Doing what it takes

If you’re not willing to “do what it takes” are you stupid, lazy, or do you have integrity?

I spent most of the past week finding out. Or making travel arrangements. I’m still not sure which.

Early in the week, I carted two sections of newspaper back to my sunroom office with me. They both had inspired some writing ideas. They were good ones too. One came of an article on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the other (which I’ll probably still get to) from an editorial on “Mass market mysticism.” But I didn’t get to them.

I also abandoned a little excitement I was feeling for trying a bunch of do-it-yourself book projects like building my own website and e-publishing my own books. I even got a manual on that one. Its cover is bright yellow and its insides are bright white. I carried it in my purse for a few days. I underlined things I ought to be doing. I began to develop goals.

Maybe the travel plans derailed me for a reason. Or a bunch of reasons.

The travel arrangements had to do with giving talks on my books. One went smoothly. The other didn’t. They led to those “doing things my way” feelings that seem to come over me every time I consider doing things someone else’s way. My “standards.” Sort of like trying to write blogs that don’t have spelling errors. I’ve caught a few over these last six months, but not too many.

I can’t base the quality of my blogs on the same quality standards anybody else has…except for the baseline stuff like spelling. That’s kind of what I confronted with the travel…this feeling of…1) there’s a baseline, 2) just because something works for Joe or Jane doesn’t mean it’s going to work for me, and 3) whether or not anyone reads my blogs (or if few read my books) the standard is still there.

So let’s say I was basically looking at, in several different ways, this attitude that can get to you without you even realizing it…the instruction (as in a manual)…or the assumption (as from an organization) … of “this is the way things are done”, the kind of attitude that gets you wondering why, if “It worked for Jane and Joe,” or why, if “this is the way it’s done,” you still feel that it just won’t work for you.

What surprises me is how insidious it is and how it gets to me at first. “Oh yeah, yeah. You’re right. If “they” can do it, I can do it.” (You don’t even realize it’s the same sort of thinking that can get you into a "get rich quick" scheme even if it’s about something a lot more benevolent.)

In this case, it certainly wasn't anything shady. It wasn't anything about the people. The intentions were all good and they were even being generous. It was just me doing my usual wrestling with an issue that had become bigger than the particulars.

Me, seeing how I go along at first, until those other feelings come. It’s not just standards. It’s disposition. I’ve got this line in The Given Self where I say, “You have the right to feel as you feel.” It’s in there because I found I’d be asking myself: “Do I have the right to feel as I feel?” Do I have the right to have my own standards? Do I have the right to say… “I’m a private person. That won’t work for me.” Or… “This is the kind of room I need to give a seminar.” Or even to shake my head over an instruction manual and say, “That’s all well and good, but man, I’m just not interested.”

I’ve found that the thing is, you have to be willing to let go of the outcome if you’re going to say, “That won’t work for me.” If you’re not going to try something, it makes no sense to then get regretful that you could have, and maybe it would have worked. You’re going to have to find a way to be accepting of the head scratching that ensues when it is discovered that you’re not Joe or Jane…your own head scratching…and that of other people.

These are the kinds of things that took up my week. Not plane reservations, but feeling those feelings that told me, “This won’t work for me,” and then having to do something with them. Accept them. Accept the outcome.

It’s a good thing to have to do it once in a while. It’s clarifying. And it’s liberating to find out that you can live with an outcome that wasn’t the one you might have been going for.

But the funny thing is that when you’re looking at whether or not you’re willing to do “what it takes,” you could be all three: stupid, lazy, or acting with integrity.

In the end, the best solution, it seems to me, is to banish the idea of doing what it takes.

I Feel

6:31 Sun not yet up. A nice dark feeling woods, still, with spots low to the ground and around the edges untouched by light. The eastern sky hovering between white and pink as the sun gets ready.

I sat down thinking “I need a procedures manual for my life.” You know you’re in trouble when you think something like that. And when your arms ache and you’ve got what feels like a toothache coming on, and this is what you write about first thing in the morning when you’re in your cabin looking out at a not yet bright day with thankfulness, watching your cat watching you through the window. The cat you wanted to boot in the butt for standing at the door indecisively even though he does it every morning, only squeezing through when you’ve grown impatient and let the door begin to close and at the last moment, with a quick whip of his tail, he makes up his mind, or whatever it is cats do. That’s about how I feel. Whatever it is that I do it is not the doing of a mind made up.

Oh, I know mornings, and feelings of inadequacy and questions of “am I doing the right thing,” and thoughts that get me out of bed even when I’d rather sleep in on mornings dark and cool. When the thoughts arrive I get up, feed the cats, wait at the door for Max, walk the fifty paces from door of house to door of cabin, watch the sky brighten and the trees gain distinction against the sky.

Oh, I know mornings, and feelings of adequacy too, and the messages that arise and the words that accompany them, the ones that aren’t strident, are often gentle, at times visionary. I pay attention.

This morning’s thought was, “I need to use the words “I feel” more often.” It seems like a message in between – not quite chastising, not quite gentle – but still revealing.

I feel: