Tag Archives: self-worth

May15

Check-Writing Angels & Growing Up

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

So a few days ago, I shared with you the amazing and transformative experience I had when I shared the gift of yoga and mindful meditation with Survivors of domestic and sexual violence.

What has happened to me in the four short days since that experience has resulted in only the most amazing gift, and thus explains my absence and lack of posts since. I’ve been a little overwhelmed.

. . . . . . . . . .

One of the participants asked me why I wasn’t certified yet. I hemmed and hawed and moaned about the expenses and how it all seems like a racket, that all the classes (there must’ve been some Steve Jobsian-edict from the Yoga Alliance) cost a minimum $3,000 for Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT) 200-hour certification. I felt like there was a “system” in place; a mafia, so to speak and I considered the whole thing rather unyogic.

Truth be told, because yoga has become so “hot” lately, some people believe the practice has become diluted; that the essence of the discipline has been taken over, and focused more on “yoga bodies” and “long, lean muscles.” Gone are the covers on Yoga Journal of regular people sitting in meditation or in a traditional pose; now everyone is doing King of the Dancers (a very advanced pose) and has 14% body fat. I tend to agree with the concept that yoga has been somewhat corrupted by commerce. The whole point of yoga is not $135 transparent yoga pant recalls but rather: to build balance and flow in poses to prepare for sitting for long periods in meditation and to build a lasting relationship with equanimity.

So much for equanimity:

I teach sixth graders for 8 weeks every spring, free, at the school. When I first started 6 years ago, the focus from the kids, and it was a good ratio of boys to girls then, was all about relaxation, stress relief and becoming quiet. The kids knew this. They were into it. They were scared and nervous about the transition to middle school and they welcomed the opportunity to stretch their muscles, touch their toes and fall asleep for 10 minutes in the dark before dismissal.

The number one question then: “Can I do yoga anywhere?” The answer: Yes.

This year, the NUMBER ONE question was “will I get abs from this?” and “how do I get a six-pack?” My answers, respectively and invariably, have been: “If you didn’t have abs, you wouldn’t be able to walk,” and “You get a six-pack when you turn 21.”

They hate those answers. They want, at 12 years of age, “perfect” bodies. They’re so stressed out about getting “perfect” bodies, that they are completely obsessed with it.

I digress. Be it known, however, that I am working on changing those kids’ attitudes.

Where was I? Oh, yes: complaining about the price-fixing -esque nature of the yoga certification industry. I complained about that to my friend when she asked about my training.

She was not impressed with that answer. She has known me for quite some time. She and I have talked about this before. Apparently, whatever I did with her that day rocked her world because she took it upon herself to blow my mind the next day.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sunday morning, Mother’s Day, she dropped off a check. A check for $3,500. $3,500 which will cover my registration, lessons, travel and testing for becoming a “Registered Children & Family Yoga” instructor by my 46th birthday, this year.

I am floored.

My husband accepted the check, he thought it was for $35 for a Pampered Chef order. He thought it was for a pan, or spices or the crank ‘n’ maul (my brand) manual food processor. When she dropped it off, she said, “This is for Molly’s yoga certification,” and practically skipped away toward her car. He was in a haze; it was likely the cooking and cleaning and dealing with the children that he had to do for the previous few hours in preparation for my awesome breakfast in bed:

Upon further examination of the check, when he confirmed that it wasn’t for $35.00, he sort of lost it. He looked out the window and she was >poof!< goneski.

He came up to me and said, “Bipsy McFarlandberger just dropped this off, it’s for your ‘certification‘?”

My heart sank. It also swelled.

Then it sank again.

Then it leapt. Then it sat.

I squinched my face. “She did? Hrmmmm… I was afraid of that,” I took a sip from my Wonder Woman mug.

“You were ‘afraid of that‘? What’s up?”

“I forgot to tell you. She gave me a loving, but firm hard time yesterday for not being certified to teach yoga yet.”

“She did?”

“Yeah. And Helga VonFranklesmith, told me that Bipsy is a force of nature and that just because I said no earlier to her first proposal, it doesn’t mean I can really mean it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because Bipsy is a force of nature. She’s tenacious. C’mon…. you know, she’s… BIPSY…”

And he nodded and said, “Yeah, I know Bipsy. So, what’re you gonna do?”

“I can’t TAKE it…”

“Right. You don’t have to. But it’s Bipsy we’re talking about.”

