Saturday, March 17, 2001
Nature or Nurture - To LTF
So I was minding my own business on Wednesday (well, struggling to get a better handle on my mother's business) and an acquaintance (a woman who occasionally does my mother's hair and who I got to know superficially when my mother's regular hairdresser was in Chicago visiting her dying father) handed me a piece of paper with the name of a book on it: The Woman's Comfort Book. The reason she handed me the book? The week before we walked into the shop on the wake of yet another frustrating delay caused by a few manipulated "mishaps", one of which involved Mr. Insurance Adjuster leaving a message with my mother that I never got. You know, with every letter and every phone call to everyone, whether business or personal, if they are people who call me regularly or I'm expecting them to call me I always, always, always tell people, "Don't leave a message with my mother and if you do, even if you think my mother took a message, CALL ME BACK AS THOUGH YOU'VE NEVER CALLED, assume I never got the message!" But he left a message with my mother anyway, to which I did not respond, and he took my nonresponse as an "answer". What a fucker, and I do mean fucker, that man is. That day, the hairdresser asked me innocently how things were going and I burst into tears for about a minute. Although I've been spontaneously flushing for more than a few months, enough so that I now consider the social sphere an appropriate place to release a flash flood, I hadn't done that in the beauty shop. Being a mother of somewhere near a million kids, I guess this woman thought she could help me (it didn't occur to her that my habit of bursting into tears in public might be helpful to me).
Although I rarely read self-help books I thought, well, who knows, maybe this one might have a suggestion or two of the caliber of your suggestion to head in the opposite direction of my intention and let the centrifugal force on the turn push both my mother and me in the direction I need us to go.
I suppose the book is valuable. It teaches the reader to self-nurture. The author makes three assumptions, though, that rendered the book useless for me:
Secondly, I think our disabilities in the area of self-nurturing are hard-wired circumstances to insure that we don't all become, well, probably like me. Some of us, I think, can get away with and be "valuable" (but, I don't think we ever really know if we're, as individuals, from an "objective" perspective, one of the valuable ones; I certainly don't, which is why, I think, the bottom line is that nature doesn't do its thing with "value" in mind) being like me or more "acute" (quoted because I consider that word a quote now; I'm still very pleased you used that word once a while back instead of "worse" because it reminds me to be careful with "worse") but not the majority of us. I know better than to think that "hard-wired" is synonymous with "eternal" or "unchangeable". I also know that right now the hard-wiring is not likely to change toward isolationism in the human species. Not with this many of us around. Unless it's utilized as a mechanism to thin us out.
Lastly, there are more than a few of us who self-nurture to the point of it getting in the way of others nurturing us. This happens, in my experience, when others perceive me as so self-competent (an erroneous perception but an understandable one; sometimes, also, a perception on other's parts that is actually a boon to me; there are so many people who think they know how to help but don't check to see what kind of help is needed and don't listen when they are told) that they can't imagine how they can help me, thus are reluctant to take my word on what I need from them or are so bound up in their own other-nurturing or self-nurturing that they don't have the nurturing energy to spare.
A good example of the second circumstance happened this week when I visited MPS one-on-one (which we haven't had a chance to do for a long time) and she said to me, "You know, I'm concerned that you need a respite but I don't know how we're [the extended family] going to be able to swing that." I agree with her. I mean, who's available to help me out? MCS, who is recovering from breast cancer and is still wiped out from chemotherapy, radiation and emotional/soulful trauma? MFS (you already know where she's at)? MPS, who has helped fashion a family full of people whose lives are so busy that they are barely ever home or available to each other let alone someone outside their immediate family? It did, however, raise my spirits considerably when she spontaneously acknowledged this. It let me know that her thoughts are with me. She's aware that I'm in deep water (primarily because I report my depths, assiduously, to everyone) and never learned to swim because, usually, water calms me so much that I can't see any reason to go anywhere when I'm in it (I did learn to float, sort of; that seemed to me like a valuable skill). Now that its on her mind, as it has been for awhile on MFS's and probably will be, one of these days, on MCS's, there's a good chance that when I sink below the surface (which I don't believe has happened and don't believe is imminent) and can no longer be seen or heard, some one of them will look for me. Being reminded of that occasionally, for me, anyway, often does the trick (whatever trick I happen to need at the time).
The hairdresser's effort wasn't wasted. I'm surprised and pleased that someone I barely know took the time to think about me enough to believe she might be able to help, even though the book she recommended didn't help in the way she thought. Since it caused me to think about nurturing though, it was an inspiration.
