Quote:
Originally Posted by tinglytoes
Hi Linn, I appreciate your sharing. I am happy for you that FB has provided an equalizing meritocracy for your interpersonal relationships. I had not really thought of how obviously it could work in ones favor to equalize the interactions, especially if one had a mechanical device which in everyday situations would be obvious, yet free from this limitation when on FB. I have not gotten into it much in my area so far. It feels pretty la-la out here in, "Santa Cruz-Keep it Weird"!
I myself have rather severe, ongoing progressive health problems, which ironically do not show. I have the opposite issue, nothing to show for all my health problems. My friend with Parkinson's tells me, half jokingly, that I should wear a sign around my neck saying "Not as good as I look"! It is very difficult at times to try to avoid explaining, or defending my reality to strangers or teachers etc... I haven't worked since '97 and live on a shoestring. This is also very limiting for what most take for granted to make choices, I cannot take for granted. I look fine, present as well and positive, act like I feel fine, unless one looks closely, and no one knows anything unless it comes up or I trust them enough to share. I have tried it all different combinations, as I am sure you must have as well. It is not easy to hit the right tone. Sometimes because I look well. I have to pretend that since the time when I could barely walk, I am truly now all better. Like it was the flu or something. The expectation is always that I could fix myself if I really wanted to. Yeah and health is for the rich if you can pay the alternative healers the exorbitant fees for chakra healing with space beings etc.... It is true i feel bitter at times.
often once I share even a little bit of my life reality, their eyes glaze over because my over-all presentation is not as expected and they get a bit freaked. Fear is more like it. If it can happen to me it could happen to them at 48!!
I agree that the lessons I have learned from the entire fifteen years plus, most likely could not have been learned any other way. I often feel saddened that the lessons will be wasted on those who need to hear them, due to the resistance to accept that life is not under our control despite the healthy focus in general. This financial downturn and the loss of home and all reasonable resources for thousands is akin to the sudden loss of physical health. The denial is similar as well. Loss is loss and does not need comparison. However we do not as a culture enfold and encourage those who fall between the cracks of the standards we hold dear as identifiers.
What wake up call for all of us that materialism is being broken down, finally shown to be as shallow and devoid of true meaning as it is. The great equalizer is Katrina type catastrophes and serious illness. At the same time we all have more than enough to share if we took the need seriously enough to step up and offer to each other according to each ones resources. Perhaps we have more resources than the average person whose life goes on as usual. Perhaps we have more muscle built up for facing adversity and keeping our head on straight and our hearts open.
I live in Santa Cruz CA with a health obsessive culture everywhere you go.
At no time in my earlier life did I know how to deal with handicapped persons, and had no exposure to stroke survivors until I became one at 48. Then I had to be thrown in with very elderly folks who naturally suspected I must be faking somehow. It is hard to be in the position to not fit, and feel unaccepted, even when I shared the same reality of struggle to accept the handicap, grow beyond the symptoms, overcome negative labels and re-gain my self concept, same as anyone with an obvious walker or wheelchair. The cultural indoctrination is a trip.Expectations all over the place. I ended up going to places my own parents were unable to cope with because they hadn't gone through them yet themselves. That was trippy.
The acculturated health bigotry is societal and encouraged by the grandiosity of our narcissistic modern beliefs. The belief that everything is possible if one only claims it true, with enough ju-ju it will surely manifest as we believe we deserve. Books like the Secret, authors like Louise Hay, and endless new age teachings are typocally one sided.. Basically splitting life into the shadow, into good or bad. Eventually those who expect only good experience the failure of their body. When this happens, the confusion that all life is a mixture of every good and often many, very bad things, becomes the inner teacher. Limitation and suffering seems to be how the human race evolves to become more compassionate and understanding, we are not actually separate beings. We don't need to define ourselves by our negative experiences. Yet at the same time I refuse to claim or label my process as "bad".
How do I know in the big picture if there is not some serious soul making gifts to be had in this process? How can I ever know if by being congruent in this present reality, someone else will be able to awaken their own heart to tolerate less than ideal life events in their future?
Sometimes I think that those who hold a part of the suffering, physical aspect of this planet are like the proverbial "canary in a coal mine". Indicators of the planetary soul -making process. No one escapes the loss of body identity in the end, some just get to practice it earlier and longer than others. We are the teachers, whether others yet value or recognize this. The humbled ones who are waiting to be heard, as we know our experiences are the often a valuable message of the way to the heart. We are the "gold made out of lead" if you will. What could be more worthwhile than this??!! Best Wishes TT
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Tinglytoes ~
I feel like you spoke from my heart. You are able to say things so much more clearly than I am, though. That expressive clarity is one of the things I had to give up. To me, it is the sign of a very good mind.
