Maybe it’s you
“So I used to walk around saying “chicks are all #$%% psychos” and then one day I thought: ‘What are you doing. What are you doing?” And I actually stopped, and turned it around, and I looked at myself and I said `oh. This is what I’m doing. And I decided to stop fishing in the same area, pulling up the same god damned fish. I BLAMED THE VICTIM in all of that. So all of the (people) out there shaking the plaster out of your hair, every once in a while,it might be YOU, y’know?” — Comedian Bill Burr
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Twenty-two years ago I was sitting in the audience at Clark Atlanta University, listening to my new young friend, author Tananarive Due, tell us how she got Stephen King to give her a cover blurb. She was the relationship columnist for the Miami Herald. Dave Berry played in a writer-centric rock band with King, “The Rock Bottom Remainders,” and they were going to perform at the Miami Book Fair. She cornered Berry and asked if she could play with them, as she’d published her first novel (“The Between.”) He found out she played keyboards, and she got her shot. The concert experience created a friendship, King read and enjoyed her second novel “My Soul To Keep” and the rest is history.
I sat there in the audience and thought: “she did a three-wall bank shot on him! She used her position at the Herald to get her into a position where she could meet King in a relaxed and energized environment, had the keyboard skills to pull it off, looked GREAT in a leather mini-skirt (nothing wrong with catching the eye!) and actually had a book worthy of his respect. Bing,bing, BANG!.” I grinned with admiration. “She’s REALLY smart,” I said to myself.
And then something happened. Almost as if realizing how smart she was gave me permission to notice my attraction to her, I thought “and she’s REALLY cute, too.” And at that moment, and EVERY time I tell this story (yep, even as I type this) I felt a CHILL run down my spine and land like a bomb. “Oh, Steve,” I thought. “You’re in TROUBLE.”
And yeah. I kinda was.
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We’re about to do our last “Soulmate Class” Saturday, and the two stories above are perfect examples of what we’re doing, what this is about, and what we want for our students.
The idea is that mating is relatively easy: all your ancestors managed it. Statistics be damned. I don’t care if there is a shortage of eligible men or women: you only need one. What stops us from finding lasting happiness is NOT a lack of prospective partners — that might explain the odds of the average man or woman finding a partner. But it has NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH WHETHER YOU, AS AN INDIVIDUAL, WILL FIND LOVE.
Nothing. If only 20% of people find that lasting happiness, THAT SHOULD BE THE GOOD NEWS. All you have to do, then, is get into the top 80% of people. How do you do that? A small investment of time, compounded daily or weekly, will get you into the top 20% of almost any field in a few years. Got something better to do?
And the trick is that it could happen tomorrow, if you were ready. The changes we’re talking about aren’t about time, they are about transformation of attitude. Let’s dissect what was in these statements by the basic five-step process:
- Love yourself
- Love another person.
- Understand History without guilt, blame, or shame
- Avoid the “Friend Zone”
- Win with integrity
1.Love yourself. If you don’t love yourself, you will never see your own beauty and power, nor be able to forgive yourself for past decisions. Bill Burr would never find the clarity to realize that HE was the common factor in all his relationships. Once you get that, you can feel depressed…unless you love yourself enough to believe you can change and grow.
2.Love another person. This includes ADMITTING that you WANT a partner. If you don’t believe you can find one, you might not be honest enough to take the risk of admitting you want one, for fear of disappointment. But if you know you are already complete in the world (you love yourself) then you come to the world of relationships from WANT rather than NEED. Very different.
3.Understand History without guilt, blame, or shame. This means both your own personal history, and the history of human relationships and gender identity. If deep in your heart you think women are inferior, or men inferior, you are either going to attract someone with precisely balancing antipathy (that will be an interesting dance) or a weakling who believes their own gender inferior, and will follow at your heels like a dog. Have fun. If you love yourself, you love both the male and female aspects of your being, the Yin and the Yang, Ida and Pingala (in the yogic model). Together, they entwine and complement or mirror each other. When they do…MAGIC. What happened to me in Atlanta was simple: a recognition of a potential Soulmate, someone who checked all my boxes, was the Lioness to my Lion. And brothers and sisters, let me tell you — if I hadn’t loved myself? Had the confidence of knowing I was well on my own journey? She’d have intimidated the living hell out of me. Tananarive would have eaten me alive in a relationship, or tried to slow herself down to stay paired to me, or I’d have tried to stop her momentum for fear of losing her. None of those are acceptable options. If you love yourself, you’ll love someone who is at an appropriate level to you. If you wouldn’t be willing to partner with your own energetic doppleganger…it’s time to get to work and purify yourself, improve yourself, until you COULD fall in love with you.
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There’s a story I heard about old time carnivals. Sometimes they had a Christian-themed exhibit “The Lion and the Lamb.” They’d have such an unlikely pairing living in the same cage together. So cute. Awwww…
But if you looked closely, the Lamb was often glassy-eyed with terror. And from time to time, they had to replace her, if you know what I mean.
Lions need Lionesses, not lambs. And vice versa.
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4.Avoid the “Friend Zone”. This uses a simple definition: the “Friend Zone” is the space where one person wants more from the relationship than the other. Everyone has been there. And everyone has put someone else there. Adults don’t take this personally. Immature, self-centered, insecure children think other people have an obligation to love them. No. If we have an obligation to each other, it is to treat one another with dignity and respect. Courtesy, perhaps. My attitude is simple: know who you are, and who your tribe is. Look for members of your tribe. Select the ones who have a “green light” on, saying they are ready for a relationship, and politely present yourself. If both of you like what you see…game on. Otherwise, thank them for their time and MOVE THE @#$$ ON, DAMMIT. You can do that if you love yourself enough to know you are lovable, and would love someone like you.
5.Win with Integrity. The victory is a good life for the both of you. I had to be confident that I could be a good partner for a woman like Tananarive, and then present myself as openly as possible and let her make an informed decision. Foremost, I wanted her to have a wonderful life — she was obviously a woman with her own force and destiny.
But I saw her as a Soulmate, someone who could walk the path of life with me. I’d done my work, so that I had no insecurity about whether that could be true, and had confidence I was sufficiently attractive not to embarrass myself. That was WORK, not “innate capacity.” She had done work to get into the Herald, to have the confidence to approach Dave Berry, the skills and confidence to perform onstage, the discipline and confidence to look slammin’ in a leather minskirt, the skills to create a novel that King would admire. That implied long years of focus, discipline, emotional work…levels of courage, clarity, productivity, and communication skills that implied one hell of a package.
Could I look into that mirror and not be burned? Yes, I could. And did. But I know damned well that if I hadn’t done that work, if I hadn’t been ready —
- I never would have recognized her when I saw her.
- I wouldn’t have been an appropriate mate
- I wouldn’t have had the nerve to open myself to her
- Nor had the clarity to be ready to drop EVERYTHING else on my social plate and go for it 100%
It was up to me. It was the answer to “who am I?” played out day after day after day, for years. And she had done similar amounts of work, such that we were both heading in the same direction, on the same mountain, at the same speed, AND NEITHER OF US HAD “CLIMBING” PARTNERS.
Booyah. That chill down my spine was nothing less than the recognition of myself, my own essence and energy. One soul looking out through two different sets of eyes. And because of all the work…we made magic happen.
But if one or both of us hadn’t been ready, we’d have gone on, kept working and living, and eventually found others…or lived a wonderful life without such a companion.
Yes, we could have. But I’m so glad we didn’t.
Namaste
Steve