The Shift Diaries

About 30 years ago, when I was approximately 28, I was having a day of illness where I felt so bad I’d gotten back into bed. I was awake. It was a beautiful afternoon. Suddenly this pops into my mind, “What would happen if someone came and took all my makeup? Would I be okay without it?”

Now, something about the way the question was posed made it clear that I’d have to do without makeup. It was not as though it would be gone from my house, but I’d be able to head down to the store, bare-faced, and replace it. This seemed an odd thing to consider (as far as I was concerned, I required makeup to feel presentable), but I reflected a moment or two on that question, and decided,”I guess I’d be okay.”

More questions like the first came steadily. It was sort of as though someone asked me, and I was replying, but it was also sort of as though I asked these questions of myself. Except that these were not questions I would ever have thought to ask myself.

What if all my clothes were gone? Would I be okay? What if everything in the kitchen were gone?  Would I be okay? What if everything in the house were gone? Would I be okay? What if my car were gone? Would I be okay? What if I didn’t have a place to live? Would I be okay?

These questions went on until all the ways I identified myself and created comfort and security were gone. By the end of these questions, I saw myself out on the street with nothing more than a blanket to wrap around me. I appeared remarkably cheerful and…okay. How could that be okay? Would I really be okay even then? And, odd as it seemed to me, I really felt I would be okay.

Now, let me assure you that I wasn’t one of those flexible, easy going, take it or leave it, anything is okay with me, let’s go live off the land types. I didn’t like camping. I did not romanticize poverty. I had no aspirations to abandon my life to wander with nothing more than I could carry in a backpack. I saw no advantage of any kind in depriving myself of anything I wanted. I liked my stuff. My possessions were important to me. I liked the usual creature comforts. I was living pretty minimally, in my opinion, and that wasn’t really okay. I wanted more and better of everything I had. I had upwardly mobile dreams. I assumed my life would improve in all the expected material ways.

But here I was in my bed on what seemed to be a perfectly ordinary afternoon, contemplating a whole series of odd questions about what I could live without.

These questions and answers seemed somehow very light and they went by fairly quickly. There was a question, a moment of reflection, then my answer. I didn’t know what to make of this, yet neither was I particularly amazed by my responses. In real life, it didn’t seem that I’d find this okay at all, yet in this little question and answer session, I somehow saw that I would be okay without all the stuff I thought was important.
 
Although I’ve never forgotten that afternoon, I can’t say that it made the slightest difference in my views about what I needed to feel okay in life. In fact, I can’t see that it impacted me in any way at all. What was all that about, anyway?

Twenty-five years later, I began a hellish transition from the familiar way of life to living on what Elias talks about as the threshold of the unfamiliar. This transition was marked by one loss after another until all the ways I identified myself and created security for myself were gone. I’m left with more than a blanket. I’m not living on the streets. But over and over during the past few years I’ve asked myself that question from so long ago.

Will I be okay?
 
A friend I hadn’t heard from in a very long time phoned me yesterday. She and I were chatting about my bizarre life (I’m just putting it out there to everyone these days — exposure ‘r’ us). Hearing about my situation prompted my friend to offer the usual perspective about the unimportance of material things  — a concept so many of us think we believe. I certainly used to think I believed it. She said, “We all know what’s really important in life are things like our connection with our family and friends, and how we feel in our lives.”
 
And I replied, “We all say that we know what’s really important. We think that’s what we believe. But the way most of us live shows what we actually believe – our expressed belief. The belief that we EXPRESS is that what’s really important is having money and nice material stuff, living in a nice house in a nice area, how we dress, how we look, and whether we’re productive in ways that seem materially significant.”

I thought I knew what was really important to me, and I didn’t think it was money and status, my youthful good looks, and living a “shallow materialistic life.” But when I lost all that “shallow materialistic stuff,” I wasn’t waltzing around full of joy that I still had what REALLY matters in life. I didn’t REALLY believe that what I had left mattered. I wanted my comfortable life back. I wanted my stuff, my money, my position on the social ladder.
 
Much as I would like to think I believe that the best things in life are free, my experience has been that living off “what’s really important in life,” heart-warming as that may sound, can seem like mighty slim pickings when it’s just about all you’ve got left. Yes, my awareness has expanded remarkably, but that and $3 dollars won’t even buy you a gallon of gas in my neighborhood. Yet, what I’m coming to genuinely understand, instead of just mouth, is that what I have left is not “nothing.” It’s something very different than what I used to rely on, a comfort that’s often not all that comfortable, and a security that doesn’t seem especially secure. But I have a strange faith in this new, unfamiliar way. I want to believe in it, even if I still express a leaning in the old direction.

So, this brings us back around to that question I, or something, asked me thirty years ago.

If all the camouflage I relied on were gone, if the familiar were stripped away, if I had to find completely new ways of being in the world, would I be okay?
 
It’s taken me many years to come to the point where I can genuinely say what I so oddly recognized all those years ago, “Yes, I guess I’ll be okay.”

