Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Expectation

Suffering is the result of attachment.

This is something my therapist reminds me of a lot, and he freely attributes it to the writings of Buddhism. He's an equal opportunity user of religious tenants in our session and has mentioned, among other things: Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism. (It's kind of nice to sit on a couch that welcomes science and logic, feelings and things that are less than rational, and world religion in equal measure.)

What he's really saying though is, when you get attached to something, you place expectation on it. You make plans based on the idea of counting on something that will hold those plans up. And since each thing you build on top of this foundation is contingent upon the thing before it, and since the foundation may or may not live up to the expectation, if any of this goes against the grain of the wood you're laying on this foundation or if the foundation itself wobbles . . .  the expectations come crashing down. Unmet. And then what you have on your hands is a mess to clean up, and something akin to a bruise on your ego with a healthy dose of disappointment. Frustration, kicking yourself, sadness for what could have been but wasn't. Suffering.

Expectation leads to suffering.

And I am the queen of expectation. Mostly, I hold myself to painfully high standards, which is another way of saying I create expectation and the accompanying suffering for myself. I owe a lot of what I've accomplished to setting the bar high, and then going above and beyond to get there, but along the way I also have signed up for more than my fair share of being hard on myself. In fact, just today I was telling a story that I often tell when I'm remembering how hard work-life balance was for me in my old job (or alternatively if I'm looking to make fun of myself) about a time when I was trying to support an entire branch's worth of centers by my lonesome and working well over 80 hours a week. It meant eating a lot of Subway and being on the road from 7 am until often well past 8 or 9pm. It meant that this chic, the one who hates speaking out loud (to anyone if I can help it) before 8 or 9am, and has low blood sugar (especially in the mornings) was trying to work out at 5am and then on the road for 10-14 hours a day. I was saying how I came home on a Wednesday at 10pm and realized my choices were to stay up until past 1am doing laundry or get up at 4am to do laundry.  Orrrrrr secret door number three: iron and re-wear my pants and drive 4 blocks to Walgreens and buy new underwear. I took secret door number three but as I was driving the 4 blocks there and back I was mentally consumed by the feeling I was (and I quote) failing life.

That's right: not working too much, or sacrificing for my team and my job, or going above and beyond for the clients and centers I supported. But failing basic life 101. It's funny, but it isn't. 20/20 hindsight took so long to sink in that it was literally more than a year before I looked back on that night (which I have vivid memories of) and realized that if there was any failure it was in the planning that left me as the only consultant in a territory covering three states, or on the part of the expectations set by my employer.

This is related to, but not the same as my musings on failure. Abstractly, I understand the uses of failure. The importance of failure. Even the necessity of failure. But I see it in terms of how successful people (Ali, Steve Jobs, JK Rowling, and Einstein come to mind) carved a path, picked themselves up, and learned what not to do. Even my own failures are best viewed from a safe distance. The time I didn't get cast in a show, but discovered my passion for stage managing as a result, the time I failed a class at a college that didn't have grades (oh, yeah. It takes someone really spesh like me to fail even in the absence of grades), the time I moved across the country for my fiance only to find myself alone knowing no one at the worst, most emotionally raw moment I've ever experienced. Sitting where I sit now, 20 years, 14 years, 4 years after those hard, weak, disappointing moments and outcomes I see how those hardships, those mistakes, those speed bumps opened my eyes, made me grow, bent me in a new or even better direction. From this safe perspective, I can be grateful for my expectations not being met, for those failures, and I can even see how they lead to successes.

From here. But never ever from the moment. Really. Never.

A lot of people SAY they're their own worst critic. But for me in the moment of defeat, I become a poor, abused child. I don't just beat myself up, I beat myself up, followed by kicking myself while I'm down (from the beating), then, while I'm lower than low (from the beating followed by kicking) I bring on the flogging and torture, and then I ask my wounded, limping, inner self to write "I am a terrible, miserable failure. I am not worthy" on the proverbial blackboard 100 times. Then I ask that poor child to write an essay about what she's learned from all of this  ( . . . hence this blog).

