Blog in Review Best of 2014 #4 Unconditional Love, or What We Really Mean

"Wow look its a unicorn, how cool is that?"

I mean come on

This statement is the peak of a very important conversation I was having with my bestie last night about love. At the onset of the New Year I made a promise to myself in regards to my emotions and how I express them.  For as long as I can remember I've tried to make myself as unemotional as possible.  I saw it as weakness as a lack of discipline and self-control.  I thought it was base and beneath me. I dislike scenes and emotional outbursts but more than anything I disliked them on me. It was very simple. My emotions give people power over me. I will rob them of that power.

It’s a very authoritative idea of a ruling mind.  I believe astrologically it is a very masculine Pluto or Mars disposition. In women it is likened to the Eris, Lilith position which is of the Queen of the Underworld Persephone herself.  Robbed of her innocence a new embodiment is given. Let's just say the story has always felt. .  familiar.

Hades and Seph

I always told myself that my emotional disengagement was just a sign of advanced maturity. A hallmark of class and grace under pressure. Which it can be seen as. I believe those who have had to deal with me when I am in an emotional clinch call it something else. . . cold, icy, quite a bit frosty. And it is.  The statements are calm, and poetically polite. My face dead cold giving not an ounce of emotion and my manner dismissive.

It is the defense of a child robbed of innocence of being as emotional as she can be. It is the foolish attempt of one who feels deeply at mastering what can be an all-consuming opus. My emotions always felt like a cliff overlooking raging rapids that plunge into a waterfall that ends somewhere at the center of the earth.  The levels of emotional lost I could and still can experience are extreme.  So I've always practiced at being practical in regards to them because practicality is the last of their concerns.

In many ways my emotions are always battling my intellect, which is the heavy Mercurial influence in me. However being a highly instinctual person I realized that denying emotions was the first step in taking away my natural gifts. So balance had to be attained. Which meant I had to explore my extremes on both ends.  I'm just glad I survived it. It was a near thing.

So back to my new year's resolution. I told myself I was no longer going to stifle how I feel about anyone.  I in fact practiced this by sending very personal very gushing messages of love to my closest pals who in some way inspire me by doing nothing more than being who they are. The results were as I expected.  I got back some gushing replies and silence.  I knew who would do what. The gushers are just what they say they are.  The none gushers, the silent, were whelmed. You see all of these people feel as deeply as I do and I know what such a message would've done to me. I would've gushed back but first I would've needed to be silent.  And sometimes when you're silent you just are because "Wow look its a unicorn, how cool is that." Bask in the moment.

Me and my bestie in film

As my bestie and sister from another mister put it, all her life she had thought that family should respond and behave as I have with her and yet due to never really seeing it our having it, my acceptance of her became like walking into your living room and seeing a unicorn. In the message I sent was what it was always supposed to be but never quite was, forcing the person to truly believe deep in their soul that it cannot exist. And then holy smokes there it is.  It was a very pertinent explanation that stuck a chord with me and made an odd kind of sense. It led me to a thought process that became spoken that symbolizes most relationship troubles in this world.  If you walked into a room and saw a unicorn what would you really do?

The response tells us a lot about how we as individuals process love. But not just any love, Unconditional love; this facet of human emotion few of us experience and none of us feel worthy of. The truth is of course you don't deserve it, but look it’s a unicorn.  Its beautiful, wondrous, miraculous and most of all a gift. Would you shoo it away for its own good or would you keep and cherish it for as long as it would let itself be yours.  Most of us say we of course would choose the second option.  However the truth is many of us actually choose the first.

What they are made of

Let me explain. Relationship patterns are an interesting process because usually the person committing the pattern cannot see it.  In someone else eyes its so clear.  Oh you date the same fundamental type of person and are always surprised at the results? The person watching shakes their head and considers this a lost case and cause.  And it is but not for the reasons you may think.  Those people aren’t stupid; none of us are really stupid.  We love patterns. In general we choose what we know, what we want and what we expect. Dating the same type of person guarantees that every relationship ends the same way.  There is comfort in knowing where you'll be before you get there. And we humans are nothing if we aren't addicted to comfort.  Even if that comfort is pain.  The need is sometimes nothing more than to fulfill the pattern.

This is also a very sad declaration on the nature of love and how it seems to be increasingly viewed as a burden that takes away instead of as a gift that gives. Most of us choose to chase away the unicorn not for its sake but for our own. The specter of unconditional love is such a miracle blessing that many of us instinctively choose to avoid it due to a higher self-preserving fear of loss and potential rejection in regards to attaining our dreams. The irony is that I think most of us do believe in some part of ourselves that we really can’t have it all.   Living your career dreams leads to sacrificing your relationship ones.

