Dear Cary,
A stupid speeding ticket has thrown me for a complete loop.
I am a slow and careful driver. I have to commute for an hour to my job. I have done this for 10 years now, and I learned a long time ago that speeding stressed me out but really didn't get me there much quicker. So I put my cellphone in the trunk to avoid temptation, I drive in the slow lane, I let anyone in who wants in, I try to stay the heck out of the way and assume that people who are speeding have some real reason to get there faster. I actually used to savor my downtime in the car alone as "transition time" between home and work. I leave 10 minutes earlier, I drive the slower, prettier route, and I enjoy a peaceful commute. Until very recently, I never had a ticket for anything.
As part of my commute, I have three miles on a four-lane twisting road through a beautiful park where the speed limit is 25 miles an hour. It is an appropriate place to drive slowly, but very difficult to drive 25 miles an hour, and most people who use this stretch of road ignore that rule. I am consistently the slowest driver on this stretch and a few weeks ago, a fellow was driving behind me very closely flashing his lights and beeping at me. This happens to me every once in a while, but this guy was more aggressive and more angry than I am used to. I was in the right lane and tried to just ignore him, but he was really making me nervous. Finally, I gathered that he was not going to go around me on the left and he really wanted my lane so I moved to the left lane. He gunned it, flipped me off and yelled at me as he passed me on the right, swerved into the left lane in front of me, slammed on his brakes to scare me, then took off at a high rate of speed. My heart was pounding, but I moved back into the right lane and looked up and a police car was behind me with its lights on. I pulled over, and the police officer said he had clocked me at 43 mph. I started to talk, he told me he didn't want to hear it, took my records and wrote up a ticket.
I got a ticket for excessive speed -- 43 mph in a 25 mile zone -- that has 4 points associated with it. I am stunned. I really don't know how fast I was going and I don't have any reason to think that the policeman was wrong, but I am surprised I could have been that far over the speed limit. On the other hand, I think that the police are generally fairly accurate, and I really don't know. I am angry that I got the ticket and the harassing driver did not, but just because he deserved it doesn't mean I am innocent of speeding.
So, since that happened I have been paying more attention and driving the speed limit on my commute. I even use my cruise control to maintain the proper speed where it is difficult, and I still cheat a little -- I add 5 mph where it seems ridiculously slow. For example, on one stretch of my commute it is 40 mph for two miles on a perfectly straight four-lane highway. The slow speed limit seems senseless, but I have been doing it anyway at 40 to 45 mph. I have been especially aware where there are road crews working, even on the interstate. This new attention to strictly following the speed limit really hasn't seemed to add any time to my commute so I think I must have been poking along like this all along to some degree. It is a more stressful and less enjoyable drive to pay such close attention for the entire drive.
Even more stressful, however, is the rage that I inspire in my fellow commuters. And I mean rage. People are outraged at me for trying to make sure I drive at the speed limit on many stretches where it seems I am the only driver who is aware that there is a speed limit. The incident that happened just before my ticket is now happening to me every day, sometimes more than once a day. This morning a fellow who had been tailgating me through my narrow neighborhood street was so infuriated that I slowed down for a yellow light that he passed me on the left and raced into the intersection after the light turned red -- he narrowly missed creating a multi-car disaster, and it took time to untangle the traffic mess this caused because he was blocking traffic and couldn't go anywhere. Although it was bad judgment on his part to pass me on the wrong side when I had stopped for a light, I feel in some ways responsible for the ensuing confusion. Other drivers who perceive that I am driving too slowly or cautiously seem to hate me, and they hate me with a sharp-edged, profanity-laced passion. They cut me off just to intimidate me, they yell at me, they flip me off. They want me out of their way. It feels like they want me to die.
I used to use my commute as a time of private isolation to listen to music or just drive in silent thought, but for the past few weeks I have been terrorized whenever I am behind the wheel. I am having nightmares about these angry people and I have started to have old nightmares about something bad that happened to me long ago -- the nightmares are of being randomly selected and harmed, and of having no way to help myself. I dread driving to work. I dread driving home. I feel very helpless.
I am trying to get along in this world where I have to drive, and I am trying to be respectful of the rules and my fellow man, and I am trying to even be a little flexible in spots (5 mph over the limit seems reasonable). But this has been a total nightmare for me, and I am seeing my fellow human beings in a very different, frightening light. I really don't know what to do. It should have been a minor event -- I can handle a speeding ticket, right? When you get a speeding ticket it is tangible and expensive proof that you should slow down, isn't it? Why am I feeling so shattered? Why can't I safely drive the speed limit without being terrorized?
I am angry that there do not seem to be any other speeding tickets being handed out by the many police I see on the side of the road, but I really don't think that would make me feel better. I want to know what to do, and I don't know what to do. Is it possible to obey traffic laws and not disrupt the lives of my fellow drivers? Why does this feel so much bigger than it is?
I hope you can find words to calm my thoughts.
