the secret
Nov 17th, 2008 by tortoise
i think i’ve found the way out. i could be wrong, but i think i have the secret.
i’ve been thinking about it, puzzling over it for years…
waiting and waiting
someone told me a story once. a woman she knew was talking about the importance of training men. this woman had a date with a guy and the guy was late. it might have been 5 minutes or 10 or 15. it was no more than 15, and i think it was 5. after 5 or 15 minutes of waiting for the guy, the woman went home. the guy called later and asked what happened, and the woman said “you weren’t there.” it took, from what i remember of the story, no more than 3 times of this and the guy was either on time after that.
i’ve been thinking of that as a good example. there are the women who wait longer than 5 or 15 and get mad because they are waiting. there are the women who wait no more than 5 or 15 and maybe even have alternate plans and they aren’t mad because they aren’t waiting.
it reminds me of the complaints people of color have about white people. the whole sordid history of this country becomes null and void not if the racism stops, but if the racism simply isn’t accepted. what i mean is, when you run into a goober, if you aren’t investing more than 5 minutes, then you don’t care. you don’t have to run to the mental bookshelf, find that volume of intended and unintended slights, misdemeanors and felonies and add another chapter. because you simply aren’t accepting the behavior.
i was reading a biography about condeleezza rice. her parents lived in the south and set up their lives so that the goobers didn’t get more than 5 minutes. to be sure, there were barriers and obstacle courses, but they found ways around them. above them. under them. and eventually, right on through them.
getting out
but i digress. i was ruminating about my own history of a childhood resembling life in a pow camp, realizing how often i run to that story. it’s so easy to return to those depressing years, finding parallels between what happened then and what’s going on now. which is stupid. i don’t live with those people anymore and i don’t have contact with them. so why the hell do i keep returning to the past mentally, dredging up old issues and complaints?
why the hell am i giving these people more than 15 minutes?
and i figured it out. i think. i keep treating myself the way they used to treat me. i’ve left their shithole physically, but i still live there mentally.
condi’s parents lived with goobers physically, but not mentally. which speaks volumes about the why of her success.
and the lack of mine.
the key
it’s simple, really. i have to treat myself differently. in every single way. that stops the mental “wah”s and reduces the amount of time i spend in the past, dredging up the old complaints and returning to a state of despondency. in fact, it makes all that shit disappear entirely. as if it had never existed in the first place. the less you live in trauma-ville, the less you live in trauma. (okay, that sounded pithier in my head.)