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23. If You’ve Ever Felt Different…You Could Be A Mistaken Zygote!

Ever feel like you were dropped in the wrong house? You just aren’t like the rest of your family? You seem to do and value and feel things totally differently from the rest of them? They don’t get you? And because there’s only one of you and several of them, you feel the outsider? You feel ‘wrong?’

I’ve even gotten to the point of feeling totally alien. I described it like, somehow I came here with ‘others of my kind’–a brain cloud descended—they left—and I got left behind, stranger in a strange land!

Stories as Antidote.

We’ve talked about stories/myths holding clues for our survival, progress in life. Some can provide antidotes for our human foibles. Human foibles are just that—our quirks, shortcomings, eccentricities, imperfections—built-in to the species—and which all of us, in our evolutionary progress, have to recognize, deal with. Stories that will help us understand, accept, yea, even overcome when we feel life is unfair or we were dealt a crappy hand.

I discovered an antidote for ‘feeling different’ in The Mistaken Zygote story. Like a lot of good discoveries that end up helping us in the long haul, the road often starts out with a sour lemon handout of emotional distress or pain. (Post 1)

My discovery of the Mistaken Zygote story came after a rough visit ‘home’ for a family Christmas which ended in my being “attacked” by a loving grandma, mom, and aunt for my different religious thoughts, and worse, my questions! (It really felt like a reenactment of “The Birds” flying at my face!) I remember fleeing in a rush to my car screaming and crying at the same time to my (blood) family, “I don’t know who you people are, but I’m going home to my family.” I couldn’t get my car far enough, fast enough. I noted every mile-marking city in the 300-mile drive home, “ok, I’m here, just keep going; you’re gonna be home soon.” I remember to this day turning the corner to my street, feeling like I couldn’t breathe deeply until I was in my own home. Sanctuary once again.

Later, I was discussing the “holidays” with Tony, a Jungian Group friend of mine. I was lamenting about my traumatizing visit back ‘home with family.’ After a few moments of consolation, Tony quietly stated, “Your story is in ‘the book.’ It’s The Mistaken Zygote.” (I knew ‘the book’ was the one we’d both been reading, “Women Who Run with the Wolves,” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Ph.D. He had told me he’d actually given a few copies of the book to women friends of his as Christmas gifts. Oddly enough, my copy had been given to me by a man also.)

Yes, I’d been reading the book, but had slacked off for my visit ‘home’ for the holidays. I had stopped just 12 pages short of the story “The Mistaken Zygote.” (Page 192) I went back to the book and read it. Wow! There it was: The Reason “Why.”

I could paraphrase the story, but I would rather let Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. tell you in her own cantadora words: (P 194)

“Well see, the Zygote Fairy was flying over your hometown one night, and all the little zygotes in her basket were hopping and jumping with excitement.

You were indeed destined for parents who would have understood you, but the Zygote Fairy hit turbulence and, oops, you fell out of the basket over the wrong house. You fell head over heels, head over heels, right into a family that was not meant for you. Your “real” family was three miles farther on.

That is why you fell in love with a family that wasn’t yours, and that lived three miles over. You always wished Mrs. and Mr. So-and-so were your real parents. Chances are they were meant to be.”

Different Is as Different Does, and It Ain’t Wrong.

There it was! Dropped into the wrong house!

I felt different often. For too much of my life. As a kid, you can’t quite discern 1) you’re different and, 2) different is wrong. What you see and live is what you think everybody sees and lives. Then you start pre-adulting and full-adulating and that’s when you begin to feel pushback for ‘not fitting’ with everybody else, not thinking like everybody else. They want to slap you with a label. They can’t just look at you and accept ‘hmm, you’re different.’ No, they gotta have a label: Flighty. Weird. Bookworm. Nerd. Geek. L., G., B. or Non-B, T., or Q. Or other B-word. With all the intonation that says: “Wrong Wrong Wrong!”

Here’s what I learned from my Jungian Group. When someone hurls a label, especially a deprecating one, at you, it’s for their purpose of shutting you down and shutting you up. When you’re proud of an accomplishment and someone hurls “hubris” at you, what’s the natural reaction? Shutting up. In the midst of a heated discussion or argument, someone calls you a horrific name, it’s for the purpose of wounding you into retreat off the battlefield! Shutting you up!

At the urging of too many friends and family, I was encouraged to see my different as being wrong. Often, dismissed when different. Mostly because I wasn’t seeing things like they did, didn’t accept things like they did, didn’t conform to previously-dictated roles or norms. My experience made me relate different to being wrong. Honestly, it took me a few decades to discover and accept:

Different is not Wrong.

Different is just Different.

Then, it took me a long time of living to convince myself of it. Struggling to convince others to see different wasn’t wrong. Struggle, I say, because too many people with ‘slow seeing’ cannot bear for different NOT to be wrong!

Antidotes for the job.

