The Ten Mile Day

I’ve discovered the secret to slowing time, and I am going to share it here with all of you!

The secret is this:  to live Ten Mile Days.

What, you ask, is a Ten Mile Day (TMD, for short)?

A TMD is one of those days when you get up a little (or a lot) earlier than usual, and then cram more than your normal number of activities (this being your own personal definition of activities) into a day.

I first noticed the phenomenon of TMDs slowing time after I started my part time job…the one that requires that I get up at 3:30 a.m. twice a week.  Time is slowed and stretched so disorientingly on these days that I often have to check my watch to be sure that it’s actually still the same day.

This past weekend, it happened again.  On Sunday morning, we got up – a bit earlier than we usually would have, because of daylight savings time – to run.  Through the day I participated in several more activities.  Things that I would normally have scattered over several days, this day I condensed into one.

At the end of the day, I turned and looked back, and the day stretched from one horizon to the other, with the morning’s run way in the distance, like a memory from another time.

And it was good.  It did not feel frantic and chaotic, but rather full and rich.  I crawled into my bed content in the knowledge that I had LIVED that day, showed it who was boss.  The day had rolled onto its back and acknowledged my mastery by temporarily reducing the relentless pace of time.

I think TMDs are best used in moderation.  The early mornings combined with extra activities may slow time, but they also beat the heck out of you and necessitate some recovery time.  This varies, of course, depending upon your age and level of fitness, but you know…whew!

But still, I notice fairly regularly how rapidly time seems to fly by, so it’s sort of great to be able to take a day off the treadmill, stretch it out like taffy, and live every moment at your leisure.

Feelings of Fraudulence

“I feel like a fraud,” my friend said, gasping it out between breaths as we struggled up the final hill of our five mile trail run.

Her words startled me – like a slap to the face, or the shock of cold water being thrown on me.  She was always so poised and competent; an intelligent, beautiful woman like she is shouldn’t be feeling such self-doubt.  And yet, part of me wasn’t surprised.  Part of me was not surprised, because I knew exactly how she felt.

The first time I ever felt like a fraud was when I was leaving the hospital with my first daughter.  A nurse wheeled me down the hall – hospital procedure -  the baby safely strapped and bundled into her brand new car seat, and I thought, Someone is going to stop us any minute now.  Any time, now, someone is going to say, “Hey, you can’t leave here with that baby!”   To be honest, part of me was almost hoping for the admonishment not to leave with the baby.  The part of me that was terrified, insecure about her own abilities as a mother; the part that felt like there was no possible way that I knew enough to successfully raise another human being well.

Of course, the admonishment never came.  And now, more than eleven years later, my daughter is thriving and healthy, and has been joined by two younger siblings.

But there are still times in life when I feel like a terrible fraud; that if someone just looks a little bit harder, they’ll find me out for the impostor that I really am.

And I’m not alone.

In fact, this feeling is so common that there is a name for it:  impostor syndrome (also called impostor phenomenon).

I learned about it because, in a deep heart to heart with another amazing female friend, she admitted that she, too, often felt like a fraud, and mentioned that she had heard someone on a radio show once talking about how prevalent the feeling is in women.

Through hard experience, I’ve learned that often, the first step to fixing a problem, preventing a feeling that we don’t want to have, or don’t believe we should be having, is knowing that we are not alone.

No matter how original, different, or unique we imagine ourselves or our situations to be…we aren’t.  Someone has been there before.  Someone will be there after.  Someone else is there, right now.  We are not alone.  In those devastating, heartbreaking moments when we feel like no one in the world could ever possible understand us, let alone know us, when we feel the despair of our solitude…we are not alone.

So I feel like a fraud.  She feels like a fraud.  You feel like a fraud.  They feel like a fraud.  We are not alone.  And guess what else?  We are probably not frauds, either.

Impostor syndrome was first documented by two Georgia State University psychologists in 1978. Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes  worked with over 150 successful women who, despite all evidence to the contrary, felt that they were frauds.

“Women who experience the impostor phenomenon maintain a strong belief that they are not intelligent; in fact they are convinced that they have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise,” says Clance in the abstract of the study.

