My Life a Masterpiece

“Life, like drawing, is a series of corrections”

Kathleen Ditmore, wonderful sister and friend.

I’ve always struggled with the big picture. I’m a details sort of girl. I’m not good at picking vacation spots, but once someone makes the call I’m the one that organizes it down to the final check mark. I am good at details, but honestly the view from the detail seats is pretty limited. I see only what is in front of me. So if problems are in front of me, there are only problems. If obstacles are in front of me then all I see are obstacles. It can make life overwhelming to say the least. This line of thinking reminds me of the expression “The devil is in the details”. I believe that. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been tempted to just throw up my hands in sheer frustration when confronted by long list of details that must be considered in order for a plan to go forward.

When I think of details I’m reminded of paint by number kits. I can remember getting those as a child and then having to figure out which number corresponded to which color. I would then spend painstaking hours filling in all the 4’s with navy and the 2’s with yellow. Slowly and a bit sloppily, a picture would eventually appear. It wasn’t until it was finished that I could actually see where I had made my mistakes, but those were usually fairly easy to correct. Sometimes I chose not to correct it. I liked it better a little different from the image on the box. I could stand back and look at it. I could see the big picture comprised of a thousand little details.

I think that is what is missing at times from my life. I just don’t step back and look at the big picture. I get hung up on all the details. I get too focused on trying to make my life look like the picture on the box. The picture on the box is just the example. It has nothing to do with how my life should look. For a detail person, like myself, that thought is a little frightening. How could I possibly know if I’m getting it right or wrong, if I don’t have some guidelines to compare my life with, how do I know if I’m on track? I wondered around asking myself this question for years until I finally realized that being on track is less about the detail concept of rules and instead more about the big picture concept of faith.

Don’t get scared and click off, running from a religious fanatic, I’m not a Bible thumper, well, not anymore. No, I am done with rigid religion and manmade denominational rules. I still believe in God minus all the made up control bullshit. I look at the big picture of Christ or Buddha or well, insert the prophet of your choice here. Unlike in my day to day “to do list” list, I don’t get bogged down in the detail of my faith, I don’t waste a lot of time trying to follow every conflicting rule. I’m not deluded into believing that I can ever get it all right or be perfect. In fact, Jesus said for me to come to him like a child. Well then, how could I have ever believed that God expects perfection if He asked me to come as a child. Children make messes, they fall down, they ask silly questions, and they tear their clothing, and occasionally spill their milk. They say the wrong things for the right reasons. Children are imperfect and I’m a child of God. Seeing this big picture has made my life a lot easier. That old Bible thumper I alluded to above, she was very much lost in the details and missing the point.

It was during those years of perfecting myself and my faith that I felt pressure from religion. At twenty I truly bought into that crap, I believed that if I tried hard enough that in time I would reach the point of perfect faith. Now at 44 I know perfection is impossible. Luckily, I have also come to understand that God never expected perfection, man demands perfection, God adores the imperfect, the unique, and the flawed. God adores me. Yep, the woman who forgets to say her prayers, who eats steak from time to time when there are hungry people in this world, who wears green with blue and overprotects everyone she loves. Yep, God loves me. Why? There is no why. That is the biggest trick of all. We spend our lives asking why but there is no why. It just is. He just is. Life just is. It isn’t about understanding any of it. It is about living it.

I think that God is in the details and God is in the big picture. God is in all of it. In the midst of my detail driven insanity, God pulls me out of my chair and asks me to open my eyes and see the big picture. The colorful, textured, vibrant portrait of my life, it isn’t perfect. It isn’t even close. It’s obvious when I look at it that I used some green where the yellow was supposed to go, the red isn’t quite right and the white and black are far too close together, but that’s okay. I’m okay. “Life like drawing is a series of corrections”, according to my sister and I believe that is true. I’m a process and this is my masterpiece, fully imperfect, and fully alive. I don’t look like the picture on the box and that is a very good thing.

Ta-Dah

“And for my next trick, I’ll pretend to be someone that I’m not, so that maybe you might like me more.”

