Hugs

After my mother died we were like six orphans living in an empty house looking after each other. It wasn’t exactly like that but that’s how it felt.

Most of us have lost family members and we all know that people deal with it differently. Some wear their hearts on their sleeves and others keep it to themselves. I remember being a hard-case teenager, driven to move forward and forget about the past. I remember when whats-his-name’s behaviour was once explained by having lost his mother and my reply was “What!? That was over a year ago!” as if everyone else in the world just bit the bullet and moved on. People come, people go. Next!

When my mother died my sister Rachel was fifteen and she didn’t just wear her heart on her sleeve, she wore all her organs, feelings, needs and wants right out there for the rest of us to share in. Not only were we expected to embrace this but to adapt, conform and get in touch with our own emotions as well as hers.

“I haven’t had my three hugs today!” She would declare. What could you do? The girl had just lost her mother so fine, I’d give her a hug. I guess my mother must have hugged her a lot for her to need all of us to fill that void, but this angry teenager wasn’t really into it.

At first.

The thing is, Rachel wasn’t taking hugs, she was giving them. She was preventing us from each living in our own little worlds and having only living quarters in common. She was making sure we each connected with her daily, acknowledge her, her presence, her person and consequently ourselves. And of course, you can’t go around just hugging Rachel when there are four other people in the house, can you?

Eventually I wasn’t just acquiescing, trying to make Rachel feel better. Eventually I was participating. Initiating. Needing hugs of my own.

Then I moved to Montreal where people kiss each other all the time instead of hugging. Left cheek, right cheek. (My left not yours – it would take too long to keep figuring out which is your left cheek!) Suddenly hugs became a very intimate thing, just for family, and all this cheek kissing is what you do instead of shaking hands. In fact, shaking hands is kind of insulting in some circles. When in Rome…

Then I came back to the land of hugs and suffered in limbo for a time as I readjusted: people would lean in for a hug and I’d be leaning in for a kiss there’d be this awkward collision of noses and chins, unintentional gropes.

And now I find my world is pretty huggy; family, friends, neighbours, Santa Clause…

But sometimes, I just have to say, “I haven’t had my three hugs today!”

Something’s missing. Could we please put it back?

The joy of learning is missing from our world. You hear new parents talk about it, for about five minutes. You hear teachers talk about it being the reason they went into teaching. But then the goals change. It’s not about learning, it’s about memorizing. It’s not about enjoying the outing, it’s about getting there on time.

Watching five-year old Ivan is like a Calvin and Hobbes come to life. “Ah!” He says, slapping himself on the head, “I’m going to send an email to myself!” and before our laughter subsides he screams “Hey!’ as he springs back from the lap top, face agog, “I just got an email from myself!”

That learning of cause-and-effect is so magical in the moment, so joyous and valuable. As we grow, try to fit in, we go around pretending that we already know everything, each cause-and-effect learning like a failure instead of a success. The joy of learning – about things, about life, about each other – is missing.

Could we please put it back?

Beware the Wildebeast

Nobody wants the Wildebeast. We all have one, you and I, different though they may be. His Wildebeast would run if it could, run long and hard in circles so big they would feel like straight lines. He would feel his claws – back and front – biting into the ground, propelling himself forward, maybe snatching at a passing branch – or rabbit – with his jaws. You know the beast I mean.

And hers would HOWL. Howl at the moon and howl at injustice and howl in hunger for a greater reach, greater scope, a challenge worthy of the effort. She would stand so tall, looking for more, peeling back the tops of trees for a glimpse of what lies ahead; limitless possibilities.

But now, we see glimpses of them only, fretting at the cages we’ve built for ourselves.

Your Eyes

When I see me through your eyes I don’t want to live here.

Don’t want to live.

I see what you imagine, what you believe, what you’re afraid of.

You don’t really look at me. Into me.

You are careful not to touch me.

I’m not that person you see, but if I reach out…

You step further away.

So I move on. Maybe for now, maybe for ever.

Maybe till somebody can see me. Hear me. Touch me.

Till I am real.

Till I can touch the world.

Till I am strong enough to see it through my own eyes.

Authenticity

I fell into a cliche and died, unheard, unnoticed by the world around me.

I spoke words that weren’t my own and my music was lost amid the noise.