But the real question is why?  Why do women who are smart, ambitious, successful and educated feel as if they are merely posing as such, and that at some point, are certain to be discovered as frauds?

Clance and Imes found that their “impostors” generally fell into one of two groups, in terms of early family history.

The first group of “impostors” were part of a family where a sibling was designated as “the smart one.”   The implication for this “impostor” was that “she can never prove that she is as bright as her siblings regardless of what she actually accomplishes intellectually,” according to the previously cited abstract.

The second category of “impostors” were from a markedly different situation.  “The family conveys to the girl that she is superior in every way –intellect, personality, appearance, and talents. There is nothing that she cannot do if she wants to, and she can do it with ease. She is told numerous examples of how she demonstrated her precocity as an infant and toddler, such as learning to talk and read very early or reciting nursery rhymes. In the family members’ eyes she is perfect.  The child, however, begins to have experiences in which she cannot do any and everything she wants to. She does have difficulty in achieving certain things. Yet she feels obligated to fulfill expectations of her family, even though she knows she cannot keep up the act forever. Because she is so indiscriminately praised for everything, she begins to distrust her parents’ perceptions of her. Moreover, she begins to doubt herself. When she goes to school her doubts about her abilities are intensified. Although she does outstanding work, she does have to study to do well. Having internalized her parents’ definition of brightness as “perfection with ease,” and realizing that she cannot live up to this standard; she jumps to the conclusion that she must be dumb. She is not a genius; therefore, she must be an intellectual impostor,” according to the abstract.

Recognize either of these situations?

Dr. Valerie Young let her own feelings of fraudulence be the impetus for her doctoral research.  She counsels and speaks on the subject, and has published a book about the syndrome, The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women.

“Your perceptions of what it takes to be competent , has a powerful impact on how you measure yourself and therefore how you approach achievement itself. And if you feel like an intellectual fraud then there is an excellent chance that you have been operating from a definition of competence that is so grandiose that not even a certifiable genius could ever hope to attain,” asserts Dr. Young on her web site.  (Emphasis my own.)

Dr. Young believes that an important step in overcoming impostor syndrome is adopting a more realistic idea of competency.

Other steps to overcome the feeling, from Dr. Young and clinical psychologist Dr. Joan Harvey, include:

‘Separate feelings from reality.  Remind yourself that feeling like an imposter is different from being an imposter.

“Imposters” often have conflicting images of themselves as either geniuses or total idiots.  Give yourself permission to be somewhere more in the middle, where most of us are most of the time.

Keep a written record of your accomplishments. Feel a sense of ownership for them.

Talk about your secret fraudulent feelings with trusted friends. Find and give support.

Don’t turn yourself in. “Fake it till you make it.”’

You are not alone.  You are not a fraud.  In fact, “there is no one alive who is youer than you,” to quote Dr. Seuss.  Let your you-ness shine.

 

 

Shine

After I linked to my “Born to die” post, I considered taking it down. I thought it might be too dark; people might find it too disturbing. People might take it the wrong way; start asking questions. People might judge me.

And then I remembered a recent exchange with an online friend about hiding your light under a bushel. And I thought about how very often I do that in my own life, out of fear; fear of offending, fear of being disliked, fear of being judged.

But when I think about it, all of those things happen, without my having to lift a finger.

Haters gonna hate.

The truth of the matter is, I write. It’s what I do; it’s how I express myself. It gives me catharsis. And if I am too ashamed of my words or afraid of the message that others will take from them, then maybe I shouldn’t be doing it.

And if I am going to do it, then I have to learn not to be afraid.

And I’ve decided.

I am going to do it.

So fuck you, fear.

It’s my light, and I’ll shine it if I want to.

Born to die

We come into this world already stamped with an expiration date.  Our first breaths, our first squall of resentment, mark the start of our unwinding.  Does that seem morbid?  Perhaps; and yet it’s true.

We are all, at every moment, dying.  Death is with us, always; hidden behind his mask, cloaked by his veils.