Terrorized Commuter
Dear Terrorized Commuter,
The words I would use to calm your thoughts are these: You don't have to keep doing this. You can stop. In fact, I think you need to stop driving this route now. My advice to you is to decide, today, to change what you are doing. It is important that you do this before things get worse. Your very life is at stake.
You need to break the cycle. Each time you get stressed by an angry driver you are flooded with stress hormones that are damaging to your health and well-being and may lead to a catastrophic accident, high blood pressure, stroke and a host of other stress-related illnesses. It's like you are being poisoned.
And for what? All in order to participate in a system of transportation that is insane and should have been changed long ago? All to keep working at a job that perhaps does not give you what you need in life anyway, except for a paycheck?
Why does this feel bigger than it is? Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it is really that big. Every morning and evening for 10 years you have been driving a lethal weapon at high speed among a horde of other drivers few of whom are highly skilled, many of whom are distracted, driving with inadequate sleep, their minds blurred by prescription medications, their nerves raw from murderous routine, their anger spiking at the slightest provocation, their vehicles poorly maintained, their reactions erratic, some of whom can barely see, others of whom do not know the rules of the road, all of whom are driving on poorly maintained American roads not designed or built especially well for high speed; you are vulnerable to the lack of skill and emotional reactions of a whole host of characters of varying skill levels and psychological stability and all this is completely beyond your control. It is insane. It is insanity multiplied by millions of miles. Things happen in an instant. Things go wrong. Things spin out of control and people lose their lives every day. It's a nightmare.
How much bigger does it have to get?
But every morning hopped up on caffeine we suppress our fear and strap ourselves into our death machines. In the evening, weary, distracted and impatient to get home, we strap ourselves in again. We pretend it's normal. We pretend it's manageable. We have somewhere to get to, so we do not linger on the tragedy of loss that is our highway system; we do not mourn the wetlands squandered for highways, the meadows paved over, the mountains cut into, the trees sacrificed, the animals deprived of habitat; we do not shudder at the poisons released into the air by our vehicles as we cruise along at lethal speed. We just drive. We suppress what we know to be true -- that what we are doing is mass suicide of historic proportions.
We just drive.
Because you've got to keep up the commute, right?
Maybe not.
Maybe it's time to throw a monkey wrench in the works.
You may need to get help for the trauma you are experiencing. But I would think hard before adopting treatment aimed solely at getting you back into your automobile. What you are going through, I would suggest, is a recognition of the truth. The veil has been pulled away and you have glimpsed just how insane this whole enterprise is. Take your symptoms seriously. They are telling you that there is something fundamentally wrong and you have to stop doing it.
There must be an alternative. If not, that is one more indictment of our criminally mismanaged transportation infrastructure: The fact that driving to work is not simply an option but a necessity for so many millions of Americans is appalling. The fact that it is so commonplace makes it not less appalling but more so.
Consider yourself forced to explore alternatives. Are there other people in your neighborhood with whom you could share rides? Could you pay someone to drive you? If you examine the per-mile costs of commuting, including maintenance, gas, oil, insurance and the value of the car itself, you might find that, rather than being an added expense, it would be a net savings to find someone to pay for a ride. And there must be some transit hub somewhere, no? That you could drive to and park? No?
Then let's get radical: Why do you absolutely have to go to this particular location every day? What would happen if you stopped going? What would happen if you refused to participate in this murderous and insane ritual? What if you take the leap, become a resister, just up and stop the madness?
You could stop commuting just on principle. You could tell the people where you work that they will have to make it possible for you to work at home.
I am serious about the urgency and immediacy of the situation. I say do something before it's too late. Stop the madness! Do this not only for yourself but for the millions like you who have been driving in appalling conditions.
You know, we sometimes live with chronic situations that we know are intolerable but we keep going. We can do lasting damage to ourselves in this way. So I urge you to act on what you know to be true. This is an intolerable situation.
Stop tolerating it. Let the chips fall where they may. You don't need to do this.
What? You want more advice?
Dear Reader,
Next week I head into the hospital for surgery on my sacral chordoma. This column will run Monday and possibly Tuesday. Surgery happens Thursday at UCSF Medical Center on Parnassus Avenue in San Francisco. I'll stay at UCSF for eight to 10 days before moving to St. Mary's Medical Center on Stanyan Street for a few weeks of physical therapy and rehabilitation. I welcome your cards, letters and visits, though it's not possible to know what condition I'll be in. As soon as I can, I hope to resume writing the daily column.
Dear Cary,
I was asked by a dear friend to be her maid of honor. I was immediately a little worried. I'm not into traditional wedding fanfare. I'm kind of like the stereotypical guy in that respect: Tell me where to go and what to do, and I'll do it. Plus, the wedding has been on a rushed schedule at a time when I have a lot going on in my life too. Add to that the fact that the bride and I have been drifting ever since she met her fiancé, about a year ago. The two are inseparable and not that social; I've just naturally spent more time with other company. Maybe my biggest mistake was not expressing my concerns when I was first asked. But I've been a maid of honor before and it's gone fine, and I imagined this would be the same.
