Life’s big lessons
can take a long time to learn
I guess a “life lesson” could be taken to mean something that takes you your whole life to learn. As a 40 year student of A Course in Miracles, I know for sure that some lessons take a very long time to sink in. First I might get something on an intellectual level, then months or years later it comes around again, and I notice that I am ready to actually try it out as a way to live.
On March 8th, 2017, I shared this picture of a worm with my therapist. The previous week I’d confessed that I felt like a worm, just waiting on the sidewalk to be squished. I felt I’d never accomplished anything noteworthy in my life. I felt there was nothing left for me to live for. During the week, Richard Scarry’s character, Lowly Worm, floated into my mind. I used to read Richard Scarry books to my kids, 30 years ago! I hadn’t thought of Lowly since. The mind is an amazing library of images. This one was so helpful, coming unbidden out of the vault.
Lowly elevates wormhood to near sainthood. He does not bemoan his fate, he lives with gusto. Lowly is always polite and helpful. I like the way he dresses up, even though he’s a worm, with a bowtie and a feather in his cap. Lowly is not ashamed of who he is.
I’ve written a lot about sexual abuse and its after effects in my own life. There is a character in my inner world I call Sewer, who carries the shame. Therapy and writing about it have eased it quite a bit.
But it could be that the scars left by sexual abuse cannot be healed all the way. I may never want to have a sexual partner, for instance. If I had come home from a war with a missing limb, I’d have to find a way to live a meaningful life without it. That’s one thing I’ve been wrestling with lately. It does not seem like I’m ever going to remember what happened in Mr. McCormick’s house. It does not seem like I’m ever going to recover my sexuality. I’m ok with that. I dug around, I went into the most painful places in myself, and this is what I’ve come to.
I’m turning my attention now to working, getting a job, earning some money. Shame came up again — the shame of never having achieved anything careerwise. How can I just go back to doing menial jobs, I wondered. But I don’t really have the energy to go to school to learn new skills. I just need a way to make some money and keep my self respect. I talked with a friend about this. He said the way he looks at it is that he can take any job and put his best effort into doing that job, whatever it is. He said that’s what they taught him in Catholic school.
Well, I took his wisdom in, but I wasn’t ready to live it. Down into the pits of despair I went again for a while— I’ll never be able to work, I’ll die. I’d rather die than take some crummy job…
But today I woke up with something new in my heart. I guess it’s called humility, which could be the antidote for humiliation, I suppose. I’ve been rereading Healing the Unhealed Mind, by Ken Wapnick. Talking about what people do “after enlightenment,” he writes:
On a practical level you don’t take your shingle down. After all, you still have to eat.
You still have to eat. I heard that. Not that I’m enlightened, but I do have to eat. What’s my shingle then? Well, I’ve done a lot of different things. I made a list that goes back to high school:
1. Babysitter
2. Sales girl in a department store
3. Waitress in a deli
4. Apple Picker
5. Baker in a restaurant
6. Historic Building Restoration, bricklaying, painting, etc.
7. Child Care/Petsitting/Housesitting
8. Salesperson in a fabric department
9. Morning Paper Route
10. Fabric Salesperson again
11. Library Aide
12. Scholarship Coordinator for an educational foundation
13. Assistant Manager of a bookshop
14. Parish Secretary for an Episcopal church
15. Receptionist for a shelving company
16. Bookkeeper
17. Eldercare
18. Gardener
Really, what I do, it’s like housekeeping. Wherever I go, I’m just taking care of something for someone, most of it stuff I learned to do from my mother and grandmother. I saw an ad on Craigslist — a law office wanting someone with “a desire to nurture and support the other staff in the office.”
Some people might think that was demeaning. That they want a servant. That they want an underling to make coffee and photocopies. Well, that’s Lowly. And that could be me, because, honestly, that IS what I know how to do, and what I’m good at. I don’t need a lot of money. Is it demeaning to take a job like that? Only if I think it is.
HAMLET: Denmark’s a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ: Then is the world one.
HAMLET: A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ th’ worst.
ROSENCRANTZ: We think not so, my lord.
HAMLET: Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ: Why then, your ambition makes it one. ’Tis too narrow for your mind.
HAMLET: O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
GUILDENSTERN: Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
HAMLET: A dream itself is but a shadow.
ROSENCRANTZ: Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
