The Bully Inside

Alright, I know. I've been gone. I have been, markedly absent, the past few weeks.  Luckily, Blogger is very forgiving. I click back in to login and I don't even get a hint of resentment or "where have you been" eye-squinting from my trusty Google account.  The truth is I've been busy...busy in my secret other life as a (gasp) actor, and busy this week just feeling lousy (both physically and mentally), and so I've been hang-dogging around, not feeling very worthy of sharing.

But now I'm back! Ta-da!

(Thanks for hanging in there)

So, yesterday, whilst in my cold-recovery funk, I went to go see this movie, which I had seen previews for (the previews alone nearly brought me to tears), but had somehow forgotten about and naively went to go see as a "cheer up" film.  It will be uplifting, I thought! A triumph of good over not-so-good! And it is. After it shatters you into a bunch of little pieces and leaves you weeping into your fruit snacks, yes, then it does get uplifting. Sort of.

But, one of the things that struck me as I was watching it was how, when you see some of the bullying on film and the bullies who are doing it, you see that they are just that...bullies. They are, it's so clear, actually much weaker in most cases than the kids being bullied.  One convicted standing of his ground by a targeted kid who figured out his own worth, would probably send said bully running for the hills.  Maybe.  I mean, please forgive any ignorance on my part if you have personal experience with this, I could be dead wrong.  And, I realize in many cases, well, it's just not possible. And no kid should HAVE to learn to stand up for themselves in this way.  BUT, as an adult, sitting safely in my cushy theatre chair, it just seemed so clear..."tell that kid to go to hell!" I wanted to say. "Tell that kid you are not going to take his crap!"

And as I was sitting there, rooting silently for these kids, I realized...I wasn't actually even talking to them. I was talking to me.

I suffered some minor bullying when I was in middle school...nothing like these kids in the film are facing, but it was enough to send me home crying on a regular basis.  I was chubby and a little weird.  I didn't have a lot of friends. I didn't shave my legs. I had a weeks worth of the same outfit, ala Albert Einstein, that I wore nearly every day to school. And, worst of all, I was a bit of a know-it-all. (Example: taking dressing cues from Albert Einstein). So, I suffered. I was teased and note-written about and often ended up eating my lunch in the bathroom in order to avoid having to sit at a table all by myself.

And though I got through all of that relatively unscarred...there is still one bully that even today I still deal with on a regular basis.  One who makes me want to hide under my bed. One who knocks me around and takes my proverbial lunch money and threatens me with all kinds of terrible fates. This bully knows all my weak spots. Knows just when I'm most vulnerable to attack and comes at me with a vengeance.  And the worst part about this bully? She lives inside my own head.

And so avoiding her, is near to impossible.

So, yeah, okay, we've all got some version of this right? That sneaky little a-hole who is just waiting around in there, in the ol' noggin, to tell us that we're stupid or worthless or fat or lazy? Only, these bullies, the ones lying in wait in our cerebral cortex, they are especially pernicious, mostly because they've learned how to disguise themselves as something other.  My bully speaks to me in very quiet grave tones. My bully dresses up like some kind of nasty-tongued guru and tells me continually that she is really just looking out for my best interests and my spiritual development.  But I know it's her by the way she makes my stomach curl up into a tight little knot. That part is unmistakeable.

And you know how I usually deal with said playground-ruffian in-residence?

I deal with her just like most of the kids in this film deal with their bullies.  I try to get her to like me.  I take her punishment and then I try to be cool about it. Or I just put my head down and soldier through because some part of me thinks, way deep down, that she's probably right...I am probably worthless.  And then I curl up into a little ball on my couch and cry and watch Hulu. Because, you know, what's the use? If I go back there, I'm just going to get wailed on again.  May as well cue up another episode of the Celebrity Apprentice and wait for the storm to pass.

But, I don't think it has to be that way.

There must be a point at which, a girl (or a fella) has to learn to stand up to those voices in the head...the ones that are telling her (or him) that there's something to be afraid of, or that she's incapable or unloveable...there is a point at which her better self has to stand her ground and say, once and for all, I AM NOT GOING TO TAKE YOUR CRAP!

Because, here's the secret, people.  Bullies are weak.  Bullies are all air and no fire. And all it takes, I'm learning, is just one moment of decisiveness. And the choice to put more faith in the voices of truth and love and assurance, and less faith in the voices of fear and intimidation.