You can see the train wreck coming. Fast-forward to a month before the wedding: I get a scathing e-mail from the groom without the knowledge of my friend (I'm certain she did not know), stating that it's time to "talk to me about my role as maid of honor" and maligning me for my many failures in the role. The e-mail was snide and contemptuous, questioned my values, and accused me of being "irresponsible," "unaccountable," "selfish," of "not caring" and not being true to my "compassionate progressive values." He said I misunderstood or underestimated the role, and that he couldn't understand my lack of involvement or inquiries about the wedding planning. He ended by saying he had no faith that I'd show up for rehearsal and that he didn't care anyway.
It felt like having the wind knocked out of me. So, I responded immediately, cc'ing my friend, basically saying "WTF?" (probably should have waited until I had a cooler head, admittedly). A few more e-mails ensue, I try to defend myself and point out that the groom's e-mail was totally inappropriate and graceless, and my albeit defensive response is construed as a statement that I feel like the wedding is a burden, or that it's all about me, and my friend's whole family and the rest of the wedding party are royally pissed at me because of my response to the groom's e-mail. So, my friend boots me from the wedding party because "others" don't want me in the wedding anymore but says I can still come as a guest. I tried after my initial defensive response to be as apologetic and deferential as possible just to try to salvage things (trying to take the high road), but to no avail.
If the bride and groom's actions sound irrational and extreme, it's because that's exactly how I experienced them.
After all the drama, honestly, my first reaction to being ousted was relief. A couple weeks have gone by, and now I feel totally pissed off. The truth is, I tried. I participated in planning and throwing a shower, and a bachelorette party, I got gifts, tried on dresses, etc., rearranged work responsibilities to make all the events ... by no stretch was I the model maid of honor, but frankly I can't imagine treating anyone close to me the way I'm being treated, especially someone who'd been doing things for me all summer -- even if I found those efforts disappointing. And maybe this sounds like a lame excuse, but she never once expressed any hopes or expectations for what I would do. The missive from the groom was the first word ever uttered to me. I feel totally hung out to dry.
I was gracious when she dumped me, and we both tried to spin this as not an indictment of our friendship, but more and more it feels like one. Neither of us have reached out to the other since the "break," and yesterday I reaffirmed my commitment to go to the wedding in an e-mail to see if I'm still welcome (still trying to take the high road) and received no response. It took her three days to write a tepid response that I can still come.
Our mutual friends agree I've been treated badly but think I should suck it up, and for the sake of the friendship put on a smile and go to the wedding. They think she's stressed and under the influence of an overzealous fiancé and family, and that I'll earn respect by showing up for her.
I have valued this friend. But the more I reflect on this situation I feel so angry and misunderstood. I feel I am owed an apology. It deeply offends me that my friend hasn't stuck up for me, hasn't acknowledged anything I actually did do for her, and doesn't empathize with my point of view at all. Even though she blames the discord on the feelings of her family, I believe that they take their cues from her, and she could have stuck up for me as her friend.
How do I go to the wedding in these circumstances? But how do I not go, if I want to preserve a chance to salvage the friendship? Is there anything worth salvaging?
Maid of Honor Never Again
Dear Never Again,
I have long labored under the illusion that when a bride chooses a maid of honor she is expressing her esteem and love for that person, declaring her to be part of her intimate circle of friends and family and pledging, symbolically, to include her in the new life that begins with the ceremony and will continue for years afterward.
I did not realize that choosing a maid of honor was equivalent to hiring an unpaid event planner on a probationary period, pending her demonstrated competency and loyalty to the company, lacking which she could be fired like a janitor from Manpower.
I guess I was wrong, and so were you. You thought you were chosen for who you were, for how she holds you in esteem. It turned out that you were hired provisionally on a trial basis and dismissed when your performance was judged subpar.
Knowing that weddings are pageants of power and status rather than declarations of loyalty and love can perhaps dull the blow. You can say to yourself it's just another bullshit social competition. Also, some of the pain we find in adult friendships and social conflicts can be traced back to childhood. But that does not make the pain go away.
So just exactly what happened here? What was it about this friend that you liked so much? Did she make you feel special in some way? Did you feel when you were with her that you were the most important person in the world to her? Did her loyalty indeed shift suddenly and completely to her husband? Certain people make us feel wonderful when we are the subject of their attention but leave us devastated when, with a guiltless, frictionless, sociopathic cool, their attention shifts to a new object of reflection. Such people do not form deep bonds and cannot empathize; their relations with others are reflections of themselves. When you are giving such a person what she needs, that is, reflecting back to her a suitable image of herself, then you are her favorite and she loves you as she loves herself (ha ha). When you express yourself, however, or deviate from the image of herself she sees in you, then she turns away to find a more suitable reflection of herself.
