power – Massage by Virginia

The Blame Game

Sometimes (ok, make that nearly all the time) it’s just easier to blame other people for things that happen to us than to take responsibility for our own role in creating a given situation.

Even if we feel that we aren’t responsible, say, for example, if something happened in childhood, as we reach adulthood, we become responsible for cleaning up the mess, even if we didn’t make it.

The unfortunate truth is that, while blaming other people feels good (and yes, I know it does), it does little to resolve the situation.

When we step out of blame, we step into our own personal power. We claim, or reclaim, our own ability to create the future we want to live in.

But how do we get there? What propels us out of The Blame Game?

For me, it is the desire for change (and the acknowledgment that doing the same old thing doesn’t get me anywhere I really want to go). The familiar can be comfortable for a time, but eventually it becomes unbearable, stifling.

Even still, The Blame Game has its allure. Things happen – difficult, upsetting things – and I look for someone else to hold responsible. Someone else’s behavior or actions to dissect or critique.

And yet, I know that I can choose to grow into my own future by acknowledging what I learned from a disappointing experience, forgiving myself for any mistakes I made which might have contributed to it, and gracefully letting go.

Every day, we have the opportunity to make the smallest choices which can make the biggest difference.

Good Fences

I’ve been re-reading Anne Katherine’s book Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin. Interpersonal boundaries, be they physical or emotional, when clearly communicated, can eliminate a great deal of confusion. It is, as they say, true that “good fences make good neighbors.”

But what about when boundaries are lacking? Without some way of determining who we allow to get close, and how close, chaos abounds. Other people can do and say what they like if we don’t believe we have the power to set limits. Gradually, we might come to feel like our lives don’t belong to us.

At the core of building healthy boundaries is discovering the difference between “me” and “not me.”

Sounds simple enough, right?

But is it really? Many of us have had the ideas and “shoulds” of parents and other adult figures thrust upon us at an early age. From that perspective sorting out what’s ours and what’s theirs may not be such an easy proposition.

Building (or repairing) our fences necessitates important, and sometimes uncomfortable, conversations. The good news is that having such conversations can build true intimacy. If we are equal to the challenge, we can negotiate our needs in personal and professional relationships to allow for more satisfying interactions.

Scare-City and the Single Life: The Future is Now

I recently read Kate Bolick’s article “All the Single Ladies” from the November 2011 issue of The Atlantic, in which she discusses the present unique situation of single women in America and how much male-female relationships have changed over the last few decades. As a 30-something single woman, I find it fascinating to learn that there’s statistical backup for the things that I hear my single girlfriends say, usually along the lines of “there are just no good men out there.”

According to Bolick, there actually has been a significant drop in the number of available men. On top of that, many of the men who are available are now less educated and making less money than ever before. Mere decades ago, it was almost expected that a woman would marry a man who would take care of her, in a variety of ways. And now, based on my own personal observations, and those of Bolick, this is less likely than ever to happen.

I’m inclined to ask, “So what’s the problem?” I don’t mean to be obtuse. I know what the problem is: My girlfriends want to get married. And not just my girlfriends. Many, many women are out there looking for Mr. Right. But it strikes me that the problem is not so much the scarcity of Mr. Right, but rather a lack of imagination and initiative in creating other options. And it’s really not single women who are to blame for this. Virtually our entire social structure is based on “couple-dom.” Movies, music, and television shows about the trials and tribulations (and finally, the rewards) of finding The One abound. In other words, there is a vast mythology surrounding the process of coupling.

You might be asking yourself, what does any of this have to do with spiritual practice? I promise you it has everything to do with it! One of the tenets of spiritual practice is non-duality. This essentially is the opposite of an either/or mentality: rather a both/and approach to life. An integrated approach based on holism and acknowledging polarities, being not only willing and able to acknowledge conflicting needs within ourselves, but being comfortable doing so. In short, what’s needed is an ability to know what’s true for each of us, intrinsically, to acknowledge its ever-shifting nature, and simply to let it be, relating authentically to others in the moment.

In the article, Bolick touches on her own desire for both “autonomy and intimacy.” And why shouldn’t she have relationships that include both? Now that women have more education, more earning power, and more autonomy than ever before, why shouldn’t they – why shouldn’t we – use that power to create the relationships that meet our needs, to write our own relationship contracts, so to speak?

How can we do that? First of all, it’s important to establish a present moment, process-oriented mentality. In other words, the future is now. Life doesn’t start when Mr. Right shows up. He may never show up…and it really doesn’t matter. Why? Because you don’t need Mr. Right to start meeting your needs and to create the life of your dreams. Bolick herself observes, “If I stopped seeing my present life as provisional, perhaps I’d be a little…happier. Perhaps I could actually get down to the business of what it means to be a real single woman.” This astute observation gets to the heart of a very important matter, which centers around the question, “What legitimizes your life?”

The mindset that being single is illegitimate, that people who are unmarried or exist outside of couple-dom don’t have “real” lives and therefore are to be pitied, is simply outmoded and no longer useful. Marriage is no longer a given, as evidenced by the rising number of singles. Let’s begin the process of letting go of our fantasies of Mr. Right and Happily Ever After, and celebrate the fact that we no longer have to fear becoming old maids. Let’s begin writing our own stories: It’s time to start imagining and creating the lives we want…by exploring paradigms outside of couple-dom.