For balance, know these things to strengthen you in your unique differentness:

Most people’s attempt to convince you you’re wrong is because of their own feelings of inadequacy and/or insecurity (which they can’t/won’t admit to). They have a need to convince you to be like them, think like them, do like them, because that would prove to themselves they are right.

In reality, deep in their unconscious, they are not totally convinced they are right. However, they are not aware enough to be honest with themselves, thus they repress it in the unconscious. So they must convince you your different is wrong…that makes them right. Right? Score one! Even when they are unaware that they are keeping score.

I believe, when you ‘Know Thyself,’ you ‘Know All Others.’ So when you know the real motivation for their making your different feel wrong, you are free not to consider their label of wrong as valid whatsoever. Null and Void.

The second thing to know: The Mistaken Zygote gives meaning and raison d’etre for it all, I’ll let Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. tell you:

“Do not cringe and make yourself small if you are called the black sheep, the maverick, the lone wolf. Those with slow seeing say a nonconformist is a blight on society. But it has been proven over the centuries, that being different means standing at the edge, means one is practically guaranteed to make an original contribution, a useful and stunning contribution to her culture.”

To those who have felt alienated and different:

Go forth and be different, you Mistaken Zygotes of the World! We need your contribution!

An Aside:

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D is a cantadora (storyteller) and a Jungian analyst. The book “Women Who Run with the Wolves” shares stories and myths relating to a woman’s passage and growth through life. Somewhere I even recall hearing, reading, seeing, or saying, “Every woman will find her story there.” I did that Christmas—The Mistaken Zygote. It gave succor and salve for a sore heart. Pertinent to my survival. Retained. A default for future applications. I noted the synchronicity of finding it at the exact perfect time that I needed it. If you’ve been harangued with feeling ‘different,’ you’ll find it is an understanding of your Self that validates you are ‘different;’ it’s okay and more than likely a good thing! I think the story is even more validated if you’ve been one of the lucky ones who has found his or her own real (if not blood) family that you were intended to be with before you were plopped into the wrong family.

22. Raisin Debt

You never know who’s gonna pop a pearl of wisdom on you! One of the lessons I learned in one of my careers—the one as a producer and writer of television—was given to me by a most unlikely and somewhat disrespected source. Many times people we end up not liking very much actually have a purpose and a lesson for us in our life. This lesson came from a television producer, a big fish in a little pond. He believed at the time he was a big fish and so did I. I have since come to see maybe the reason he seemed to be a big fish was that his pond was really a puddle and there he was flopping around creating what seemed to be big splashes. How did I know he actually presented me with a lesson for my life, a piece to my puzzle, a Dot for my pertinent pocket? (Post 2) Because here it is, decades later, retained!

So Producer Fish told me in one of his pontificating moments that everything in a show has to have a Raisin Debt. (That’s what I heard: Raisin Debt.) Well, I wanted Producer Fish to think I was the bright and knowing young writer that I was trying to pass myself off to be and that I could save his show…but ‘Raisin Debt?’ Yish, my little memory banks were just racing index after index, reference after reference, back even into the offline archives to find some semblance of a meaning or obscure reference for ‘Raisin Debt.’ A reference to recent grape crop failures? Singing California cereals? Gross National Product Indices, commodities? It’s a wonder my eyes weren’t fairly spinning in my head like a slot machine looking for three cherries…or in this case, raisins…raisins in debt. Alas I was never able to find the reference or manage a look of understanding necessary to let Producer Fish know I knew what the hell he was talking about, and I was forced to ask him, “Raisin Debt?”

“Yes.” He smiled at his opportunity to pontificate, “It’s French. Raison d’etre, a ‘reason to be.’

Amazingly, out of the mouths of fish sometimes plops a pearl.

He, of course, was talking in his limited puddle concept of writing a television show. He felt everything in the show had to have a Reason to Be. But when you hear a Universal Truth, well, I immediately clicked on a bigger picture concept of a Reason to Be!

Everything has a raison d’etre (Raisin Debt)…

…a Reason to Be.

Applying Big Picture strokes to it: Yes, we all carry in our souls a Raisin Debt, a reason to be. A reason why we Are. A reason why we Are Here. A reason why this soul chose this body and those parents and this life and all those aggravating circumstances, that trait, those tendencies, that skill, that fallibility.

Yet, we don’t live our lives understanding we have a Reason for our existence, nor work to find what our Reason to Be is. A reason why we are here. A reason we were born. Something in this lifetime to accomplish, to learn, to teach, to contribute, to save, to live through, to experience. The good, the bad, the boring; the indifferent, the ugly. Living our life with the precept that Everything has a Reason to Be in our life. Once you realize there’s a Purpose in there somewhere, it sheds light on the Bigger Picture. The realization that there is a reason for it all becomes the seed bed for acceptance and learning and growing.