I struggled for years with the reality that my physical appearance doesn't match my profound inability to function. My facial muscles don't work like they should any more, but the slackness just looks, to others, like "depression". I can pass for "pain and dysfunction free" in public without a thought, but every single minute I spend out in the busy environments, or in face to face conversation, is torture beyond description. Just using my voice is often torture. I have no desire to explain myself or excuse myself to other people, though, unless I've committed an offense, and so I could not find a way around this. (However, those people whom I've brought back into my life from my past know how animated and bouncy I "was", so they'll see the difference, face to face.) I used to resent not simply having lost a leg or something obvious. Now I am glad that I "pass", because it is a normalizer.
We used to provide therapeutic care for teen boys who had committed horrible offenses, and had significant behavioral challenges. Our approach, generated during my previous time as a Social Worker, was to look candidly at their dysfunctions and deviancies, and set up their environment in our family home so that those dysfunctions and deviancies became irrelevant. It took very careful planning. The end result was that they were able to be "just boys" in a family, and get up on Saturday mornings and watch cartoons in their PJ's, and have all of the daily family experiences they truly needed. Inside the home, you seldom knew the extent of these boys' histories. They could play and laugh and be actually "normal". We couldn't extend that environment into the public with most of them, except with the support of a few young, dynamic Case Aides by their sides. That seems to be my approach to my situation. Define the mechanical dysfunctions I have, adapt where I can and find a way to make the rest of the issues irrelevant, while still engaging with the current of life. I think of the computer as an "adaptive tool", in that regard.
I think people assume/expect that they have so much control in their lives. Any evidence to the contrary means they have to reestablish control by converting it into anger, and directing it at a chosen "cause" of their injury or loss. Acceptance has become equated with "failure" or "giving up". The best gift I now own is the complete knowledge, and peace with, the Truth -- I have no "right" to any control over the physical aspects of my life. Even the most basic, fundamental aspects, like food and shelter (I have gone without the former more than once in the past few years). The only Actual control I have is to accept Life as Life, and to choose to find joy wherever I can, and to feel my frustrations and pains honestly, but to not over-indulge them and let them take me over. I'm from the Puget Sound Region, which has borrowed a lot from the culture you live in. (I could not live in CA, as beautiful as it is there, for just the cultural reasons you refer to). My whole peer group settled comfortably into that successful, intelligent, "enlightened" upper middle class, with all of the associated magical thinking. I love so many of these people, but I see their assumption of control in their lives and I actually pray that they never have that shattered. I know, however, that if they do, and they survive it emotionally, they will be so much more free, and really truly happy. I know that now that I have reestablished relationships with these different, important people from my life, I can tell them, when it's important, about my health issues, and they will actually see me as I am, compassionately and with real empathy. I can't explain why this is the case. I think it's partly because they're already comfortable with me as "normal" by their unconscious definition, and so what's wrong with me physically will, by default, end up being included in their definition of "normal".
I like the "Wounded Healer" archetype. I associate that with what you are saying. The person who has lived through what life actually has to offer and become the stronger and more compassionate for it, and therefore has a kind of Peace that other people want to emulate, or that can serve to teach other people. My dad, a Methodist Minister who is fluent in the original Biblical languages, loves to point out that the NT Greek word used in the "Sermon on the Mount" is actually a word that translates accurately as "wounded healer". He will demonstrate how this is the whole point of that sermon. I think that almost every culture and religion has that same archetype. Not that suffering is the goal -- but seeing life as what it is, from the larger perspective, and letting go of attachments to physical identity and possessions and the expectation of Perfection, as a result of having lived through life's challenges, and making peace with the world, and with a true Compassion because of this, *is* the point. What I find ironic is that when I let go of the narcissistic expectation of a sort of functional perfection, I found True Perfection, in the Universe and how the whole process of Life works. It's so much more freeing to see that Perfection in what Is, rather than to try so hard to impose the reflection of it over what is.
I really wish I could express myself with your clarity. You demonstrate so much insight and perspective just with that gift. I keep checking in to this forum to see if you've posted. I think that you probably bring a lot of good to the world, whether or not you mean to, just by having achieved, inwardly, what is unconsciously shown by your insight and your ability to communicate it simply.
Thank You :-)
Linn