I watched "Listen To Me, Marlon", the documentary about Brando that's almost all drawn from audio tapes he made over the years. I assume every actor is out there watching the movie - Brando gives a master class in acting. Listening to his voice, it's clear he was a brilliant man, sensitive, compassionate, which is something of a miracle given the childhood he had with two alcoholic parents, one of whom liked to knock his mother and him around. The demons that chased him all through his life were born his hometown in the mid-west.
I was struck with what he said about fame. He hated it, hated that he'd lost the possibility of moving through the world seeing, rather than being seen. He was very aware of people treating him differently, in a way that kept him from learning who they were. When people looked at him, they saw Stanley Kowalski and The Wild One and Terry Mallow. He knew he was nothing like those characters. The myths about him put up walls that were impossible to scale. He found himself isolated, which was an enormous deprivation for a person who was endlessly curious about other people. When he first got to New York, he'd stand at the window of a cigar store and watch people going by. He felt he had them, who they were, their story, in the few seconds it took them to pass by. Fame made that impossible. No wonder he loved Tahiti where no one knew he was a movie star or, if they did, they may have been unsure of exactly what that meant. This actor, this great and unique impersonator, was desperate to be himself.
Many famous people talk about the cost of the loss of anonymity. Most of us don't believe them - how could you not like the spotlight, being the center of attention, having every door open for you. Not to mention the money. In our culture, fame is the prize. But most of us live our lives unknown except to family and friends and the other people we actually encounter. It's enough for most of us as long as we feel rooted in the world we travel in.
The opposite of fame isn't that kind of anonymity. It's not being noticed by others in the world you move through. It's the feeling that no one sees you, not only as you are, no one sees you at all. It's the same isolation that's at the heart of fame - the sense that you can't break out of the bubble you live so that you can be seen as you are.
That there are so many people who live that life is heartbreaking. They aren't characters in a movie or book and to begin to think about them risks going down a very deep well. And yet to do nothing puts us in a moral limbo. Our culture says, "love you fellow man" and it also says, "keep your head down, look away, take care of your own." We all exist in the heart of that dilemma; sometimes we're drawn to one side and sometimes to the other. The seesaw is always going and all we can do is the best we can do.
A few years ago, a book came out about our culture, focused on the loss of community and a shared civic life. It's called, "Bowling Alone." It's hard to think of anything sadder.
He who is not contented with what he has would not be contented with what he would like to have -- Socrates
I've been very dissatisfied the last few days. "My life isn't anything like I want it be, anything like what I thought it would be. Why haven't I done more and have more? Why haven't I changed more, learned more - why have I turned out the way I have?" I could go on but you catch my drift.
Satisfaction is an interesting concept. I used to think if I were satisfied, it could only be because I'd given up and surrendered ambition; I thought my desire for more was the only thing that would help me get what I wanted. Contentment, which is one of the definitions of satisfaction, seemed like the kiss of death. I didn't want to be content because it meant that I'd be like a dumb beast in a field, chewing my cud, getting nowhere.
It took me a long time to see that I rejected satisfaction and was afraid of what contentment would mean for me because I was run by a tyrannical ambition and the kind of perfectionism which told me that everything I did wasn't good enough. I was afraid that if I turned away from them, I'd never do anything at all. That both paralyzed me and made it very hard to act for good or ill somehow escaped my notice.
Things only began to change as I slowly understood that the things I thought I needed, like ambition and drive, were the very things that were getting in my way. It's not that those concepts are bad in and of themselves; we'd never get anywhere if we didn't want things and actively pursue them. But in my case, they had a negative effect. That tyrannical ambition meant that my work didn't come first; it stood in the foreground blocking my view of everything but what my work was supposed get me. I was a capitalist of any talent I had, driven to make my talent pay, in attention, admiration and financial reward. When that drive is coupled with a perfectionism that tells you everything you do isn't good enough - well, I was living on the razor's edge and it was a terrible place to be.
