Ahhh…Friday night. First Friday Flake since the substack began, sucked into a vortex this week of warrior energy for sure…I wish it was the battle with my DAW (digital audio workstation, AKA program that I use to create music productions), but alas I finally had to unsheath my sword in 3D, and a few heads rolled.
I find it ironic that after a whirlwind of laser-focused activity early in the week, when I later fell into a little out-of-joint space, not quite in the rhythm of flow, needing to tend…and wait…that the hours of music work today on the drum track for “Ashes to Ashes” spoke that off-beat. Ugh. Definitely not ready to share. Yet.
I learned years ago that nothing is worth doing if it’s not coming from a place of general contentment for me. Even tough projects, with frustrating super-exponential learning curves, get clear and easy when I’m more “balanced”.
So last night, mentally reviewing the course of the week’s events for where the detour into disjoint could be found, I started thinking about the “they”. The “others” in my life, and how it seemed there was this binary category in my mental filing system labled with a smiley or a frowny emoji.
This musing was prompted by my reading of Eric Barker’s new book, Plays Well With Others. The “Barking Up the Wrong Tree” blogger and author is universally hilarious, and presents research on being human, to answer the many versions of the question “how can I make life not such a drag?”
Do yourself a favor if you haven’t yet and check the dude out.
So the book dives into relationships, and I noticed the emoji filing system seemed pretty rudimentary in the setting of his findings. And his words spoke contradiction to so many mental lables we use to categorize the “they”, demolishing the processes we as a species have counted on for generations to distinguish friend from foe.
As I pored over the first few chapters, faces across a lifetime flitted through my head - smiley…smiley…smiley…frowny - that one had moved from the “friend zone”. I did not like that. I liked to like people. All people. I did not want any frowny emojis in my head.
Even people who I considered the proximate cause of some of the greatest tragedies in this human lifetime…I wanted to “like”. Or at least not recoil when their image popped onto my internal monitor. FROWNY.
I thought about what makes an “other” a friend? Foe? Was there an in-between? What about “frenemies”?
When I started the deep woo dive years ago I experienced a loosening of the labling, and contentment with almost everybody that lived in my head. A sense of “I love you, man” no matter what the story was. Like I had the inside scoop that we were all part of some big play, each acting out their role, and after the show we would catch a beer and laugh about how it all seemed so serious.
But that waffley space had really unclear boundaries between me and “others”, and the on-set guns were loaded with real ammunition. That hurt. I didn’t want that for me, and certainly not for my kids.
Clearly identifying “others” who acted harmfully towards us and choosing not to engage helped reduce the chaos, but what about the really determined jerks? What about the times where it’s too late to ditch the relationship without nuclear arms?
I had figured out that blaming the perpetrator and leaving it at that left me a victim, and started doing the internal sorting of owning my part and giving back what wasn’t mine. I got good at not taking arrows personally or needing others to be “wrong” for me to be ok. Could enjoy the mental slide show of the police line-up of previous perps feeling grateful for my growth, who I am now, free of resentment…
But as I left the battlefield this week I wondered, what changed? Why did I feel emotions of anger and hard determination to not like the “others” I needed to behead this week? To not be nice?
Why couldn’t I get the job done like a Jedi Master, cool and expressionless except for a faint smile? Why did I go all Luke Skywalker emotional?
The phrase “friend or foe” and the face-filing worked its way into a thought - maybe the “foe” I saw was fake - something that helped me act and speak my truth, in a way that I have a hard time with “friends”.
Like in the movie Inception, where the people in the dreams are projections of the dreamer’s unconscious, not to be engaged directly or they will turn and attack.
Maybe for the confrontation story in Paint It Forward I had less at stake, and it was easier to say what I needed to say and detach from the outcome.
This last week, the fate of my almost 11-year old was on the line, and years of not dealing with a problem that has become Godzilla huge. Months of giving the benefit of the doubt, working with “the system”, speaking my truth, and still experiencing relentless encroachment and devastation without remedy. That’s a story for another post…or never.
And with evidence over years of patterns of deliberate harm spread out before me like concrete confetti, there was no doubt: the individuals requiring beheading were foes.
Maya Angelou said “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” And this Monday, after years of talking myself out of dealing “better” with what appeared to be “not ok”, I saw what can’t be unseen - I knew better. So I had to do better.
The doing was easy, clear action had to be taken, decisive changes - boom! But the speaking aloud to others, these “foes” that would demean me and argue to maintain their stronghold in “the system”, was the challenge.
I got the job done, but not without the feels. What started as “no shame, blame or resentment”, “just the facts, ma’am”, turned in to frustration and anger at the years of abuse and injustice. There was blood on the floor when I was done, and rightfully so, but I still felt like I could have “done better”.
Could have Obi Wan Kenobi’d myself to present the facts with no emotion. Not added fuel to the fire of defensiveness in the “others” by setting my jaw, steeling my gaze, and hardening my armor.
I wrestled for days with “what is the right way to” (behead a foe;)…and all I can come up with is like Maya Angelou said, I did the best I could. Maybe now I know better?
Now I think that the frustration I felt was a projection - of the frustration I had with myself for letting the little alligator pet that took off a few toes grow to fire-breathing dragon that laid waste to my countryside - because of my own weakness. I knew years ago, in retrospect, the “not ok”, and didn’t believe I had options. Mainly didn’t believe in myself enough to confront “authority” figures, just take a stand and say “no”. “You are wrong”. “It’s not a matter of perspective, or ‘he said, she said’”. And walk away.
Anger at myself for inappropriately continuing to trust humans that had demonstrated untrustworthiness repeatedly. Does that make them a foe? Not unless I keep expecting them to be a friend.
What I realized, is that to accept “others” as themselves requires more nuance than I had been capable of, and more self-love and trust in my own viewpoint than I had ever offered myself.
Instead of working so hard to keep the ‘friend’ balance, maybe letting go of friend or foe and realistically acknowledging the core trust in a relationship. Hard to do when I didn’t trust myself enough to be myself.
Maybe we are all humans in a big soup of humanity, all a collective doing our individual spark-y thing, and when we see in “others” a bully, or liar, there is something deep inside us being projected.
Something shown us to bring forth the truth of who we are - and force us to demonstrate that. Finally turn what in its embryonic form is weakness into fully fleshed out strength. A challenge that demands that we take a stand - not against the “other”, but for who we know ourselves to be.
For me, “love and light” was not getting the job done, so honoring myself, and my daughter - cherishing our play and our simple deep connection - meant learning more, so I could do better. Learning about the sword of my own truth I carried, practicing walking with that sword in its sheath, and wielding it with increasing mastery. Not on the offensive, not to protect in defense, just to show it as a representation of what is ok for me in the world - and be ok if I have to use it to slay a dragon.
When kumbaya circles, honest words, and following the rules of a broken system fail to allow our light to shine, maybe it’s time to punch the bully in the face, and bring the po-po knocking on the liar’s door.
You beautiful people may already have mastered this level of the game, and already “know better” and are “doing better”. My shame at letting bullies kick me and my kids not-withstanding, I’m getting ready to fight the big boss in the next few weeks, and this “friend/foe/faux” rambling has helped me see that maybe I don’t need to project those feels on others to get the job done next time.
Any “foe” I have battled has always led me to myself, and shown me how I can be more of what I came here to be - and that, my friend, sounds like a friend. Give that one a smiley emoji with a wink ;)