Often I explain that I don't do something or haven't done something because I've had peak experiences of it and now can't be bothered by less.  The real reason could be that I honestly don't want to find anything that would make those past experiences less beautiful. I want them preserved as the peak to make the pain I experienced worth the effort in the long run. And I use them as a road map to attaining something similar thinking that this time it might work. It is an odd sense of displaced loyalty to a younger me that had the illusions of a child looking for pixie dust in every kiss while telling herself there is no such thing as pixie dust. When faced with pixie dust you will deny deny deny until you have no choice but to see that the weird horned horse is really a unicorn.  But if I were honest it didn’t look like a unicorn then, but somehow it looks like one now.  We either traumatize or romanticize our pasts.  Its human nature.  The bad relationship was really bad; the one that got away was so wonderful.  But it is the lackluster present that enables a dramatic past because if we’re honest the lackluster present is actually a lot more like the dramatic past than we like to admit.  The implication being we are still making the same mistakes and learning nothing from them.

Oh naughty black unicorn

It is the same for a person who continues to date those who can never really love them the way they need to be loved. But this is a different level of affliction I think. Addiction to love is a terrifying thing. It is a declaration that someone else has a level of control over your well-being that could potentially end your desire to exist without them. It is a lure and a trap that many find no solace or comfort in the idea of attaining.  They instead choose to forge temporary unions with tried and true results of interest, excitement and inevitable endings.  They tell themselves it will end differently this time.  Deep down inside however they realize that it’s too similar to previous relationships which are why they are preferred. At the core of this is the desire to win the heart of the one that started the mess to begin with. In every new person that holds the attraction the way the one before did, they try again expecting different outcomes.

The result is a declaration about self-worth and what you consider sacrifice to be.  Love is within itself a paradox, a selfless selfish thing. It gives and takes, it births it kills. It is all and none. The true fabric that holds this thing together because it can be everything and nothing at all. It fills in the empty spaces.  There are many people who lack the proper perception of their self-worth, mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It is a fundamentally human flaw and sometimes it takes viewing yourself from the eyes of others to temper it. But self-worth is a highly misunderstood concept.  It is a process of finding all parts of yourself worthy of care and love. It is why religion is so popular. Most religions are based on an idea that the human spirit that embodies a human body is worth unconditional love just by dent of being a creation of an all knowing all seeing all wise and powerful God.  It establishes the ultimate authority on loving yourself. But this is not really a love that can provide a true understanding of self worth.  For some religiously minded people they have done the work, the soul searching and the forgiveness. Some are just going with it.  But a true dialogue that defines self worth starts with self.  Its starts with looking at yourself under a harsh lens and being very critical. This is why people usually find self-worth through either successful or failed love. The successful lover loves your flaws to the point that you realize they aren’t that bad.  A failed love affair forces you to take those flaws to heart and may make you aware of them.  In the last is where self-worth is mostly lost, as some people don't hold the glass up to see what is worthy in them, just why they no longer have a lover.

Me and my bestie in our heads

In the core of that thought is sacrifice. The trick to the thing like all else lies in sacrifice. In order for my bestie to find that unicorn she had to sacrifice, thoughts of family, thoughts of herself, everything.  For people like me, my privacy, my truth must not be held in, it must be made public.  My hard fought for emotional self-control must be ripped to shreds at my feet. 

My favorite song about love is by Mumford & Sons. Its called White Blank Page.  Within this song is the pathway to the light. In this song is the greatest sacrifice.  As the singer finally understands a fundamental divinely uncontestable truth about love that the heartbroken hardly ever ask themselves. The thought centers around the idea, that you can be better, you can do something different and love will be the result. You can read articles about your attitude, consider new style trends.  All the things you can do to make yourself more lovable will not change one simple thing. Who you decide to love. In the end you might just need to date someone you would never date and consider a perspective you’ve never considered.  Sacrifice all of your thoughts about your fault in something and accept a truth about your inherit worth.  Accept that the person was never able to see it and no . . . that was not your fault.

I’ll leave you with the song. .

Oddity of Mind

A few year ago I released a memoir style fiction called Perilous Flight. It was a coming of age thing that had a lot more reality in it than I ever wanted to believe.  This weighs on me right now.  Give a read.  Feeling a bit of melancholy, need a little direction or just want to get lost with someone who was.  Perilous Flight is the book you're looking for. It is the culmination of healing a broken heart that begins and ends with understanding what you should and shouldn't be fighting for:

I usually don't indulge in psychic flights of fancy.  I know things, I don't like it, I just do.  But every once in a while I have an awareness issue where it feels all of the world's everything is pouring into me.  So it's a haze, blurring dizzying and out of control and then I focus.  And out of the whirl comes a clear conscious stream.  Within this stream I see everything.  Not just a picture, I see people, what they are thinking, what they are feeling why they've responded the way that they have, the connections in their lives that have made it so.  I see myself through their eyes and still maintain what I'm thinking.  It's almost like watching my life as a spectator.  I remove myself from myself and then just politely, quietly watch. 

