Personal Declaration of Independence
July 4th, 2008
I am done with self-improvement.
Of course, the marketing forces telling me how many things are wrong with me, and all the things I need to buy in order to at least pass as ok are perhaps more intimidating and pervasive than King George and all of his Red-coats. Those marketing forces wouldn’t have a foothold, of course, but for my long history of being complicit, worrying that I needed to be more critical of myself than anyone else could be, so I could be prepared, could steel myself, before anyone else could point out everything that was wrong with me. My ancient fear that everything that goes wrong in my life can be traced to something wrong with me that everyone else can perceive that I cannot. My history of using commiseration over flaws as a way of bonding, the way women do.
It’s a scary thing to write: done with self-improvement. If I refuse to reinforce the idea there is something wrong with us with my sisters-in-misery, over the size of our butts, the need to have cleaner, more organized houses, or the need to be more patient with our children, will I get stuck with the label of stuck-up that killed my social life in middle school? This arrogance, this chutzpah could end in resentment and alienation, and yet, I want to treat myself with the same gentleness and generosity that I would a friend — there is nothing wrong with you. And there is nothing wrong with me. (Please, listen carefully: I am not saying I am perfect, but I don’t worry about whether you are perfect, I spend a lot more time thinking about the things I love about you. )
I want to declare war on everything telling us we’re not enough. I had thought initially that this was about the body-image struggle that is so on-going, the waters recently stirred by the unreliable narrator’s lovely blog entry revisiting cultural orthorexia and by this stabbing identification when a friend mentioned that looking at photos of a happy time didn’t make her feel happy because all she could see was her body not looking the way she thought her body should look. We got a Wii fit, which exceeded my expectations as something that makes body awareness and exercises with instant feedback fun, and yet when it tells me “visualize your ideal body when you’re exercising” I have to shout back at it “I quite like the body I have, thank you!” which must mean I am making slow progress in this struggle.
It goes deeper. It’s summer guilt at relaxing and reading fluff and just hanging out when I could be filling my own perceived deficits (getting the kids and myself really fluent in a second language! Plant identification! Learning the names of all the stars and constellations! Being able to identify chord progressions in music!) And I finally had this realization that while there is nothing wrong with those things as goals, I am done with perceiving these things as deficits. I have decided I am whole, I am complete, that I have racked up enough small, personal successes in thirty-five years, that setting goals for myself, challenging myself — that’s extra. I am going to acquire virtues rather than eliminate sins.
I finally face the fear that not struggling and striving to improve myself could be the first step into a slow slide into complacency and then apathy. And yet, lately I have been arguing that one doesn’t really improve oneself out of shame and self-loathing or fear, that shame, self-loathing, fear will keep hiding, telling you that everything you have done isn’t enough. And so I am trying to slow down enough to be aware of the little thoughts that come out under stress, and in the stillness here, now, knowing that they will re-emerge, I am arming myself against them. (”One if by shame and two if by self-loathing and three if by fear…”?) But more: that sort of mindfulness? Don’t take it for self-improvement.
July 5th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Oh you’re so STUCK-UP, you, all sliding into complacency and apathy and mediocrity and, and, and happiness and all.
Wink.
Kimba (!) once said to me, shaking her head in disbelief, “You’re so hard on yourself.” And I, like the stuck-up little rooster I was and probably still am, huffed, “Well, but look how far it’s gotten me!”
I thought this said it all at the time, and it does, but not in the way I meant. Actually I’m not sure how she kept from laughing. Maybe because we were sitting on my bed at the psych unit at the time? Or we might have been on the sofa in the philosophy department, late at night (because I was a work/study I had a key…hot date, no?).
ANYway, the point is, I don’t think giving up on self-improvement is really going to end in lying down on the floor and waiting to die–although that’s the dark warning which lurks, occult, in the ad copy. It might, in fact, end in actual self-improvement. Lao-Tze would probably say as much.
I’m intrigued by “shame, self-loathing, and fear will keep hiding” because it reminds me of something that a teacher of Mandarin’s once said, about the four noble truths (or as he called them, the two nasty truths and the two noble truths). But I’ll have to track it down before I can repeat it properly and AAAAA the green light is flickering. Love!
July 5th, 2008 at 11:37 am
PS: What is this word you keep using–this “exercise”?
July 5th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Jenny pointed out to me last night the synchronicity between this particular entry and one her older sister had put up which suggests not only letting go of self-improvement but also letting go of trying to save the world. Which I get all anxious about. I responded to her in email that it
July 5th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
It might be literature’s fault; but personally I blame it all on Hegel.
I blame a lot on him, come to think of it.