Slowly, I gained some insight into all this. It's hard to say why the process of change began but I know a part of it was my realization of the pain I was in. I'd been holding down my fear that I would never accomplish anything that was good enough (good enough for whom was a question I didn't ask.) But it was pain that forced me to consider the possibility that what I thought of myself, who I had to be, what I had to do, was - maybe - the source of my problems. I took a tiny first step - I became willing to change.
I began to see my ambition in a new way and to understand how lacerating my perfectionism was. I slowly became able to find them in my being, to isolate and get some space around them. I worked to bring them down to size. My desire to let them go taught me about surrender.
It's been a very long process. It took time to strip away levels of fear so that I could bear to look at some truths about myself and my thinking. But above all things I wanted to get free. I instinctively knew that I'd never be free enough to do my best work and connect with the world if I wasn't willing to have the knots in me unravel. I wanted another kind of satisfaction and contentment, the kind that comes from the sense of being free.
Well, you can tell from the first sentence of this little essay that I haven't gotten so free that I no longer feel dissatisfied. Some part of me will always want unrealistic things and make me feel I'm falling short. I'm content with that, not in spite of still being susceptible to the things inside me that cause me pain, but because of those things. I now know I'm human and humans have "issues." These are just my issues and I can live with that.
Years ago, in the middle of doing something I can't remember, I suddenly heard a voice: "I want but I can't have." I knew immediately this was a voice from the deepest part of me. Core. One of oldest, perhaps the oldest belief I had about myself. It was shocking - and heartbreaking that I myself, ruled by this idea, was the reason I felt so held back by a force I couldn't understand. I knew had everything I needed to have a successful life - but I couldn't seem to get ahead.
The voice was heartbreaking because I suddenly understood the world or circumstances or luck weren't holding me back. I was the one holding me back. I had been confirming the truth of the voice again and again. I'd been compulsively enacting a self-fulfilling prophecy. I began to understand why I could rarely keep commitments, was always moving from thing to thing and place to place, unable to follow through on opportunities, unable to create the arc of a successful career or maintain a long term relationship.
A hidden part of my subconscious had revealed itself, and it was devastating, to think that all the time I lived under a tyrannical ambition, wanting to (in shorthand) be rich and famous, I was actually living out a very different goal, one that was about impoverishment, frustration and self-denial.
I thought this core belief must have come from childhood but in a sense that didn't matter. Its etiology might be interesting, but I intuitively knew understanding its source wouldn't help me walk out of the prison the voice kept me in. How then could I get free? Was the part of me that wanted to get free, to change, weaker than the voice? How could I transform a fundamental part of my psyche, my very being, so that I was no longer under its dominion? Did I, so used to pessimism about myself, frequently in despair, really think it was even possible?
Over the years, I've learned there are many roads to transformation. No one of them is the only one; all of them are useful, even necessary, for dealing with the negative sentences I pass on myself. I first had to acknowledge the voice inside me; my hearing it at all was a great gift, the first step in seeing the truth inside me. I decided that the part of me that heard the voice was greater than the voice itself. I tried to act out of that decision - even when I doubted I could. Through experience, I learned how to take a step back, put some space around the voice and in that way to begin to bring it down to size. It's been a slow walk to the kind of change I want and it's still going on. I understand now the voice will always be with me but I don't have to believe it.
Most of that slow walk has been on a spiritual path. I learned to meditate and often found images that could help me. I saw a collapsed stick figure, the picture of despair, and I worked for months to get her arms and legs fleshed out, to put color in her cheeks and get her standing. Eventually, I saw her walking out into the world, smiling with her arms open wide. It was powerful and I can still think of that image and feel the possibility of change.
Because of my frequent companions, suffering and despair, I've learned how to surrender to something greater than myself, to the idea that the universe is benevolent and wants me to have a good life. I do what I can to cultivate hope. I try not to impose my will, rush to come up with solutions to all my problems - I've learned that if I concentrate on principles like gratitude and humility, the answers, the right actions, will come to me. The answers aren't the end; my resistance to change is a major obstacle; it's a challenge to take the risk of moving out of my comfort zone. I have to ask the universe to give me the strength to take the actions to make the answers come true.
Does this sound as if the work I've had to do is done? Far from it. There are still many days when I can't connect with hope or gratitude, days when all I hear is the voice, repeating again and again, that I want but can't have. But some crucial things have changed. I used to think the fact that I was so held back by a voice deep inside me meant that there was no hope for me; it confirmed all my hopelessness and fear. But, slowly, slowly, I've learned it's all right to have things inside me I want, need to change. In fact, I've come to understand that dealing with the voice inside me, working to get freer and freer, is the real purpose of my life, the work I'm meant to do. In a paradoxical way, it's the struggle that's put solid ground under me. I'm anchored in the effort to change.
I've come to believe something else as well. If the deepest change is possible for me, it's possible for all of us. Hope, gratitude, humility and the art of surrender will inevitably lead all of us where we want to go.
For more than a year now, I've been eating in a way that's allowed me to lose weight. Day in, day out - not always perfect but good enough. I've kept track of the pound by pound loss and by now I've filled up pages in a little pad I keep near the scale. Every once in a while, I go through the entries, track the slowly declining numbers, July, September, January, July again. It's the record of my commitment, my willingness to keep to a beneficial discipline.
The other day I hit a new low, a significant low, and I felt a rush of deep pleasure, a special combination of amazement that I've done it and the thrill of satisfaction. For a few minutes, I walked around the house feeling delight, holding myself close, wrapped in the wonderful fact of my achievement.
I thought about the day after day gradual peeling away, the process that's been taking place under and through whatever else has been happening in my day or month or year. In the times I've been dragging through the Slough of Despond or been pretty much oblivious to the content of my days - through all the time I've read as disappointing or unproductive or just blah, underneath, behind it all was something positive, something nourishing that I all but ignored.
It's a lesson in focus, on where I choose to put my attention. It's very easy for me to see only the negative or to float away into The Great Blank. I can feel all my internal eyes shifting, darting, not really alighting long enough to take anything in. The internal flow becomes incoherent, chaotic, overflowing with content, holding on to very little meaning.
In this year of continuing commitment, I'm going to take the time to feel hard won satisfaction. It's possible I can even manage to feel proud of myself. Even if I feel like a fool, I'm going to stand in front of a mirror and really take in how much my body has changed. I'm going to take time to think about how I can build on this accomplishment; is there some other good I can do for myself. I don't have to drive myself to find that "other good." In fact, a frenetic search built on self-will is guaranteed to do more harm than good. Better to walk around allowing myself some good feeling which opens the possibility of coming to good ideas...
You got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on the affirmative, and don't mess with Mr. In Between.
There are two things that can throw me into a panic: something going wrong with the car and something going wrong with the computer. It's not the oh-my-god-how-can-I-function-without-it sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, and it's not because I know nothing about them and am therefore dependent on other people who I hope know what they're doing. It isn't even the money it will cost to fix either of them,
I think the panic goes deeper. It's my fear of being without something I need which I can see is a kind of fear of abandonment. I'm a child saying, "Mother, don't take that rattle from me - Mother, don't take yourself from me." I feel bereft, and as I had bad parenting, I learned to cover up whatever I needed so I wouldn't feel the pain of not getting it.
The car and computer are crucial to my daily life and, even though I'm an adult and know whatever the problem is will get fixed and probably sooner rather than later, I find myself feeling resentment at the universe for doing something mean to me, and the powerlessness of a child, and anger at myself for having that reaction in the first place. I know it's irrational and I have ways of quickly moving past the turmoil of those feelings, but the buttons that were installed in childhood will always be there. They've seared pathways in my being, and the feelings they give rise to will surface at the most unexpected times. I've learned that's all right. Those fears and needs have taught me most of what I know about surrender, letting go and the transitory nature of all feeling, both good and bad. Those feelings have taught me how to deal with them.