Maybe the reason we don’t live our lives understanding that there is a raison d’etre for our life is because it can be a long-term, open-ended project that stretches through our whole life long—a life’s work. And we’ve all been refocused on 10-second soundbites, 20-minute half-hours, a Cliff Notes’ version of life.

It’s sometimes hard, focused, and, lots of times, thwarted work. We run the risk that we may never finally dot the I’s, cross the T’s and put a name on our Reason to Be. It may be like the daily picture puzzles I work. They offer no picture to go by. Instead, you put the puzzle together by observation and instinct. If you actually look for the picture to go by, it says, “Picture will be revealed after you complete the Puzzle.” Maybe we only discover our raison d’etre after we exit this life. Maybe that’s why so few people live their life with the purpose of finding out.

But If One Were Looking for a Raisin Debt, Where Would One Start?

Most importantly, it takes seeing every other human as Soul. Regardless of any external distinguishing marks, colors, creeds, religions, or orientations. Realizing that each and every body is wholly and holy encasing a glowing ember of the Eternal—no matter what name you call It—and especially no matter what flotsam and jetsam and BS they have piled on top of that ember! It still burns. You now open your vistas to seeing connection to all things, all people. Everybody’s. Got. A. Soul. It’s the internal, Eternal Guidance System we were given to lead us. Tap into it. You’ll feel and find your Raison d’etre.

Secondly, it takes a kind of faith, maybe even a strong kind of faith, to live your life with the precept that Everything has a Reason to Be in your life. Yes, the tormenting, traumatic, and tragic. Accepting that “Everything happens for a reason,” opens the door to letting that Eternal ember lead. Maybe it’s just the people you encounter—to learn from or survive from, or to reconnect like you’ve known each other for-ever. There have been Dots dropped through the ages: Behind every cloud is a silver lining. It’s why my Family and Children’s Services counsellor had me list everything ‘bad’ that happened and hurt, then try to find something good that came from it.

It takes focus and intent: You want to find the Reason to Be for your life. Seek and ye shall find, sayeth the Bible. See with eyes that truly see, listen with ears that truly hear, and live with a heart that seeks to understand. See people and circumstances as pieces of the puzzle to be put together to reveal the answer, the Big Picture of why you Are. See how many answers you come up with to “why is this happening.” What am I getting out of the circumstances of my life? Squeeze the juice right out of every raw circumstance!

Everybody’s got a Raisin Debt! Everybody’s got a Reason to Be in this life. If you ever wondered why the Home Page for Mesmarriah Miracle is Raison d’etre, this is the reason. Mesmarriah Miracle is just looking to find a Reason to Be for Life—with a Capital L. Defining It. Naming It. Living It.

21. Everybody Swings, Like a Pendulum Do—Balancing the Opposites

“When you have come past the pairs of opposites,

You have reached compassion.”

The purpose of the journey is compassion.”

(Joseph Campbell, “A Joseph Campbell Companion,” p. 24)

Our psyche contains the Opposites. Of everything. They’re already there. The hero(ine)’s task: Recognize, Honor, Accept, and Contain polar opposites. And it’s a job.

First: Recognize. We must recognize we contain both sides of the opposite. Mostly we just want to deal with the ‘good’ opposite, then ignore, yea repress, ‘the other’ opposite. (See Post 11. The Shadow.)

Second: Accept. Acknowledge and accept both as a part of us—a part of our whole.

Third: Balance. We learn to balance them. Back and forth. See-saw Margie Daw. Can’t deny one; can’t repress.

You’ve met Mrs. True, my counselor in other posts. She once told me, “You’re a dreamer…and yet you’re the most practical person I’ve ever met.” I literally cried out in physical and emotional anguish, —“Yes!! And how do you reconcile the two???” —for having both of those in one psyche can feel crazy-making! A dreamer flies. A pragmatist is bolted to the ground. How can you possibly be both?

Learning the balance of opposites.

It’s one of the stepping-stones if you’re looking to be healthy and whole. Learning to balance between the opposites. Be a dreamer and a pragmatist. Have a dream to be a writer AND be responsible for the mundane details of paying bills, raising kids, making sure you change the oil in your car, buying wrinkle-free cotton instead of linen, checking for bugs in the cereal and mold on the cottage cheese!

It’s like being the only one on a seesaw/teeter-totter and maintaining your balance as you go back and forth. A little bit of this and a little bit of its opposite. Nurture your dreamer when she wants a flight of fancy. Praise your pragmatist and let her balance your checkbook, plan ahead 3 steps, and keep your schedules. You can be both. Excellently. Don’t bad-mouth either one. Know they each have their time in your soul and your everyday living. Recognize both and say, “I am grateful” for both.

Newton’s Third Law. Exact and Equal Opposites.

We talked about Opposites in the Shadow (Post 11), so I’m going to focus on one major set of Opposites The Highs and Lows of everyday life (lower case l). You can’t have one without the ooooooother…as an old song sings. For many of us, we only bemoan the Lows because they feel like an intrusion, an abnormality to what we expect of life. We expect the Highs, the smooth sailing to be constant and feel betrayed when crap happens and a Low hits.