Perhaps that is what happened. Perhaps you were the victim of a person with narcissistic tendencies. After all, a modern American wedding is a narcissist's dream. Such a wedding ignores the great fact of all rites of passage: that while something is gained, something is lost. It only celebrates and does not mourn.
Rather than accept the reality that not all of her friends are perfect reflections of herself, and not all of her friends exist solely to support her narrow view of who she is, which would have been an adult approach, your friend retreated from reality. The loss she might have accepted she instead transferred to you. She made you lose, rather than face reality.
It is ironic that the one ritual that is supposed to usher us into adulthood is so festooned with pastel fantasies of preadolescence. It is also an indictment of our culture. Covering ourselves in the rituals and symbols of childhood, we blind ourselves to our coldest and most bloody conquering, muttering silly platitudes about God and country while blithely marauding across the planet, conquering and destroying all that is not Disney.
By acting in such a way, the bride turned away from maturity. You, on the other hand, can use this event to grow stronger and wiser.
Painful as this is personally, I hope you will examine in detail what friendship means to you. What traits do you look for in friends? What do you value? Who among your friends is truly your ally? Who would come to your aid in a crisis? Who values you for your uniqueness and cares about your feelings? And who seems to be hanging around you only for what they can get? Who steps forward and offers help when you are in a jam or feeling bad? And who seems to be around only during the good times? Did any of your friends tell the bride what they thought of this action?
As for your own character: Each of us must know our strengths and weaknesses. Next time someone asks you something like this, you have a chance to say, Sorry, I'm not sure that's for me. There's no shame in that.
Lesson: Beware the narcissistic bride. If you displease her, she will inscribe the scarlet F for Fired on your forehead.
Since it's been a few weeks since you wrote me, I include your addendum here:
UPDATE: Dear Cary -- So, I did go to the wedding, sat with our mutual friends, and was basically ignored. This was a few weeks ago, and she and I have had no contact since. I have mulled whether there is anything else I can do, but I think now the ball is in her court, and I fear that this friendship is over.
My friend and her husband are decent, reasonable people. I honestly do not know how they justify between themselves this sustained anger at me. My only suspicion is that the groom is very possessive, and as my friend's closest girlfriend, I wonder if that was threatening to him (subconsciously, as he would never admit that to himself). He does not like her doing things without him. She accommodates this, realizing it's an insecurity but also flattered by the depth of his love and need. I feel that he set this whole thing in motion with his explosive e-mail, and that my friend lacks the perspective right now to look objectively at what he did. I believe she sees his letter as an act of loyalty and love.
I have two rival impulses at this point: I still want to express to my friend my point of view, which I never did for fear of "ruining" her wedding. It also makes me sad to lose her as a friend. But I think this is out of my hands. I actually think the person who holds our fate in his hands at this point is the husband. And that pisses me off and makes me want to walk away. I don't know that anything good would come of trying to talk honestly with my friend. But it feels bad, too, to walk away without an honest conversation.
What? You want more advice?
Dear Reader,
Appointments, appointments, appointments. You'd think I was the president. Except they don't make the president pull his pants down so much. Do they?
Also getting my money stuff together for when I'm lying around in the hospital for days on end doped up silly. Lucky I have really good help with the money thing (see below). -- ct
Dear Cary,
I have been with my boyfriend for two years. For six months of that, we've been living together. We're grown-ups with enough of life behind us to know what we want from the rest of it. We're in love, compatible, and extremely happy together. Not to say we never have moments of frustration, and the stray medical issue or crappy job situation sometimes dampens the fireworks, but our life together epitomizes everything we've ever wanted in a relationship. I've been thinking I'd like to be with this man for the rest of my life, in that formal, official, traditional way that usually involves a few dozen relatives and friends, cake and quite possibly some dancing.
There's a complicating factor: I'm a relatively recent divorcée from a marriage that was emotionally manipulative, exploitative and draining. About a month ago, my boyfriend started asking questions about my views on and attitudes about marriage, but it didn't lead to anything. I'm concerned that it's because I didn't get my message across that "YES I AM TOTALLY OK WITH MARRIAGE. I'D SAY YES ENTHUSIASTICALLY!!" On me, suppressed anything looks and sounds like a bad case of constipation. Even suppressed joyful hope (or hopeful joy?). So maybe he thinks that I'm not ready.
(Note that I've never been awkward or uncomfortable with him about any other topic. It's just that this is so big!)
For a number of reasons, I don't want to propose to him. He's younger and less experienced in relationships, so I want to give him the chance to set the pace. I also want to be asked, rather than ask, because I enjoy his knack for romantic gestures. I don't want to ask him his intentions directly because I don't want him to feel the pressure of me Waiting For Him To Propose while he makes that kind of decision. As for the indirect route, he'd see right through a dropped hint.
Should I just wait it out? Bite the bullet and ask? Do something terribly clever I haven't thought of? Am I misinterpreting the situation? Let me know what you think the best course of action would be for me in this situation. Thanks!