The miracle is that we manage to go through our lives, for the most part, forgetting this.  We work and sleep, eat and pay bills, shop and laugh, all forgetting that somewhere, a clock with our name on it is counting down our remaining time, doling out the seconds.  It has to be that way, or we couldn’t function.  If we lived in fear of our own mortality – of the inevitability of this mortality – what sort of life would that be? 

So we forget.  To the point of taking for granted.  But this is as it should be.

Then every so often, something reminds us of our own mortality, and for a brief, precious time, we cling to life, savor it, sample its depths and climb to its heights.  For this brief time, we are gloriously, truly alive.

Until again, we forget.

It’s impossible to live at that knife’s edge precipice of awareness for very long.  Like the filament in a light bulb, we would burn out from that degree of intensity of living.  It is unsustainable.

But the truth is, whether we are aware of it or not, we are all at that precipice, living our lives on the knife’s edge, every day.

Because the thing about that expiration date?  We don’t know when it is.  The doctor didn’t look at our tiny baby heel and make a notation of it on our charts.

Our mothers, for all their diligence, never spied it when wiping away dirt, or kissing away boo-boos.

Our lovers never came across it when exploring the secret hidden places of our bodies.

No one has seen it; nobody knows.

And yet we go on, blithely, as if we have all the time in the world. 

But there are times when someone comes a little too close to the precipice; when they totter and seem to lose their balance.  They sway at the edge, arms flailing, trying to right themselves.  Times of injury or sickness, when a person is in the hospital and everything seems to pause, all life turns its attention to the question of balance.  Death throws back his veils, pulls off his mask, shows his face.

And you go.  You drop everything, put as much of your own life as possible on hold, and go to them.  Because that is what you do.

But why?

The truth is, they may be no closer to death than you are.  We have no way of knowing.  They just appear closer.  And so we go.  To honor them, to be with them, to let them know we care.  Perhaps, too, to see if there is an inkling of their mortality; a sign, a clue, to look for as a hint to our own.  If I sit vigil often enough, will I spy Death himself?  Commit his face to memory, so that I can spot him, elude him when he comes for me?

I don’t know.  But the truth is that I’ve thought about it often enough recently to understand that nothing I do or do not do will affect the outcome of the patient’s epic battle for life.  Whether I visit or do not; whether I pray or do not; whether I wish for it or do not.  What will happen, will happen, with or without me.

The only thing I can change is my own experience of the situation.

And so I go and do my duty, make my visits, sit my vigils, all the while with the knowledge that my own expiration date is yet unknown.  If I were to die in the car on the way home, no one would have made their peace with me.  No one would have had a chance for that last visit,  to say “I love you” one last time, to glean an iota of closure.  And perhaps that is why we go.  For the tiniest of semblances of control over the uncontrollable.  So that we can appear to be ready, to have it all together; to have wrapped up loose ends.

But there is no control.  There is only chaos.  And once again I am here, on the knife’s edge, trying to get all my living in, out loud.  Telling people I love them, just in case.

I guess it’s not always a bad thing.

Christmas Craze

Because doing it all, or even trying, is just impossible…

My brain has died,

my nerves are fried,

I really want to run and hide.

This time of year,

I feel no cheer.

My to-do list has come alive.

 
I try to sleep

when night is deep,

but those to-do’s just will not keep.

Like ghosts they haunt,

they tease and taunt;

accomplishment stays out of reach.

 
I just feel stressed;

I cannot rest,

this holiday must be the best.

I hear the songs,

their words sound wrong,

I feel I’m failing every test.

 
Why can’t I find

some peace of mind?

Holiday joy of any kind?

The to-do’s sneer

“Because we’re here;

you can’t escape the Christmas grind.”

 
I stare in shock;

my mind’s been rocked.

Those to-do’s have my hours locked.

If I could cut

everything but

the crucial things, would I unlock?

 
I heave a sigh

for days gone by

the years and holidays, they fly;

and all the stuff,

it’s just too much.

This year, it’s time to simplify.

 
Hope you all find a way to make your holidays all they were meant to be, minus all the stress!!

Signs, signs, everywhere are signs

Way back when, I told you my tangerine story.  For a while, I’d gotten into the habit of asking for signs when I felt a bit shaky.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes…not so much.