“Yeah, and she kindly said that she’s tired of hearing my story and she knows this is a dream of mine and that she has this money and she wants to give it to me and I told her not to and well… you see how far that got me,” I said, as I began to chew on my inner lip. On one hand, it’s freakin’ awesome: I’ve NEVER had anyone I’m not related to or had exchanged a marriage vow with (that’s only one guy so far) believe in me that much; you know: just hand me cash. In fact, NO ONE has done that. On the other hand, would I be morally beholden, obligated, is this a transaction? I didn’t want to be “owned.”

Well, no one more than Bipsy knows that no one is ever “owned.”

So I called her Monday. We talked; she’s so funny. She said this, “I’m taking a very safe bet on you. You’re so good for this… ” she doesn’t want repayment. Of course she will get repayment. “This is a gift,” she said. She… who thinks she has the last word on this. But there is an air of yogic responsibility and universal (woo-woo alert) flow to this. She expertly argued that if I don’t take the gift, that I am stopping the chi, the prana, the flow of good energy back into the universe.

She had me there.

She told me that instead of repaying her, I will pay for someone else; pay it forward. Ok. It’s hard to argue with that logic.

I talked to my husband about it.

“A lot of men would feel emasculated by this,” he said. “I don’t. Here’s why: she’s right. I could give you $10,000 cash RIGHT now, and you wouldn’t do it. Why? Because you think I don’t mean it; that I support you because I’m supposed to; in sickness and in health, and all that. But she’s right: you’ve been giving yourself away for so long, it’s time you were certified so you can become ‘legit’, y’know, earn income and give back, which you always and already do, on so many fronts, so why not take this gift, as you’ve tirelessly and selflessly given to others, to this community and to the school, in return?”

So I shrugged my shoulders. I had no answer, no good point. She didn’t need the money. He wasn’t threatened by it. I had no reason to say no. No good reason. The bad reasons: I’m not worthy of it; I can never repay her; I think she’s a good kind of crazy; I’m not ready for the certification; I’m unable to do it; it’s logistically impossible I’m … I’m … I’m … all of it, every single reason was prohibitive or critical. That’s not good.

I’ve stopped people from giving me gifts. For our 10th anniversary I made my husband take back a pair of diamond stud earrings. They were princess cut, like my engagement ring; they were fantastic and happy and gorgeous. They were not prudent, so I made him take them back. I feel a pit in my stomach now at that memory and how I must’ve shot him down. When he presented them to me, he said the kindest things. That I make him smile. That he loves me like no one else ever; that I have given him miraculous children, that I am the reason he lives. ~~Shit~~ Stuff like that. I rejected them. It was an imprudent gift; we were in no position financially to do it; we’d just renovated our kitchen, literally, on our 10th anniversary; I was happy with that. But I shot it down angrily nonetheless; I had the temerity to blame him.

Another time, when Bruce Springsteen came to town, he wanted to surprise me. So he bought tickets. They were financially out of sight, in an outdoor stadium, in the middle, excellent seats. I made him sell them on Stub Hub. We made a nice profit, actually, but the point is that I rejected them again.

The other point is, that I have a problem, a serious problem, with accepting sincere and loving kindness and gifts. I am afraid to open my heart. I am shielding it.

If we want there to be peace in the world, we have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid in our hearts, to find the soft spot and stay with it. We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility. That’s the true practice of peace.” – Pema Chodron

I have to grow up. I have to accept the fact that not all gifts are “loaded” that people like to give for the pleasure of giving and accepting the gift is not a sign of weakness. That graciously accepting the gift means that I see value in myself and that the giver is not an idiot for giving it. I also have to grow up and realize that “hand-outs” are nothing compared to a hand-up. My upcoming yogi, who apparently knows a lot more about energy exchanges than I thought I did, said that my continual hand-outs of my own talents and gifts for nothing in exchange sends two messages: 1) that I believe I have no value (which has been established) and 2) that my giving my talent away makes the recipient feel like charity.

“What if your current yoga teacher or offered you classes free but charged everyone else? What would you do? What what you think?” she asked.

“I would insist on paying her. I would feel that she didn’t value herself,” I answered, as I kicked a rock and shoved my hands into my pockets. “I would feel like she felt sorry for me.”

The fact that Bipsy is a friend, but not a super-lifetime, known-me-since-I-was-in-diapers friend helps. There is that level of detachment, that level of our knowing each other only as adults, and that she knows me as an active community member and trusted friend and as a healer (or attempting healer) and so it was with great gratitude and cheer that I accepted her gift. Monday I inquired. Tuesday, I applied. Yesterday I was interviewed and accepted into the program and today I registered for the program.