At least, that's what I'm going to try, the next time that little she-devil comes a-raring to the surface. I'm going to tell her just where she can shove all her little ideas about what I should and should not be doing. I'm going to tell her to go pick on someone else, because I am nobody's punching bag.

I'll let you know what happens...

A Problem of Thinking...

Have you ever considered, that perhaps this is not a thinking problem?

Have you ever considered, that perhaps problems get solved in your life in spite of, and not because of, your thinking?

Have you ever considered (I rarely do) that perhaps all the moments of all the days don’t need to be filled with thinking?  That maybe one doesn’t need to think from the bedroom to the bathroom, from the bathroom to the kitchen, in the kitchen while the tea is bubbling, in the car while the wheels are turning, on the walk while the door is looming, over the sink while the dishes are doing, above the stove where the food is cooking, in the place where the work is happening, at the end when the lights are turning, back in the car as the eve is dawning, back up the steps to where the door is waiting, and on and on and on?

Have you ever considered that the mind is not meant for such stuff?

Have you ever considered that the mind is meant for mind-matter:  for chair building and computer programming and book-reading and play-writing and lightbulb choosing and car driving and philosophy grasping and fire starting and gadget inventing and all the other hundreds and thousands of things that the mind is perfectly suited to?

Have you considered that love, is not the domain of the mind? That feeling, is not the domain of the mind?  That instinct, is not the domain of the mind, art-making is not the domain of the mind, sex and fucking and love-making...all not the domain of the mind?

Perhaps you have.  Perhaps you have considered all of this, because these are so obviously products of the heart, and the senses, and the pumping of the blood.

But what about decision making?  Have you ever considered that decision making is not the domain of the mind?

What?  You may be saying.  Of course decision-making is for my mind.  That's what my mind done does.  That's what it always done did and always will would.

But what if it's not?

What if...if when faced with a decision...you were to get soft and quiet, instead of tight and loud? Not letting the many voices of reason that occupy all your many spaces pipe in immediately with their suggestions.  What then?  What if you were to close your eyes and drink in the smells around you and just rub your face against the wind that is rubbing against it?  What if you were to unclench your jaw and unclench your eyes and unclench that poor little mind, that just wants to help, that always wants to help, but maybe, possibly...can not serve you here?  What would come rushing in?  What would establish itself in clarity?

Albert Einstein would have all his greatest ideas in the shower.  So he said. Or while shaving.

Isaac Newton talks about problem solving like one would talk about watching a flower open, "I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first dawning opens gradually, by little and little, into a full and clear light".

"It is curious," said Mark Twain, "-- the space-annihilating power of thought."


All great men.  All great doers.  All, somehow, in agreement about this--spaciousness.  Be it spaciousness of shower, or spaciousness of dawning realization.

And for myself...every real stroke of insight or clarity or brilliance I have ever had, has bubbled out of silence, and not out of the morass of thought. Never ever ever has it bubbled out of the morass of thought.  Sometimes I have driven myself near to insanity with thought and then finally, because I just could not take it anymore, or because I had cried tears and the tears had broken some kind of dam...finally I relented.  And in the relenting came a ready solution.  And so, sometimes I have equated these two things:  the exhaustive death-match with thought and the miraculous solution at the end.

But perhaps you could have the latter without the former?

The great guess of spiritual practice, the grand hypothesis of yoga and all the others, is that the world, at it's essence, is born from space and from silence.  And, in that silence is the power of creation.  And our small piece of eternity, our sippy-cup of heaven, as humans, is that if we can get ourselves as quiet as that space...then we can taste a bit of what it has to offer.  We can actually step into the power that makes worlds.  That is the experiment.  It's the experiment of meditation and the experiment of yoga and the experiment of writing and the experiment of song and the experiment of love and the experiment of play...what can we do to step in?  How many things can we find that can quiet us well enough and for long enough that we might just get a little eternity juice on our hands and our face?

I am still in the trial phases, myself.  I will report findings when they are available.

In the meantime...if you are struggling with something, if you are turning it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over in your mind.  Just consider, that perhaps your mind is not meant for such things.  Perhaps it is the silence, right down there in the center of you, that is best suited to hurl that particular boulder, to that particular moon.