Ma Vie d'Autrefois, Ou est-ce Encore la Même ?: February 2009

More Background Information for my Poll

OK, apparently I haven't provided enough background information for my poll.

I am living on the Monterey Bay, in CA, right now. I lived here from 1989 to 1992, and then again from 2002 until 2007, when I got married and moved to France. I have been back here since November, but the economy is hitting CA particularly hard.

My Mom passed away from Lou Gehrig's disease in 2005.

My Dad and his long-term girlfriend broke up last year. He isn't the greatest Dad in the world. We are not close. Not that that has anything to do with anything, but it's an interesting side note. My sisters both live in MN. One is married to a police officer, and the other also lives at their house along with their two kids, mice, rats, and a dog. My son is 22 and a senior in college. He has drug and alcohol addiction problems. Apparently they are primarily my fault. My daughter is almost 15. She lived with me all of her life until 2007.

I used to have a great relationship with my daughter. Then she resented me for her not spending more time with her father. He doesn't work, lives near his parents, and has a wife and two younger daughters. I was a single Mom without much family, and living far away from what family I have. My daughter has conveniently forgotten that her father rarely came to see her even when we lived in MN. My Dad's then-girlfriend thought I should let my daughter spend a while living with her Dad, so I let her go for a year. In 2007. And now she wants to finish high school there. She rarely wants to talk to me for more than a minute and a half, and doesn't seem interested in seeing me, either.

She thinks I am crazy. Whether right or wrong, I am still her Mom. Maybe everybody's crazy. Who knows?

I am moving because of the economy here.

I don't really *want* to leave CA, but I am in teaching, and they are laying off 20,000 teachers, plus 25,000 other State employees, as well as liberating over 50,000 prison inmates, etc., to save money.

My last job before I went to France in 2007 was as an assistant professor in language test development for the Department of Defense. I would love to work at that school again, but that hasn't happened. So, since I haven't found a job here, and the cost of living is so high, I thought I would be better off moving. I only need one job, but I need to be someplace where that job exists.

But, I don't know where I should go. To the place my daughter is; to the Twin Cities area, where I grew up and where my immediate family and oldest friends live; or....?

My Personal Poll

As you know, since i haven't been able to find a job in CA, I am leaving. I am going to go somewhere until my daughter turns 18, in May, 2012, when, hopefully, the economy will be better, too. It's just too expensive and jobs are too scarce here, where I really *want* to be.

But now, I am second-guessing myself. So I am taking a poll. Where do you think I should go? To the place where my daughter, Morgan, is, or somewhere near the Twin Cities, in Minnesnota, about 4 hours from where my daughter is, but where my friends, what family I have, and more jobs are? I will be able to split time with my daughter if I go to WI, but still be able to see her regularly in MN.

My maternal self wants to be near my daughter. But my gut somehow doesn't think that where she is is the right place for me, economically and job-wise and all that.

I think that it's interesting that my instinct is telling me not to live where my daughter is. And, I have a hard time with her Dad, but we are already in court and have attorneys and all that good stuff. He'd have to let me see her more often than he does now. It's virtually impossible to see her less!

Thanks for your treasured opinion!

Love,
Danielle

Thanks for the Link, Ejiro!

Who's Never Going to Let You Down?
By Martha Beck
Blindfolded woman
Illustration: Julien Pacaud

You've got a no-fail means of recognizing the really dependable people out there—a nifty inner gizmo Martha Beck calls a trust-o-meter. The problem: Over the years, it may have gotten a little out of whack and now need a little fine-tuning. (Or maybe a lot.)
I'm writing this in the African bush, where I've just watched five lions dismantling a dead buffalo, a hungry leopard stalking impala, and several baboons snitching part of my own breakfast when my back was turned. Out here, my safety depends on the knowledge, courage, and selflessness of just a few human beings. Some of these people I know well; others I've barely met. We are of various colors and creeds, sharing only a conflict-riddled ancestral history. Yet I feel safer at this moment than I once felt in my suburban American bedroom. It's not that I'm blind to life's fragility or the dangers around me. It's just that I possess a gift offered by many mistake-filled years: At my age, I have a pretty good idea what and whom to trust.

It's because I've learned to depend on a handy little inner mechanism—you've got one too. Call it a "trust-o-meter," a bit of hardware preinstalled on your hard drive the day you arrived, tiny and vulnerable, from the stork factory. Ever since, your trust-o-meter has been programmed up the wazoo, first by caregivers, then by you yourself. If your inner software is working well, your trust-o-meter is guiding you safely through life's many hazards. If it isn't, you smash into one disappointment or betrayal after another. The good news is that no matter how faulty your trust-o-meter, it's never too late to debug the system. Trust me on that.

Or not.

Read this; then you make that call.

