11/3/11 Re-Examining
Options 6:03pm
We can get stuck easily, and unstuck less readily if we don't
learn how to make a practice of it. When I was younger and had all the energy of
my convictions to heal the planet, elders warned me that I'd soon lose the
desire to do good or the belief that my little plot of good will have much
impact. Unfortunately, as I was taught to listen to my elders, to be a good
girl, to be respectful of their years of experience, I listened. I pulled back
from believing that my deepest intuitive impulses, insights or inspirations
were to be followed whole-heartedly. I did step off the beaten track, but I
walked hesitantly instead of joyfully in the wilderness.
Now, at my age and in my position, I know better. I spoke
today with someone I met when I was 17 and she was 16. I was Junior Class
President. She was Sophomore Class President. We had our journals and were
sharing notes out on the girl's softball field. We've remained dear friends and
trusted guides to each other all these years. She's one of the ones who
encouraged me to step off the path. She wrote me a poem over a decade ago about
how she was the Mother to All Men, and I was the Guest of the Land. Today she
said, You did thirty years ago what kids today are starting to do and getting
criticized by their elders. Your stories would give them assurance that they
are not wrong or crazy for streamlining their life choices to subjectively suit
them and not just take on someone else's excuse of a life.
I shared with her that after reading Lori Gottlieb's writing
in MARRY HIM: The Case For Settling For Mr. Good Enough, I had five fascinating
men who were suddenly extremely interested in me. Gottlieb says that every year
after the age of 35 a woman loses her power, allure, value in our society.
Gottlieb chose to have a child before she found a husband and is now experiencing difficulty finding a suitable
man she can stomach, yet she writes threateningly that unless we settle now, we
won't have a chance later. She says at 41 her options are increasingly limited
but they aren't as limiting as they would be at 51. This is utter and pure
hogwash.
Karen said, "I don't understand why you aren't pissed off
that she's writing this old fashioned dreck and getting it out to the youth of
today as common knowledge." I told her that they were in the process of making
a movie about the book. "All the more reason you MUST tell your story, write of
your experience. You truly are a Guest of the Land. You are welcome everywhere.
Don't doubt that this is true." I
said that a guest is perhaps welcome for three days. "Do you want or need more
than three days?" I admitted that
after three days I need to return to my own self. She said, "Exactly. If you'd
stayed on the path by now you would be on your fourth divorce. Instead, you are
delighted to be valued and appreciatied for who you are and what you think and
feel instead of playing a role that others insist you be for them." Just as I
could have listened to Gottlieb and shut down in fear, I can listen to the
American Cancer Society and do the same, or take what I know about healing and
implement what I know will heal me.
Decades from now I can sit with Karen on rocking chairs in
Ireland, all wrinkled and wise, laughing that we each made this life our own. She the palliative specialist guiding
the masses into their next life, and my writing out in the world giving
permission and guidelights to one's own BIG O.