I used to be the life of the party. My smile never left my face. I know this because for days after an event my jaws would ache. I used to leave parties exhausted. Not from any physical exertion, I mean how much effort does it take to stand around with a drink in my hand and nod, no my exhaustion was the result of the effort it required for me to be “on” all night. I’m not an “on” person. In fact, I am quite comfortable now admitting that in most ways I’m very much off in my thinking, but that is another entry altogether. I’m actually a rather shy and quiet person, but somewhere along the way I learned that being shy and reserved isn’t as desirable as extroverted and entertaining. I can’t be sure where this quirky, comic relief part of me came into being, but I suspect that perhaps it developed in the commercial spots between Gilligan’s Island and the Brady Bunch. I learned many of my social skills from Days of Our Lives, Dynasty, Dallas and Knots Landing. No wonder there is so much drama in my life.

Being a natural born people pleaser and social chameleon, skills honed through generations of genetic refinement, I was able to adapt my personality to whatever the situation required. Naturally, as a result, I’ve avoided parties much like lobbyists avoid audits. It’s a shame too, because parties can be a lot of fun whether a person is the life of it or well, not the life. I refuse to think of myself as the death of a party. No, that is usually the person who brings their vacation slides. No, I’m not the death of the party just more comfortable listening instead of talking.

Many times I can be mistaken for the help. I tend to hide in kitchens, washing up glasses, getting the next tray ready to take out, even serving, so I have something to do instead of trying to make small talk. Did I mention that I suck at small talk? No? Well, I suck at small talk. I usually find one thing out about someone and then repeat their answer back to them over and over again varying it slightly hoping they might not realize I’m stuck in an infinite loop. After a while even they are bored with their children’s occupations, or the great deal they got on their car, or what color they painted their house.

I’m finding that so much of life is about expectations. When I look out and accept what I believe are the world’s expectations without factoring in my own unique skills and quirks, I’m destined to feel like a fish out of water, the odd man out, the exhausted party guest who keeps looking at the clock and wishing it was time to leave. I’m not smooth. I’m not polished. I’m not Alexis Carrington, beaded gown, professional make-up, “I’m a tramp and I like me” confidence. I’m not J.R plotting and planning and always trying to sum up a room to my advantage. I’m not someone who cares what fork a person uses or if they put the salad plate in the right spot on the place setting. I am just a guest invited into someone’s home. What I forget is that I am the person that was invited and so it’s okay for me to be myself. It’s okay for me to be the real person I am. I’m the one setting up the performance expectation, not the host. I’m the one trying to replicate a scene from a fictional “B” television series mistaking it for a reality show.   It's not the world's expectations that are the issue.  It is my interpretation of those and the assumption that I'm to conform to them.

I can’t always distinguish between the performers and audience members at a party. The truth is that some people are just naturally outgoing. Some people do feel at ease in a crowd. It is important though that I realize I’m not alone. There are others out there in the crowd, glancing at their watches and searching for excuses so that they can escape to the comfort of the kitchen, out of the spotlight where purpose replaces personality and tasks jump start small talk which eventually evolves into conversation. This is where the introverts hang out, like the dark corner of the gym at prom, this is our stage and where we can practice being ourselves. Life ain’t so tragic in the kitchen or that corner. It’s actually pretty nice there, safe, comfortable, and a home away from home.

“Ta Dah, and for my next trick I will be myself, no applause required.”

And Today's Special Is...

I’m not special. I know what you just thought as you read that. Wait a minute, isn’t this blog about optimism? Well, yes, it is and believe it or not, the fact that I can finally admit that I’m not special is a step in the right direction. Accepting my own normality frees me from grandiose expectations and allows me to finally be happy by accepting who I really am.

Remember way back when we were all young? For some of us that isn’t so long ago, but for me it is half a lifetime. When I was young I can remember being told by everyone in my life, “You can do anything you want to do”. “You might be the first woman President. You might cure cancer. You might author world peace.” I’m not sure if I was more trusting or gullible, but I ate those words up like candy. Like candy, they became a part of me. I accepted that those were legitimate expectations and that unless I managed to pull off something spectacular with my life that I was letting others down and was in fact a failure.