Not many people know this except for close personal friends. But I dreamed of Siegfried for years before we met.  Call me nuts, but really what use would it be. Anyway in these dreams he would murder me.  He was a serial killer, and he would come up to me and I would stand there knowing that he wouldn't hurt me, trusting him even though I knew I shouldn't and I would let him cut me down. 

He would start with my limbs slowly hacking away at me.  His face impassive and calm, indifferent.  He wasn't even really enjoying it, or paying attention truly.  He was performing a function.  And I endured it knowing that while I would die in one way, I would be reborn in another.  The sane would say that you stay away from the man that murdered you in your dreams.  I say I'm not sane and this was the path I needed to take.  Pain teaches so much more than pleasure does.  As far as my life up to this date has shown me at least.

Honestly I owe the man I'm divorcing a bit of gratitude.  I am just now becoming the woman I've always wanted to be.  And I never would've done it if he hadn't destroyed me emotionally to the point that I no longer wanted to live.  It made me find a reason to exist and forced me to find value within myself and not as a side car of what other people want from me.  The greatest gift a woman can ever give herself, is herself and herself alone.

And now my dreams are my own.  They are tempered with flirting, anticipation, longing, desire, waiting, anxiety, all of the delicious, delicious sensations that accompany being alive.  And now I'm starting to finish the dream, the one where Siegfried destroys me.  It doesn't end like I thought it did, but I never knew that before.  The pain of what I was enduring was always too much and I would end the dream early, well before he’s done killing me. You see, I always thought that this ended in my death and I always check out of dreams before I die in them.  Too Nightmare on Elm Street for me. But now, that I don’t fear the dying I can finish it, picking up from where he left off.

I watch as he pries out my heart and just holds it staring into my face waiting. Finally I yell at him to leave me alone, cursing at him, hating him.  He calmly tosses away my heart, gets up and leaves me lying there. I lay on the ground, my limbs scattered around me, they are burned and singed from my proximity to hell.  My eyes are closed and I weep, uncontrollable weeping.  But no motion, it hurts too much I can't bear the pain of crying as I normally would because heaving does me no good.  I turn to see tiny red demons with stubby limbs fighting over my heart.

Suddenly, the earth shatters around me and I hear him before he lands.  The sound of his wings ripping away as he falls cuts through my pain and stops my tears. I close my eyes as the lightning strikes, it tears up the sky and hurts to look at. And I can see him in my head, falling backwards through clouds, his black wings being torn from his back by the force of his falling. He folds his arms across his chest and lets himself fall.  His face is obscure because it’s being covered by his whipping hair. And then he's there. 

I can't see him, but I can feel him slowly putting me back together.  He starts with my legs, the putting together is almost more painful than the hacking off had been.  Because I can feel the burned torn flesh, I can feel the skin he peeled away from when Siegfried was pulling me apart.  I can feel the exposed nerves, the aching of my bones as they are being fused back together.  I feel the stranger’s hand at my brow. I want to open my eyes but I’m so afraid to stare into the face of my savior, so afraid to meet the man that will have all of me forever no matter what else is decided. He fell for me, what choice do I have. Not that I would choose anything else.  I feel his lips at my eyes telling me its okay not to look, and I feel him push my heart back into my chest. 

Through my pain I now know what to look forward to in pleasure.  I can feel it pour over me peeling away the marred, burned, sliced, and badly cauterized wounds the one who came before left.  This mystery coming into my life just unzips this heavy carcass of my despair, and carefully pulls me free from it.  Like a snake dropping its skin, my reconstructed form, starting with my feet he slowly pulls every part of me free.  His hands brushing away the debris slowly I feel the warmth of the sun combined with the coolness of water. The smell of burning flesh replaced with the onset of spring honeysuckle and lavender. Without a word, his lips to mine I am reborn.

From Perilous Flight at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords

Sacrifice. . Not a Good Idea

Sacrifice

The biggest lie ever told to us that we constantly tell ourselves is that the height of true love is the act of sacrificing your own happiness for another's.  Its sounds so very noble and gallant doesn't it?  Very Christian, for God so loved the world he sacrificed his only son. The truth is that we are not gods; we are mortal beings with finite existences and a limited amount of time to achieve a sense of true self and happiness.