If we have Highs, we’re going to have Lows. There’s just no way around it. The goal is to handle the Lows without getting lost in them, thinking this is all there is, it’ll never be any different; this will never end. We’ve all been there. When you’re in the weeds, it feels like it will NEVER be any different.

I’m invoking Newton’s Third Law–For each and every action there is an exact and equal opposite reaction! It’s a law of nature; it confirms a symmetry in nature, a pairing up of opposites. So if there are Highs, they will cycle around and be Lows. If there are to be Lows, just know there will come the day of the corresponding Highs. Be ready for them. Recognize and bask in them: “Hey, I am feeling good; things are going smooth; I AM GRATEFUL.” (I believe that noticing and saying, “I am grateful” for the good makes it come sooner, last longer, return quicker. Just my personal eval.)

Then, when that Low funk returns, it’ll help you reaffirm…”Hey, this is just a Low funk I’m in, but it’s just the opposite of that great High I’ve experienced.” Here’s how I finally resolved Lows for myself with a little humor:

Cycles circle circle

Hope

the apex

Despair

the nadir

Faith

that you will grow through it

Fear

that things will never change

Courage

you will survive

Fear

you will succumb.

When the Lows circle ‘round,

Take heart and know ye this,

for it was written long before me

and passed down through the women of civilization:

THIS TOO SHALL PASS!

And when it does,

when life is singing a happy tune,

be aware enough to notice and be thankful.

For this shall ye also know:

IT SHALL RETURN!

That’s ok. That’s normal. That’s life. That’s the opposites taking turns. Teeter-totter. Back and forth. You can weather both. Your soul, your psyche are big enough to contain the opposites. In fact, balancing the opposites is not only a natural part of our growth; it can keep us healthy.

The Resilience Hypothesis.

If you’re still not sure about the balancing act, what if you looked at every ‘bad’ time as having its very own raison d’etre (reason to be).

I’ve referred to Dr. Frederich Flauch’s book on his daughter’s mental decline and his search and research to return her to health. (Post 8.) He talks about ‘disruption and reintegration’…that sounds like a Low disrupting our High and how to get back to it.

”I’ve been trying to formulate my ideas within the framework of a theory,’ I told Bill., ‘something that can tie together a lot of loose ends…like calcium changing when people are depressed, and depression itself being a natural phenomenon and becoming an illness only when it’s not properly managed. I decided to call it the ‘resilience hypothesis,’ a law of disruption and reintegration. Nature’s mandate. People fall apart when confronted with serious stress or change in their lives. Then, if they have what it takes, they put themselves together again in a different way. After their breakdowns, a lot of my patients reach better levels of coping. I’ve taken this concept much further, viewing the breakdown itself not necessarily as an unfortunate event, but as an inherent part of adapting to change, setting the state for personal growth. If you don’t go through it, that’s when you’re in trouble.’…“Something I call resilience. It’s physical, of course, and psychological as well. If you’re flexible, creative—if you believe—you can get through these times and come out of them more than you were before.’”…But the prototype for resilience is right there in the New Testament. Death and resurrection. In our field’s preoccupation with Freudian doctrine, we missed it.”
“Rickie” by Frederich Flauch, M.D., p. 172

Know you’re not alone in your Highs and Lows. It’s a part of our human nature. There is a reason for it all.

I found this to be my first caution: It’s easy to get lost in either side thinking (and expecting) during the good times, 1) I’ve got it made, It’s gonna be like this for-evverrr!; or 2) during the bad times, “my life is over, it will never get any better, life sucks!” Balance. Focus on Balance. This too shall pass…And it shall return.

The second caution is: You don’t want to remain in the middle of that teeter-totter. Recognize and embrace the cycle as natural. Without the Highs and Lows, that middle ground could be close to a flatline! So many times, when we are in the funkiest of funks, ‘not feeling’ sounds soothing. We think “I don’t want to have these (bad, hard, sad) feelings.” It would feel so nice to cover up and plaster over all those tough, sad feelings and NOT feel.

Resist. Feel. The goal is to nurture the courage and fortitude to accept the bad with the good as part of the cycles circling life. The Lows aka bad times are the hard ones to incorporate as ‘necessary.’ But the goal is ‘containing the opposites,’ making our ‘container’ big enough to handle both sides. Know: those are admirable and attainable goals. Gain the strength that comes with making your way through. Feel them and survive. You are built to survive.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”— F. Scott Fitzgerald

20. Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, But Words Will Hurt Forever.

