the worst thing that could happen probably won’t, but B) if it does, you’re ready for it. And C) if you have a strategy for dealing with the very bad, then any thing that happens on the spectrum between the worst thing and the best thing, will be a piece of cake to deal with. Because you have a plan.

If you’re really susceptible to pessimism, this may not be a good exercise for you; you don’t want to fall into a rabbit hole of negative thinking. And folks who believe in the Law of Attraction—that you draw to you the thing you think about—will be squeamish about giving any mental energy to any “worst thing.”

But I don’t dwell on the worst. I don’t expect the worst. And my focus isn’t on the “bad thing.” My focus is on the best thing I could do about it. What could I do to turn an unpleasant situation into something good? How would I make the best of a bad turn of events?

A fine example lies with the parents who lost children in the Katrina floods or the tsunami in the Indian Ocean—and then adopted orphans who’d lost their own parents. Their “worst case” didn’t devastate them; instead it resulted in incredible generosity and an outpouring of healing love. Of course I’m sure they hadn’t anticipated the tragedy they'd faced—who could have imagined that? But the point is that they found strength and hope when it was most likely to have been washed away. That’s what the exercise is about to me: looking for strength, tapping into hope.

What’s the worst that could happen? What’s the best I could do? Once I imagine the thing and then see myself dealing with it, it doesn’t feel like the end of the world. I see where my resources lie. I make note of—and give thanks for—my support system. Worry disappears, and a sense of empowered gratitude takes its place. And that’s the best-case scenario.

First, Do Nothing.

I thought about going to yoga class.
I considered going to church.
Said Husband was outside sanding and painting the boards for much-needed book cases. I thought about helping him. Or taking the sander the old bureau that needs to be redone.
I need to write a letter to my friend who is ill, and send a thank you card to the woman who took me to lunch last week. I thought about doing those things. Or working on the text for my website.
I turned on the classic movie channel, thinking I might catch an old flick. Gene Kelly didn’t move me. Neither did I Love Lucy. Neither did Rachel Ray.
I acquired Obama’s biography. Considered reading that.

What I did instead was to lie down on the narrow couch in my room, pull a cotton spread up to my shoulders and allow myself to lie there until I fell asleep. I slept for a couple of hours until my child came in from play, squealing and chattering, and my husband finished his task, thumping things back into the closets. I got up long enough to quiet them. And then…I lay down again. I went back to sleep.

Okay, that was extreme. Oh, but I needed it! And there is something to be said for moments of silence, of quiet, of rest.

My days often begin at 7 a.m., and frequently end at one or two the next morning. I am famous among my friends for catching a few winks in the afternoon. (Still clinging to the idea that when baby sleeps, mommy should sleep—though “baby” is now four and hardly willing to nap herself.) But those naps are strategic. I figure that if I allow myself to sleep a while during the day, I’ll be able to stay up later in the evening to “get things done.”

The focus is always on getting things done. How many tasks can I accomplish in a day? How many tasks can I accomplish at one time? And I’m not the most "accomplished" among the folks I know. Many of my women friends work nearly constantly. Two jobs, some of them. A job and kids. Kids and elderly parents. A job and an all-consuming pastime. We turn our hobbies, our exercise regimens, even our social activities into tasks by which we evaluate our level of accomplishment.

For many of us, the very idea of stopping. For a minute. To rest. To catch our breath. To think. That is—well—unthinkable.

I wonder why? I think some of it comes from living in society that tells us we have to do more and more—and gives us the technology to be doing something constantly. But I think that, for some of us (okay, for me), there is a deeper need to prove ourselves. To prove that we can do everything and be everything. To fend off any criticism for our imperfections by being able to say, “But look at how hard I’m working….” To convince ourselves that we are good enough.

Doing—and being able to exhibit the fruit of our doing-ness—gives us a sense of power and control. But we forget that our source of power does not come from what we do. It comes from who we are. Before we do anything, we are powerful. Who wields more power than a newborn infant who can’t even raise her head? Who wields more power than the patient lying in a coma? All our energy, our thoughts, our decisions, our time, our attention is drawn to this one who can “do” nothing. That should tell us something.

Periodically, I will myself to do nothing. To let the e-mail pile up; to let the phone ring. To stop thinking, thinking, thinking about the next task I “need” to do. Once in a while I give myself permission to let things—and people—wait. I recall the phrase, “Cease striving and know.” And I do nothing.

It feels powerful.