True selflessness doesn't come from sacrifice to another for the sake of love. This is an egotistical idea and is based in an exaggerated sense of self-importance and aggrandization. It is an ego trick that we play on ourselves to attempt to trap another person in our lives. True selflessness comes from existing as you are created, as you are, and being willing to give as much of who you are to the world as possible.  Thus the idea of being without self. 

Mermaid Sacrifice

You are not you, but everyone. Fulfilling your needs is just as important as everyone else's because we are one. Selfless. Please keep in mind that this message is coming from a romance writer. I love the idea of the big sacrifice, but I'm a realist and I believe in love as it is more than the love of a nihilistic ideology fairytales and religion have peppered us with for decades now.

This supposed sacrifice is instead just the opposite of true nobility.  It is not a sacrifice but an attempt at martyrdom to attain some unseen prize that only the person claiming the sacrifice can truly name. But what do they really attain?  Resentment.  When you have sacrificed all that brings you happiness and joy for someone people have unrealistic expectations about what the outcome of that should be.  How is the other person supposed to respond?  Is there any response that is good enough?  Just death right?

Seppuku

I think back to the days of samurai.  They would commit ritual suicide before suffering the humiliation of losing a battle.  How many people died this way without accomplishing anything.  The margin of error is too small and unrealistic. It is something that has always been held as a brave and honorable act to willingly face your own death without flinching when a grave injustice has been done. 

But when the injustice is only to pride and ego, where is the glory gained? This was an act of extreme cowardice.  Instead of learning and growing from a lost battle, these men refused to endure the momentary sting of shame from loss and instead chose to end their lives. They let a simple perception of ego self devalue the entirety of their lives to that point.  I believe people do this in regards to relationships as well and it is equally cowardly.

Resentment

We all know relationships are hard work.  But we as people enjoy work.  What we don't always enjoy is the work that is available to us.  This is where we need to talk about the difference between people who work fueled by passion and people who are passionate about work.  Because there is a reason besides monetary gain that work as an institution exists. We need it.  Our souls, our bodies, our minds need the constant interaction and adjusting.  Our greatest strength is our adaptability. So we must flex this muscle often.

We are different each and every one of us.  Some of us work tirelessly fueled by our passion to work while others are passionate about working. I think most people can be separated into these two quadrants.

People who are fueled by passion for their work are an odd breed.  Artsy, athletic, doers who need to feel like what they are doing carries some importance and weight.  Beyond that they self identify in a lot of ways with what they are doing for a living. Its' not a job its a part of who they are.

Inexplicable Superhero Couple Nightwing and Starfire

When fueled by passion to work the relationships need to embody similar principles or it will not work. They don't have to be identical, however the core beliefs have to center around work being a craft that is constantly growing and changing.  Renewal is very important with these types.  Understanding of temperament and the occasional huff about nothing at all. They need an air of excitement and mystery.  A hint of constant revolution and change. A keen understanding of something not just being done right, but as close to perfect as humanly possible.  

Those with a passion to work can do nearly any job that gives them the basic things they need.  These people are luckier when it comes to relationships because they like the work of being in a relationship as opposed to how the work identifies them. They are truly the love the one you’re with type. They like the structure of someone to come home to.  The idea routine of knowing how the night is going to end and the next day is going to begin.  They enjoy the simple pleasures of life.  Human companionship, warmth and those stresses of day-to-day life because they are service oriented.

The key to understanding what relationships work best for you is understanding what work is best for you.  Often you’ll find people in a dead end job they hate in a relationship that is only slightly better.  Sometimes they have an amazing job and their relationships suffer, or vise versa. But in this work life which shows what people are willing to do for what they need is the key to what they need to be happy in all aspects of their lives.

Avoid resentment and live for yourself.  Understand what you need in a relationship and why it makes you happy.  Compromise is path to self-delusion.  You should always love the work to the point that is doesn’t feel like a job and never settle for something less.  Know that your happiness is worth the wait and whether in a relationship or not, you will have it.