That sounds a little like the schoolyard retort we used in our childhood, when someone said something mean to us. But the one from ‘the good ol’ days’ touted that “words would ‘never hurt me:’”

Sure, we flung that ditty back at our tormentors, but those nasty words did hurt! Our retort was our childish bravado; the chant an immature deflection for actually being hurt—by words, as well as sticks and stones. We probably were too young even to acknowledge that the words hurt us. We just wanted to convince ourselves that saying was true…words will never hurt me!

But, we’ve evolved from ‘the good ol’ days.’ We’ve grown in our understanding of ourselves; we’ve learned from the experience of many lives, even generations of lives, examined. And the new and improved understanding is:

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will hurt forever.”

Shortly after I had my first daughter, I found a class called PET—Parent Effectiveness Training (By Dr. Thomas Gordon–I still have that book, too.) I wanted to be the best parent possible so I enrolled. I took away several things from the class, tried to incorporate and use them in bringing up what became two girls 13 months later. I remember the impact of understanding ‘active listening’—hearing what your child is telling you (or acting out) even though the words are completely different.

Another memorable one was an example about words. The instructors (it was a woman and her husband) were illustrating how we had been talked to as children and how we, thusly, talked to our children. How words can hurt; and they illustrated, perhaps there was a better way.

The example was…you (the parents) just bought a brand new beautiful white couch. It was a dream come true. You’d always wanted a gorgeous white couch. A neighbor came over to admire your new couch and, lo, and behold, they tucked their legs up under them with their dusty shoes resting on your beautiful new white couch! Did you react outwardly like you did inwardly and yell at them, ‘Get your shoes (or damn shoes) off my couch right this minute or I’ll blister your behind”? (Or worse?) No, you probably asked them rather kindly if they would please not put their shoes on your new couch—if you said anything at all! You might even have laughingly offered an explanation for your request, saying it was new and meant a lot to you to keep it that way.

Then think about your child running in from playing in the dirt outdoors and throwing him/herself onto the new white couch. Reaction! Do you imagine a much different scenario of words? More than likely it was the one you’d had yelled at you as a child. If we’re being honest…

Are Only Hard Lessons the Ones We Learn From?

My early writing came out as what I learned were called ‘epigrams. Short, concise capsulations of many times large ideas. Here’s one I wrote long before I read the new version of sticks and stones hurting forever:

Children are like clean, pure slates

And we mark upon them

With chalk

With china marker

With chisel.

To children, especially, but adults too, our words can be chalk–lightly written and easily erased or washed away, even rewritten.

Or our words can be like a china marker, indelible, leaving a permanent mark.

But the worst words can be as damaging as a chisel on stone, harsh and cutting, chipping away parts of a young psyche and self-esteem. These do damage and can remain carved into the heart of a young psyche forever.

I, of course, had to learn that the hard way. How else could I write the words I wrote if not from my experience?

It was way back in the heated atmosphere and stress of a husband and a wife in the midst of a family about to be split asunder. An early morning before school, everyone rushing around to get ready for their daily duties, school, a job. Something occurred which set the two parents into fight or flight mode, and neither one fled. In the midst of that anger, frustration, and distrust, an innocent little 8-year old daughter asked some question of the day. Lost in the frustration I was in, I snapped an answer. And I saw it. Even if it took much later to recognize what I saw, my subconscious registered that look on her beautiful sweet face.

A light went out in that sweet little girl’s eyes. Even in the heated atmosphere of that fleeting moment, I registered that look. I didn’t process it til later, but I am grateful that my subconscious did register it. I can see it still today. And feel it. It breaks my heart just as surely as a mother broke her daughter’s heart that day. Just with words. And when I visit it in my mind, I want to cry for that sweet, sweet, giving, loving little girl.

My words had hurt. Deeply. Have they hurt forever?

In that flicker, she felt she had disappointed. She had received disapproval, not approval. One sentence and words had chiseled into that pure little heart as if I had wielded the cold metal object. Did she, at that moment, tear off an inquisitive little part of her and throw it into the Bloody Room so that she could be accepted and continue to be loved by mom? The Bloody Room holds those bright, inquisitive, talented, generous, humorous parts of our psyche that we tear out and toss in order to be valued and loved and fit in with the authority figures, family and peers that mold us in our early years. The Bloody Room is sequestered in the Unconscious which is where all repressed emotions are locked up—and cry always, always to be recognized. (Post 11).

I have apologized to my daughter, the woman, many times. But can that truly fill the cleft of a chisel even after years of weathering?

I have used this experience to explain to others why the words we say to our children can hurt forever; and, moreso, how they shape or mis-shape them for a responsible and caring, giving, loving adulthood.

Yet, there are many of us who have had chisel words cleaved upon us. In her book, “Women Who Run With the Wolves,” author Estes tells of an exercise she does with women. She has each make a material Scapecoat. “A scapecoat is a coat that details in painting, writing, and with all manner of things pinned and stitched to it all the name-calling a woman has endured in her life, all the insults, all the slurs, all the traumas, all the wounds, all the scars.” Through the exercise comes the lancing and draining of stifled, oft-times long-buried pain. Dr. Estes continues, “Sometimes we also call them battlecoats, for they are proof of the endurance, the failures, and the victories of individual women and their kinswomen.” A woman comes to see how strong she is and has been.