Please Insert Clever Acronym Here
Dear PICAH (is that clever?),
You know what I suggest? I suggest that you continue to talk about marriage in an open-ended, non-threatening way, with the understanding that nobody's proposing anything and nobody's declining anything. You're just sharing thoughts and feelings. Maybe the conversation would go something like this:
Remember a month or so ago when we sort of talked about marriage?
Yeah.
Well, could we talk about it some more?
Sure.
OK.
Well?
Well, I just wanted to talk about it some more.
OK, he says.
Well, you say, I want us both to be happy. Don't you?
Sure, he says. I want us both to be happy.
So it would be great if we both wanted the same thing.
Oh, yeah. That would be great.
But it would be sad if we wanted different things, you say.
Yes, he agrees, that would be sad.
So I'm scared, you say.
What are you scared of?
I'm scared that we might not want the same thing.
Aw, baby, he says.
Or maybe he doesn't say "Aw, baby." Maybe that's not his style. But he acknowledges that you have expressed a feeling and doesn't freak out about it.
Basically, you don't have to decide on a big thing like marriage right away. Instead, you have the courage to admit your fears and explore your wishes. You just explore and share.
So then he might say,
Well, what do you want?
What do I really want?
Yes. What do you really want?
What if I say what I want and it's not what you want?
That's OK, he says. We couldn't want all of the same things.
Maybe he's trying to get you to say what you want first. Maybe you want more couscous. Does he want more couscous? What about sleeping? Do you both like to sleep the same amount of time? What kind of pillow do you like? Have you been mildly unhappy with your pillow? What about his pillow? Sometimes when you just in together you don't talk about which pillow you like. Sometimes you end up with his pillow or he ends up with yours. Maybe he wants a new pillow. That would be good to find out. Asking, Do you want to get ... a new pillow? is easier than asking, Do you want to get ... married?
Keep it open-ended, talk about concrete things in the here and now. Take your time. As you explore these questions, ask yourself, what would marriage do for us? What would it require of us? How would it change things? What expectations would we bring to it? What were the marriages of our parents like?
Maybe some of that will work its way into the pillow talk.
Also, if you're talking about marriage, you're talking about money. So you could also talk about money. No pressure. Just sharing feelings. How do you feel about money? Do you hate money? Are you afraid of money? Do you hoard? Do you binge?
As far as that goes, I found a good person to help me with this money thing -- my friend and mentor Elizabeth Husserl, inventor of Inner Economics. She has a private practice in Berkeley where she works with people one-on-one, either face-to-face or via phone consultation, about their relationship with money. She also offers workshops. periodically (the latest one was last week!). I have learned a lot from her. I'll let you know when her next workshop is.
So ... Let's talk about money too, you say.
What about money? he says.
Well, money scares the shit out of me!
Me too, he says. Let's talk about rugs instead. Things will become clear.
Maybe, you say.
I think so, he says.
Bit by bit, you say.
Bit by bit, he says. Plus, I could understand if you were a little gun-shy.
Well, it would have to be the right person, you say.
Even so, he says. After what you've been through.
But with the right person ...
Even with the right person, he says.
You're sweet, you say.
I try, he says.
Makes a great gift. Can be personalized for the giftee of your choice. Signed first editions on sale now.
What? You want more advice?
Dear Reader,
This is going to have to be quick. When it has to be quick I try to make it just true. One way is to just write once through. I tried that last time I had to take painkillers. It worked OK. So I'll do that again. It's not that I'm on strong painkillers now. I just have more doctors appointments.
There is something to be said for writing a piece straight through. There's no going back. We writers, aided by the ease with which one can move text around using a computer, very well may revise too much. But that's an argument for another day. All I'm saying is that I have very little time so I'm going to write this straight through without revising.
I wanted to say more about forgiveness. I mentioned yesterday that one has to go through an internal process to arrive at a moment of letting go. This process can be quickened by having a scare. My recent cancer diagnosis was just such a scare.
One thought such a scare elicits is that we have been living all wrong. We've been stressed, angry, hurried, not taking good care of ourselves. We think, "Perhaps that led to this disease." We also think, "I've been wasting time worrying when I could have been enjoying life more." And we sometimes think, "I've been holding on to resentments that are doing no one any good."
As we see how our attention has been wasted regretting the past and fearing the future, we pay more attention to the here and now. As a result, we trust our intuition more. This leads to a greater incidence of synchronicity, or apparently positive coincidence.
So it was that the other night I found myself attending a meeting. It was not terribly unusual for me to be there, but I could have skipped it. I followed my instincts. There it turned out was someone with whom I had had a strong friendship followed by a falling out. It had been years. I had been stuck believing that this person owed me something. I had been insisting that I would not budge in my poor opinion of this person until the imagined debt was repaid. I felt put-upon, ignored, dissed, even disgraced if you want to know the childish truth of it.
I have a side that is not very adult. Call it what you will. We must take care of this side, most of us, because it never grows up. Sometimes when the things we most care about are involved, this side is most present. So it was in this case.