Sacrifice courtesy of https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcTbNWUfjyU5iSu7ppSW6Yehl5IkJB_ZWtn3NXo5nY13l1dyqtqxZhgwh3qv6eXSX2wRKqOhmi4nulVWXSB_g0QPx5X7ri6a6dci_SLgnAEOuwILpylwEY1i6_vSJee85uB2IMgsCM5W8A/s1600/crossman.jpg

Mermaid Sacrifice courtesy of http://digital-art-gallery.com/oid/77/640x419_13593_The_Sacrifice_of_The_Little_Mermaid_2d_fantasy_illustration_mermaid_sea_storm_fairy_tale_shipwreck_picture_image_digital_art.jpg

Resentment courtesy of http://www.sadmuffin.org/pinkforsure/graphics/photography-quotes/resentment.gif

Seppuku courtesy of http://hoffstrizz.typepad.com/.a/6a0128773aba66970c0134854417e4970c-800wi

Inexplicable Superhero couple: Nightwing and Starfire courtesy of http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l3cfjk65tu1qc7r93o1_500.png

A Little Romance courtesy of http://deals.westin.com/uploadedfiles/SOP/Westin_Santa_Fe/romance.jpg

True Altruism

In book one of my W.A.R.M. Front series the heroine and the hero share a very interesting if not integral belief.  That belief is in altruism.  Whenever I write books I like to talk about things that are near and dear to my heart.  In very many ways I doubt anything is as near or dear to me as altruism. 

Growing up my family depended very much on the kindness of strangers.  I remember at least 2 Christmases very clearly that would've been awful if the local church had not been kind enough to give us a Christmas dinner and toys for my brother and me.  I wonder about how different my childhood would've been if these services had not been available and how I would be a different person now from those experiences.  And I wonder how the general public feels about charity and altruism.  Even more so I wonder if those who have been fortunate enough either through recognition of hard work or by virtue of luck to be highly financially successful in this life understand what sharing this does for their soul.  Not just giving money to the Red Cross once a year, but actually getting their hands dirty and watching a life transform.  

For those who have lost their way and lost meaning in their own lives, it is restored through finding meaning in another’s life. Altruism is in many ways the most selfish act I know and all the more lovely for it.  It is a process of healing another that brings the healing to the healer. By opening the most nurturing and cradling parts of yourself to others you give that part of you what it really needs, air to breathe.   By burying it in yourself you are only suffocating it, depriving it of sunlight, food, and water.  The things it needs to grow.

This comes on the heels of reading something yesterday that literally made me cry.  I've always been a fan of the music of Bon Jovi. Well now I'm a fan of the man Jon Bon Jovi because of this wonderful contribution he has made to his hometown.  In a nutshell he and his wife have a foundation that gives back to their community. This is something that I believe is an absolute must if you have any amount of great success, and is a must in smaller quantities even if you don't. 

Their latest endeavor is a revamping of the 'soup kitchen' concept.  Historically the soup kitchen is a necessary thing that brings with it a multitude of soul destroying poisons.  However this version includes something that I believe people forget to give to those in need. Dignity. This is a pay as you can restaurant that gives a healthy meal in a clean well received environment.

The full story can be found here: Soul Kitchen, Jon Bon Jovi

I can't wait for the next trip I take to the area so I can eat a meal there and leave $100 on the table.

I know it stands to reason that if you are this down on your luck, beggars can't be choosy.  But this is in essence the problem.  Beggars should be choosy.  It is this sense of self-worth that propels a person to make the necessary changes in their life to actually start a positive shift in their existence.

I remember being ashamed of my upbringing when I was younger.  I never had the best toys on the market, was lucky to have the toys I did have.  My mother always made sure that we had clean clothes, food, and a roof over our head no matter what she had to do to accomplish this.  If it meant swallowing her pride and asking for aide then so be it.  Her children were worth it.  However as a young child all I had was a perpetual sense of not being 'good enough' to have things other children had.  And my mother's income or lack thereof became a definer for people as to what I could or could not accomplish.

I remember being accepted to my high school and then told in so many words that children from my socio-economic background usually didn't last long because they felt like outcasts from other students who sometimes had very privileged backgrounds.  They could afford the things I could not.  Being a visual artist is very expensive business and somehow my mother made sure that even if I couldn't have the best supplies, I could create art. She didn't let me feel guilty about costing the family so much money because she saw this for what it was; dignity for me.  And she knew that I very much needed to have that if I was ever going to achieve anything.

As the first high school graduate, first college degree holder, and soon to be the first graduate degree holder in my family I can look back and see how unattainable these goals would've been if I didn't have my dignity to see it out. What people from other backgrounds don't understand is the sense of helplessness someone who is deeply impoverished has.  When you are in poverty your living conditions and standards are much lower than that of people in the middle class.  You juggle bills, paying them by importance as opposed to paying them because they are due.  You never have enough money to pay all of your bills and trying to live below the means necessary to account for the amount of money you make leads to consequences like not being able to buy the proper clothes for the job you work. Not being able to secure transportation to it, or not being able to eat enough to have the energy to work. And all the while everyone around you blames you for your inability to be better, to be more.  The United States poverty lines are just a bad joke that accounts for an economy that was thriving over 3 decades ago without truly accounting for inflation, technology, and the changing standards of basic human needs.