I’m telling you: all y’all saving-the-world people? You need to HOP TO IT because (over in this corner of it anyway) we got some serious unaddressed issues. This here world needs some goddamn saving, you picking up what I’m throwing down?
(And now you know how thoroughly and relentlessly I recycle my few shards of witticism; the wizard is just a fully-looking little old man.)
July 5th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
ERRATUM ALERT: For “corner of it anyway” please read “corner anyway,” and, even more humiliating, for “fully-looking” please read “funny-looking and also has forgotten how to type.”
Thank you. That is all.
July 5th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
I could go in and fix errata except that your alert is so much more charming and I sort of secretly hope that certain people will feel more free to participate in the interesting conversation happening over at your blog, being now less intimidated? And, in another point entirely, the funny-looking little old man was much more empowering to the brainless, the heartless, and the courageless than any great sorceror could have been. No fair guessing which one I am.
July 6th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Intimidated by wit and intellect? Surely you couldn’t be referring to me! ; )
All right, this isn’t fair, as I was totally on the “no more self-improvement” bandwagon with you on the phone, but I’m going to play devil’s advocate. I can’t help myself: I like self-improvement! Perhaps it’s the recovering alcoholic in me, or maybe it’s that I’m a good little indoctrinated American and I don’t feel complete unless I’m “working on an issue”. I’m sure self-improvement (and saving the world) have got to be on the list of stuff that white people like. But gosh darn, like the unreliable narrator, look how far it’s gotten me! (Do you suppose we have connections through the psych ward, too?!)
I even like body projects. (Can I admit that publicly and not have to surrender my subscription to Bitch?) I especially like body projects when I get to see Dramatic Results. That’s why I can never keep my hair one length – it’s so much fun to grow it out and then chop it all off – and why the gym is a lot more engaging after I’ve had a baby as opposed to just going for maintenance. I’m coming at this from such a different perspective now, though, than I have for most of my life. When my Body Project was all-consuming and motivated by shame, fear, and hatred of my body, it wasn’t much fun and (go figure) it wasn’t very effective. It’s seems nothing short of a miracle that I can honestly say I love my body now, and at the same time, I think it’s possible – fun even – to have little mini body projects. Like playing Wii Fit! But I think that’s your point: Do things for fun or because they are the next right thing in front of you, not because there is a gigantic media presence out there telling us we’re not enough. Amen to that!
I’m not sure how all this fits in with working the steps. Are the 12 steps considered self-improvement? If so, then my big talk about taking the summer off is a bunch of hooey, as I’m right in the middle of a 4th step. In fact, the very reason I’m voicing disagreement here is because that’s an “issue” I’m currently working on! So this comment is in fact a part of my summer self-improvement plan. : )
What can I say, I’m hopeless?
July 8th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Okay, speaking of self-improvement? Why does this irritate the bejeezus outta me?
http://www.handipoints.com/
The Brujo says we don’t have kids and thus can never know the issues involved–sure, fair enough. And, why would I want to basically train my toddler for middle management? If you meet your quarterly objectives, you can has popsicle?
As far as working a program…aaack, I am a worse than unreliable narrator on this one, since I’ve suckled at the metaphorical teats of both the B. and the Sponsor. If I suggested to the latter that the steps were for self-improvement he’d eat my brains. In particular, his version of Step 4, and the workshop he teaches on it, offers an interpretation so profoundly divergent from the commonly received one….suffice it to say that his entire starting premise is: Alcohol is not the problem. There is no problem. Everything is the way it should be and you’re fine exactly as you are. And then the Big Book fundamentalists usually start running around screaming and bleeding from the eyeballs….
I absolutely concur that making life/behavior changes for fun is an altogether different animal than making them because I Want to Be Gooder.
Oh, and I’ll never in a squillion years find the exact quotation, but Alice Walker says in some novel or essay or another: Hair is the toy God gave us to play with.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Making comment number one because the unreliable narrator mentioned in passing a conversation about self-improvement, and I love to toss that one around. I’ve been enjoying being a fairly new reader of your blog, by the way.
When I was in the drunk tank at the Culver City jail, slowly sobering up from my .20 BAC DWI arrest, I sure felt like I needed some self improvement, desperately. The magistrate who sentenced me a month later to 6 months mandatory “DWI Class,” 24 AA meetings, a $3000 fine, a restricted license and a MADD panel presentation sure seemed to think I needed self improvement also. (It’s still jarring to remember that it was “The People of the State of California versus” little old me…so really, it was The People of the State of California who thought I needed self improvement, which, if you read anything at all about said People, is really saying something).
