Category Archive for Personal Evolution/Life Transition

I’ve let the Easy Weekly go for a month or so for no good reason except that I’m going through some kind of change in focus. Now that Men Are Easy has been out for over 6 months, and after a weekend with some systems friends in Chicago and after a week immersing myself in the International Conference on Complex Systems in Boston, I’m thinking more about who I am and what I’m doing. Whatever I do has to from now on be important. The Easy Weekly has to be more and more about making a difference.

So what in the world does that mean?

I want to articulate a view of marriage and work based on conscious design, grounded in universal values, and emerging out of creativity and openness.

I want to promote a new view of mental health, ethics, and consciousness, so that we no longer see them as abstract but as processes that can be conveyed and cultivated at every level from the intrapersonal to the global.

I want to outline the normal breakdown, chaos, and reordering of the brain and life and work that happens at times of transition. Just like Lamaze did for childbirth and Kubler-Ross did for death and dying, someone needs to describe and teach the signs, symptoms, and process of normal life transitions. We need to demedicalize normal transitions and stop medicating people at 6, 14, 19, 25, 32, and all the other transitional times. We all need support for those times, and support takes an understanding of what the chaos of transition means, the experience and process of it, and the great news that it is not just breakdown, that it’s a reordering to a next level of awareness and efficiency of thought and action.

I want to completely restructure psychological, philosophical, religious/spiritual, medical/neural/physiological,  sociological/anthropological/political science divisions  into a whole systems/process view of people. I just want to completely restructure the entire human educational and research enterprise.

That’s all.

I guess the days of simple relationship advice are over.

Or maybe not. Maybe I’ve been right all along. Maybe the way to convey it is to ground it all in the immediate concerns of everyday life.

I don’t know any more. A bit of chaotic transition in action.

In the book Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth is nuts, crying on the bathroom floor for months, leaves her husband–the suburbs and babies just weren’t going to work for her–falls in and out of love on the rebound and then takes off (with a big fat book advance) for a year-long trip to find herself in Italy, India, and Indonesia.

Oprah is fascinated by this woman and the book. Oprah has said over and over again how very important it is to retain your sense of self. And this book is about the complete loss and then discovery of a renewed sense of self.

Oprah thinks that the self is something that you have that needs to be protected. And with a beautiful self like Oprah’s, no wonder! But the self is an illusion. We are creating ourselves as we live. You’re adding, strengthening or pruning neurons as you read this. Put in enough information–and who in this culture isn’t?–and soon you’ll find that the old you is no longer able to efficiently process what’s coming at you. You’ll find that for a while everything’s all wrong because your brain is literally reorganizing. For a while, all is chaos.
Like I say in Men Are Easy:

At some point you will probably find that the life you constructed no longer works. Maybe you can no longer tolerate what you tolerated before. Maybe he’s not changing and you are. Or he’s changing and demanding that you adapt.

In these times, your relationship to love and to others is undergoing intense growth, and transition, in nature and in life, is rarely smooth.

A time of intense growth is not like the bloom of a flower. It can be more like Mount St. Helens, rumbling and growing in pressure until it erupts, obscuring everything known. Eventually life comes back, often more beautiful than before, but the landscape is never the same again.

This is not the territory for sissies.

Our culture tends to think that chaos is breakdown, but, in nature, chaos is the re-ordering to a higher level of efficiency and complexity. Fear makes it all much more difficult to handle. When you’re afraid that you’re crazy and that you are having a breakdown, your brain can’t function properly. The brain fails to process as well.

But when you understand that the chaos is a good thing, that it’s temporary, and that it will result in a higher level of functioning, then you can relax and get curious about it. Once you understand that you’re changing your relationship to all of your relationships, then you can just wait and let it all shake out.
Too bad we all can’t just run off to Italy, India, and Indonesia. But we can all eat, pray, love, and talk and laugh with our friends. I’m just glad that I’ve been able to go through the craziness in relative obscurity. If Oprah’s going to go through it, it will be in a spotlight while running an empire. Geez.

Earlier this week, I ran across Stephan Miller’s blog post, “What To Do When You Forget What Romance Is” on the smartmarriage.com newsletter. He writes about how he’s sweating it, working nights and weekends, caring for the kids, never making enough, making the wrong moves.

I love [my wife] and she loves me. We both know that. But the nights of me staying up late to get a handle on work and the weekends of telling the kids, “No, daddy has to get some work done,” has done some damage to this love. I have forgotten how to bring it back.. .Plus I am paranoid. One bad day of sales and I’m Chicken Little. The next day, I spend even more time here with this stupid machine.

Oh, God. I so remember those years.

Does she understand? Yes. Do I understand what all this has done to her and to us? I tell her I do, but I am slow to learn. She is a much more patient, trusting, understanding person than I am. . .

You have to read her comment to his blog. It’s so sweet. She’s taken her older friend Juanita’s advice to expect the bad times. She blows off the “work at it” approach and goes with a “this too shall pass” philosophy. No matter how much he worries, her response is, “It’s okay. Go for it. You’re fine.”

She’s not trying to change him. She’s not on him about needing or wanting more. She appreciates his work and encourages him to keep going. She’s fine.

She knows the secret: If you just take care of yourself reasonably well and if you appreciate him for who he is and what he does, then you’ll have the ability to say the right thing. Then you’re able to speak, not from fear or anger, but from the heart and from a good feeling.

And look how he responds: “Love you too baby.”

Ah. . .

Now that’s romance.

A post this week from Peggy, 26, who shares an apartment with my daughter and works at myspace.com

I used to try to plan everything. Make lists. Following them the letter. Anticipate outcomes. Everything that we’re taught from childhood about dealing with our lives.

