E.T. 101
In gathering up books for half.com from the bathroom shelf, I stumbled on one of my old favorites, E.T. 101.
There were a few gems from my years helping Diane running DreamStreet, the New Age bookstore, that continue to travel with me. Michael Raspberry's Good Business shaped my philosophy as an entrepreneur. Paul Winter's Canyon CD. Susan Osborne's Susan CD, which is long out of print, but she sent me a copy a few years ago. Unbelievable voice and music. There are more, but E.T. 101 is something special. Here's an except from the Intergalactic New Collegiate Diction written, of course, by Mission Control.
"Reality
"This is a difficult word to define because there really isn't any such thing. What we mean by that is that there is no single reality, here or anywhere else.
"The reality you live in is nothing more than an audio-visual demonstration of where your attention is. The universe presumes your attention is on what you want and graciously provides you with more of the same. If this dynamic were understood, you would never do anything so foolish as declare a war on drugs -- unless, of course, your objective were to create more of them. ...
"Because you have yet to understand your power of creation and who you really are, you perpetually put your attention on denial instead of affirmation. This results in the universe serving up an extra helping of what you thought you didn't want."
I couldn't have said it better myself. Now, if I can just remember it.
Putting together a portfolio is always a startling experience for me. I forget how good I am until I start looking at samples of work. And more than that, I forget how much better I've become as a writer over the years. I can barely stand to read the articles and position papers I wrote ten years ago. Awkward, pretentious, wordy, full of redundancies and sloppy logic. If there is one thing I've gotten out of this great adventure in the commercial world, it's a long step toward incisive thinking and elegant writing. I guess that's two things. Anyway, practice does pay off.
Meanwhile, in trying to find a bit of information for a client, I searched search through my old e-mail files. And surprisingly stumbled over the complete "sent" file from 1998-9, the years in which I hired D and then he became whatever the hell he was. Reading it was at first a tough journey into those old feelings of emotional displacement. But afterwards, in thinking about it, I think I finally got a different perspective on what happened. Or a different perspective on his perspective.
For those of you who witnessed it, try this on. I had everything. He had nothing. And therefore he couldn't really hurt me. I had all the power over everything he wanted. He only had the power of being able to manipulate me. So for him, it was kind of a long chess game. And everything was in the game. There were no boundaries, no limits, except what either of us could declare limits and make stick. He drew his lines -- no fidelity, no commitment, except as long as it took to do the deal. I drew mine -- my business to run as I chose, my money because it was my money. But everything else was fair game.
As you know, if you've been reading me, I think that it all worked out for me in the end. Mostly because it clarified what was ultimately wrong with my basic strategy for living -- find a savior, save him or her in exchange for being saved. I didn't take care of my own life, but paid someone else to do it by taking care of theirs. His strategy of taking care of himself trumped mine big time. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life, but it was also a major event in terms of illustrating to me exactly why that strategy was not only inefficient (no, no, no, I would always be telling my partners, do it this way not that way), but it kept me from ever really getting grounded in who I am, what I want to do for myself, and figuring out to do it. As he put it, I was always in this black hole of commitments to people I was responsible for. It exhausted him just to try to help me sort it out. I couldn't argue with him. I could never get clear.
But the interesting part of imagining him thinking that he couldn't really hurt me, because I was so powerful and he was so powerless, is that it makes sense of the whole thing as a game, in which we were each playing constantly for our own advantage. My big objective was to get him to love me. His big objective was to get what he came for and get on with his life. As I said, he had the real advantage in strategies. He was always telling me I was responsible for myself. He was not going to take care of me, beyond what he was being paid for. I read it as betrayal. I was taking care of him; how could he not be taking care of me? These were the rules of the universe. But you know, these were rules that lost the game. Not that people don't fall in love. Not that people don't care about and for each other. But you can't really do that until you're competent at taking care of yourself first.
One of the rules for getting over codependency (and handling the oxygen masks on airplanes): you can't take care of anyone else if you're running on empty. Take care of yourself first.
I think that looking at this as a kind of board game, played with only one rule, might work as a way to approach this book with some kind of objectivity that doesn't make him a monster. The rule? Everyone is responsible for himself or herself. After that it comes down to how well you negotiate.
Sometimes I think I'll never love again. Not because he broke my heart. But because I don't know what love is, as a person who is responsible for herself. But when I think about him in these terms, it makes me realize why I loved him and why it was so hard to let him go. He made things real. He looked at the whole world as raw material for his life. He didn't lie. He was manipulative as hell, but he was also transparent about it. He'd wait a beat to see if he was getting away with it, and when it was clear he was, he'd zoom off to the next thing. Part of me was gasping in pain all the time, but part of me was in total awe. How did he do that? And why couldn't I?
Wake up to who you are. That's the core message in E.T. 101. Stop agreeing to all the things that make you less. Stop focusing on what you don't want, and spend the energy to figure out what you really do want and make that who you are.