The issue is when another bill collector has called you a deadbeat, your boss is too cheap to give you a raise implying that your work effort is not worth this level of finance, and you don't know how you're going to feed yourself or your children tonight, you start to believe some unfortunate things about yourself.  When you work yourself to the bone with multiple jobs, no health insurance, living paycheck to paycheck and another financial burden presents itself as an emergency; you are willing to do almost anything to free yourself from the panic, the horror, and the rage this gives you.  The last thing on your mind is your dignity, because if it will make you feel like you are accomplishing something to sell it off, you most likely will, and very few people in similar situations would blame you for it.

While some may say all you have is your pride, you must realize that people in truly tragic situations don't have that any more.  Pride proved to be too expensive in the face of hunger. And dignity isn't allowed to be a thought if you want to maintain shelter. There are those miracle stories.  Those people who despite the odds managed to maintain both and succeed.  However they are the minority not the majority.  Self-worth is a commodity in our world that has had a definite price tag placed on it.  It is now a beast that involves status, income, and has little to do with moral values and community building. Dignity has always been this nearly indefinable mix of human frailty and strength.  It can be used to break you and to lift you high.  Sometimes within the same breath.

I build this case to state this. The humility it takes for a person who is very successful to look at someone less fortunate, and offer a hand as opposed to a handout is immense, and should be treasured for the miracle that it is. The difference is in the old Chinese fish metaphor, give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him how to fish. . . you know how it goes.  This is the act of showing someone through the care you have taken to prepare something for them, their worth to you as a human being.  And when someone can't manage to build self-worth and dignity for themselves, it is the job of others to show them how it's done through our own actions. The world is our community if we don’t care enough to take care of it, who else will? No matter how isolated we try to make ourselves, no one is here alone and if you are in a position to help others, you must understand this and help.

I give men who have Superman tattoos a hard time.  It’s because usually they are self-involved delusional braggarts that have placed on this false persona to fulfill some missing need within themselves.  My issue is that Superman is a hero and saves lives.  If you aren’t doing something similar you haven’t earned his colors.  Jon Bon Jovi is earning those colors.

I hope acts of true altruism become an epidemic.

Celebrity Crisis

Confidence

I feel like I need to start this blog with a disclaimer because I'm going to talk about things that need to be clearly identified as not belonging to each other.  They are the differences between confidence and self-absorption. I am all about confidence.  Everyone should have it and everyone should display it.  I've been told I'm in fact much too modest.  Trust me I do this on purpose because the megalomaniacal beast that I hold at bay daily is no cake walk I assure you.  I try to channel that through my characters.  Let them be larger than life and I can just be me. 

I suppose I find myself wondering about the state of wealth and celebrity.  The wealthy are pretty obscure.  Very few people even know the names of the wealthiest people in the world.  They couldn't pick them out in a crowd, and can't easily identify their names in print or vocalized.  However celebrity is all the rage.  People can identify a celebrity without even trying, thus they become the image that is often associated with the wealthy.  Even pop cultural anarchists like myself can tell you a few basic tenets of modern pop culturalization. 

The best way to get press is to get caught doing something amoral by 'good' American citizen standards.  As an entertainer it is nearly impossible to not eventually do something that other people disapprove of.  Never underestimate the ability of people to do two things, misunderstand, and then judge what they never understood. The irony is that the best way to keep fame is to then somehow transcend what got people's attention in the first place. Which I believe is that crucial step between confidence and self-absorption. It’s 'I got away with it' syndrome.  It leads to a life of 'getting away with it' and expecting to always do so.  This is when the first inkling of "I'm better than you starts" to really cement itself.

Remember this story? I do!

Self-absorption starts with that one basic idea.  I am better than you.  Every case of it stems from that one primary thought. I've had brief brushes with celebrity and I hated it.  I hated it because this entity of celebrity can somehow prevent and hinder the ability of making true connections. My life has no meaning without true connections to other people.  It was hard for me to tell the difference between the truth as it was, and the truth as it was being presented as.  The biggest favor I ever did for myself was to discover the difference.  From time to time I still slip up.  But with less people involved in the process to snow me over for their own gain, it’s easier than it could've been.

The only aspect of celebrity that I didn't mind was the idea that financial woes would cease for myself and those I loved. However at what point does your financial success when combined with the specter of celebrity make you not see anything beyond yourself.  To be successful in any industry a certain level of personal choice and compliance has to be given up.  To be successful in a performance based industry this is multiplied by 10 because usually you aren't talking about just a job.  You are talking about doing something you are passionately in love with to a degree that it is a part of you.  You need it to exist more than you need breath. Sometimes that peak is very far away. So far in fact that people have to convince themselves beyond what is actually true to reach it.  Which means you have to negate reality as it is and replace it with one of your own (shameless Mythbusters steal).