Step 1: Testing the System

"As soon as you trust yourself," wrote Goethe, "you will know how to live." To discern between people who might save your life and those who might ruin it, you must be reliable, honest—in a word, trustworthy—toward yourself. And we do this far less often than most people realize.

I'm about to reveal one of my favorite life coaching tricks, which I've used on literally thousands of people. In the middle of a speech or coaching session, I'll suddenly say, "Are you comfortable?" Most people look startled, squint at me as though I'm a few chocolates short of a full box, then assure me that yes, they're comfortable.

"Really?" I'll say, earnestly.

Yes, they insist, getting a bit annoyed, they're totally comfortable.

Then I ask this: "So, if you were alone in your bedroom right now, would you be sitting in the position you're in at this moment?"

It takes them all of 0.03 seconds to answer, "No." But it takes them much longer to come up with the answer to my next question:

"Why not?"

Some people will just sit there blinking, as if I've asked them to explain why they didn't invent spaghetti. It takes them much consternated thinking to come up with the answer—which is, of course, that the positions in which people sit in public settings are generally much less loose than the positions they adopt when unobserved, in a room designed for rest and relaxation.

In short, they're a bit uncomfortable.

Now, the problem here isn't the discomfort itself—people can handle a world of hurt if necessary. The problem is that they aren't conscious of their own discomfort, even though it's obvious. They lie to my face in clear daylight, believing they're telling the truth even though they know (and I know…and they know that I know) they're lying.

Do you find that last sentence confusing? Welcome to denial, which, oh, honey, it's true, ain't just a river in Egypt.

Denial exists because human infants, though equipped with trust-o-meters, are built to trust, blindly and absolutely, any older person who wanders past. Life would be brief, incredibly complicated, and unbearably frightening for any baby who didn't invest automatic confidence in her caregivers, who suspected adults of deception whenever they said, "Drink this; it's good for you" or "Those people are evil" or "Grandma will take care of you." We all have faith in the people we encounter during our early youth. If they deserve this, our trust-o-meters are programmed to function accurately, and we're well on our way to a life of wise discernment.

Sadly, however, few child-rearers deserve the unmitigated trust babies invest in them. Some adults, purposely or (far more often) accidentally, give children unhealthy drinks, from tainted water to Jack Daniels. Others, out of malice or (far more often) ignorance, create unwarranted fear and prejudice. Sometimes Grandma is a psychopath or (far more often) a short-tempered neurotic whose idea of childcare involves strapping the kiddies into her Cadillac so she can cruise the red light district searching through binoculars for her ex-boyfriend's car.

If something along those lines happened to you, you've been conditioned to attach the definition "trustworthy" to people who are, in fact, untrustworthy. If your parents let you sip their whiskey as an expression of affection, you may be wired to swear by alcoholics. If you were raised by white supremacists, you may rely on lunatic skinheads. If your beloved Grandma was a stalker, obsessive jealousy may inspire your confidence. You'll be extremely uncomfortable the whole time, but you won't recognize the discomfort.

This is why denial is so baffling: You have no idea you're in it. Rather than thinking, "I am now displaying unwarranted trust," you just feel…off. Confused. Maybe a little crazy. Maybe a lot crazy. Something seems wrong, and over time, it feels wronger and wronger. Those of us with badly calibrated trust-o-meters usually think the wrongness must be in us, that if we can somehow think or work or love better, our painful relationships with the alcoholic racist stalkers in our lives will somehow become perfect.

For those of us who want to know if we have defective trust-o-meters, the evidence is blessedly obvious: Our relationships and life situations don't work. We're lying to ourselves, pretending we're at ease when we know we aren't, so, in the converse of Goethe's dictum, we don't have a clue how to live. We're often rudely awakened, bitterly disappointed, shockingly betrayed. If this happens to you once, perhaps it's bad luck. If it happens repeatedly, there are bugs in your system. To check, take the Trust Test. If your score indicates that your trust-o-meter functions well, you can stop reading now. But if the quiz reveals a problem, it's time to recalibrate.

According to the Trust Test, my total score is a 101.

80–104
You are something of a drifter: honest with yourself in some situations, blind to reality in others. You may be taken in by manipulative, dishonest, or damaged people. Pay attention whenever this happens. Notice the circumstances and people that end up disappointing you, and steer clear of anything that feels similar.

Step 2: The Scientific Method

All child-rearers—myself among them—are confused, mistaken, or ignorant about some things, so don't waste time insisting that your parents fix every glitch in your programming, or flagellate yourself for not spotting their errors. Just start using the scientific method to reboot your trust-o-meter. This involves three basic steps: making predictions about how the world works, looking for evidence to either support or disconfirm those predictions, and changing your hypotheses in light of what you see to be true.

