I have come to know...

That I am only fully accountable for the things I can control.

I've always had a good handle on this reality in some areas of my life, but in others it just hasn't sunk in. But it's sinking in now... and that's good news!

I am responsible for the consequences, both to myself and to others, of my decisions, but (assuming I act with reasonable consideration) I am not responsible for others' feelings and I am not responsible for the decisions others make. I am primarily responsible for my own feelings and actions.

This is empowering—it means that I have phenomenal power in the ambit of my own internal and external life—and liberating—the way others feel about and behave toward me (whether they like me or not, whether they join me in my endeavors, whether they treat me well or poorly) is their responsibility, not mine.

Like a lot of people, I have tended to carry the weight of others' feelings and expectations on my shoulders. I've tried to act to bring happiness to those I care about, and to meet their expectations for me. When someone who matters to me has been unhappy, or thought poorly of me, or acted in ways I knew were unhealthy or unwise, I have felt responsible; as if their unhappiness or poor perception of me or unwise actions were somehow my fault.

I have taken responsibility for things that are not my fault, and because I didn't like those things, I have not liked myself as much as I should.

But recently I have come to understand that it is right and proper and good to only take responsibility for things that are my responsibility: my own well-being, my own pleasure, my own emotional state, my own happiness, my own choices, my own joy.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." I've liked and admired that (obvious!) observation for a very long time, yet have failed to internalize it as I should.

This summer, my efforts are applied to personal empowerment and liberation as means of finding personal fulfillment. I am owning my shit and shedding as much as I can of the baggage that has hindered me. And it's going well! With apologies to Shakespeare:

"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer..."

Made glorious summer...

What I say, what I feel, what I do... these are my responsibilities. And I'm happy to take them. They're enough. Let others say, feel, and do what they think right and proper; that's their responsibility. I'm not going to worry overmuch about things that aren't my responsibility.

I'm going to enjoy my glorious summer...

Finally Learning the Lesson

It's important for me to remain motivated as I pursue the self-confidence I ought to have. It would be easy to stop affirming my worthiness before the confidence I articulate becomes an emotional habit. I want it to stick, however, so I'm constantly on the lookout for what improved self confidence will pay, and what the status quo has cost. The payoff is the carrot of my motivation, while the expense is the stick.

On the plus side:

• Confidence is attractive and sexy
• Confidence makes me more likely to assert myself; to go for what I want
• If I am confident in myself, others will have greater confidence in me

On the minus side:

• If I lack confidence, I don't pursue the things I want
• If I lack confidence, I expect the worst rather than the best
• If I lack confidence, I distrust others' interest and affection, even if declared and shown

I was contemplating that last one the other day, not to beat myself up over it, but simply to understand and be aware of it. It's been my bugaboo when it comes to relationships of a romantic nature.

Contrary to my own protestations I am not altogether inexperienced when it comes to relationships. I am relatively inexperienced, but I have had a few. In almost every instance it's been the woman who broke things off, but in retrospect I don't blame them. I think I understand the part I played in the way things turned out.

In just about every instance, the woman in question was (is!) a wonderful woman and a wonderful person. If I were to name names, those of you who know those women would agree that they are amazing and committed and true. In just about every instance, the woman sincerely cared about me and saw me as not just worthy, but worthwhile. Each worked to convince me, but I would not be convinced. Eventually, the effort became too great a burden.

Other times, I'd meet a woman, maybe we'd go out, I'd want to call them... but doubts born of a lack of confidence persuaded me that I shouldn't. I'm sure that I flushed a few opportunities down the toilet because of that.

It's like getting involved with an addict or alcoholic. It's one thing to support someone who is working on her/his recovery, but another thing altogether to live with someone who can't or won't try to save her/his own life. If I'd trusted any of them and worked to improve my own confidence, well... my life might have turned out very differently than it has.

But it's never too late, I guess. I've reached a tipping point, thanks in large part to another great woman I've encountered. I'm becoming as confident as I ought always to have been. I look back at those other relationships—failed, perhaps, but precious and valuable gifts nonetheless—and at long last the view is sweeter than it is bitter; far sweeter.

And looking forward, I see a brighter tomorrow. I finally feel what those wonderful women have been trying to tell me; that I am quite a catch. A dear friend, who is numbered among those wonderful women mentioned above, once told me that I was good at being in a relationship; I just wasn't very good at getting into one.

I think I'll be better at that, now. I'll probably be a little clumsy—I haven't had much practice, after all—but I won't be afraid, and I won't sabotage things.

This makes me smile.

Unnatural Number

(No, that isn't a typo; I didn't mean to type irrational numbers)

In mathematics, many strange classes and categories of numbers exist: irrational numbers, complex numbers, superreal and surreal numbers... and they fit within the universe of mathematics; they have their place. They have no place in my brain, but they still belong in the abstract reality of mathematics.