There were a few gems from my years helping Diane running DreamStreet, the New Age bookstore, that continue to travel with me. Michael Raspberry's Good Business shaped my philosophy as an entrepreneur. Paul Winter's Canyon CD. Susan Osborne's Susan CD, which is long out of print, but she sent me a copy a few years ago. Unbelievable voice and music. There are more, but E.T. 101 is something special. Here's an except from the Intergalactic New Collegiate Diction written, of course, by Mission Control.
"Reality
"This is a difficult word to define because there really isn't any such thing. What we mean by that is that there is no single reality, here or anywhere else.
"The reality you live in is nothing more than an audio-visual demonstration of where your attention is. The universe presumes your attention is on what you want and graciously provides you with more of the same. If this dynamic were understood, you would never do anything so foolish as declare a war on drugs -- unless, of course, your objective were to create more of them. ...
"Because you have yet to understand your power of creation and who you really are, you perpetually put your attention on denial instead of affirmation. This results in the universe serving up an extra helping of what you thought you didn't want."
I couldn't have said it better myself. Now, if I can just remember it.
Putting together a portfolio is always a startling experience for me. I forget how good I am until I start looking at samples of work. And more than that, I forget how much better I've become as a writer over the years. I can barely stand to read the articles and position papers I wrote ten years ago. Awkward, pretentious, wordy, full of redundancies and sloppy logic. If there is one thing I've gotten out of this great adventure in the commercial world, it's a long step toward incisive thinking and elegant writing. I guess that's two things. Anyway, practice does pay off.
Meanwhile, in trying to find a bit of information for a client, I searched search through my old e-mail files. And surprisingly stumbled over the complete "sent" file from 1998-9, the years in which I hired D and then he became whatever the hell he was. Reading it was at first a tough journey into those old feelings of emotional displacement. But afterwards, in thinking about it, I think I finally got a different perspective on what happened. Or a different perspective on his perspective.
For those of you who witnessed it, try this on. I had everything. He had nothing. And therefore he couldn't really hurt me. I had all the power over everything he wanted. He only had the power of being able to manipulate me. So for him, it was kind of a long chess game. And everything was in the game. There were no boundaries, no limits, except what either of us could declare limits and make stick. He drew his lines -- no fidelity, no commitment, except as long as it took to do the deal. I drew mine -- my business to run as I chose, my money because it was my money. But everything else was fair game.
As you know, if you've been reading me, I think that it all worked out for me in the end. Mostly because it clarified what was ultimately wrong with my basic strategy for living -- find a savior, save him or her in exchange for being saved. I didn't take care of my own life, but paid someone else to do it by taking care of theirs. His strategy of taking care of himself trumped mine big time. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life, but it was also a major event in terms of illustrating to me exactly why that strategy was not only inefficient (no, no, no, I would always be telling my partners, do it this way not that way), but it kept me from ever really getting grounded in who I am, what I want to do for myself, and figuring out to do it. As he put it, I was always in this black hole of commitments to people I was responsible for. It exhausted him just to try to help me sort it out. I couldn't argue with him. I could never get clear.
But the interesting part of imagining him thinking that he couldn't really hurt me, because I was so powerful and he was so powerless, is that it makes sense of the whole thing as a game, in which we were each playing constantly for our own advantage. My big objective was to get him to love me. His big objective was to get what he came for and get on with his life. As I said, he had the real advantage in strategies. He was always telling me I was responsible for myself. He was not going to take care of me, beyond what he was being paid for. I read it as betrayal. I was taking care of him; how could he not be taking care of me? These were the rules of the universe. But you know, these were rules that lost the game. Not that people don't fall in love. Not that people don't care about and for each other. But you can't really do that until you're competent at taking care of yourself first.
One of the rules for getting over codependency (and handling the oxygen masks on airplanes): you can't take care of anyone else if you're running on empty. Take care of yourself first.
I think that looking at this as a kind of board game, played with only one rule, might work as a way to approach this book with some kind of objectivity that doesn't make him a monster. The rule? Everyone is responsible for himself or herself. After that it comes down to how well you negotiate.
Sometimes I think I'll never love again. Not because he broke my heart. But because I don't know what love is, as a person who is responsible for herself. But when I think about him in these terms, it makes me realize why I loved him and why it was so hard to let him go. He made things real. He looked at the whole world as raw material for his life. He didn't lie. He was manipulative as hell, but he was also transparent about it. He'd wait a beat to see if he was getting away with it, and when it was clear he was, he'd zoom off to the next thing. Part of me was gasping in pain all the time, but part of me was in total awe. How did he do that? And why couldn't I?
Wake up to who you are. That's the core message in E.T. 101. Stop agreeing to all the things that make you less. Stop focusing on what you don't want, and spend the energy to figure out what you really do want and make that who you are.