Start by thinking of someone important to you, and rate your trust in that person on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = lowest possible trust, 5 = highest). Then, evaluate the person by recalling your observations of his or her behavior.

Here are a few obvious questions I've found very helpful in quantifying the trustworthiness of people in my own life. The first three are the "yes" questions; if Person X is completely trustworthy, you'll answer yes to all three. The second three are the "no" questions—if Person X deserves your trust, the answer to all three will be negative.

The "yes" questions:

1. Does Person X usually show up on time?

2. When Person X says something is going to happen, does it usually happen?

3. When you hear Person X describing an event and then get more information about that event, does the new information usually match Person X's description?

The "no" questions:

4. Have you ever witnessed Person X lying to someone or assuming you'll help deceive a third person?

5. Does Person X sometimes withhold information in order to make things go more smoothly or to avoid conflict?

6. Have you ever witnessed Person X doing something (lying, cheating, being unkind) that he or she would condemn if another person did it?

These questions might seem trivial. They're not. As the saying goes, "the way we do anything is the way we do everything." I'm not saying we have the ultimate power or right to judge others. But if you trust someone whose behavior doesn't pass the six screening questions above, your trust-o-meter may well be misaligned. If Person X rated more than one "no" on the first three questions, and more than one "yes" on the second three, they don't warrant total trust at present. If you trust someone who blew all six questions, you need some readjustments. You don't have to change Person X (you can't), but you do need to take a hard look at your own patterns of trust.

By the way, if you're now rationalizing Person X's behavior with arguments like "But he means well" or "It's not her fault; she had a terrible childhood," your trust-o-meter is definitely on the fritz. These are the small lies we use to tell ourselves we're comfortable when we aren't. It's not the end of the world if Person X lies to you. Lying to yourself, on the other hand, can make your life so miserable, the end of the world might be a relief.

Step 3: Learning to Trust Everyone and Everything

"The Master…trusts people who are trustworthy," wrote Lao Tzu, my favorite philosopher. "She also trusts people who aren't trustworthy. This is true trust." Many earnest do-gooders skew this to mean that everyone is noble at the core, every crazy stranger should be invited to sleep in the children's room, every elected official is intelligent and just. But that's not "true trust"; it's another version of denial, like the one Pema Chödrön calls by the memorable label "idiot compassion."

So what does it mean to "trust people who aren't trustworthy"? I pondered this earlier today, as I watched the lions devour the buffalo, the leopard attack the impala, the baboons stealing breakfast. I am very wary of these beasts, but that doesn't mean I don't trust them. I depend on them deeply—to do what they usually do. Lions and leopards can be trusted to eat animals about my size. Baboons can be trusted to steal food whenever possible. Because I know this, I adapt my behavior to avoid getting eaten or pilfered.

By the same token, if someone in your life pulls in a dismal score on the Trust Test, perpetually failing to keep promises, tell the truth, quit drinking, or show compassion, this is exactly what you can depend on them to keep doing. Addicts can be trusted to lie. Narcissists can be trusted to backstab. And people who reliably do their best, whose stories check out against your own observations, can be trusted to stay relatively honest and stable.

When you spot faulty programming in your trust-o-meter, you may experience some deep grief. You'll have to acknowledge what you already know, deep down: that your alcoholic dad may never be reliable, that you may have picked an irresponsible partner, that the friend who never supports you probably never will. You may face some tough choices as your debugged trust-o-meter directs you away from familiar negative patterns and into new behaviors. But as you more accurately predict what will happen, you'll feel a new, growing confidence. Your life will begin to work.

This is why I feel so much safer today, in the bushveld, than I once did in my home. Yes, it's a jungle out here, but it's a jungle everywhere. Life, in fact, is just one big wilderness. But you were born for this wilderness, and you have the instruments to negotiate it safely. Does that thought feel comfortable? Really, truly comfortable? As soon as it does, you've found your way to the first part of Goethe's promise: You can trust yourself. And because Goethe was a trustworthy person, you can rely on the second part of his promise following automatically. You really will know how to live.

Hittin' the Road...

I am leaving California tomorrow. It was going to be Thursday, but tomorrow is fine.
Tomorrow's intended destination is near the Manzanar internment camp. I want to visit the camp and some ghost towns between it and Arizona. Hopefully, I will see and capture some memorable places. I will keep you posted of my progress as I progress. Love to you all!

Je quitte la Californie demain. J’allais partir jeudi, mais demain me convient aussi. La destination prévue pour demain est dans la région du camp d’internement de japonais de Manzanar. Je veux visiter le camp ainsi que quelques villes fantômes qui se trouvent entre Manzanar et l’Arizona. J’espère pouvoir visiter et photographier quelques lieux mémorables. Je vous tiendrais au courant de la progression de mon progrès. Bisous.