Everything in its Place

If you liked last post's extended metaphor, oh boy get ready for this stretch...

For some reason, in the last week or so, every time - seriously, every time - I've gone to use a public restroom, with the little latchy thing that pushes to the side to lock, I've locked it quickly, begun to open my fly or lift my skirt, only to discover upon turning around to sit that the door didn't actually lock and has swung open.

Every. Time.

I'm of the belief - fruity as it may be - that when odd patterns like this recur over and over, the world is trying to tell me something; there's something about which I'm not being mindful, beyond the usual "slow down and pay attention."

The best I've been able to come up with (and, admittedly, I came up with it at about 3 in the morning at a bar after a couple Stellas) was that you can't move on to the next step in life, until the previous step is finished and in its place, and if you move on too fast, your vulnerabilities will be exposed. 

(Told you it was quite the extension...)

But patience is not an easy skill to cultivate.  My mother told me many times in my childhood, when I would remark on my anticipation of a birthday, vacation, Christmas (believe it or not the collective favorite holiday of the Rosenbergs) or other special events: "don't wish your life away."  Wanting things NOW, however - whether it be change in one's life, career success, love - is endemic to our culture.  How many commercials end with the insistence on speed of purchase?  How often are we offered training programs or new software or self-help guides to give us the tools to advance as quickly as possible?

As I've mentioned in my discussion on sympathetic joy, it's incredibly difficult not to get caught up in the Western spirit of competition, comparing your path to the path's of others.  I'm terribly guilty of this - I have a horrible time focusing on all I have accomplished in five years in New York, choosing instead to flounder in a swamp of "haven't done as much as the other guy."  But my path is my path, and theirs is theirs, and the suffering I experience is entirely self-inflicted: if you live in the delusion that you have control over your journey, you're doomed to the consistent, painful discovery to the contrary. 

I feel like each year I've been here I've thought, "now I'm REALLY ready for [insert here: 'an agent,' 'to be in a relationship,' 'to book my first huge gig,' etc.]  Man, last year I thought I was but no way. Man was I dumb then. But NOW I'm ready."  I have the audacity to believe over and over the world should provide me with the next step, that I know when the lock is in place, and damn it I should be moving on.  Only to, year after year, realize in retrospect I was not yet ready for that step, and put myself through suffering unnecessarily, sometimes getting caught with my pants down, as it were.

I'm convinced as long as each year of my life I look back at the previous year and think I was a complete idiot, then I've successfully grown. I guess the key, then, to "locking the bathroom door," and allowing things to be in their place, is to accept that basically, I'm always an idiot.  No matter how super awesome I think I am now, in a year (a month? a week?) I'm going to look back and laugh at my arrogance, so I should just enjoy my idiocy now!

Don't have a lifemate, Rosenberg? You're not friggin ready for one.

Don't have an agent? You convinced you'd have known what to do with one if it had dropped from the sky a year ago? Fat chance. 

Didn't get that show you thought you were "perfect for?"  Not getting it is allowing you to ride the wave of Boy in the Basement's continued success.  Just be a happy idiot.

It is funny, though, that for someone who spends most of her life striving to get smarter, rejoicing in idiocy is proving a far more intelligent choice...

Comments

[MadeInBrooklyn]

freudian exhibitionism

[Q]

"When the student is ready, the toilet stall will arrive."

[Brennan]

So, I have a question.

Are you saying you have no control over your future?

Or are you saying that lusting for results isn't the answer? And you should "drive" from your current position rather than the future-position you're living for?

I also put A LOT of weight in "signs" or other little lessons that life seems to be trying to communicate. I think that the signs are valid whether the signs are being created by the universe with the purpose of communicating a message or the "signs" are simply my subconscious pointing out things in the physical world to help me learn. Either way, they are sings that carry info for me. It's then on me to pick them up and run with them or not.

Good perspective on yourself.