It’s Monday morning and my day has been well under way for hours. I awake most days at around 6:00-6:30AM, no later. My usual routine is to get myself together and go to the kitchen to get the coffee started. Must have coffee. In an old post I told you how I like to make coffee in my old fashioned Corning Ware stove-top percolator. Old school style, I know, but drip just doesn’t offer the aroma of perked coffee. Sorry, just doesn’t and what’s a morning without the coffee wafting through the house?
I get the coffee going and make lunches for the Mr. and Son #2. Son #1 is married and out so I’m down to the three of us. I bring in the newspaper from the sidewalk and read it with my coffee. It’s the perfect time of day. If I’m lucky I write the Morning Pages while they’re still asleep. Most days that doesn’t happen and I write after they leave for the day when my time is my own. I write every day.
The Morning Pages, from the book The Artist’s Way, have become a lifeline, as I’ve said before. I write the date and time at the top of the page and then all this stuff starts pouring out of my head, through my arm, the pen, and to the page. Then the fun begins. Good thoughts and ideas, stupid stuff and dopey people wind up in the pages. Lately the focus has been on my own resistance, and the dopey people. Every day another block. Every day another thing from these dopey people. The pages are supposed to help one see where one needs the most attention. Okay, my resistance I’m working on, but how about the dopey people?
I’m being mild here when I say “dopey people.” I’d like to call them something else, but I’m just not that way. How long can you excuse their actions by calling it jealousy? This is no longer 4th grade no-clue stupid stuff, but real life adult dopey people. What are you supposed to do, hide in a cave? In a previous post I was talking about reading Walking in This World, how other people try to fit you into how they’re used to seeing you, but they can’t now that you’ve become who you’re meant to be. Okay, find a better mirror, but how long does it take? When will it be over and how do you get out of the fun house?
Here’s a scenario. Let’s say there’s a young person who loves doing a thing, and someone a little older loves doing the same thing, that’s nice. Over time they grow older, learn more, become more talented, more interested, more adept, more out there with this thing they love, and do it better than the older person. Suddenly, the older person is annoyed, upset, surprised, and combative. Just because the younger person grew up and became more of who they really are, and is better at the thing than the older person will ever be, why is that a problem? Why can’t the older person say, “Good for you! Look at how you’ve grown and what you’ve become!” No, this previous mentor becomes the aggressor, the enemy. We’re talking about an adult with responsibilities, children, in an adult world having a tantrum, pouting, screaming, ignoring, sulking, pounding their chest like a big ape because they’re surprised this younger person showed them up by doing the thing they love to do differently, better, new. “Since you’re doing it like that, now I’m not going to be your friend. He has a swelled head.” Give me a break. Who really has the swelled head?
What keeps coming up in my pages is the question, “Why?” I know I said in the other post that people are jealous when you grow. But, how does the word jealous cover all this dopey person’s stuff? I can’t figure it out. I’m hoping that in writing about the negativity it will dissipate and the morning pages will give me an answer. I need to know how to react when I see said dopey person. Soon.
Perhaps the older person’s real problem is that the younger one growing up and learning more and becoming adult reminds said older person that life is finite and he is on the thin end. Perhaps that is what he’s really railing against. Just a thought..
Originally I thought it was a bruised ego, and how one looks to others when they flip out. How do people save face after that? I don’t know Pat.
I don’t know either hon.
I only do know that unless someone has crossed a huge line, its kinder to give them the benefit of the doubt. And less stressful for you 🙂
Thanks Pat,from what I understand they crossed a huge line. I’m proud my person kept their cool and calmly stood their ground.