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Being the Change
By admin | March 30, 2008
In high school, I wrote poems to a girl who was in my gym class. I didn’t know how else to go about making her acquaintance, other than by sharing the poems. They were part of a series of writings, including songs, inspired by Thomas Mann’s book Death in Venice. I called the series, “My Own Little Tadzio.”
In Death in Venice
I gave a presentation of “My Own Little Tadzio” in Contemporary Thought class, and I shared some of the feeling behind what motivated me to write. I felt warmly received by the class. The teacher, however, took me aside and told me that Death in Venice was written to deliver a message: “Homosexuality is bad, Lady!” he said. I learned from my English teacher, that yes, Thomas Mann was a moralist delivering a message, but the book was an exploration of how the artist had learned to sublimate his life’s urges in order to succeed in the ways of the world, only to reach a point where the dam broke.
A Rose By Any Other Name
My gym class acquaintance said that my poems reminded her of how she used to have a good relationship with her father until she began to develop into a young woman. Then, her father ended the closeness they had shared, and she felt abandoned.
One of the boys in my Contemporary Thought class who was popular in the school came up to me after my presentation and said, “You know, Mary Ann, that was a good presentation, but she is not who you think she is. She is running around the school telling everyone you are writing her lesbian letters.” I was struck by that. If I had written poems and songs about a rose, would I be accused of having some kind of sexuality for a flower?
One day not long after that, as I was walking home from school, a white car sped by and a girl’s voice shouted out the window: “Suck my tit, you f***ing lez!” I found out later that my own little Tadzio was in that car, while a friend of hers did the shouting. I confronted her in the bathroom at school the next day. “I’m not the one who said it,” she said. Somehow, I thought she would protect me, but no. She told me that her mother said it was my own fault anyway, and if I continued to share my feelings so openly with people, I would continue to receive such treatment.
But…wasn’t the failure to share feelings more openly what led to von Aschenbach’s dam breaking, and his choice to die in Venice?
Understanding Takes Time
Recently I took a job in a law office in which I found myself frankly overwhelmed. I had brought with me my carefully cultivated new age idea of offering my work as a gift from my heart. (Of course, I did still expect to be paid. For a wonderful discussion on the tension between logos-thought as commerce and eros as gift-exchange economy, see Lewis Hyde’s The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World
After only a few weeks, I was in tears over the fact that one of my employers had come into my office, veritably stamped her feet, and demanded that I work more, and harder. Even if we had mandatory meetings taking up hours of our day that were not billable to clients, we were still expected to bill 7 to 8 hours a day directly to the clients. (Whatever happened to, “Work smarter, not harder”…?)
Did I take this as a sign that maybe this was not the environment for me? No. I decided to see it this way: at least she’s talking to me. (This is what the Harvard Business Review article advised.) I did my best to interpret my employer’s words in a way that could help me adapt to be more of what my employer said the office needed. And I heard this method echoed in the words of others. When I told one associate that, based on how I was spoken to, I didn’t think I was actually wanted there, she said: “I’m spoken to just that same way, and I’ve been here for two years. My previous firm was worse than this.”
Flirting with Disaster?
A pretty assistant in the office began to flirt with me. One day, she leaned back against me while I attempted to walk past her in the file room. Another day, she came into my office, shut the door behind her, and said suggestively, “So where are you taking me for lunch?” I had already been warned about her: “Notorious black widow! Stay away! She went out with a guy who worked here, dumped him, and then got him fired because he kept trying to talk to her after she dumped him.” This same woman was being held responsible by many staff members for the tenor of the office. For the past two years since her arrival, people were in constant fear of her maneuvering to get them into trouble, with everyone having to watch their backs, and be vigilant.
When I first heard all of this, I just wanted to stay in my office with the door shut. Why would a firm allow this, or choose it, as its modus operandi?
I had taken intensive training in Nonviolent Communication
I had noticed that learning about Nonviolent Communication did not stop me from having strong reactions when I experienced harsh treatment. I had also noticed that even its creator succumbed to his own strong reactions in times of challenge. And I noticed that trainers of Nonviolent Communication did not address what to do in situations of genuine abuse, as if such situations did not exist.
So, I studied some of Gandhi’s own writings, as well as the history of nonviolent resistance of oppression, and the writings of Biblical scholar Walter Wink. In his book The Powers That Be
No Regrets
Franz Kafka
“Hell is in the office. I am afraid of no other.”
Ultimately, through my creativity, enthusiasm, and theater, I was able to at least change my own situation - perhaps the first step to living true to nonviolence, and being in harmony with life. Unlike the frog in the now-proverbial pot of steadily heating water, I managed to be thrown and simultaneously jump, shaken but unscathed, from that near-boiling pot!
Years ago, a woman told me that she went to a spiritual teacher and asked him why she was having such difficulties in her life. He asked her to describe her relationships, and after she did, he said simply, “You’ve been talking to the wrong people.”
Maybe it is up to me to stop sharing my soul with those who, even if I can see them as a mirror, either do not recognize me as one in return, or do not understand the value of what they see reflected. Yet, at the same time, I believe in the power of love to transform, and in the words of Edith Piaf: “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien
No, nothing at all.
I regret nothing at all.
Not the good, nor the bad;
It is all the same.
No, nothing at all.
I have no regrets about anything.
It is paid, wiped away,
forgotten.
I am not concerned with the past,
with my memories.
I set fire to my pains and pleasures;
I don’t need them anymore.
I have wiped away my loves,
and my troubles.
Swept them all away:
I am starting again from zero.
No, nothing at all.
I have no regrets.
Because my life, my happiness
Today, it all begins with you.
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March 30th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
interesting post i too had just read the thoughts the words from Amma about the post and then was taking a look at Clarissa Pinkola Estes blog and came across these words from her that some how expands Amma’s, Clarissa’s words and your together concerning the past.
” Grave-looking takes guts, calm, and deep souls. . . so that looking has every chance of turning into useful inquiry instead of endless indictment.”
In speaking about race in the blog Clarissa says,” The graves are wide open and the graves are unblessed.” I think the key to letting go of the past is to look at it long enough to release it with blessing.
I remember Swamiji saying, the past is just a place to visit like a basement it is not a live.
I have so often appreciated you posting the Amma quotes, so many times have felt they were a direct transmission with the perfect words at the right time. Many thanks