The Continuum

Life is a continuum, perhaps The Continuum (Post 1). The definition of a continuum is “the line that progresses between two opposites,” like the continuum of life, from birth to death. Some have described it as ‘the whole made up of many parts.’ Its elements are always interconnected. It marches ever on. It changes unperceptively as it grows its way toward the opposite, until it has changed from cold to hot, or from spring-to-winter, from baby to crone, from birth to death. A continuous whole made up of elements that are both affected by the element before it and affects the element after it. (How can you separate the warm water from the cold water on the continuum from cold to hot?)

The psychological application—the Life application—is that in order to grow an adult with peak physical, emotional, and mental health on the continuum, you must treat the beginning of that life continuum with great care—during infancy, childhood, even challenging teendom. And words count.

All words count.

Actions speak louder.

All along the continuum.

From birth to death.

19. “You Just Need Another Mule in the Traces.”

Before you know it, you’ll be quoting the line, “You just need another mule in the traces with you for a while.” You just have to understand it to know how and when to whip it out! It just takes listening.

I’ve mentioned “mule in the traces with you” a couple of times (Post 2, Post 17). Well, here’s how that lodged in my ‘pertinent pocket’ and has been pulled out to use time and time again.

I always like to give proper credit for any stories I share, so…back in the wayback, Steve was an insurance guy I dated for a while. He knew how to diagnose and/or fix my car if there were problems, changed the oil, prided himself on being a helper, besides a great insurance salesman. So when I’d complain about my life or get discouraged or disappointed—which, have you noticed, I’m prone to do?–he’d be there with encouragement, oft times with a story. Parables for those in need, I’d say. A couple of his ‘stories’ were pertinent-pocket worthy and have been thusly retained.

Clinch Mountain Mules

I’m sure Steve pulled out his little parables when I’d be in one of my ‘woe-is-me’, my life sucks, gritching mode (Post 17). On this occasion, he asked me if I’d ever heard of the Clinch Mountain mules. I admitted I hadn’t, so Steve explained that Clinch Mountain is over in the Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee and Virginia. The farmers farm the mountain with Clinch Mountain mules, a particular species of mules that have one side of their legs shorter and the other side longer so they could plow around the side of the mountain.

(Pause.) I fell for it! For a second…and was trying to figure out if they always had to go the same way around!

Started to…but didn’t. No, I didn’t fall for that. So he got serious.

The Clinch Mountain mules were special in that they always plowed all by themselves, one single mule in the traces all day long, day after day, week after week, season after season, working solo. But…every now and then they’d get tired and could not (or would not) work any more by themselves. So the wise mountain farmers knew all they had to do was bring another Clinch Mountain mule and hook it into the traces with the first Clinch Mountain mule, and off they’d go, pulling and plowing together for a while. But just for a while. Then the farmers could separate them and they’d plow happily alone for another space of time. I’m sure Steve was thinking of himself as being a Clinch Mountain mule pulling in the traces with me for a while. I sorta doubt he would ever have thought he would provide me with a parable for the ages.

We All Need Another Mule in the Traces with Us from Time to Time.

As humans who try to do it all, do it right, many of us “pull” alone for long periods of time until we feel we just can’t ‘pull’ anymore. And that’s the time, “You just need another mule in the traces with you for a while.”

It works. Just someone to work or think or do along side you renews strength and spirit. Short period of time; doesn’t have to be forever. Combine energies long enough til you feel steady and strong to pull some more through life.

I have pulled this phrase and explanation out of my ‘pertinent pocket’ many many times as I hear women lament their tiredness. I understand women’s tiredness. (My truism is that you can’t have empathy without first the experience.) I’ve lived women’s tiredness to write:

Prime the Pump

Sometimes I feel like a well

That everyone comes to dip from

And then go away.

A comforting drink of cool water

Pull long from it

Refresh

Cleanse

And then leave the well

Alone

To find its own way

To replenish itself.

Doesn’t Take Much to Be a Clinch Mountain Mule.

Kim M. was one of the clients I had when I was a freelance writer. She did the marketing for a company that sold industrial uniforms. She and I got along really well, worked together great.

I was working on a project for her and had called her with an update. She confided she was immobilized at her home. She was overwrought because she and her husband were being “interviewed and reviewed” the next day to adopt a specific child, one whose need was so personal and prolific, she felt frozen, unable to do anything. The fear of not making the grade and not being approved to adopt the child had her petrified physically and emotionally. She said she just couldn’t move to do anything even though she knew she needed to move, clean her house, prepare—but she was stuck.