Minimum Daily Requirements

Ever look at a box of Total with it’s 100% of 11 essential vitamins and minerals? Makes you feel like you’re eating the healthiest food in the world. Wow, look at the minerals! And all those vitamins! But it’s deceptive.

They’re talking about minimums—i.e. what you need to stay alive. But what if you want to thrive in abundant, overflowing good health? The minimum is not going to cut it. It’s easy to fall into a “minimum requirements” mode where the minimum is all you come to expect. Or, worse, you start to feel that’s all you deserve.

We accept minimums about a lot of things—the things we buy, not because they’re lovely, but because they’re on sale. The jobs we take just for the paycheck, not the creativity they inspire. Settling for Mr. He’s Alright instead of holding out for Mr. He-Treats-Me-Like-Gold. We accept the minimum as if that’s all we are worth or as if that’s the limit of our dreams.

That’s how I found myself in the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store, looking at other people’s dusty, cast-off chandeliers in hopes of finding one under $75 for my dining room.

Meanwhile, I know exactly what I REALLY want. What I REALLY want is the capiz-shell pendant light by that I saw in my favorite shelter magazine. It's simple, subtle, gorgeous. And it's $2550. Mm-hmm, two thousand, five hundred and fifty dollars. Don’t know about you, but for me that’s a mortgage payment. Actually, it’s two. Not exactly in my budget… but that shouldn’t stop me from feeling like I deserve something that beautiful.

The price of my chandelier isn't the point. It’s about feeling free to say what I want and feeling that I deserve what I want—even if realism and practicality tell me it’s beyond my grasp. (And even as I remind myself that many people live without electricity, much less a light fixture of any kind, and they deserve beautiful things as well.) I don’t want to get in the habit of thinking only in terms of the lowest common denominator. It’s one thing to make peace with the fact that a $2000 home accessory is not the wisest way to bend your budget. It’s another to forget that you are worthy of things that are fresh and beautiful and awe-inspiring and affirming. Compromises have to be made. But standards can be held.

I think I’d almost forgotten. And it wasn’t until I reminded myself—and allowed myself to go boldly into my local lighting boutique and monopolize nearly an hour of the lighting designer’s time looking at all the chandeliers I loved (cost be damned), that I was able go back to Habitat and buy a $50 fixture that pleases me. It is identical to one the lighting designer showed me at ten times the cost. Hey, I deserve nice things and I have expensive tastes, but I’m no fool. And I’m still keeping a picture of that pretty capiz-shell number in my wish book.


P.S. I adore Habitat for Humanity. Love what they stand for; love what they do. I've donated to them every month for more than a 10 years now—and that's not counting the amount of money I've spent buying great stuff in their Re-Stores.

Plan B(itch)

Yve’s husband called her a bitch.

Well, he didn’t actually call her that. He programmed her phone number into his cell under the b-word. Instead. Of. Her. Name.

Look, I’ve watched the TV show “Girlfriends” enough to know that some people apparently use the b-word as a term of affection. I understand that it has come to fall in the same category of code-switching as the “n-word” among African-Americans. I know that there are academic dialogues taking place about the appropriateness of the use of “taboo” words and language in helping a social group retain a sense of group identity and belonging, and to mark “their rights and obligations relative to others in the conversational setting.”

Blah, blah, blah. Whatever.

I also know that using “bitch” or “nigger”—depending on who you are and what your intention—is tantamount to abuse or a hate crime.

And that’s an important point. But it’s not my point here.

My question is: What is Yve going to do about it? What can she do? What is she willing to do? And how do her circumstances affect her response?

She, like a number of women I know (many who don’t work outside the home and a few who do), lives a lifestyle that relies on Husband's presence and his paycheck. Like many of us, she doesn’t have much of a safety net of her own. She is, at least to some degree, dependent.

Unless you have a strong sense of personal power, not having a sense that you have a safety net (even if it's as simple as "I can always go home to Mama.") can make your lines-that-must-not-be-crossed quite blurry. You can find yourself compromising values that you might otherwise hold firm.

I just read a compelling quote from Retrouvaille.org:

"If you are not free to reject, you cannot accept."

How do we get to the place—within ourselves and within our circumstances—that we are as free to reject as we are to accept?