I could never be certain if I just wasn’t seeing the signs, or if they weren’t being sent, or if the lack of signs was  a sign in and of itself.

This whole sign thing can be crazy-making.

But I’ve been feeling good about my writing path lately, and haven’t thought about writing-related signs in some time.

Then, the Universe gave me an “atta girl.”  Which, btw, if you ever get one?  Is FANTASTIC.  A completely unsolicited pat on the back from the powers? World-rocking.

It came, again, via my Oprah magazine.  (Thanks, Oprah!)

There is always a page in the magazine with a photo and an inspirational quote.  I usual dog-ear these and look at them over and over.  Yesterday was no different.

The photo really resonated with me:  a very old, weathered door stood, incongruously, in the middle of a vast field, with nothing or no one else in sight.

I have a bit of a love affair with doors, especially in my writing.  They feature prominently.  I’ve discovered, on facebook, that there is a page for the poet, Rumi – who I also enjoy.  There are a large number of photos on this page, posted with poems or quotes from Rumi.  Most of the photos seem to have been manipulated by computer, but to intriguing results, and I’ve found them to be a rich source of inspiration for my writing.  Lots of them feature doors.

So here in Oprah is this beautiful door photo, that I say to myself I am going to save, and frame. 

Oh, and did I mention the quote?

It’s a Rumi quote, from “A Voice Through the Door.”

I know, right?  RUMI.

Can I tell you that I didn’t make the connection until today?

I woke up this morning and thought “DUH!  How did I miss that?”  Then I opened to the page – which I had, of course, dog-eared – and read the quote.  I got chills.

“Sometimes you

hear a voice through the

door calling you…

This turning toward what you

deeply love saves you.”

The world owes you nothing

Someone I know was once acquainted with a gentleman – and I use the term loosely – of a certain character.

This gentleman, when he was in his twenties, was in a terrible accident; the kind that leaves people shaking their heads, crossing themselves, and marveling that anyone survived.  Against all odds, he not only survived, but exceeded all expectations and fought to regain his life in all its former glory, garnering a small amount of media attention along the way.

So that’s horrific accident, miraculous recovery, and 15 minutes of fame:  check.

Then life goes on, right?  Perhaps you are a better person for it?  Perhaps you find ways to help others who have been in a similar situation?

Whether it was something hidden in the dark crevasses of his character, or something he caught from the bite of fleeting fame, this gentleman decided that life was now beholden to him.

 No ordinary human, he.  No.  He was now, to his mind, special.  MORE special.  The world had done something bad to him, and now?  Now THE WORLD OWED HIM.  Big time.  And he stood, ready to collect.

When the acquaintance ended, this gentleman was busy, desperately trying to trade on a years-old miracle to buy himself the fame and reputation he felt he so richly deserved.

The world turned her cold shoulder.

Now, lest you think I am vilifying or criticizing this gentleman…well, I might be.  Just a little bit.

But only a little bit, because I know that it is all easy to slide down that slippery slope of entitlement, to land at the bottom, all petulance and grasping hands.

We’ve all had hardships and disappointments in our lives.  I think that sometimes, we have this little scale in our heads, and we expect life to sort of balance out in the end. 

We think, “OK, I’ve paid my dues, had my hardships.  Now it’s my turn.  I’m ready, world – bring on the abundance!”

And the world keeps on spinning, oblivious to our tiny, petty demands.  Because that’s not the way this thing works.

I think that sometimes, we get so consumed with what is owed to us that we spend all our time standing there, waiting with our empty bushel basket to collect our just desserts, when the real reward is passing us by.

That’s right.  You knew it was coming to this, didn’t you? 

Life.  Life is the reward.  The fact that we are here at all is our big jackpot – the Grand Prize.  You and I, friend?  You won the lottery; I found the golden ticket.

This is it.  And it’s enough, isn’t it?

Yes, there are days (weeks, months, years, sometimes) when life doesn’t seem so grand.  It feels cold, looks ugly, and is viciously, savagely unfair. 

But it’s not.  Life is neutral.  It doesn’t care about you, but neither does it wish you harm.  It’s like a diamond:  glittering, precious, but the toughest substance around, and able to cut…well, lots of other things.