This entry was posted on Monday, May 15th, 2006 at 11:17 pm and is filed under Sharing experiences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About 30 years ago, when I was approximately 28, I was having a day of illness where I felt so bad I’d gotten back into bed. I was awake. It was a beautiful afternoon. Suddenly this pops into my mind, “What would happen if someone came and took all my makeup? Would I be okay without it?”

Now, something about the way the question was posed made it clear that I’d have to do without makeup. It was not as though it would be gone from my house, but I’d be able to head down to the store, bare-faced, and replace it. This seemed an odd thing to consider (as far as I was concerned, I required makeup to feel presentable), but I reflected a moment or two on that question, and decided,”I guess I’d be okay.”

More questions like the first came steadily. It was sort of as though someone asked me, and I was replying, but it was also sort of as though I asked these questions of myself. Except that these were not questions I would ever have thought to ask myself.

What if all my clothes were gone? Would I be okay? What if everything in the kitchen were gone?  Would I be okay? What if everything in the house were gone? Would I be okay? What if my car were gone? Would I be okay? What if I didn’t have a place to live? Would I be okay?

These questions went on until all the ways I identified myself and created comfort and security were gone. By the end of these questions, I saw myself out on the street with nothing more than a blanket to wrap around me. I appeared remarkably cheerful and…okay. How could that be okay? Would I really be okay even then? And, odd as it seemed to me, I really felt I would be okay.

Now, let me assure you that I wasn’t one of those flexible, easy going, take it or leave it, anything is okay with me, let’s go live off the land types. I didn’t like camping. I did not romanticize poverty. I had no aspirations to abandon my life to wander with nothing more than I could carry in a backpack. I saw no advantage of any kind in depriving myself of anything I wanted. I liked my stuff. My possessions were important to me. I liked the usual creature comforts. I was living pretty minimally, in my opinion, and that wasn’t really okay. I wanted more and better of everything I had. I had upwardly mobile dreams. I assumed my life would improve in all the expected material ways.

But here I was in my bed on what seemed to be a perfectly ordinary afternoon, contemplating a whole series of odd questions about what I could live without.

These questions and answers seemed somehow very light and they went by fairly quickly. There was a question, a moment of reflection, then my answer. I didn’t know what to make of this, yet neither was I particularly amazed by my responses. In real life, it didn’t seem that I’d find this okay at all, yet in this little question and answer session, I somehow saw that I would be okay without all the stuff I thought was important.
 
Although I’ve never forgotten that afternoon, I can’t say that it made the slightest difference in my views about what I needed to feel okay in life. In fact, I can’t see that it impacted me in any way at all. What was all that about, anyway?

Twenty-five years later, I began a hellish transition from the familiar way of life to living on what Elias talks about as the threshold of the unfamiliar. This transition was marked by one loss after another until all the ways I identified myself and created security for myself were gone. I’m left with more than a blanket. I’m not living on the streets. But over and over during the past few years I’ve asked myself that question from so long ago.

Will I be okay?
 
A friend I hadn’t heard from in a very long time phoned me yesterday. She and I were chatting about my bizarre life (I’m just putting it out there to everyone these days — exposure ‘r’ us). Hearing about my situation prompted my friend to offer the usual perspective about the unimportance of material things  — a concept so many of us think we believe. I certainly used to think I believed it. She said, “We all know what’s really important in life are things like our connection with our family and friends, and how we feel in our lives.”
 
And I replied, “We all say that we know what’s really important. We think that’s what we believe. But the way most of us live shows what we actually believe – our expressed belief. The belief that we EXPRESS is that what’s really important is having money and nice material stuff, living in a nice house in a nice area, how we dress, how we look, and whether we’re productive in ways that seem materially significant.”

I thought I knew what was really important to me, and I didn’t think it was money and status, my youthful good looks, and living a “shallow materialistic life.” But when I lost all that “shallow materialistic stuff,” I wasn’t waltzing around full of joy that I still had what REALLY matters in life. I didn’t REALLY believe that what I had left mattered. I wanted my comfortable life back. I wanted my stuff, my money, my position on the social ladder.
 
Much as I would like to think I believe that the best things in life are free, my experience has been that living off “what’s really important in life,” heart-warming as that may sound, can seem like mighty slim pickings when it’s just about all you’ve got left. Yes, my awareness has expanded remarkably, but that and $3 dollars won’t even buy you a gallon of gas in my neighborhood. Yet, what I’m coming to genuinely understand, instead of just mouth, is that what I have left is not “nothing.” It’s something very different than what I used to rely on, a comfort that’s often not all that comfortable, and a security that doesn’t seem especially secure. But I have a strange faith in this new, unfamiliar way. I want to believe in it, even if I still express a leaning in the old direction.

So, this brings us back around to that question I, or something, asked me thirty years ago.

If all the camouflage I relied on were gone, if the familiar were stripped away, if I had to find completely new ways of being in the world, would I be okay?
 
It’s taken me many years to come to the point where I can genuinely say what I so oddly recognized all those years ago, “Yes, I guess I’ll be okay.”

This entry was posted on Monday, May 15th, 2006 at 11:17 pm and is filed under Sharing experiences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.