I recently said that I am a little tired/overwhelmed by the endless number of possible re-revelations available and that I’d like to remind myself to scale it back and take things one thing at a time. I’ve made a little side-trip on that simplification mission to read a few books recommended by friends.
The first book I just finished – it was a quick read – was Women Food and God by Geneen Roth. This appeared to me to be a self-help book that I would never in a million jillion years have sacrificed my pride to read, but I sort of had to. My friend “Ladypants,” whom I love and respect, had it on her couch when I went to visit her this week. And of course, even though I am waaaaay too good for self-help books, I actually really like them, and of course this book appeared to be about food and women and who doesn’t have at least some kind of dark and damaged relationship with food on some level? So I picked it up and asked her what it was about. She said it was basically about the title, but then she also said that by page five she was in tears, and that she read the book with a box of tissues and would just read and cry and read and cry. Compelling book review, Ladypants. Sold.
Okay first things first – I’ve been thinking about The Feminine Mystique and Betty Friedan’s articulation of the mass purposelessness of women in the 1950’s. I’ve been thinking about happiness and wondering what makes someone happy – is it working really hard to be content with what one has (a la Buddha and meditation?), or is it working really hard to shape and influence one’s reality in a way that is personal to your own sense of self and your own individual passions (a la The Feminine Mystique)? Am I describing the same thing in two different ways (and contentment does not foreclose meaningful change), or are these two approaches incompatible with each other (happiness and striving cannot co-exist)? One seems to require the elimination of self and ego and ambition, and the other requires the cultivating and refining of self and ego and ambition. And when do we know to endure drudgery and misery with a “contentment” state of mind and when to rail against drudgery and misery as a fruitless waste of our precious life and passion in a “save myself” state of mind? I can’t tell. And I am still in the process of re-writing my understanding of my own journey into a really draining career situation that I thought I was toughing out in a “contentment” kind of way which eventually gave way to quitting the job in a “save myself” way (that career situation was corporate lawyering).
So the first sort of case-study that Geneen Roth provides in the book is, you guessed it, a letter of desperation from a first-year litigation associate at a big law firm who goes home and eats every night to numb her pain. (I, by the way, gained 17 pounds in six months at my job by filling myself with cheesy starches and red wine every night to kill the pain.) Lordy lordy lordy. So what was the author’s prescription to this girl? Not so much about finding one's purpose - it was all about Live In The Moment. Observe the hallway lights and the glorious humanity of your “aggravating” situation. Feel the sensation of the emptiness you find so terrifying that you want to numb it with food every night; disentangled this emptiness for yourself and feel, observe, feel, observe.
Dude, QUIT YOUR JOB and find a better outlet for you energy. See, the author offered a sort of Buddha-esque solution, and I offer Betty Friedan, so we can see where my current inclinations lie.
I guess quitting her job is not really necessarily the answer though. Being a quitter is bad, right? – when push comes to shove you can’t just hide under the bed, like me. And sometimes people have to endure crap to get to somewhere good, right? Like dues-paying? Be broke and write off-off-Broadway for thirty years and then get to be head writer for Sex and the City like Michael Scott King. That’s a bad example, because ostensibly theatrical writing is a passion-based job and money wouldn't matter. I guess the law can be passion-based, too, and maybe the miserable chick was really dedicated to being a big lawyer someday but I don’t recognize that as a legitimate goal for anyone to pursue so there’s a problem with me getting her situation completely.
Okay whatever I don’t have a cogent conclusion to draw from this example except that for me, rolling with the drudgery and observing my own pain wasn't going to work while I was at that job – I had to quit, and I am having trouble telling the difference right now between what I should endure and what I should not endure according to which approach of viewing life.
Another interesting insight I got from Women Food and God was about searching for answers, and how seeking answers can be just another form of self-evasion:
“One month it’s about white foods. Then it’s about brain chemistry. Finding the right drug. The fat gene. Being addicted to sugar. Eating for our blood type. Alkaline- and acid-forming foods. Although attending to one or some of these issues might indeed ease our struggle, we use the hunt for answers to abdicate personal responsibility – and with it, any semblance of power – for our relationship with food.”
Well, if I could summarize my concerns about my life any more succinctly, I would. I wrote in THIS post that I am conscious of externalizing my problems – I am spending time learning and thinking blah blah blah in order to further postpone confronting the challenges of actual life. Buddhism as escapism. Education as escapism. Self improvement in general as escapism. It sounds tautological (because it is), but searching for what I am supposed to be doing is a great way to abdicate responsibility for what I am supposed to be doing . . . which is . . . what? Earning some money? Getting to know myself? Meditating? Starting an underground newspaper? Shouldn’t I be looking outside myself to test my relationship against things that may or may not be great for me to do/know/think/achieve, since how else am I going to know what to do with myself? But on the other hand, can I even know how to direct myself purposefully, and sincerely, without letting go of ambition, and of all the ways in which I wish I were different and all the work I keep doing (or failing to do) to make myself into someone I really like and respect, at last (gourmet chef, speak Portuguese, better clothes, get into Harvard, win an award)? Do I have to stop trying to be something in order to be something? Is this the intersection of Betty Friedan and Buddha?
Okay anyway if that made any sense you can let me know. The next book I’m going to be happily side-tracked with is “The Happiness Project.” Another friend mentioned it and it was at the library, and I loooove reading the same book as someone and then getting to talk about it, yay!!
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