And if all you do with this life you’ve been given is fritter it away waiting for something good to happen, you are going to be sorely disappointed at the end of things.

So when I had this thought today, it sort of lifted a weight from my shoulders.  I actually put down my bushel basket and asked myself:  “What the hell was I thinking?”

The world does not owe us anything, so don’t sit around waiting to collect.  You’ve already won your big prize:  spend it accordingly.

Here there be magic

Sometimes, the scrape and push of life against your skin becomes too much, until you have to push back; to tell it “Enough!  Give me some room to breathe.”  These times, you need to just exist, for a time, as yourself – outside of and untouched by all of life’s weighty expectations.  You just want to be the simple animal that you were born: to move, see, smell, feel and taste.

Today was one of those days.

I’d been feeling slow and bloated – skin stretched and shiny with the burden of my frustration.  Nothing was good.  I might never be happy.  I knew things were dire.  I knew I had to go to my place.

Before I went, I told myself “Something magical will happen there today,” because I needed some magic.  I am either too stupid or too broken to know how to get the venom of my own frustration out of my veins.  I have to go there and let nature quietly leach it away.

That is the magic that exists in this place.  It works every time.

Sometimes I go there, armed with my curiosity about all I see.  I want to identify every plant, every bird, every insect.  Every living thing is fascinating to me.

Other times, I go to simply be; to be simple.  To experience, to savor, to absorb.  To dwell in beauty.

I always bring my camera and my notebook.

I am never disappointed.

Today, the garden was brimming with people.  Of course, in a time when I needed solitude.  It was a hunt to find a place that was isolated enough to be alone.  Each time, I thought I’d found the spot, and someone would come traipsing along.

Finally, I opened the gate from the moraine garden and walked into the woods.  There is where the quiet finally found me, alone with the snakes and the frogs and the turtles, insects buzzing, pine trees whispering in the wind.

The paths were dappled with sunshine, the pine needles fragrant and soft beneath my feet.  Lacy fronds of fern tickled me as I passed; some more than waist high, others dainty and frilled.  There were unexpected splashes of color, on the ground and in the canopy.  I did not question these; just savored them.  I let the colors guide my way, and they rewarded me with a path formerly untaken, along a bubbling stream and away from the world.

Gradually, the tension slipped away from me.  After a time, I forgot it had ever been there at all and just delighted in the sense of freedom, and in the peace of the outdoors.

No medicine can compare with this.  For those of you who don’t believe in magic, I say you need to come to the gardens with me, and walk the twisted paths through the woods, in the quiet, where these things live.

Everything’s coming up tangerines

I am not a religious person, but I do consider myself to be a spiritual person.  As part of my spirituality, I’ve come to believe that occasionally, we get little “signs” from the Universe/God/whatever higher power you believe in, to sort of help us along. 

Sometimes, the signs are hit-you-over the head obvious.  Other times…not so much.

WAY back in 2009, I read a brilliant essay in Oprah magazine about a woman who got a very definitive sign, when she’d asked for one.  (I wish I could link to it for you, I really do – but I searched the archives and it didn’t turn up.  I’m sad as well!)

This inspired me to ask for my own sign.  Now, a seemingly insignificant fact that is important to the story:  I had written a piece during my writing group on a Wednesday night.  The piece itself is not important, except for the fact that in the story, the main character’s fiance wears lip gloss that I named Tangerine Dream.

The following day, Thursday, is when my Oprah magazine arrived in the mail.  I read about half of it – the half including the essay about signs from the Universe.

I requested my sign:  I wanted to know if I should continue with my writing.  At a later date, I picked up and read the rest of the magazine.  Imagine my shock when, in an article titled “What’s not to love,” there was a photo captioned “Tangerine Dream.”

I mean, hello?  It doesn’t get much clearer.  I continued happily on my writing journey.

As a human being, I am, on occasion, plagued by self-doubt.  It’s nice to know that sometimes, when I ask, I can get reassurance from…someone.  Some higher power, or my own consciousness, or whatever.  It comforts me, and that’s what’s important.