When I saw this person, my first conscious response was dread. I groaned inwardly. But that was a protective response I had learned to project in public. My true response, my inner response, was gratitude and excitement. I was actually happy to see this person. Having been through two weeks of extreme fear, regret and uncertainty, I welcomed the chance to see this person from my past. During the meeting, it is true that I entertained various uncharitable thoughts about this person. But it was as though this childish side of me were fighting its one last battle to maintain its sick ascendancy. I was done with the old feelings. The old resentments lifted.
Afterward, this person sat near me and I was able to say with complete honesty that all that old resentment had lifted. It was gone. And it truly is.
Did I have to get cancer to experience this? Let's hope not. How can we come to cherish life and get our priorities straight? Sometimes it does take a shock of this kind. Perhaps we can get such shocks in other ways. Perhaps we can engineer our lives so that similar shocks of recognition are not so hard to come by.
It is true that I express my emotions through my body, often through illness. This has been true since I was a child. I resist knowing this and saying this but experience shows it to be true.
So the logical thing to do is to seek out peak experiences that can bring us to such brinks. One such recent moment, I must say, was the experience I had at the Sun magazine Into the Fire conference at Esalen. Did I tell you about that?
Perhaps I will tell you about that tomorrow. Right now I have to go have a conference with a surgeon.
Surgeon rhymes with sturgeon. If I get scared looking at the surgeon, I'm going to think of sturgeon.
Makes a great gift. Can be personalized for the giftee of your choice. Signed first editions on sale now.
What? You want more advice?
Dear Reader,
Well, I finally found time in between medical appointments to write answers to your questions. I am an advice columnist, after all!
Meanwhile, nothing new to report on the medical front. I'll keep you informed. -- ct
Dear Cary,
I would love to get some advice on dealing with anger when you can't address the person you are angry with directly.
I spent a few weeks with my sister and her family as well as my mother this past summer for a much-anticipated reunion of sorts. My sister moved to Singapore last year, I live in Germany, and meeting up on Cape Cod was something I really looked forward to. Particularly because I work long hours for the Army and most of my leave is spent flying home to visit my parents. My father has dementia and is in a nursing home. Travel has been exchanged for family priorities over the past few years and for the most part I'm fine with that.
Still, during the two weeks at the beach house, during which I had a great time with my little niece and nephew, I noticed that my sister and her husband were fighting a lot more than normal. There was so much tension between them that I finally asked my sister what the deal was.
Turns out he cheated on her with two different colleagues and both affairs occurred at the same time their children, now 4 and 1, were conceived.
I listened to her talk about how angry she was, and am the only person she has shared this with. She said she would never tell my brother-in-law that I knew.
So here's the deal. It's been two months and I am incredibly angry.
Part of that might be because I don't have the opportunity to say, Hey, pal, that thing you did? Not so great. Or just a simple "I know." Instead we're looking at years of family trips where I'm going to stifle my thoughts and feelings and just play nice. My brother-in-law is a very sensitive guy who always is emoting about everything. He is a highly educated (Ph.D.), ponytailed poet who is highly critical of others. His opinions about other family members' choices are always freely given, which is why I can foresee this being difficult. He doesn't deal with illness very well either, can hardly bring himself to visit my father, and I was already angry about that. Angry about a lot of things, actually, that I just have swallowed because I believe in the high road. Suffice it to say that I'm flabbergasted by how judgmental he is of others when all the while he was doing this.
But now ... I saw my sister's pain. I am worried about the future of my little niece and nephew. Trips planned to see them in Asia? I have lost interest now because I can't see myself not having "the talk" at some point.
I need advice. Assuming we're a family for life, I need to know how I can constructively deal with this. I can see myself at 90 finally telling someone and, yuck, I don't want to carry this. That sounds self-absorbed, I realize, and this isn't about me. But still ...
Angry
Dear Angry,
Forgiving him does not mean that you approve of what he did. It means that you unlock the boundless human compassion that lives within you. It means you come to see him as just one more imperfect human doing his best to get what he needs and find wholeness.
It means you let go of the urge to throw him out of a moving car.
Surely it would be gratifying to throw him out of a moving car. Feel free to meditate on that. It may have some brief therapeutic benefit. After all, you can tell yourself, it's not his body tumbling with sickening flips and thuds along the gravelly shoulder of a freeway at 70 miles per hour. It's the body of his tragic incompleteness. It's the body of our shared human flaws.
But going down that road is a lost cause. For as you meditate on this image, your boundless human compassion will kick in, you will empathize with that body being torn and broken by the impact of the highway, and you will have a millisecond of revulsion.
Then you'll feel all dirty inside. He's your sister's husband and the father of your niece and nephew, after all.