Today, there is nothing wrong with the car and the computer is working just fine. No need for panic, no need at all.
I was thinking about how personal words are. They're common currency among us all but their meanings, their resonance, is particular to each of us. For instance, I say "surrender" and think freedom, letting go of something that is blocking me, something I cling to, demand, expect. But many other people hear surrender as defeat or resignation, accepting you'll get less than you want, be less than you want to be. The way I understand surrender comes out of direct experience. When I'm rigid, insistent, controlling, surrender - letting go - comes as a relief, a lightening of the rock I've been carrying around with me. To accept things as they are isn't to resign myself; it's to free myself so that I can be free from distortion, free to act not out of ego but with equanimity.
Another word that resonates is for me is "austerity." I know for many people this word means less than should be: tighten your belt, do without, go on an enforced diet. It means bare, without ornamentation. But that's exactly what makes the word significant for me. For some reason I see water dripping on grey stone, zen-like, something very plain and simple. Something without adornment, something pure. Oceanic art, Bauhaus design, Teco pottery - their beauty comes from simplicity. So austerity for me means simplicity. I don't know why a word that suggests a negative for most people is a positive for me.
There are many other words that resonate in me. Humility, gratitude, kindness...No one else can know exactly what I feel when I hear or think of those words. All of my experience, my thinking, my temperament has created certain connotations; they're completely my own, private and even if I wanted to say in detail what I hear, why it resonates, I couldn't. They're unique to me. Personal.
Each of us has certain resonant words, the ones that put us in touch with something very deep inside us. We have many of those words in common; we agree on their meanings in a general way. But we can't know the particulars, the pathways through our being these words travel.
There is a universe inside us, a universe made up of what we inherit from our culture, what we've learned from our experience, our own connotations and random connections that are formed paradoxically in the vast part of that universe that exists in the place beyond words. We never come to the end of ourselves and the more we open ourselves the more the resonances come.
The other day, a friend was talking about telling someone else that she was sorry for something she'd said - making amends. As we talked, I began thinking about humility and the willingness to take responsibility, at how necessary both are to getting free. We live in a culture in which many people are defensive and blame everyone else. Sometimes, I can see them stewing, rehashing all the reasons they are right.. It seems impossible for them admit any wrong-doing and I think this comes out of insecurity. The more threatened the ego, the more it wants to protect itself.
I think of the many times I've said or done something I shouldn't have, gotten angry, tried to get my own back. Something eventually shifted, though, and I began to realize that it doesn't matter if I'm right or wrong; what I actually want is to let go of the residue of bad feeling I can so easily drag around with me. I've learned to feel in my body what anger, resentment, the need to prove I'm superior feel like. A motor revs up inside me and takes over, makes me go over and over again whatever the incident or argument was, becomes an obsessive reliving of all the bad feelings I walked away with.
I no longer want those feelings in my body so I've had to cultivate the kind of humility that helps me recognize when I've been wrong or done wrong. It keeps me from leading with ego and from the need to prove anything. It's what make amends possible.
But there's another ingredient in the willingness to make amends. Someone once said that the only way out of guilt is to take responsibility. Guilt imprisons and paralyzes me. Taking responsibility puts me on a new footing; it's as if I've been in a dark cave, endlessly blaming myself, giving myself all the bad feeling that keeps me from change. But I can find the way out, the way past the prison of guilt and that means taking responsibility. Not only for things I've said and done but also for the voices inside that tell me lies of negativity. I want that pathway, the freedom it promises. If it requires owning up to the truth or making amends or surrendering the need to clutch bad feeling to me, I'm more than willing to do it. I just don't want to live in guilt and carry bad feeling forward.