When numbering and counting things in nature, fewer classes and categories of numbers are useful. As a practical matter, enumerating things in nature involves just two numeric possibilities. You can have none of something—unicorns (sorry!), political scruples, circles with a ratio circumference to diameter = 3—or you can have more than one—narwhals, spoiled celebrities, stars.

What you can't have (or can't have for long) is one of something.

It's said that "nature abhors a vacuum" and that's just not true: look how much vacuum there is in the universe! What nature really abhors is uniqueness. In nature, for any class of things—any species, any class of celestial body, any geographic feature, any thing—there is either more than one of them, or there aren't any at all.

I'm not talking here about the kind of fine points that make each of us a unique treasure to others. I'm talking about the big stuff. One is a transitory number: If there's one of anything it won't be long before there's either more than one or there aren't any at all. One is an unnatural number.

The upshot of all this is simple, really: if you encounter one of something delightful and for whatever reason it doesn't come to you, do not despair. If there's one, there are almost certainly others.

I'm not saying why this makes me happy...

Patience My Ass...

According to Edmund Burke, "Patience will achieve more than force. It's been famously said that "All good things come to he who waits." They say, "Patience is a virtue." "Patience is the key to contentment," they say. And they might very well be right.


In the more ordinary sense (the sense of waiting without demanding that someone "hurry up, dammit!"), I guess I'm fairly patient. But because I am waiting for something, I am not exercising the kind of patience that 'achieves more than force,' or 'brings all good things,' or 'is the key to contentment.' My problem is the expectation that some specific thing(s) will come to me if I wait.

But I think patience is more than waiting. Patience is waiting without expectation; patience is waiting without waiting for anything.

A lot of things are worth waiting for. But there's more than one kind of waiting, and the kind where you passively sit, expecting what you desire to magically appear, is useless. When you engage in that kind of waiting, you're expecting the world to give you what you want because you "deserve" it, or because "it's only fair," or maybe because you bought into the "All good things come to he who waits" propaganda. And the world just doesn't work that way.

Vultures are famous for their waiting... but the cartoon above, one of many renderings of the same idea, suggest that it's possible to have too much of even so good a thing as patience.

And while there are many quotes, proverbs, and aphorisms extolling the virtues of patience, there are some that take a contrary position:

"Patience is good only when it is the shortest way to a good end; otherwise. impatience is better."
"Patience under old injuries invites new ones."
"He preacheth patience that never knew pain." H. G. Bohn

Patience my ass...

Overdrawn at the Well-Being Account

Somehow, I've become the guy a number of people turn to for advice on relationships and life. In some ways I'm a strange choice—I haven't actually been in very many relationships, after all—but nevertheless I'm a good choice; I pay careful attention to how people live and relate to one another, I empathize with people's pain and joy, I think carefully about what I see and feel, and I can explain things pretty well.

One piece of advice I give again and again is, "Take care of yourself!"

So many of the people I talk to tend to put other people (or other things)—whether a family member, a significant other, an organization, or an ideal—so far ahead of themselves that they neglect their own needs. I caution and counsel these individuals to put themselves in the equation; maybe not first, but high enough on the priority list that they don't neglect their own needs.

I don't insist they put themselves first because I understand what it means to love someone or something. I know that love sometimes demands we put another's needs ahead of our own. And sometimes—like when a loved one's life is in danger or when choosing between a child's legitimate needs and a parent's reasonable wants—we can and should be prepared to make sacrifices.

What we shouldn't do (but often do) is put another person's (or organization's) every need ahead of our any need. It's like a household budget: we should prioritize so that all needful things are taken care of before we spend emotional capital on things that aren't vital.

The challenge is putting our own needs in the "needful things" category. When we love someone (or something), we tend to see our own needs as luxuries... and they aren't. Our emotional investment in who (or what) we love is drawn from a "well-being account", and if we draw it down without making deposits, sooner or later the account runs dry.

It's actually really good advice, isn't it?

The irony is that it's advice I've generally failed to apply to myself. For whatever reason (probably relating at least a little to poor self-esteem), I've felt that it was only right that I put myself dead last: after family, after loved ones, after friends, after students, after institutions, after programs, after everything.

Eff that.

It just occurred to me that there's a bit of a vicious circle—a positive feedback loop—in this. By putting myself last, I reinforced the feeling that I belonged last, which made it easier to put myself last, which reinforced my sense that that's where I belonged, which reinforced the habit of putting myself last... ad infinitum.

Eff that.

I am done putting myself after everyone and everything else. In fact, I am ready to assert that sometimes, I should put myself first; ahead of everyone and everything else. Not always, but often.

Eff always being a good sport. Eff being only or mostly a giver. Eff doing what others want when it isn't what I want. Eff all that.

If I'm ever going to persuade myself that I am as worthy as I (intellectually) believe, I need to treat myself well. I need to stop doing things just to please others and start doing things to please myself. If I'm ever going to believe in my heart that I deserve the good stuff, I need to begin by giving myself the good stuff I've got.