So. We all have such thoughts. We move beyond them. You have to find your way into a moment of forgiveness in which this resentment rises into the air and disappears. You have to experience this. It might happen in a conversation with your brother-in-law. That may or may not be the best course of action. (If you decide to do that, however, I caution you to talk it over with your sister first. She may be concerned about how he will react if he learns that she told you.) No matter what overt action you take, the letting go has to happen within you. And it won't come through understanding what happened. That's not how it works. We arrive at forgiveness through a somewhat mysterious process. We pray, we meditate, we play rugby about it. It can take years. One day it lifts. If we practice, we can shorten these intervals. We can inoculate ourselves against these things by remaining in a state of constant awareness of our own flawed nature. But it remains a mystery and comes upon us unexpectedly.
My recent cancer diagnosis caused me to let go of certain resentments. I was thrown into situations where my resentment lifted; I seized moments, too, under this pressure, to resolve certain long-standing issues.
You may be prevented from letting go of this because of unshakable moral conviction. Surely he violated his marriage vows. Surely his actions caused pain to others. But they flow from something we all share: our hunger and incompleteness, our tragic fragmentation of the spirit. If you can come to see that, then you can see these reprehensible acts as expressions of his flawed nature rather than as acts against your sister.
Without knowing exactly how this is going to play out, I suggest you treat it with seriousness and urgency. Seek fervently for release. Throw yourself into the effort. Face this with the desperation of a man who knows it's a life-or-death situation. You have already imagined what a shame that would be to carry this with you until you are 90. So begin now.
Start with what you know. Whatever you have done in the past to move on, to cleanse yourself of attachments and beliefs that no longer serve you, turn to that practice now. It may be religion or exercise, martial arts, philosophical meditation and thought, hiking, sailing, scuba diving, music.
Whatever practices you have, turn to them urgently, for resentment can be deadly. It can poison relationships, ruin families, catalyze addictive behaviors and deaden us to our own innocence. Throw yourself into this. Find its root in your own spirit and tear it out. Let it go. Let it rise into the air and disappear.
Somehow, eventually, you must forgive this man his weakness and move on.
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Dear Reader,
Nothing new on the medical front. Holding steady until surgery Dec. 17. I plan to write daily through the 15th. Then I'll be out of commission for a an unspecified number of days, and will get back to writing as soon as possible after the surgery. The logistics will take some figuring. Maybe I'll use the iPhone. And I'll let you know where I am in case you want to bring fruit.
Dear Cary,
I'm not the most articulate person but I read this column most days and today I want to throw a little problem of mine out there.
I have read questions of life and death and everything in-between here, but mine involves the use and abuse of my cellphone.
What troubles me is when people, well, almost always family, my three sisters in particular, call and do not leave a voice message but expect me to respond to a missed call.
My message says if you want a call-back please leave a message. Still, I have been chastised for not returning calls from a simply dialed-in number.
And I stand my ground. I use my phone for my business five days a week and get many calls and messages. I always return voice-mail messages and answer my phone most of the time. On my time off I don't carry it with me on walks, at movies, in the bathroom, while driving, whatever, but I check in for messages regularly and return calls when I can.
I have stated to them that it is not personal if I do not answer the phone when it rings but they don't seem to hear my side. Writing this, I realize that it is not my problem but the caller who won't leave a message and expects a quick call-back. But I have not found a peaceful solution or a way to not be defensive about this. Honestly, I realize that this is a small problem in the scheme of things but it is a recurring theme in my life and I am troubled by the negative input I get for it.
Is this a cellphone etiquette thing that I missed? I usually call my mom back in that circumstance because she is older and may need me in an emergency. Otherwise, is this an obligation I am missing?
Now that it's written, it does seem rather peevish and nothing funny about it but again, the little things can hold us back, dammit.
Thank you.
Please Leave a Message
Dear Please Leave a Message,
We're all busy constructing hoops for each other to jump through. We say, Here is the hoop you must jump through to reach me.
See how you have to scrunch down to get through it? It diminishes you, doesn't it? I stand on a chair with my whip and I observe you scrunching down to get through the hoop. Nice job. Now maybe I will call you back if I think it's important.
When your phone rings and it's your sister, do you say to yourself, "Well, she did not leave a message, so she must not want to talk to me"?
That must be why she called: because she does not want to talk to me.
That makes sense.
Or she must not want to talk to me strongly enough to follow my rule.
She must not want to jump through my hoop.
New rule: Everyone is holy and deserving of our love, even people who do not follow our cellphone-answering and callback rules.
It is a lot of work having all these rules. I ought to have a police force. Then if people leave the door open at the cafe, or people talk on their cellphone next to me in the wrong manner, my police would intervene.
They would have to intervene silently. I don't want to know about it. I don't want a scene.
On the other hand, I want certain people to know that they have been intervened with, that they were wrong about whatever it was.
I have rules for where to put the sponges in the kitchen sink. It's not enough to just have the sponges put where they belong. I want the misplacer of the sponges to hear about it. I want the satisfaction.
I would be a demanding emperor. It would suck up all my time.
I would get sick of all my rules and complain. I would blame other people for how much time running my empire is taking. Someone would say, but sir, these are all your rules.
That person would get thrown in the river.