I’m not sure how parents and teachers are supposed to inspire children without also feeding them false hope. I mean how motivated would have I have been in algebra if my teacher had said, “You will only use this when there is a super bargain at the grocery store and you are buying for the entire month”. No, telling me that algebra is important to anyone working in NASA was far more motivating. I never saw myself walking in space, but I knew that astronauts were important and I was destined to be important, so I could wind up at NASA, therefore I’d better learn algebra. By the end of the second year I was fairly certain NASA would not be knocking on my door, but there were other important careers out there like doctors, lawyers, politicians, research scientists and movie stars. Why must unrealistic expectations be dangled to motivate students? Why isn’t a normal life acceptable motivation in this country? Maybe it is and I just missed the point growing up, but for whatever reason the prison of unrealistic expectations has been my home for far too many years.

I think it was on my fortieth birthday when I started wising up. I was staring at myself in the mirror thinking “Not that many more shopping days before Christmas, what are you going to be when you grow up?” and then seeing a few wrinkles I realized that I was grown up and had been for years. My life wasn’t going to be some magical time travel miracle that never ended. One day my life would end and spending my time waiting for some magical special career to find me was a waste. I already had a good life, a normal life, but I treated it at times like a way station. It was my first life, the place where I was waiting for my real destiny to find me, but looking back even I couldn’t make that kind of thinking sound sane. It was crazy talk. Now I accept my life and realize that it’s a good one. Perfect, no, but I gave up perfect years ago. Perfect tells me that nothing and no one is enough. Yeah, perfection is an illusion that the world created to keep us all heads down and working harder. I reject perfection, it is the prison located next door to unrealistic expectations.

So, the lights are now on and I’m seeing life in a new way. I’m accepting that it’s okay that I’m working part-time at a job that I love while going back to school in midlife. It’s okay that I have twenty pounds to lose and that wrinkle creams don’t work. It’s okay that I have a degree I don’t want and never plan on using. I selected that career out of fear and by default. I didn’t know what I wanted to be, so I picked something that I knew, something familiar, a safety net, but honesty at this point in time I think I would only use it if there were no other options. It’s okay that I’m not going to have my name on a plaque or fly to the moon. It’s okay that people don’t know me out in public or call me to see what I might be able to do to fix health care or the education system. It’s okay that I don’t know how to end wars or save our planet. It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m enough. Happiness triumphs titles and salaries scales.

Happiness comes from accepting who I am and where I fit into the puzzle. I’m not that center piece what makes it all make sense. I’m a small piece slightly inside the edge somewhere up in the sky or clouds. I’m happy with that. That’s my place and I have two choices I can embrace it and be happy or reject it and spend the rest of my life grieving the fact that I’m not a bigger piece. Wow, easy answer for me. I want to live and be happy everyday that I have.

I’m not sure exactly where all of my unrealistic expectations came from, but like a virus they are contagious. I’ve spread them around to others with a comment here or there. “You can do anything”, “You should be president of the company”, “You are smarter than everyone else”, “You know more than they do”, “No one sees the world like you do”, “Things would be better if you were charge”, “They are just jealous of how special you are”, “You are the best and the brightest”, and so on. This is the breeding ground for false selves. I know because I grew up creating a mask I’ve lived behind for years.

These false masks that we create tell us that we are too special or not special enough to fit into the rest of the world. We can’t be ourselves so we have to be other people. That’s a lie. These masks are created out of the imbalance of who we know we are and who we think that others want us to be. They aren’t helpful. Just like the ones we slipped over our faces on Halloween, they obscure our vision. We can’t see where we need to go and so we stumble along and have a much harder time finding the right path.

I’m not special. I’m not going to walk on the moon or save your life. I can knit a warm scarf and bake some comforting cookies, but no one is going to line up to buy one of my designs or to eat one of my meals. I’m normal. I’m the person you pass in the grocery aisle and never think of again, but that doesn’t make me less. I have worth. Not because anyone else tells me so, but because I say so. Living a normal life ain’t so tragic. In fact, it’s pretty terrific!