So I test drove it.  This new reality for me was dark. It was filled with pitfalls and attacks.  An unending landscape of fire pits and terrifying creatures ready to snap your head off for fun.  I explore this idea more in a romance I'm writing featuring a Hollywood movie producer and a grassroots painter. It explores how alike they are yet how their choices made them seem so different from each other. Working on this again made me think about my own peccadilloes with fame, celebrity, and the price that I thought was too high to pay for the promise of money, glory, and popularity.

Overconfidence

I've never thought well of celebrities or people who needed and wanted fame.  That is my prejudice developed from people I've met and known in my past in addition to my disgust at the assumption they made that I was in fact just like them. I made assumptions about them based on my value system.  As unfair as that is, I do it because I realize they have done the same. The truth is I am just like them, we all are.  Some of us just channel it differently. But the core that makes someone choose to pursue fame and choose not to are basically identical.  The need to associate, develop, and ultimately belong to something. Always trying to find the formula to a happy fulfilling life. We just make different choices as to how to fulfill our core.

Celebrity Weddings

There were things that I attached to celebrity and fame because the actions others encouraged me to propagate in order to achieve it left very obvious victims. I never wanted to believe it was okay to look down on people.  I never wanted to think that some people just deserve less because I was able to achieve something considered 'more'.  I never wanted to be able to justify making ridiculous amounts of money and not starting a charity.  I never wanted my need to express my talent to mean more than human decency, kindness, and empathy.

The point is I never wanted to be able to ignore another person because I thought I was better than them.  I always think about the people who I know now that I most likely would not have met had I chosen a different path and what a grave loss that would be in my life.  Most importantly I never wanted to wrap myself in that cynical cocoon I was developing that didn't even allow grace in.  I wanted to remain human enough to understand the importance of humility. To ultimately keep the magic of meeting special people that the world for whatever reason ignores.  That feeling of discovering this perfect meadow that has somehow remained untainted by the filth of the world.

Yes this is that car

When I see that some rapper has blown $370,000 to destroy a car in a music video I cringe at what I could've become.  When a musician refuses to do a charity concert because they aren't getting paid I wonder why do they need more money.  They already have more than they need to live well. When I see music, art, dance leaving schools and very few of the people who benefitted from these programs care enough to do something about it, I wonder how can they claim to love what they do if they don't care enough to make sure that it always exists.  You can hear it in everything they do. I am better than you. And all I can think is I no longer care about anything you do.

Why?

Why does celebrity lead to this 'us versus them' mentality no matter what type of fame it is? This 'I as a celebrity cannot be bothered by you a regular person' nonsense.  I've meet people that aren't like that, but the majority abide by and prefer this separation that is in essence contributing to the class war that the wealthy is waging.  The extremely wealthy are using celebrity as their front line fodder. Celebrities bear the brunt of the criticisms for overt wealth and wealth flaunting practices. If celebrities would take a moment, and just be with 'regular' people they would be moved to discuss their plight and be less villianized.  But in this country our celebrities are sometimes even worse than our politicians.  Because for entertainment careers being a savvy politician is necessary for success.

Love word clouds

The question I could never answer, and was too afraid of losing myself to confront was this.  Is it even possible to retain any empathy, compassion, or reality when fame is your reality?  What would lead a character who is being victimized by his own fame into understanding the plight of a person on the other end of life?  In this case I choose magic.  A witch to be exact.  I wonder how their story will end?  Coming soon. . . .

Confidence courtesy of: http://danpetrosini.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/confidence.jpg

Overconfidence courtesy of: http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/u107/confidence.jpg

Better Than You Book cover courtesy of: http://adaptiveblue.img.s3.amazonaws.com/books/i_am_better_than_you/robert_lopshire/small

Why courtesy of: http://www.maddymann.com/publicity/crywhy.jpg

Rap Car pic courtesy of: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/08/13/article-2025575-0D691BAB00000578-428_634x427.jpg

Word Cloud courtesy of: http://www.compassnt.com/Compassion_Quotes.html

Celebrity Weddings courtesy of:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEAgy0rvpV3h7xRDc5sa0BhiEaVdAhwAa6mHPjvURJIzqJAYQs33jRAGjOUMHy9aXVUUlghgg9mNLBfGurIo5BUBl6aDvf_ED0yQ2GMph7KNzknwce4UFmgwmKvJr4ylY4Wv6CMXsbsDc/s1600/celebrityweddings.jpg

Perspective Bluff: The Leading Lady

I am a bit of a sociology buff.  It's one of those social sciences that I feel very connected to mostly because it's the study of society which is a construct made by us.  People.  So I read lots of sociology blogs and textbooks because I find the study of us rather fascinating.  Recently I've decided to embark on another odyssey besides romance novels.  I also would like to write self-help books for those members of society that would like to free themselves from the constraints of society which would benefit everyone overall.  My self help series will be about women and some of the common perception traps we often find ourselves in.  So here is a little sample of what I would like to confront.  We'll call this segment the leading lady.