In this manner, I toiled away at life, constantly worried I was making mistakes. Analyzing every potential move, and stressing when things went wrong. To make a dentist appointment, I’d consult my boss’ schedule and pick the most unobtrusive day and time — at least a month out. Inevitably, my dentist would cancel or my boss’ plans would change, and I’d end up having to wait another month for a “convenient” appointment or just going whenever there was an opening. Either way, someone would lose (usually me).

So much of my energy was spent making the perfect plans, and it always seemed to go to waste. It was unbearable. My life was pure and utter chaos.

What had I done wrong? The question plagued me. There was no order, and I had no idea where to begin to make sense of myself, my life, anything.

Finally, I gave up. My life was just too messy to be fixed.

But then, a strange thing happened: As soon as I let go of everything, it became easier somehow. So what if I couldn’t make everything right? Maybe there was no right. Or, maybe chaos and mess was right. Either way, just this understanding made it all more manageable — and actually kind of fun!

Now, each obstacle (from dentist appointments to buying a new car, changing careers, and having to find a new apartment) is just a small thing. Something to be dealt with, but not worried about. By letting things just “hang out,” they gained buoyancy. I take things as they come. I expect less, but somehow get more. My preconceptions have been replaced by my experiences. And even the “bad” ones have their upside… eventually.

LIFE IS MESSY.

It has taken me years to realize this, not to mention accept it. It’s a rare day that goes by when everything goes exactly as planned. And, really, even those days don’t happen perfectly. So, I just accepted it, and began to expect the chaos.

Why? Because chaos is a GOOD THING! It helps us live creatively, and without complacency.

Chaos is the reminder that, even when we’re at a loss, we are in control. Our old ways of doing things weren’t working, and we haven’t quite figured out the new ways yet. Enter the mess, the chaos, the uncertainty. But don’t stress about it — enjoy it. It’s all part of our creative process. It’s all part of living…

Last week I got an email from David Ing asking if the incoherency of my last blog entry was due to the same jet lag that he was experiencing. We had just been in Tokyo for the annual International Society for the Systems Sciences meeting.

I took a look at that entry again and he’s right. (I love it that someone as cool as David is not only reading it but cares enough to critique it!) I wrote about what too many middle schoolers experience and then tried to tack on midlife crisis and every other crisis. What a mess. So here’s a rewrite:

There are times in life when nothing seems right. Early adolescence is one of those times and it’s heartbreaking that we’re putting our kids into systems that make it all worse.

On Tuesday teacher and blogger Dan Brown in Huffington Post told why New York’s mayor is completely off track in his approach to middle school improvement:

Rather than making school a nurturing and personal experience, kids, as early as kindergarten, are jammed into overcrowded classrooms, denied support services like fundamental skills tutoring, denied much-needed counseling, and are supervised by administrators more worried about test scores than their real needs. It’s no wonder that they “stop doing what you tell them to do,” as the mayor says. Bloomberg is blaming the victims here.

Here are 10 more reasons why middle school kids’ scores drop:
1. Loss of sense of self.

Just when they need people around them who know them, to give them a sense of belonging and connectedness, sixth and seventh graders are put into massive schools, into multiple classes, with teachers who may have over 100 kids/day.

2. Leslie Ritter.

In 1963, when I was happy enough with my saddle shoes, little cotton dress, and new lunchbox, Leslie Ritter showed up for the first day of sixth grade at Berryessa School with ratted, hair-sprayed hair, eye makeup, and pale, almost white lipstick, a tight skirt, and shaved tan legs. Leslie Ritter changed the rules and upped the ante. Life shifted for us all.

3. 8 times 7.

Just ask any kid having real problems with math, reading, or writing. That child never mastered the basics and then is expected to perform and are graded for poor performance. Far too many intelligent-enough children dread school every day, feeling stupid, losing hope. The more they worry about it, the harder it is to learn. It’s a private, stress-filled hell that compounds in middle school and then there’s. . .

4. Homework hell.

Slammed with daily homework since kindergarten, kids expect to get even more now. Gone is any hope
of time to themselves, of rest, freedom, the creative time to run wild, to experience nature, to explore life together.

5. Reorganizing brains.

A feeling of chaos and confusion comes with the reorganization of a childhood brain and the building of an adolescent brain, all accompanied by hormonal storms. It’s a creative process, not a breakdown. No one’s telling them that. But then major life transitions are poorly understood at every life stage in this culture.

6. Lack of sleep.

Kids get up as early as 6 a.m. to catch the bus for school. Often they can’t sleep until after 10 p.m. because of their biological clocks or because they have so much homework or because they’ve spent so much time doing video games or on the phone with friends. They need 10 hours of sleep to feel normal but Saturday morning they are roused out of bed for chores or sports. They can be accused of laziness and bad attitudes when their problem is fatigue.

7. Malnutrition.

They aren’t hungry at 7 a.m. (those biological clocks again) and rely on snacks–sugar and caffeine–at 10. Many drink sodas instead of milk and too many don’t have protein until noon. Dinner isn’t until after sports after a long day at school. They’re starving. And often overweight because of this cycle–They fuel up their malnourished, starving bodies with junk.

8. Too much cynicism and hyperactivity.
Where are the ideals? The dreams? The visions of a good, clean life? Where’s the Beaver and the Cleavers?
9. Recreational drugs.

Finally, some relief to all this. A vacation from the mess of their brains and their lives. A vacation from the brass band blasting in their heads.

10. Chaotic, demanding schools.

School could be a safe haven from the mess of life. A place of refuge for poor and disadvantaged children, for children from angry, crazy households. But too often it’s the opposite.

Oh, lots of kids are doing just fine. But far too many aren’t. It breaks my heart.