So, for 16 days, I will be on an intensive, yoga certification retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia to learn how to teach Kundalini yoga to children, children with autism, anxiety, differing abilities and all the other kaleidoscopic ways that makes them unique and also to men and women and seniors. Meditations will start at 6am and lessons will go until 6pm ever day. I will learn how to cook vegan-ally (is that a word?) and I am so excited. It will be the first time I’ve ever been away from my team for more than five days. I’m ready.

Mind officially blown.

Thank you, Bipsy. I don’t know if I will have ability to send dispatches from retreat, I hope not… I’ll just bring a pen and paper. Remember those?

xoxoxoxoxo

Update UnGifting.

May10

Friday #Fiction 2.1 — Perfect is the Enemy of Good

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

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Although she was not normally a morning person, Claire relished this time of day: dawn, in the “donzerly light” (as she used to call it as a little girl) and watching the sun rise, crest the tops of the baby green leaves on the tallest oaks and poplars by the river and see its climb to the high noon. It’s when she did her best thinking, her only thinking, really. She felt melancholy, but couldn’t understand why. She felt distracted but didn’t know by what. She felt unsettled but everything was in place in her world.

http://www.debiehive.blogspot.com

This is a fourth in a series; please go here for the first “chapter”: https://mollyfielddotcom.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/friday-fiction-friends-2-0-familiarity-breeds-fonder-over-greener-ponds/

She unlocked the boathouse door, walked inside, flipped on the light, unlocked the padlock and hoisted up the roller door to let out the barely lit into the darker. She saw her shell, “Claire-ity” sighed and said aloud, “Girl, it has been toooo long, it’s so good to see you.” The water had warmed just enough for single rowers could take out their shells and go it alone. She wouldn’t be alone though, she had her memories with her and the geese and cormorants and fish and frogs, her long-lost friends. Crickets were still chirping outside the boathouse. She turned to grab a dusting cloth from the musty racks and gently wiped down the shell’s periwinkle fiberglas hull.

“Oars first. With the water bottle, check,” she said quietly to herself. “Being off the water for several months, even though you mostly know what you’re doing, does not mean your first time out will be flawless. Perfect is the enemy of good. Perfect is impossible, clarity, yes. Perfect, no.” She said as she lifted the oars out of the rack, signed them out of the log and headed down to the docks, leaving her water bottle behind.

“How many times do I have to forget to learn?!” she whispered to herself. “Just one more time, Master Bruce,” she answered to herself as Michael Caine. She kept walking down the slope to the dock, she had decided that the water bottle would have to wait.

The dock was barely visible, save for the abrupt reflection of the water when it met its sides. Claire had been to the boathouse so many times though that she could walk to that ramp with her eyes closed.

“End of the dock, smoother push-off,” she said gently to herself. “It’s all coming back now…good,” she had learned to be kinder to herself and allow tiny moments of praise when she had figured things out. The concept of self-congratulation was foreign to her. She grew up in a world where adults abdicated their responsibilities to their children to desperately flee their reality. “If no one dies or winds up under the table with a bottle, we have achieved success. Today,” was how she encapsulated her life as a child, teenager and young adult.

The guilt from being unable to fix her mother and perform her father’s bidding to try to fix her mother was just too much at times. It hung around her neck on a 10-pound choker, like a 100-pound iron weight on a 50-pound chain and Claire weighed only 140-pounds so, it held her down from time to time even now, in her late 20s.

She placed her oars at the end of the dock and as she turned, the sun was lighting the sky although she still saw Venus behind her near the moon to the west. “Venus, you beautiful thing! Go to bed!” she shouted at the sky, laughing to herself and startling a heron perched on the water level sign about 12 feet off the shoreline. She jumped when the heron barked at her, “the feeling’s mutual, bird!” she said to the tail of the great gray bird who silently coasted above the water landing on a log floating on the surface.

“Looks like it’ll be a row in the cove today,” she said to herself, taking notice of the debris floating downriver from the recent rains. “Yup. Not going on that with no one else on the water.”