My thoughts came and went from the lips of others, repeated; in one ear and out the other.

Until I saw the ripple in the pattern that was me, only me.

And when I saw it others did; and when I spoke, others heard.

And then we spoke together, listening, talking, sharing. Ideas that dance on our mingled thought-waves.

Authenticity.

Alone Together

What I like about going down to the lake is that I can be immersed in all of the elements at once. I can feel my energy going straight down into the earth, who knows how deep; I can feel it stretching on the wind as far as I can imagine, feel the pull of the water wrapping me up, and on special days, the lightning sears the sky and sings to my nerve endings about the beginning of time.

I feel like we are all connected through these energies, through these elements and through time. I have this idea that the energy is sort of physical, and finite and that when you travel by a means that is not under your own power, your energy can’t keep up, can’t stretch that far. I think of the drain of jet-lag versus the stimulation of canoeing, or cycling.

I feel as if you and I are connected, secretly, underground by that earthy energy, the way the quaking aspen trees in Utah are connected (are actually one living organism), and not so secretly, through the air, by our thoughts. And smiles. And what on earth do we call the energy that travels from your eyes to mine? Science and sci-fi suggest that I can give you positive energy and that you can give it back, and that this is the ultimate win-win.

And yet, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we take take take and maybe that’s why I like to go to the lake alone. Sometimes we need to go back to our roots and revel in the energy from the earth and wind and fire and water.

Or maybe it’s not about being alone, maybe it’s about reconnecting with the whole.

The End of the Tunnel

Our culture is so focused on that light at the end of the tunnel. I find I am so easily derailed when I can’t see it. Maybe it’s a bend in the tunnel, maybe the light goes out, but the panic, the flailing in the dark, the desire to give up, to press re-start and build a new character is terrific. I wonder if it really happens, if these deja-vus we all get are cause we already played this part of the game before. I wonder if that’s cheating.

On a trip to Vermont once, Mike aka the Best was driving and I was gawking at the scenery; up and around the winding roads, green valleys, steepled towns, low-hanging sky. We saw a rainbow, bright as can be with all its colours intact and as we wound around hips and curves of hills we got closer and closer. The excitement grew and then, quite suddenly we saw it – the foot of the rainbow planted firmly on the road in front of us. We drove through it in a shower of pixie dust and revelations of forgotten spiritual treasures and I felt for sure that life would be smooth sailing after that.

But maybe that wasn’t the lesson. Maybe the lesson was that the light at the end of the tunnel is a beautiful and compelling guide, but the point of the journey is all of the bright souls that light the tunnel along the way.

Naked Fear

So I have a lot of wacky ideas, and I go “whew”pretty often when I realize that people can’t tell that I have these wacky ideas. Some of these wacky ideas might be called Worst Fears which I don’t realize are wacky at all until they’re over, or done with, or gone.

So it’s pretty alarming when the repertoire of worst fears start to happen one after another. One of them, lets call it the banking-related fear, played out like a bad stage play in slow motion. The kind of play you can’t get up and walk out of cause you know all the performers, but you can’t bear to sit through it and you wonder how on earth you ended up here in the first place.

Next there was the, “cop happens to run your plates on the 401″ fear. You see her driving behind you. You pass a car to put someone else in the line of fire. She passes the car too and follows you. Then the cherry lights go on. Can you play dumb at that point, with a heart attack in progress?

So the scary part is that there’s a whole bag of fears where those came from. And the stressful part is that it’s tempting to think that maybe they aren’t all as bad as I imagine they will be. That they’ll happen and I’ll go, “Oh, well, now that’s over with.”

Like the time I walked Denise to the subway early one morning. I didn’t need to be up so early and decided I would go right back to bed so I pulled a dress over my nightie which was over nothing, slipped into some flip-flops and walked the few blocks to the station on a quiet blue morning. As we approached the entrance a train went by underground and my dress-nightie combo flew up around my ears. Straight up. I pushed down the front and the back billowed on. I held the back down and the front went up again. Finally, I stepped off that damn subway grate.

Then I had to walk back past all those people waiting for the bus.

In this case, I think I must have experienced someone else’s worst fear by accident cause I assure you, I wasn’t losing sleep at night fearing that I would one day be naked in front of the Junction commuter line up. I didn’t wear a dress for ten years or so.