A couple of weeks ago I was watching this romantic comedy called Just Wright starring Queen Latifah and Common.  Most days of the week you'll catch me watching some action or super hero movie.  It's just what I prefer.  There was nothing else on, and the part of the movie I chimed in on intrigued me because I've always felt like no one has ever dealt with this aspect of female socialization.  The aspect I'm talking about is the 'professional athlete wife’.  This movie confronted the common perception issues most people have with this designation of society.  It is a one sided account so while it was not very flattering to the image of the professional athlete wife it did show some deeper thought and intelligence directed towards the professional athlete.

The character development for the movie was pretty standardized. If you picture in your mind what the wife of a professional athlete should look like she is usually of a certain weight, height, hair color or texture and sometimes a certain ethnicity. She is what Hollywood would refer to as 'The Leading Lady’.  The leading lady is a concept that leads into certain beliefs about a woman and her worth in the world. Through her portrayal in the media the average person begins to believe that only certain types of women deserve to be treated well. A man should only fall in love with a specific type of woman. She should have certain types of friends, and participate in certain activities.  She should always dress a certain way, and she should always be perceived as the height of feminine beauty.  The Venus Di Milo if we are being specific. The movie has this fascinating scene during a game where the two female characters that will ultimately vie for the attention of the male lead are facing the wives of the athletes.  It was this stark cookie cutter scene where there were rows of women who physically looked nearly identical.

The brilliance of this movie was that the actual leading lady was Queen Latifah who by all standards has never fit into the so called 'leading lady' role.  At several times during the movie I myself questioned why she was cast as she was.  The story itself was a paradox as I found myself thinking about how implausible it would be for a professional athlete to even consider a relationship with someone who didn’t fit the standard. This even slight wondering on my part was quite an epiphany for me because I usually don't prescribe to these pre-conceived notions.  Then I had to acknowledge how invasive and brainwashing media can be.  Even though I knew that this was not such an odd occurrence and should in fact be seen more and not less, something niggled at me saying that this woman wasn't the woman that belonged in this situation.  She didn't have the right qualities to be loved by this type of man, and she shouldn’t be the focal point of this movie.  This was all based on her physical appearance alone as the movie was full of women that did fit that very narrow ‘leading lady’ designation.  But it was that setting that made the absurdity of it my thoughts so apparent.

What it made me realize is how victimized American culture is by the mandates prescribed by our media.  Women hate themselves for not being what media tells them to be, and men actively support it.  However this point is in all respects. While it seems that one end has it better than the other end, what is thought of an unconventionally attractive woman who endeavors to expound upon her beauty as opposed to a conventionally attractive one who attempts to hide it. This aspect of fitting in becomes a value system for self worth and societal standing.  The rating system wants to know how well you fit in, and the system is set up to punish those who do not conform. Consider what happens to an Amish who falls into prideful ways.  In many respects society seeks to do this to those who don’t conform, thus the many societal subcultures.

The irony of this was presented so very clearly in the movie as the standard ‘pro athlete woman’ was in fact a gold digger who didn't care about the man or the sport he played.  She cared about the status symbol he would become in her life and the exalted status that she would enjoy as his wife.  While this is an unfair assumption to place onto most of these women, how many of them have carefully cultivated that look so that this goal can be achieved? It was the believability of it that was the most startling as women do sometimes see each other as either a scheming gold digger or not. We limit what the other is capable of because of it. But in regards to the professional male athlete isn’t this type of wife a statement of the same value system? Even though the female lead actually had more in common with the male lead, when faced with a conversation with each of them he chooses the gold digger instinctively understanding that this was the proper woman to be with thus solidifying his place in the system. This is how he fits in and thus reaffirms his self worth.

The key to society working is the understanding of each other and the value inherit to certain aspects of humanity.  The world is growing more caustic by the day towards ideas of true charity and service because of establishing ideas of glamour and excess. Instead of correlating societal value to service, dignity, compassion, empathy and care, value is given to avarice, vainglory, and idolatry. The system is in place, and it is not a faulty system.  However the accepted qualities and designations of fitting in desperately need to be reworked.