When she approached the shell, she squatted down to make sure the bolts and riggers were still in shape and to inspect for any signs of rust or bugs. A small red spider dropped down from inside the port hole cover on the bow of the boat as if to greet her. “Sorry chap, no free rides today,” she said to the spider and grabbed its web as she gently placed it on another rack. She checked her boat’s position to the other riggers and her riggers to the other hulls and mentally prepared to remove the shell.

On a mental count to three, she squatted back down, straightened her back, leaned in, shuffled her feet out and lifted the shell. Her bow ball tapped into the floor, sending a vibration through the shell and Claire overcorrected, slamming the stern into a rack. Crestfallen, she apologized to the shell and took a few deep breaths saying to herself, “Easy now. Do NOT let this get to you. First time out is always rusty.” She got her bearings straight and smoothly executed a “lower to the waist, water-side down” so she could exit the boat house with the riggers pointing up and down and narrowing her chances at hitting anything else in the boathouse. With the boat in her hands, she looked down and saw her water bottle, again, all by itself. “You will just have to wait,” she said.

The sky was much brighter now and rays of the sun’s telltale white glow were shining above the treetops. She was relieved that she was no longer in the dark. Carrying sculls is one thing, carrying a 25-foot, 31-pound racing shell in the dark was quite another. As she approached the dock, she saw a pair of slings ready and waiting for a shell like a cradle waiting for a baby. She put the boat in the slings and turned back to get her water bottle.

Once on the water, things started to click into place. She felt her muscles ease into their old motions and she thought actively about her form. “Press through the heels, straight back, left hand over right, straight back, square the blade, drop the blade, pull the handles, feather the blade, roll back up, press through the heels …” and on and on. Again and again, taking her to her zone, her place where she was most alive and free from the weight of the world. A fish jumped beside her shell leaving the water in ripples and her scull blades did the same. Down, whoosh, slide, up, back, down, whoosh, slide. She was warming up and felt a bead of sweat under her baseball cap. Her skin was cooled by the gentle breeze her rowing provided. She was at peace.

She decided to practice some balance drills.

Lay back, pull in the handles, hover the blades, hover … hover … skimming and shisshing is okay… shisshing is ok, hover … hover… shish…balaaaaance… hands together… silence! annnnd roll back up to the catch, repeat the drive and hover…. balance … balaaaaaaance… skim… roll back up to the catch…

“This. This is MY happy place,” she said with a mild swelling in her heart, a little tear in her eye and an effortless smile on her face. It had been a long winter for Claire and now it was spring and she was ready to begin anew.

=-=-=

Thank you.

Next round: https://mollyfielddotcom.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/friday-fiction-2-1-pants-on-fire/

=-=-=

Here is today’s prompt provided by the lovely World’s Worst Moms: “Let your characters work through the old saying, “Perfect is the enemy of good.”

That’s it. piece of cake. Cupcake.;)”

Check out the posts from our other Fiction writers today:

http://clearlykristal.com/?p=3532

http://wp.me/p2FdGQ-1mK

http://worldsworstmoms.com/friday-fiction-part-16-the-ties-that-bind/

http://debiehive.blogspot.com/2013/05/fiction-friday-challenge-impossible.html

http://neargenius1.blogspot.com/2013/05/fiction-friday-may-episode-2.html

Feb19

Tuesday Morning Press 18 — Achievement Vs. Recognition

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

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One of my favorite moments in the film, “A Beautiful Mind” was when the Judd Hirsch character Dr. Helinger (who was the department chair at Princeton where Russell Crowe’s character, the protagonist John Nash), took an agitated and confused doctoral candidate Nash to the mathematics department tea room at the university.

In the hallway just at the entry to the tea room, Helinger and Nash discussed Nash’s lack of work, which resulted in threatening his PhD candidacy as well as his appointment to a coveted position at the prestigious Wheeler Institute at MIT after attaining said PhD.

Helinger interrupted Nash’s clucking and excuses and barters for more time and he tersely instructed him to look at a gentleman, presumably a senior mathematics professor of some countenance sitting alone at a table covered by a draping ecru linen tablecloth in this gorgeous room of soaring coffered ceilings, wrought iron glass windows, Norman moldings, and cherrywood walls.

What they were witnessing was “the ceremony of the pens” which I just learned this very second upon researching it that it was completely fictitious. Well… that sort of blows the moment, doesn’t it?

ANYWAY, in the now-discovered fictitious moment (despite its significance to me and this post — this revelation is totally killing my buzz on the movie, by the way), the ceremony was to make big noise deal to smart someone teacher long time who’d done has math real good at college the.