And it was buying this essential line of thinking hook line and sinker that got me to my first miraculous AA meeting in 17 years. “AA will make me a better person.” For about a year, it seemed to do just that. California’s fine citizens had no complaints about me. I was nicer, I was more quiet and smiled a lot more. I had corrected the murderous behavior of hurtling around in thousands of pounds of automobile while several sheets to the wind.
But then something started to rattle, and rattle louder and louder. Often, at AA meetings, people tell the following archetypal tale: “I was such a loser and a heel before I got sober. Now, I’m a better person.”
Every time I would hear this, really at just about every meeting, it started sounding more and more hollow.
I’m still slowly waking up to what’s unsatisfying about the tale. It’s the archetypal tale of our culture, really. “I used to suck. Now, I’m great!” “I used to be on my way to hell. Now, I’ve got a pass to heaven!” “I used to have a fat ass. Now, it’s a nice tight set of buns!”
I’m slowly accepting that I *never* sucked, and, disappointingly, I’m not now nor will I ever be (by contrast) “great.” Like Jehovah herself, I am. A perfect-as-is Child of God. Nothing happens by mistake, so my active drinking days too were essential, were as perfect as everything else, including my flawed human ass. The Sponsor’s toughest question early in my work with him was “What’s the problem?” It took me several weeks to realize the answer for myself: There is not and never has been a problem. This is what “unmanageable” means to me, in expanding ways. Nothing to solve, no problem, nothing to manage. If I think I’m managing it, it’s unmanageable. If I’m convinced I’m improving myself, I’m under the illusion there was something wrong, deficient and incomplete in the first place.
Activities that seem like self improvement shift then, into play, investigation, surrender, not knowing, acceptance, and dare I say it– joy and gratitude.
wow, okay, this is a long comment! I’ll do better next time, I promise.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:44 am
okay Okay OKAY I can’t help it now I have to comment too.
(We’re totally bogarting your poor blog!)
In my last politics seminar at the Women’s College, the Professoressa had us read first Beloved and then Bastard out of Carolina. For some masochistic reason of my own I decided to reread The Trojan Woman in conjunction with these cheery narratives.
Then the P. assigned us a paper, answering the question: “What is the problem here?”
Predictably, the women’s studies majors thought the problem was patriarchy. The ethnic studies students thought white privilege was the problem. The economists thought it was probably unbridled capitalism. And the politics majors….enh, you get the idea.
And there’s Ms. Un, rereading Euripides, stewing and cogitating. No paper. No paper. Weeks pass.
Finally I write the damn paper. Title of paper: “There Is No Problem.” I guess I was the only philosophy major in the class?
Suffering, I argued incoherently, is so intrinsic to the life of the sufferer that it can’t be even theoretically excised. Hecuba had a happy life until one day the Trojan War came along and then SHE HAD A PROBLEM? Sethe would have been just fine if it weren’t for a PROBLEM? Like, what, she lost her car keys? Noooo, it don’t work like that. Such “problems” make up our entire beautiful wild anguished unmanageable substance.
(Now the B. is wandering in and out eating tortilla chips and distracting me from grinding my axe, which is fine, since really this whole comment proves nothing other than, well, that at least I’m a *consistent* little sumbitch.)
We play, investigate, accept, enjoy and feel deep gratitude for this here blog.
July 10th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
As I approach the eve of the anniversary of my 50th year (when in fact I’ve already lived 3/4 of my first 50 is enough to give anyone pause.
As I get ready to celebrate, yes, celebrate, that 50th year, I begin to look at my bulging midsection with pride” “I’ve earned it!” I begin to revel in my need to rest and my short of breath strolls in the yard.
However, when I take a stroll down memory lane, like I did last night at my friend’s retirement party (see last night’s #afterhours post), I see that all my OCD self-improvement has not gone to waste – in fact, to the contrary, I just couldn’t handle on the whining and self aggrandizement anymore – which is why escaping to the laughter at Portland Werewolf was such a delight!
Yes, self-improvement is overrated. However, the lack of it is less exciting – even though the unexamined life is certainly less fraught with self-loathing.
Or is it? Maybe that’s why there was more beer being drunk and the Firehouse Pub then there was at all of Lucky Lab last night.
I’m just sayin…
July 10th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Rereading the post above gives me even more respect for all the full-time moms out there. I’m being househusband this afternoon while my wife and her friend are at a canning seminar (my suggestion to watch the kids) – but I certainly make more typos and grammatical errors with a 10 mo old demanding my attention. Oops.
July 10th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
aw, come on guys! I can’t keep up!
PB’s comment reminds me of this endearingly abrasive New Yorker I know, a woman who got sober back when I was probably learning how to tie my shoes, who likes to remind us in meetings that she “joined AA, not the all–better club.” I think that if I had found AA to be a club for people who were all better, I probably would have wound up killing myself.