It's ironic, because I'm told I'm a good person to have on hand when things aren't working out as planned. I'm compassionate and I often even say things that aren't just supportive, but are smart and understanding. I get it, I let people feel their feelings, but then I also help them see the road ahead. this is what I'm told. So . . . why can't I tell myself these things?

Well, hey, this is what therapy is for, and so we've come full circle to where I started - my therapist says attachment leads to suffering. There's a multifaceted idea he and I are working on . . . ways to notice how much I judge myself, ways to work on it without setting the expectation of banishing it too high . . . leading to more judgement and suffering. Ways to pick myself up when I do find myself rolling on the ground taking kicks.

But, I've had a lot of speed bumps this year. If I'm honest, my expectation was that I would have a job long before now. That my feet would be back on the road of figuring out how I want things to align in my life, and what I'm going to be putting my passion and energy and drive and killer work-ethic towards. I truly never expected to be just a few days away from turning 35 still wondering what opportunities I might have, and how the pieces would fit together.

I've realized lately that standards are one thing, and judgement, expectation, and self-flogging are completely another. I was in the process of discussing a job that, frankly, had more liabilities than assets. It very likely would have held me in place, for not enough money or challenge, while making it nigh to impossible to job hunt for anything else. We mutually reached the conclusion that when she moves her business forward, she will be ready for my higher skill set, but until then, she needs to hire to fill the need she has now. It was perfectly reasonable, and more than that, self-preservational (even, gasp, hopeful and optimistic of me) for me to reach the conclusions that this job didn't meet my standards and might create as many issues as it solved if there wasn't a clear path for me to move onto greater things (and there wasn't). The problem that I avoided was getting attached to this interview as the solution to my rapidly scary problem.

I've learned this lesson the hard way a few times over this year. I've worked so hard to apply only for jobs I really want, so this means that when I get an interview, or worse, a second interview, I feel, well, attached. And what follows is expectation. And over and over, that has lead to disappointment and suffering.

My therapist is of the opinion that when I figure out how to let go, when I stop white-knuckling, when I can be truly and authentically OK without slotting everything into a plan, a design, a structure (all disguises for expectation, by the way) that is when I will find and land the right opportunity.

I have some significant reservations about attaching my job search results to something mystical. Of the jobs I've been most excited about and not gotten, one of them was really hiring from within. Another changed the details of the job as well as the salary after I had already interviewed several times. A third turned out not to have the budget for another full time employee. A fourth re-wrote the position significantly around another candidate, and that wasn't the job I had applied for so I was just not in the running anymore. I'm not sure that not getting any of those jobs had to do with the cloud of judgement and expectation I let mushroom around me.

But I can't deny the fact that I have this desire for all of the struggle and emotional work and mis-steps to lead to something amazing. Some job that is better, less commute, better for my life outside of work, contributing to the greater good, thrilling, worthy of my passion and skills. You know, all around SHINY. And If I can't deny that desire, I also can't ignore that that is expectation setting me up for pain again.

That is the truth, though. I want things. I want to know if I am going to be able to swing it to go to my dear friend's long overdue wedding celebration in August.  I want to have the ability to feel secure enough on my own path that I have some sense of how I would walk that way with my person . . . if it turned out we both wanted that. I want to fly to New Jersey and meet the beautiful happy baby some of my best friends' had. I want to work out with my trainer again. I want to not have to tell people, "I'm not sure I can do that. We'll see what I can afford." I want to go hiking without worrying what would happen if my knees blew out again and I had no insurance. I want to not have my answer to almost everything be, "I have NOOOOOOOOOO idea what my life will look like in three months so . . ."

I want things. I want them two months ago. and I think what I really want is a smidge of stability and some predictability. I think I want some safety and I want some relief from doubt. It's like my favorite Toad the Wet Sprocket song,"I spend too much time seeking shelter. World without end couldn't hold her."

I don't know if getting better at free-falling will help me get a job, but as long as I'm out here, falling fast without a chute, it probably pays to get better at it anyways. Lord knows I'm not working, soooooo, if not now, when?! (A little unemployment humor goes a long way.)