Shit, I don’t even feel like writing well anymore.

What the what?! Really? Resist urge to edit and start all over. This is not what I do… I write IN the moment.

Excuse me a moment. Please hit play:

ONWARD… there is a point to all this: Nash is frantic, begging for more time; Helinger essentially says shut up and watch the now entirely fictitious frigging ceremony of the #)(%@_! pens.

When the fictitious ceremony was over, Helinger immediately asked Nash what he saw. Nash ~~supposedly~~ blurted reflexively, “recognition.”

Helinger ~~supposedly~~ corrected him and firmly said, ~~supposedly~~ thrusting his ~~fake~~ right fist, “No. Achievement.”

Hell, I don’t know what to believe. Curse you, director Ron Howard! I do know that Hirsch did thrust his fist for emphasis at the Nash character in that building when the cameras were rolling to show a moment of truth whilst witnessing a completely made-up ceremony at an Ivy-League university.

On Mars.

The point is, as it doesn’t matter what I’ve researched since starting this post (honestly, I was just trying to get the name of the Hirsch character and to learn the real name for the fake ceremony of the pens), is that achievement is more important than recognition.

Because Judd Hirsch said so.

This brings me to my current moment of self-actualization (and the post would’ve been a lot shorter had the entire ceremony not been made up…I’m letting this go…NnnnnnNnN).

My point: yes. Achievement matters more than recognition. Recognition is a construct of the ego; it requires outside validation and external gratification and it will hardly ever be enough; it’s constant and never ending. Think Madonna. Think Schwarzenegger and Stallone at the Golden Globes:

Better yet… don’t. My apologies. Wow. That’s gonna stay in my mind for a while.

It’s all well and good to want to be recognized for our work; but that shouldn’t be the goal.

Achievement is an actual experience: it is quantified and reliable internally and measured by a sense of accomplishment and pride by creating something or doing something that matters to us. It is largely a private experience. Achievement and accomplishment can build upon themselves as well and that’s good. We want to feel good about what we do; it’s nice… but does lack of recognition invalidate our achievements? No. Who cares if no one notices. Really… think about it. Like this: because that pens ceremony was completely made up does its message take away its significance? ~~Maybe.~~ No.

So this leads me to another self-acutalization, not based on a fictitious ceremony (sorry, I’m still pretty steamed about that): in order to build more pride and more enthusiasm for what we do (I’m really talking to myself here, you’re just sticking around to see if I come up with anything of any real value): we need to feel good about what we have done. I’ve been noticing this:

When someone asks me what I do, I usually sigh-speak, “I am a SAHM, but…” and that’s wrong. I need to build value and esteem into what I do here as a mother of three boys, because guess what: this gig is tough. I vacillate on this, clearly, I’ve written about it before, but the point is this, and I’m feeling closer now than the last time I dipped in this pool: I’m doing a good job. My kids are healthy, smartasses, and clever. They have friends, they have outlets and they don’t return the tools they borrow or bring their laundry down. This is all normal behavior. RIGHT?!

Instead of kicking a rock every time I think about the entirely huge reality that my book won’t outsell the Bible (especially not if I never publish it a*hem, Molly…) I need to be OK with the fact that I wrote one because that’s a big deal. (But… it would be nice to put it to bed and see what happens… Nnnn. That’s semi-recognitionistic isn’t it?)

These are the ideas that are floating around my head since giving up Facebook for Lent. I’m pretty cool with that decision; I haven’t thought in status-update mode yet today.

So here we are. Feel good about what you Have Done so that you will feel good about what you Will Do. We all have to start somewhere. I’m not looking for a ~~pen~~ medal (that’s good, because now I feel better that John Nash doesn’t have all those pens because… that would be wrong). But Nash did win the Nobel Prize in 1994.

I’m looking for self-satisfaction. That’s tough these days what with everyone seeking their 15 minutes of fame. It’s hard to know the difference. Or it used to be… I think I’m getting a handle on it. Self-satisfaction with personal achievement means you’re good with what’s going on; that if you kicked the bucket, you’d be OK with how your life has turned out, based on your own assessment.

If you haven’t seen the film, you should. It’s largely true; Nash did have schizophrenia and he has overcome it, and he is still affected by hallucinations. Here’s a nice moment that ~~likely~~ never happened:

The take away is this: be happy and proud of what you’ve done. If nothing else: it keeps the flow of good energy going in the universe and that, my friends, is HUGE.

Thank you.