The thing is, all these little fears sap your confidence and it makes you feel like you’re in a bit of a trap. It’s how you feel when you’re without a job, without resources, without the language, or the connections or a community to tell you it isn’t as bad as you think. (Or a family to tell you it’s worse!)

You need some kind of reference group in order to check in and realize that you aren’t public enemy number one. Then, presumably, you don’t have to learn everything the hard way.

Note to self: always be prepared – wear under garments.

Maslow’s Adendum: The Artists’ Paradigm

In my MBA class one of the weirder things we were asked to do to was to self-identify our social class based on a textbook list with a pretty strong bias.

In marketing terms, businesses look at groups of people to study their buying power, buying habits, buying preferences and figure out how best to make money off of them. I checked boxes indicating that I had the material values of the upper-upper, the social network in the middle-middle and the financial profile (historically) far below lower-lower. As I pondered this, I realized that most of my friends were in the same boat as I, making us undefinable targets for marketers. After pondering this I came to believe that for a minority of people, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is exactly inverted. I am referring to the Artist Class, though I suppose no one will ever study these people because there is no money it in. At least, in the short-term.

For the artistic temperament, self-actualization is all. They are willing to sacrifice safety, shelter, food, family, social acceptance, financial gain, everything on the imperative need to be themselves; to be true to themselves, to be all that they can be. When they develop some confidence in this, they then want to be accepted for who they are and build a place for themselves in the world, whereas previously they disdained the opinions of those who couldn’t value them. After years of toiling for little recognition or compensation, they start to want to indulge in a few material essentials, like a credit card, a car or a house with their name on the deed. And finally they start to want a little security, and begin to look for teaching jobs and other stable occupations that let them earn a living while practicing their craft and being themselves.

I see this tendency even in a child who knows in his heart that no one really listens to him, no one really understands him, no one sees him for who he really is or values him for his him-ness. We are all trying to stuff him into a box – for his own good – and his reactions repel us.

Given that this is being called the creative age from so many angles, I wonder what would happen if this small number of creative types were actually identified, invited into some kind of environment like the Centre for Social Innovation where they could develop some confidence that their self-ness wouldn’t be taken away, and then worked backwards from there to help make the world a better place. Is that what happened to me? Here at CSI I have found home, shelter (even food) acceptance, encouragement and all the support one could want for self-actualization and I wonder if that is the reason why I am now engaging in outreach, in (gag) cooperation, in helping others to self-actualize. And suddenly it makes me wonder, what’s next?

What if everyone was treated like an artist from the beginning and given these basic ingredients for life?

Loner Pie

One hot July day in 2007 I was feeling a little bit invisible, like I had no connection to anything and sort of felt like I needed people to see me. To know that I was here. I needed some way of making a scene without making a nuisance so I changed my birthday on my Facebook profile to the day in question.

Back then we were all new to FB an only had 40 or 50 friends each, you remember those days right? So of course everyone saw that it was my birthday and I got a great many well-wishes and nobody seemed to care that it wasn’t February.

Then the following February I turned 40. I didn’t feel 40 but when you’re sitting around broke and jobless you really feel like “this is not where I planned to be at 40!” I had planned to have a fabulous masquerade ball with all my favourite people at some sort of Cirque-esque venu, or to have a potlatch and give things away. But I didn’t have any things to give.

So I invited the family out to breakfast at the Grenadier restaurant in High Park and just crossed my fingers that someone was going to pay for mine. I think several someones did and now we have a new birthday spot in the family.

I remember in first year theatre at Concordia, after about one week of going home alone each night and then spending a whole weekend with nothing to do, I went back to school that Monday morning, found Barb, Isabel, Walter and Krikor sitting in the hallway, and blurted out some kind of blah-blah about not having any friends in Montreal and nothing to do and they all said “Yeah-yeah, me too!” And even though I left after one year, we all stayed friends.

And sometimes I write about things that I think are just my own weirdness, and I put it out there in the hopes that it is entertaining to people. (Actually I’m hoping for engaging, compelling and enlightening, but I’ll settle for entertaining) And then I am always surprised by how many people comment, send emails, messages or Facebook notes saying “Yeah-yeah, me too! I get it!”

How come we all get lonely if we all share the same weirdness?