I need to make some deposits in the well-being account, and stop writing so many checks drawn from it.

Maybe that's selfish. And maybe that's okay.

A Chorus of Crickets

When I ask my students a question and no one has a response, after a while I say, "Cricket... cricket... cricket..." When all else is silence, what is left is the sound of chirping crickets (if you live where crickets do, too).

The sound of crickets, then, is a metaphor for silence; either literal silence or the absence of meaningful response.

Like many U.S. citizens/residents, I've been conditioned to be uncomfortable with silence. In recent years I've come to appreciate silence and even be comfortable with silences that others find awkward, but some silences (as in "the absence of meaningful response") still challenge me.

It isn't simply that I find them awkward. It isn't awkwardness at all. It's the "failure to communicate" that pushes me off balance.

Long ago I learned a mantra from one of my dearest friends: "Open, honest, maintained communication." I believe in communication the way coaches believe in discipline, or music teachers believe in practice; persistent, consistent, open, honest, and maintained communication grows understanding, and understanding grows all kinds of relationships: business/professional, collegial, familial, platonic, and romantic.

Therefore for most of my life, I've gotten worried when I could "hear the crickets." I'm a pretty good communicator, so when communication wasn't happening, I'd be out of my comfort zone and I got nervous. Coupled with a poor self-esteem that tended to paint silences in the worst possible terms, that anxiety created a positive feedback loop that made me feel worse.

Please note that those statements are written in past tense. "I got nervous," it "created a positive feedback loop," it "made me feel worse." That's how it has been in the past.

I still have poor self-esteem (though it's improving), but I am finding that silences are not creating the discomfort, worry, and bad feelings they would have in the past.

Part of it is that I've stopped trying to interpret it; sometimes a silence is just a silence.

Part of it is that I'm no longer so deeply invested in having things go "my way."

And part of it is that I have come to feel in my bones what I have always known in my head: communication is not one person saying something to another; communication is two (or more) people talking to and listening to one another, each working to make sure that what the other(s) heard is what s/he meant. If only one of the people is talking (or listening, or checking for understanding), then very little can be communicated.

Sure, silence can mean something. It probably does. But any guess as to what that meaning is will never be more than a guess. Knowing will have to wait until the silence is broken.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy the chirping of the crickets.

Sauce for the Goose

I remember the summer I worked as an intern with a church minister whose calling was to the LGBT community in New York City. That experience challenged me—when the summer began, I still had some vestiges of homophobia in me (well suppressed, but present), but by summer's end it had been pretty thoroughly eradicated—and it taught me some important lessons, one of which I only got half-right at the time. I'm just getting the second half today, more than 15 years later.

We spent a lot of time at a gay and lesbian center in Greenwich Village. One vivid memory, from my first day there, is standing at a urinal in the restroom, and being greeted by a woman headed for the stalls. That's when I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wasn't in Kansas any more.

That summer, I got over a lot of hangups. It only took a week or so before events like the one above became commonplace and normal. I came to be blasé about things that would previously have triggered body modesty and embarrassment. As a result of that experience, I have largely lost my self-consciousness about my body (not completely; I still worry about whether or not a woman will like it).

Even better, constant exposure to the GLBT community eradicated any remaining vestiges of homophobia dwelling deep in my psyche. I already knew (at an intellectual level) that homophobia was unjustified and inappropriate; what remained before this experience was a little of the emotional reaction that I'd been conditioned to when growing up. That embarrassing remnant was blown away that summer.

The first time a man hit on me, I was uncomfortable. I didn't react badly—that would have been embarrassing and just plain mean—but I have to confess that it made me uneasy. I told the man that I was straight, which led to a conversation about why a straight man was hanging out at the LBGT center, and it was all good. I overcame my discomfort and everything was fine.

By the tenth or twelfth pass, I was over it. One man explained to me that a gay man's "gaydar" was just about as accurate as anyone else's—that is, not at all accurate—and that helped, too. I came to see the passes as a compliment; I didn't have to be interested in men to be flattered by a man's attention.

So there's the first half of the lesson: I learned to be flatted by a pass even if—due to sexual orientation, marital/relational status, chemistry, or whatever—I can't take what's being offered. I haven't always remembered this lesson, but it's deeply engrained nonetheless; it pops into my consciousness frequently.

The second half of the lesson—and I can't believe it's taken me this long to "get it"—is that the same is probably true of the women I might be attracted to.

I know, "Doh!"

I've always been hesitant to make a pass at a woman. Partly that's been because I fear rejection (I know, a whole 'nother kind of stupidity), but partly it's because I didn't want to piss off a woman who might not be interested.

But why wouldn't (most) women feel the same way about a (gentlemanly) pass as I learned to feel about passes by gay men? Even if she isn't interested in me—because she's a lesbian, or married, or in a relationship, or isn't attracted to me—why wouldn't she at least see it as a compliment?

Am I wrong about this?