And out came, “All you need is another mule in the traces with you. I’m caught up on my writing deadlines…I’m gonna come over and help you clean up the house and get prepped for your interview tomorrow.” And I did. That’s all it took; another human being in the traces to plow along side her for a little while. She got unstuck and could move. She and her husband passed their review and adopted the little girl.

I’ve used that phrase and explained about the Clinch Mountain Mules many times to people who seem temporarily swamped in the boat of life. Grateful to report that there have been people who have gotten in the traces with me when plowing through life had me tried and tired. Proud to say I’ve been a Clinch Mountain Mule and harnessed myself up for a pull with different people over the years.

Through the Fire Twice

Apparently I might have complained and whined about my lot in life at the time I knew Steve! One time he pulled out this little parable of the Tempered Sword, “To temper a sword to make it stainless and strong, it has to be put through the fire twice,” he said. And he assured me that’s just what was happening. I was being put through the fire once again to make me stronger. That little story tweaked the way I was looking at things, gave me the hint that there may be a raison d’etre for what was happening to me. Could I see my situation as an opportunity to learn something from it? Shore up my strength as a result? Be more aware that there may be a reason for my being? That little parable? Yep, I retained that story, too.

You know, I deeply appreciate Steve and his stories which apparently were comforting and edifying to me at that time. I’m not sure where he learned his parables or how he learned to apply them. But, hey, teachers come in all configs. I’m not gonna look a gift mule in the mouth. I am grateful and thankful to Steve wherever he may be.

(There’s also a saying my grandma used to use…about ‘working someone like a borrowed mule.’ But that’s a whole different mule moral!)

18. Making Order Out of Chaos—Stir It Up!

You may wonder how an ‘aha’ moment, an epiphany of understanding, or revelation happens. You may wonder how you can accept as a Truth something that just ‘bubbles’ up seemingly from out of nowhere—that you can’t quite trace back the linear logic that got you there. Some people say, “it resonated with me.” Is ‘resonates’ really even a thing? That’s sorta what happened to me in Auto Therapy (Post 16). I fairly vibrated with the information that bubbled through from somewhere even though I could not retrace a logical progression of A to B to C afterwards.

Quick version: if something resonates with you, it’s an internal, almost perceptible bodily vibration when your mind/consciousness/psyche/soul recognizes a Truth. Some people may call it a ‘knowing.’ They just ‘knew.’ Sometimes it’s felt like a ‘glow’ in your gut, solar plexus.

So it’s happened to me, I questioned it, and then found evidence of the universality of it in all of us. And, I’m gonna say, even a scientific basis.

Feeling the Glow.

Here’s my experience: If you read Post 6 and 7 (The Catalyst, Part I and Part II), I had worried most of all about the heartbreak I was causing my daughters, my grandmother, my family. Tearing apart my life and family to claim a life of my own, could it truly be the ‘right’ thing to do? At a bookstore visit during the hardest times of the break-up, there, right at the cash register was the book, “Co-Parenting.” It was a new concept at the time, but I felt it was meant just for me to find it and offer it as a mediating solution. Mrs. True, our counselor, always expressed her pride in how both the girls’ father and I were able to put the girls first as we worked through the pain.

I’m not sure if it was months or even a year of co-parenting when it happened. I had chosen to move to the outer edge of the girls’ school district and the price I was willing to pay was driving the girls to school each morning, most years to two different schools before I would then get ready for my own job.

One such morning, I had dropped first one daughter at her elementary school, took the second daughter to her middle school and back home, to get ready for work. I’ve sorta accepted that we pay a price for most everything, and I was comfortable with the price of driving every school morning that I had the girls, feeling happy even that I was comfortable with the cost of the arrangement.

I can see it as plain as day exactly where I was when it occurred. I was getting ready to enter the on-ramp to the interstate that would take me to work. Perhaps I’d still been feeling the self-satisfaction of the progress my choices had been giving me. All of a sudden, I felt this glow is all I can use to describe it. Right in the middle of my gut. I may even have reached my hand to touch it. And with the glow came a realization that my daughters would not have to go through the pain I did to claim a life of their own. They would inherit it from me! I had absorbed the pain so they wouldn’t have to go through it.

I had lived into the answer to my emotional question.

Did the glow come first or the realization and answer to my question? I can’t say. I just know I felt the glow radiating from the pit of my stomach, and as the illumined answer to my worries about my daughters came, that glow warmed my heart all the way to every extremity. It was more than an answer; I felt it a reaffirmation that I had made the right decisions. So, I extrapolated: a revelation of something hidden and previously unknown that is True, well, the atoms in your body vibrate with the excitement of Knowing a Truth!

Perhaps you’ve felt something ‘resonate.’ You read something, someone speaks something, and you feel a bodily ‘knowing’ it’s true. A micro tremor of the atoms somewhere in the gut region (solar plexus), sometimes throughout your entire body. I haven’t gotten into atom research (yet)—maybe they do increase their vibrations—but if you have ever felt it, you know exactly what it feels like. Here are the Dots that help explain this bodily reaction to Truth or Knowing.

