Laying the Blame

It may be a few days before I get back to Facebook. Although I knew this was going to happen–in time of a tragedy, our natural reaction is to find someone to blame. Guns. Criminals. The mentally ill. The health care system. And finally, yes, it came down to: Mothers. “His mother was rigid.” “His mother was too strict,” the comments read on the killings in Connecticut.

Yes, there are mothers that don’t do a good job. Ones that probably shouldn’t have had children. But there is a much more pervasive problem here–a culture that demands that moms take care of kids, have money-producing jobs, take care of a house, make sure the kids have play dates and are in sports, music and summer camps. (And do it smiling in heels and coordinated outfits). Add to that the clothes and food shopping (better comparison shop or use coupons), homework supervision and religious education, and then, don’t forget yourself, so we can be the woman who has it all. And if you are not a mother, you better do a lot more, because there is an obligation to be a mother, as well.

You can’t have it all. You can’t be all things to all people. Not at the same time, maybe not all in your one lifetime.

The messages we get from our magazines (cook like the Barefoot Contessa! Be

Image from http://www.ebaumsworld.com

organized like Martha Stewart! Run a blog, take care of a farm and farm hands  like Pioneer Woman! Run an empire, write books and take coaches on training sessions like Martha Beck! Look and dance like Beyonce!) are constantly showing us what we are not and need to be.

Sure, some moms get help from the children’s father. As they should. But even with help, meeting all those expectations is impossible. The effort alone is exhausting.

We wake up and our first thought is “I’m late,” or “I didn’t get enough sleep,” or “I didn’t finish that report for work.” The first hour of the day, the one in which we are most creative, is spent giving ourselves messages of “not enough,” and “hurry up.” No wonder creativity gets shoved into a corner as a chore rather than as personal growth.  No wonder we are tired, frustrated, and chronically at the end of our rope. The demands to be everything, have everything, and do everything is constant.

Instead, we are not enough of anything consistently. We take a dash at creativity by assembling a kit, we hand our kids a video game instead of reading to them, we put preservative-loaded food on our table and we worry about our family and our image all the time.

Playing along with a culture of perfection, fear and blame doesn’t make us perfect, courageous, and bold. It makes us shaky, angry and scared. It makes us look around for someone to blame when a corner of our world crumbles. “We have met the enemy he is us,” Walt Kelley wrote in the long-vanished comic strip Pogo. It’s time to change our culture, and it starts with you.

—Quinn McDonald helps people through re-invention and change. She is a life and creativity coach and far from perfect.

The Heavy Responsibility of Perfection

What causes most people to quit a new habit? The same thing that causes most people to abandon their New Year’s resolutions.

This tree got in the habit of leaning on the wall and then made the most of it.

It’s not that the goals are too lofty (unless made in a hurry under the influence of drink or peer pressure), but the mistaken belief that one misstep “ruins it all.” It doesn’t. One misstep, one missed day, one incomplete page is just that–an imperfection. It doesn’t invalidate the intention or the goal. It can reinforce your determination, if you let it.

One missed day, one misstep, does, however, make it easier to add another missed day to the stack. It’s easy to let your determination erode. At that second,   self discipline comes in. If you skip a day of a new habit, be aware of it, be conscious, make it a deliberate choice, not just a shrug and a skip. And the next day, make it a choice to return.

Change doesn’t happen all at once. Change happens when we replace one action with another. And the more often the replacement happens, the more likely we are to repeat, until we have a new habit. In an email I received, someone insisted that if they forgot one day, they would have to “start over,” they added, “with nothing.” I know that’s how AA does the counting, but I don’t think that’s true with journaling, or meditation, or compassion. You have something. You have begun to walk down a path. You are exploring your motives and excuses. That’s not nothing. That’s already part of the journey.

Of course, if you want something positive to happen, you will have to kick yourself occasionally to keep doing it, and you will have to do the work, but you will always do your work imperfectly, because that is the reason we keep learning–every imperfection is a chance to learn something new.

—Quinn McDonald is a recovering perfectionist. Most of the time she lets go, but then sometimes, there is the death grip on needing perfection validation. So she has a way to go.

Unrealistic Healing

The new yoga teacher looked dangerous. Compact and lithe, she marched to the front of the class, got on her mat with her back to us and began barking poses. It was my first yoga class in a long time. All around me, younger, more flexible people twisted, stretched, and grabbed their ankles behind their backs. I sweated and creaked. Felt like I was hiking a long hard climb up a dark, washed-out path.

A xeriscaped yard has no grass and no ground cover. It has desert-adapted plants and crushed granite.

Coming home, I noticed a flicker of something in the front yard. Tired and stiff, I got out of the car to find my front yard flooded. A xeriscaped yard should not flood. We have drip irrigation so flooding shouldn’t happen. Yet, there, in the light of the full moon, my front yard shimmered with water. Something was very wrong, and had been wrong since morning. Since the yard guy had come to change the watering pattern for the summer.  He’d forgotten to turn it back to automatic. Twelve hours my water had been running. The back yard was floating. Water pressed against the foundation. Cacti standing in two feet of water. Water lapping out of  plant beds and edging toward the pool.

I found the end of my rope really quickly. It was fuzzy and wet and fueled my anger and exhaustion. It took me another half hour to figure out where the shut- off valves were and turn them in the right direction.

After all that work on compassion and forgiveness, I still had wanted to dismember the yard guy. After all the conscious choosing to see the better side of life, I did not live it.

Moon reflected in standing water from http://www.ghostinthemachine.net

And then I had another realization:  we distrust improving ourselves because we are afraid we can’t keep it up. Not forever. And we can’t. We will slide back. We will do that thing we hate about ourselves.  That’s why I love the Buddhist saying, “Before enlightenment–chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment–chop wood, carry water.”

There is no final goal to self-improvement. We don’t recognize a shortcoming and then cure it. We don’t admit to a flaw and then have it surgically removed. We don’t pull out our bad characteristics and never have to deal with them again.

Even the enlightened get angry, feel despair, make mistakes. None of that goes away with awareness. It doesn’t vanish because we admit to weakness.

No, we have to keep working on it. For years. That’s the strength in change. It requires upkeep. It’s the lie most self-help books tell—take this quiz, work these steps and then you will be perfect. Glowing. Complete.

It’s not true. We have to keep working at our lives. Every day. We do not undergo a transformation and then spend the rest of our lives resting and comfortable. Nope. Transformation is a step, not the goal. The real goal is to become self-aware. We see the shortcomings, the flaws, the mistakes and love ourselves anyway. Then we look at where we ran off the rails, fix the break, load the train (and our life) back on the track and move on. Chop wood, carry water.

—Quinn McDonald is finally ready to go to bed. In the moonlight, the standing water still shimmers, but it’s not rising.