Waiting More Than a Dozen Years

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

As a statement, that is perhaps true – but as a reality that’s all over to you. You chose to have nothing unique to offer. How’s that working for you apart from providing you with periods of smoothness in your life?

I'll let you know when I truly get back to that, if I really can. The last time I got firmly grounded in that way of being, I had women swarming around me. I had to (metaphorically speaking) swat them away like gnats and misquitoes (the madding horde). Note that I didn't advertise that I had nothing to offer, I was just being that. I was not God's gift to anyone and when I dropped any pretense that I was something special, that is when people see me as most special. I know it's a paradox.

Interestingly, I've noticed the same thing in my teaching. When I come from the POV that there is nothing special about the experiences I've had (and that they are available to anyone who was interested enough to pursue the same type of experiences) the class outcomes, what people say they get from my classes is "magical." If I start from the POV that I've got all this really useful experience and knowledge, it comes across okay but not quite the "gee whiz" experience that the other way provides. I can always fall back onto what I know from experience as a default safety position, but it's more fun if I remind them that they can know it, too.

Let me expand on what I mean as being smooth and see if I can explain it on other terms that are easier to relate to. It does not mean that life is without it's ups and downs, it's chaotic twists and turns. It does not mean that for me at all. I describe it metaphorically as being in the eye of the hurricane. Calm, centered, focused. It is the art of being there and not being there all at the same time. Watching and participating from the inside out and the outside in all at the same time. For some, that is very, very disquieting.

As an example, I was put in charge of a weekend project with a number of volunteers, some whom had volunteered previously, and so the had some experience in the project work and knew what to expect (ah, expectations from the past). I was nothing like they expected, nor did I do things the way they expected or had experienced. One of these people challenged me a week or so before our weekend project and was a little distressed that I did not share his sense of urgency in getting stuff lined up like he had been used to with others in the lead (or when he was put in charge). I did not dismiss his concern and in fact recognized that for his own comfort, he needed to know what the structure was and how things were being lined up for all the resources and equipment we needed. But I also asked him to trust that everything would come together and that I was accountable for that and that I took that accountability seriously.

After the weekend, he said it was the best volunteer experience that he ever had. In fact the entire volunteeer staff, as well as those who were the recipients of our volunteer project all agreed that it was unlike any volunteer they had previously and whatever it was that I brought to the project, they wanted to be able to create and replicate for themselves elsewhere in their lives (I was coming into it with no expectations of how it would go while seeking to produce a specific outcome at the end of the weekend). I challenged the notion that it had always been done a certain way and that we just needed to do it that way again to produce the results. We could have done it the way it had been done in the past and been fine. But there would not have been any real sense of extraordinary.

I was asked to become a lead in these weekend service projects and people would come and volunteer simply because I was there. But there was nothing special about what I did or how I did it. There was no trick I used. I was just being who I really am, not someone I was expected to be, should be, or ought to be out of some title I was given (although the title conveyed some automatic authority in a hierarchy).

Another example, literally from hurricane recovery work I've volunteered for: the folks at FEMA noticed that people migrated to me as we worked with people whose homes were damaged or destroyed by hurricanes and flooding. While you had to manage your own well-being in such devastating conditions, and for some it was hard to be in the presence of such destruction and upheaval, just being was all that was required. No expectations about what the people impacted should feel or how they should be, just being there and being acutely aware of what it was they were experiencing and sharing and then being with that. I was a calming voice and guide to what we could provide in the first days of the disaster recovery when lives were turned upside down. The people I worked with through FEMA noticed that and wanted me on the front lines dealing with people as they came into our disaster relief center.

How does that work out for me? Pretty well when I'm in that zone. It's a powerful place to be and a powerful way to feel. And there is nothing special about it (other than I can be that way with relatively little effort). But it requires I give up my preconceptions and expectations (the baggage of life). Sometimes, I don't wish to give that stuff up. And when that happens I'm out of the eye and into the eyewall with all it's sound and fury.

An SSM requires, at its foundation, that there be some expectation of some level of sexual intimacy that is not being met. That's the expectation that has come up for me after a long period of time, that it should have some minimum way of occurring that is not being met. As I indicated in my previous post to Bagheera, I have the experience of what a very intense and satisfying sexually intimate relationship could be like as well as the experience of what it's like when it suddenly goes away. The sudden loss revealed the expectation that I was unaware of.

But, if you did not have the expectation, would an SSM have any cogent meaning? It's difficult living without expectations because practically all the rules and measures we have are based upon an expected outcome; the way things should or ought to be. We have our expectations about relationships and marraiges and what they should look like.

As a thought exercise, what if that premise is fundamentally flawed?