But sometimes, this feeling of guidance, as I’ve mentioned, leaves something to be desired.  You see something that may or may not be a sign, or if it is a sign, you’re not sure if it’s a positive or negative sign, and then you work yourself all into a tizzy trying to figure it out. 

Sometimes, you need something just a little bit more black and white.  Or orange, as it were.

Again, having some doubts about my writing path, I asked for a sign.  Something specific, I thought.  Something…oh, I don’t know, something Tangerine Dream.

That same morning, I was reading through the internets, and came across the blog of an author I’ve read and enjoyed.  She was talking about her car, and  how it needed a paint job, and mentioned that although the car looks red, it actually isn’t.

The actual color of the car – the AUTHOR’S CAR, mind you – is Tangerine Kandy.

Bonk.

Message received.  I no longer doubt.

On envy, and language

A writer friend and I were talking the other day, and each admitted, with a certain degree of unease, to having been envious of one another, at different times.  There was unease – and perhaps even a smidgen of guilt – in the admission because of the connotation of envy, milder sibling to jealousy.  We hastened to assure each other that we would never wish bad things for the other, and that the other’s success had spurred our own motivation to do similarly well.

According to dictionary.com, “Envy and jealousy are very close in meaning. Envy denotes a longing to possess something awarded to or achieved by another: to feel envy when a friend inherits a fortune. Jealousy, on the other hand, denotes a feeling of resentment that another has gained something that one more rightfully deserves: to feel jealousy when a coworker receives a promotion. Jealousy also refers to anguish caused by fear of unfaithfulness. 4. resent. Envy, begrudge, covet refer to one’s attitude toward the possessions or attainments of others. To envy is to feel resentful and unhappy because someone else possesses, or has achieved, what one wishes oneself to possess, or to have achieved: to envy the wealthy, a woman’s beauty, an honest man’s reputation. To begrudge is to be unwilling that another should have the possessions, honors, or credit that person deserves: to begrudge a man a reward for heroism. To covet  is to long jealously to possess what someone else possesses: I covet your silverware.”

It started me thinking about envy, and how sometimes it can be negative, making us question our own self-worth, but how other times, it can be positive, spurring us on to success of our own.

It turns out, there’s some merit to that line of thinking.  A study conducted in the Netherlands in 2009 by Niels van de Ven concluded that there are two forms of envy:  benign, which people use as a self-motivator, and malicious, which motivates people to harm the object of their envy.  According to web site tilburguniversity.edu, “Both types of envy are frustrating feelings that arise when someone else does better, and the general aim is to level the difference with the superior other. This can be achieved either by pulling the other down (malicious envy) or by improving one’s own position (for benign envy).”

Interestingly, admiration does not similarly motivate us.  In fact, admiration begins life as envy, and only morphs into admiration if we consider the other’s achievement too difficult to accomplish ourselves.  “Admiration can therefore be regarded as a form of self-surrender; as resignation or acceptance of the fact that the other is so good that you yourself cannot attain the same level of performance,” according to tilburguniversity.edu.

I think this study is great news.  It relieves us of the useless burden of guilt for feeling an all but unavoidable human emotion.  To quote Professor Robert Bringle, “Envy can be a positive motivator. Let it inspire you to work harder for what you want.” 

I became slightly obsessed, however, with the fact that we do not have words to distinguish between benign and malicious envy.  We might use just “envy” to indicate benign, and “jealousy” for malicious, but I think that the waters around those two words have become too muddied to make such a distinction.  What we need is a word like that spectacular German word, “schadenfreude,” which means that small glee we feel when something bad happens to someone else.  A terrible word, for sure; a shame that we should need it – and it would be good for us, as a species, to aspire one day to transcend that word, so it becomes obsolete, an antiquity found in the pages of a dusty dictionary.  But human nature being what it is, there is a specific twisted emotion and the Germans were prescient enough to name it.

Well guess what?  It turns out that the good folk of the Netherlands had similar foresight, and came up with words to distinguish between benign and malicious envy.  Sadly, I have yet to come across those words.  Any Dutch speakers out there?  The English language needs to adopt some of your words…