Nobel Prize Winning Dot #1. The Clue.

The first clue was a Dot I picked up long long ago (and retained) from a book, “A Life of One’s Own: Three Gifted Women and the Men They Married” by Joan Dash. (I also retained the book because I felt some day it would be pertinent for me to have it—like to quote this Dot to you.)

The three gifted women were Margaret Sanger, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer. Margaret Sanger was a nurse whose mother died at 50, presumably from the wear and tear of having birthed eleven children. Margaret worked/advocated/politicked for birth control for women in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.

Edna St. Vincent Millay won a Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her poetry and verse which she went on to use as her medium in her activism also for women’s rights.

Maria Goeppert-Mayer is probably less well-known as a nuclear physicist who shared a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 for her work in “discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure.” Out of my ilk for sure, but…it is her description and other scientists’ descriptions of something resonating bodily that I retained for decades. (And please note that the feeling was so great, it made receiving a Nobel Prize pale in comparison!) From the book:

“But it happened in her mind even before she saw it on the paper, an awesome process that Maria would never forget; and before it happened in her mind, she felt it almost bodily: the feeling she had then was what made the day of the Nobel Prize an anticlimax. James Franck once said that the way he could tell a new idea was really important was the feeling of terror that seized him;…And Robert Wilson, a distinguished nuclear experimentalist, described at length the aspect of terror in his creative insights in an interview in ‘The Way of the Scientist,’ by the editors of ‘Science and Technology:’

…the real kicks come, of course, when you have…filled yourself with a particular problem, and—you know—you have a great desire to have some clarity in it. You go through this long, hard period of filling yourself up with as much information as you can. You just sort of feel it all rumbling around inside of you, not particularly at a conscious level. Then—it can happen at any time—you begin to feel a solution, a resolution, bubbling up to your consciousness. At the same time you begin to get very excited, tremendously elated—pervaded by a fantastic sense of joy….

But there’s an aspect of terror too in these moments of creativity. You must come pretty close—can you call it the life force?…I think there’s something universal about the experience of something coming from your subconscious almost fully formed. It’s like throwing up when you’re sick.”

That’s resonating. Your body atoms ‘knowing’ something is true/infallible even before your mind registers it.

Nobel Prize Winning Dot #2. The Science.

Fast forward several years from that book, I discovered that Nashville had a C. G. Jung Society which met once a month. I started attending, found most of the speakers presenting more and more ideas and insights that strengthened and lengthened my understanding of human beings, dreams, egos, shadows, all of it! I have also shared, many times, that the Jungian Group was the first place I ever felt totally accepted. No question was questioned. No thought or feeling trivialized.

One such speaker told us about another Nobel Prize recipient, a Russian-Belgian physical chemist Ilya Prigogine. In 1977 he was awarded the Prize in Chemistry for his Dissipative Structure Theory. To my layperson thinking, it explains just how that whole bodily ‘aha moment’ can occur to anyone with a brain (literally).

Prigogine’s Theory is about the functioning of closed and open systems. He named ‘dissipative structures’ which are systems that seem to be self-organizing—taking all the chaos and making ‘a new order out of the chaos.’

The Jungian-based guest speaker (and I apologize for not being able to credit him) correlated Prigogine’s dissipative structure to our brain, which is an ‘open’ system. He explained that in a closed system, no new information is introduced. An open system is one that receives new ‘information’ from the outside, limitless information even, always feeding more and more new information into it. Then, if all that new information is stirred up, (what Prigogine called “perturbations’)—stirred stirred stirred—all of a sudden the open system can and will totally reorganize itself into a whole new (and improved) complex structure-paradigm-answer-resolution-order.

If we feed more and more new information into it, then stir it up, thinking about it, asking questions, pondering, inquiring, (all perturbations), our brain can totally reorganize into a whole new perception/aha/answer—and it will bodily resonate through the atoms. (Doesn’t that sound exactly like what Robert Wilson described in the quote above?)

The description the scientists talk about was because they had a theory! Most new discoveries are based on theorizing first (suspending ones’ self out over an abyss, home of the pumas (Post 4). Then they exerted energy, zoomed atoms around at supersonic speeds thinking of possibilities and probabilities, testing and retesting, heating the brain to the core to find an answer…and the brain totally reorganized…put the pieces of the puzzle into place. Atoms vibrated and there was the answer bubbling up!

My theorizing is that the phenomenon is not limited to scientists. We all have a brain. We all have access to new information. We all know how to perturb, I’m sure. Ask your question, any question, fill that question up with information, searching, asking, then stir it stir it stir it up! Wait for those atoms to rearrange, reorganize and relay a whole new thought/view/perspective! It happened in my Auto Therapy trip. (Post 16)

Open the parachute (Post 15). Ask your questions. Fill it up. Stir it up. Don’t give up.