It doesn’t matter to me how Yve finally addresses this with her man, as long as she's satisfied with her decision. I love her, I respect her choices and I know better than to try to tell even my best friends what to do within their own marriages. He’s her husband, for better or worse. They have children. And, it takes two, so she certainly carries some blame in her relationship's breakdown as well. That makes it complex. Even if she had a million-dollar trust fund and a private hideaway on St. Kitts, there would be no easy answers. But what I wish for Yve—and for all of us—is the ability to make hard choices from a position of strength.

Are you ready to leap?

I barely talk to the woman any longer. But she offered me a piece of hopeful wisdom some years ago that that I still hold onto.

We were walking along the river one day, and I was lamenting my status—at work and in my life. I was past 30 at the time and felt like I hadn’t accomplished much—not married, no kids, no house, and working a part-time job well below my experience level. I didn’t see a family anywhere on the horizon. I couldn’t see any way that I could scale the career ladder before I was nearly ready to retire.

But she told me that you can’t always look at climbing step by step. She said that sometimes we have to look at making leaps.

I’d never thought about it like that—I was a work-hard-and-wait-your-your-turn kind of girl—but I never forgot it. And then it happened: I made a huge leap at work. And suddenly I was working on par with my experience and my aspirations. That leap caught me up. And confirmed that river-side lesson that I’ll never forget.

How do you develop a leap mentality? It’s a little different than waiting to hit the lottery. That’s passive. And it’s not about cultivating a willingness to step on people. That’s unnecessarily aggressive. (And bad karma, to boot.)

It’s about being intentional, being ready and being open—really open—to the world of possibility. It’s the Olympic hurdler with her feet in the blocks, waiting for the starting gun. She has trained, she has prepared, she sees the finish line ahead of her and she has willed every muscle in her body to know that she can break that tape. She’s just waiting for the BAM!

Are you on purpose? Do you have a plan, so that if your number comes up, you’ll know exactly what you’ll do with that jackpot? It doesn’t have to be a 20-page life map. It can be an idea on the back of a napkin. But it should be a complete thought—because unless you’ve thought it through, you won’t know how to prepare.

You have to prepare. Identify and gather your gifts and talents and resources. Go get what will be required for you to step right up into your new role. Otherwise, when opportunity arises, you'll have to let it pass you by.

Do you believe? You know that Oprah thing: “God has a bigger dream for you than you can dream for yourself.” Do you believe that anything really is possible? And do you believe it’s possible for you? Are you walking around in the world as if you do?

You don't have to know in advance what the leap will look like. You just have to believe it's possible and be ready when it comes. And when you're ready—and not one second before you're ready—it will appear. BAM!

Know. Do.

She started quietly, lifting one picture off its nail in the wall and placing it in the hallway. Then she carefully took down another. By the time she started moving the furniture, she didn't bother to tiptoe. The bedside table slid along the floor. The nails she was wrenching out of the walls came free with a squeak and tinked to the floor. When her husband finally roused from sleep, the only thing left in the room was the bed he was sleeping in. "What are you doing?" he asked, trying to make sense of what he'd awakened to.

"I am MOVING!" she said, leaning in, looking him square in the eye. "You can stay. You can go. But I am moving."

That's my girl Rox. She'd started quietly, she says, months earlier, talking about how quickly they were outgrowing their apartment. It was time to move themselves and their two young children out of the two bedrooms they rented, she'd said. Over the weeks, she kept bringing it up. And he kept saying, "We're gonna..." But nothing ever actually happened.

That morning, she'd had it. Totally. After she emptied the bedroom, she started on the kids' room, and she kept going until finally everything but the bare necessities was stacked in the living room or packed in boxes.

All this talk about Plan B? She didn't have one. Hadn't looked for a new place. Had no idea where they would find one. She just knew it was time to go and that she was going. She was not asking. She was not suggesting. She wasn't waiting. She was moving.

What she had was more powerful than a B-plan: She had clarity--a crystaline certainty about what was needed. And she trusted herself and her God enough to know she could make it happen--whether her husband came along for the ride or spent the rest of his days lying in the middle of their empty room.

Her story made me realize something: a plan B is just courage in a bottle. It's something we stir up, distill, and label Our Saving Grace. But what really saves us is our own willingness (willingness) to leap right past fear, self-doubt, second-guessing or whatever else has been holding us back, and put our feet down on what we really want, need, deserve and demand.

The best plan is simple, really: Know. Do.

As for Rox, it was barely two weeks after she emptied the bedroom around her sleeping husband that she was moving into a quaint house on a hill in a lovely old neighborhood. Husband and children in tow.