So, LTF, my consolidated response to this book is, someone needs to write a book entitled You'd Better Nurture Your Nurturers and it should be directed to both genders. I don't think I'll write it, at least not now. If I did, the first sentence would be, "Listen, asshole." Not an appropriate intro for sales purposes.
Although I rarely read self-help books I thought, well, who knows, maybe this one might have a suggestion or two of the caliber of your suggestion to head in the opposite direction of my intention and let the centrifugal force on the turn push both my mother and me in the direction I need us to go.
I suppose the book is valuable. It teaches the reader to self-nurture. The author makes three assumptions, though, that rendered the book useless for me:
- Anyone who picks up the book is suffering from a lack of self-esteem;
- The reader has absolutely no idea how to self-nurture and doesn't even do the most basic things like:
- Telling people when one needs them, whether or not those people appear to be available;
- Allowing oneself to get angry;
- Being honest when someone says "How are you?";
- Accepting oneself in the moment as is;
- She implies the well-worn assumption that men are better at self-nurturing because they learn how to do it as a matter of course and women learn how to other-nurture as a matter of course. [Actually, I think you guys are "better" only at allowing yourselves to masturbate, and that's probably because it's more difficult for you to ignore the need. I mean, you can see the need so you're less likely to believe that masturbating is going to cause you to grow hair on your palms, and probably less likely to care, since most of you become familiar with the utility of razors.]
Secondly, I think our disabilities in the area of self-nurturing are hard-wired circumstances to insure that we don't all become, well, probably like me. Some of us, I think, can get away with and be "valuable" (but, I don't think we ever really know if we're, as individuals, from an "objective" perspective, one of the valuable ones; I certainly don't, which is why, I think, the bottom line is that nature doesn't do its thing with "value" in mind) being like me or more "acute" (quoted because I consider that word a quote now; I'm still very pleased you used that word once a while back instead of "worse" because it reminds me to be careful with "worse") but not the majority of us. I know better than to think that "hard-wired" is synonymous with "eternal" or "unchangeable". I also know that right now the hard-wiring is not likely to change toward isolationism in the human species. Not with this many of us around. Unless it's utilized as a mechanism to thin us out.
Lastly, there are more than a few of us who self-nurture to the point of it getting in the way of others nurturing us. This happens, in my experience, when others perceive me as so self-competent (an erroneous perception but an understandable one; sometimes, also, a perception on other's parts that is actually a boon to me; there are so many people who think they know how to help but don't check to see what kind of help is needed and don't listen when they are told) that they can't imagine how they can help me, thus are reluctant to take my word on what I need from them or are so bound up in their own other-nurturing or self-nurturing that they don't have the nurturing energy to spare.
A good example of the second circumstance happened this week when I visited MPS one-on-one (which we haven't had a chance to do for a long time) and she said to me, "You know, I'm concerned that you need a respite but I don't know how we're [the extended family] going to be able to swing that." I agree with her. I mean, who's available to help me out? MCS, who is recovering from breast cancer and is still wiped out from chemotherapy, radiation and emotional/soulful trauma? MFS (you already know where she's at)? MPS, who has helped fashion a family full of people whose lives are so busy that they are barely ever home or available to each other let alone someone outside their immediate family? It did, however, raise my spirits considerably when she spontaneously acknowledged this. It let me know that her thoughts are with me. She's aware that I'm in deep water (primarily because I report my depths, assiduously, to everyone) and never learned to swim because, usually, water calms me so much that I can't see any reason to go anywhere when I'm in it (I did learn to float, sort of; that seemed to me like a valuable skill). Now that its on her mind, as it has been for awhile on MFS's and probably will be, one of these days, on MCS's, there's a good chance that when I sink below the surface (which I don't believe has happened and don't believe is imminent) and can no longer be seen or heard, some one of them will look for me. Being reminded of that occasionally, for me, anyway, often does the trick (whatever trick I happen to need at the time).
The hairdresser's effort wasn't wasted. I'm surprised and pleased that someone I barely know took the time to think about me enough to believe she might be able to help, even though the book she recommended didn't help in the way she thought. Since it caused me to think about nurturing though, it was an inspiration.
So, LTF, my consolidated response to this book is, someone needs to write a book entitled You'd Better Nurture Your Nurturers and it should be directed to both genders. I don't think I'll write it, at least not now. If I did, the first sentence would be, "Listen, asshole." Not an appropriate intro for sales purposes.