At the same time, submitting myself to the process of the 12 steps has totally transformed my life. Are those changes for the better? Are they improvements? I know I couldn’t have gotten where I am now if I hadn’t first been where I was, so does it make sense to say that the way I’m living now is better? I don’t know. I know there isn’t enough money in the universe that could make me go back to the way I was living before I got sober (and I use the term “living” loosely here.) I mean there’s struggling and then there’s struggling.
The more time that passes between that period of my life and the present, though, the more sense it makes to take value-laden language out of the equation. I mean, it’s a hell of a lot easier to understand that the agony of those years was fruitful now that the wounds of the past aren’t still smarting. But how then to talk about the change? Is it that I am more useful now? More present? Less ridiculous and unlovely?
This is a great reminder for me that I don’t get to chart the course for my own spiritual development. One of the 12 steps suggests that we ask God to remove all those defects of character (there’s that pesky word “defect”) that stand in the way of our usefulness to God or to our fellows. This really kind of pissed me off at first: you mean I don’t get to choose which defects of character get removed and which ones I have to continue to wallow in? Damn! But really, this is a great gift because it lets us all off the hook. The aspects of my personality that don’t seem to work so well for me, that cause me pain – what the steps refer to as character defects – these can actually be useful to God and to my fellows (for example, the way that my friend C’s propensity toward interrupting me/talking over me and generally monopolizing our conversations is an excellent opportunity for me to practice speaking up for myself). In that respect, they are not defects at all. In fact, they are evidence that, in this moment, everything is exactly as it should be. But what a paradox! Because the more I submit to the process of turning things over and letting go, the sweeter life gets.
July 10th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
@Jenny – whoa, talk about self-improvement. The 12 steps saved my life, but it wasn’t me, it was God.
July 13th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I think “endearingly abrasive” describes el Brujo PERFECTLY. ;o)
The Sponsor has yet another of his infinitely divergent interesting takes on Big Book fundamentalism concerning the word “defect.” His exegesis is that it refers to defecting from our character—those times when we step outside our integrity and behave in ways we don’t like. I like your take on it too—that God gets to decide when we’re “defecting.”
Brava for surrendering and for sweetness. I owe Ms. Jenzai an email–to be written when I’m less intimidated by her! ;o)
July 13th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
OMG *TWO* winking smileys in one comment, so much for the remnants of my big swinging intellectual dickdom.
Mara, have you abandoned us for your more recent post? –In which you adroitly manage to strike an heroic amiable balance between surrender and self-improvement? –You’re suspiciously good at mediating, too; were you a middle child? ;o) <–THIRD AND FINAL!
July 13th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I haven’t abandoned this comment thread at all, I am just sitting back grateful for the food-thought and for seeing some of my favoritest people talking to each other.
And in visiting my childhood home, as I do only periodically, and noticing changes around the house, the neighborhood, the city, I am struck on how I get caught between the Myths of Progress and Decay, that with both presenting their evidences I have to choose between accepting that both are simultaneously happening and thus reflect where we choose to put our energy and work, or falling into some fallacy of there being a moment, a Peak, that happens as the pendulum hits that change in momentum from Progress to Decay.
When I fall prone to believing in this Peak I grow unbearably nostalgic even for the very moment I am experiencing right now (my children are all past toddlerhood and none have reached adolescence and will family life ever again be so fun?), or I use it to self-flagellate or excuse myself (well clearly I peaked as valedictorian of my high school graduating class and no accomplishment since then has been quite so august). And telling myself I was never that great, nor have I ever completely sucked, well that just doesn’t feed my love of the dramatic arc.
I always thought the mediating-thing was Piscean wishie-washiness but since discovering I am in fact an Aries… well, who can explain it? Except that I spend my days making peace between four strongly-personalitied boys?
;•) back atcha!
July 14th, 2008 at 7:38 am
I love The Sponsor’s definition of “defects”! You can bet I’ll be working that into a meeting in the near future.
And that’s twice now in this thread that you have made me laugh so hard I cried. First the bleeding eyeballs, then the big swinging intellectual dickdom…
I’ve got to figure out how to subscribe to your blog, Mara, so that I will know when people are commenting. Is that the whole RSS feed thing? I’m sorry to be so technologically retarded.
Doesn’t visiting the old homestead bring out the drama queen in all of us (at least internally if not externally)?
July 17th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Mara wrote: “I grow unbearably nostalgic even for the very moment I am experiencing right now….”
And then I NEVER STOPPED LAUGHING.
June 7th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
I just thought i’d post and let you know your blogs theme is not working properly on the K-meleon browser. Anyhow nice blog…