People would form opinions. They would say, "ruthless dictator." "Petty tyrant."
They would get thrown in the river.
Soon the river would be clogged with bodies and I'd ask, Who clogged the river with bodies? Someone would answer, But you did, your highness!
That person would be thrown into the river.
This would not end well.
So I abdicate. I step down from the throne. I celebrate the holiness of every individual, even the one who takes calls "during a religious service."
Look closely at the caption of the "photo" (that's a cheesy stock image, no?) for the Reuters story by Patricia Reaney quoted above and you will see that someone doesn't know an etiquette lapse from a pair of tight pants.
For a long time I was a copy editor. I worked for King Kaufman. We had rules. You had to follow them. That was heaven. We made sure you knew the difference between etiquette lapses and tight pants.
However, giving me the power to make rules about usage was a little like giving bourbon to an alcoholic.
It's just the rule thing. I have too many.
I have rules for the stars. I have rules for the sun, how bright it should be, where the clouds should be placed.
I have rules for how you should walk down the street. I see some people and I think they're walking all wrong. They're too close to the edge of the sidewalk or they're waiting for the bus in the wrong spot or they're leaning out too far into traffic when I'm driving by, or they are not watching carefully walking down the street because they're on their iPhone. I have rules about when you are allowed to talk on your phone in my presence, and if you don't follow my rules then a little alarm bell goes off inside me and you have been marked. You have been downgraded. I put a little mark on you in my head. So now my head is full of people who have been marked.
It is my spiritual quest to stop making up rules for people. It is my spiritual quest to try to see everyone as holy. The driver in front of me who does not go when the light turns green does not seem to be holy. She seems to be an obstacle. But people are not obstacles. We make them into objects when we are living in our little control booth but people are full of light and joy. If some small elderly person of surprising agility steps in front of me on the bus, it is not very spiritual of me to elbow an old lady in the neck just because she cut in front in the bus line. She has been shopping in the open air market and she has many bags. It is ingenious how she has all the bags tied together so she can carry them in one hand and elbow people out of the way with the other.
The old lady who cuts in front of me in the bus line is holy. She is a creature of light. But she does not seem that way. I could knock her over with my elbow (I could do this rather unobtrusively, I think) but then I would not seem holy. I would not be following my new rule: Do not elbow the old ladies out of the way on the bus.
So I know what you mean about people not obeying our rules. We don't even follow our own rules ourselves. Our rules get us into trouble. They lead us into contradiction. They arise from illusion.
If we have rules for people, then what we are saying is that they must obey. But who is the emperor?
A child puts on a crown and pretends to be the emperor. You! To the guardhouse! You! Bend before me. Bring me jelly beans. Bring me my Xbox. Bring me tribute from the Apple Store.
Right now, as I get ready for surgery on Dec. 17, I am preparing to be both an emperor and a child. I will be in the hands of a team of skilled surgeons who will slice into my body with sharp tools and remove things. I will be hooked up to machines that listen to me, machines that hear things in me that I cannot even hear. I will be helpless. At the same time, I will be like an emperor. People will attend to my every need. They will come and check on me. I will be like a child emperor, powerless but doted upon. Bring me that. Raise my pillow. Raise my bed.
So will I act imperiously? Will I say to the surgeon who wants to save my life, "You'd better leave a message or I won't call you back!"? Ha! World-renown surgeon, I say: You'd better follow my rules or you're out!
Ha ha.
Get my drift?
Everyone is holy. The knives are holy. The tumor is holy. We are all bathed in unearthly light.
Leave me a message. I'll call you back.
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What? You want more advice?
Dear Reader,
Another CT scan today, at the UCSF radiology lab at Mission Bay in the old China Basin building, followed by the strict admonition to avoid caffeine, which has placed a gummy caffeine-withdrawal membrane over the visible world, and made thoughts extremely hard to come by.
While lying supine on the CT machine slab that cranked my carcass back and forth inside the doughnut, my only thought of any dimension at all was that inside that booth where they were watching the images of my insides, looks of horror crossed their faces: "What in God's name is that?! one said. "What is that?"
Some primordial thing living on my thigh bone perhaps, munching contentedly on my sartorius muscle, idly snapping my adductor longus, planting a garden, growing snap peas and turnips. Or my long-lost car keys, that leather wallet not seen for years: There it is! Thank God for modern medical imaging!
That's the state you get in.
Nothing much more than that. Nothing but my ardent complaint that all this medical business and the attendant life issues, i.e., getting my stuff in order so I can languish in the hospital for four weeks or more without sinking the ship of state is seriously cutting into the writing time.
Plus: Strangely enervating, all this sitting in medical offices and getting stuck with needles.
But that's the job. Nothing to do but roll with it. It could be curiously liberating if seen in the right light.
Just where is that right light? Could you shine it just a little this way please?
Ah. Better. Life. Another day. Not bad.
Makes a great gift. Can be personalized for the giftee of your choice. Signed first editions on sale now.
What? You want more advice?
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