Problem Solvers Apply Here

I used to consider myself a prime applicant for any position that involved problem solving. My problems, your problems, world problem, any problems I was up for the challenge. I was certain that given all the facts, I could come up with at least one, and usually more than one, viable option to solve any problem. I'm not sure if this attitude was delusional or naive, probably both.

What I know now is that I can't even manage to solve my own problems, so I'm quite sure that I can't solve yours. When problem solvers enter our lives they tend to undermine our confidence. That's what all these past efforts did to the people around me. Someone would mention an issue they were having and before they had even finished explaining their situation, my mind was already spinning out solutions. What my actions were really unintentionally saying though was, "You can't possibly find a good solution without me." In other words, by not allowing someone to find their own solution, allowing them to trust their own abilities to problem solve, I was undermining their confidence. This creates more problems that need to be solved and so on and so on until everything in life starts to look overwhelming and like a problem.

This warped overestimation of my abilities does create job security. I mean let's face it once I've convinced everyone around me that I'm the only one who can solve their problems then I am certain to have unlimited problems to solve, but I wasn't looking for job security. Nope, in fact, I was solving problems to help people, but turns out it only managed to hurt them. I failed as a problem solver because my efforts resulted in the opposite of my goal. It is a good thing that I finally reached the point where I could admit that fact. Admitting I have a problem is the first step, so now that I know that problem solvers only cause more problems, I can let go of that unrealistic and damaging, albeit, well meaning behavior and replace it with something that is truly helpful. Like listening.

Listening is a dying art. In the past I've been so eager to share my unique, creative, wonderful, one of a kind insights with others that I have never allowed anyone to finish what they were trying to tell me. Communication is the key to knowing someone, to understanding that person, and to developing and maintaining a relationship with another person. Listening is half of the process known as verbal communication. I was only interested in the talking half of the process, so no wonder I knew so little about the people in my life. Now, I'm listening. I'm letting others tell me their problems AND their solutions. It's amazing how different conversations are when they involve a dialogue instead of a monologue. I'm listening and learning that everyone is a good problem solver if given the opportunity to brain storm their own solutions.

I don't always agree with the "best" solution a person might pick, but that's just my opinion and I have a 50/50 chance of being wrong. Actually, since we know ourselves better than anyone else, I would say that I have more than a 50/50 chance of being wrong. The good news is that once we pick a path, we don't have to write our solutions in concrete. They don't stand there before us for the rest of time. Solutions are more like waves that ebb and flow, the wave comes in and the wave moves back out. We try one thing and then we try another. Life is a lot easier when we allow ourselves this kind of freedom. Freedom to try new things, to follow our instincts, to admit our mistakes and to try something new, these basic liberties remove a lot of stress from our decision making process.

Imagine if you had to make a decision and right before you made up your mind someone said, "Think about it because whatever you choose can never be changed. You are stuck with this decision for the rest of your life." Whoa! That would be a difficult final decision to make for me. I used to believe that such was life. I was stuck with decisions that I made and if I admitted I had made a mistake that I would be considered a failure. Who can survive living under such strict and harsh standards and expectations? Well, I did, but I didn't enjoy life very much that way. Accepting that we are all human is the best place to start. Accepting that all humans make mistakes is another important fact to remember.

So, looking back at my life I have been very human. I have made lots of mistakes. Many of my decisions I wish I could reverse, some I can, such as what I'm doing now by deciding to embrace optimism, some decisions I can't reverse, but that doesn't mean I have to beat myself up for them. Nope, no good comes from beating myself up for past mistakes. I accept them. I learn from them. I move on. That's the best that I can do.

By giving up my job as a problem solver, listening more and talking less, accepting my own humanity and the imperfections that come with it, I can live a life that is kinder and gentler. I can see how life ain't so tragic after all. So all you problem solvers apply here for a new job that of a good listener and human being. It won't feel as powerful as your previous position, but that's okay, power is an illusion. Besides, I'd choose peace and kindness over power any day. Frankly, I think that you will find that once you can openly admit that you don't have all of the answers that life will become a lot easier to live, not only for you, but also for all the people you've been trying to help. At least that's how this change in jobs has worked out for me.