Are We Gonna Let the De-Elevator Bring Us Down? (You can always see the Sun - Day or Night)

I was telling a friend that Martha Beck's, "Finding Your Own North Star," has been the most pragmatic self-help book that I have ever worked with (or in or through or against...however you'd like to phrase it). Beck even writes about the anxiety that she felt about writing a book in the way that North Star is written - lacking in psychological terms, using funny (and sometimes slightly racy) analogies and using a myriad of examples from her clients'/patients' experiences. The supplemental material is also useful for those that are just starting their journey into understand why they do what they do or those that are seasoned in seeing the meaning in every move they make. It is often grueling to be the one in the room that has done the most emotional/psychological work - because it means that when you think of intangible things in this really methodical way, somehow, you're instantly pegged the Buzz Killington - too cerebral (and yet too unpredictable, somehow), too emotional, too angry, too sad, too weird, too metaphysical...just TOO. 

My Father once relayed a story where he met a young girl in a bar that was the friend of a friend. He said that she was talking about school and work a lot. And about her belief system and her politics. He said, "you know, she's a pain in the ass like you."

Forgive me, please, if I have shared that before, but it was such a pivotal moment in my adult-to-adult relationship with my parents that it reverberates in my ears a lot. The idea that you realize that your parents don't really understand or appreciate who you've grown into even though you've spent a lot of time and money (and tears. and sweat beads. and changes. and broken marriages. and transformative grief...) for the current iteration. 

That realization about how they feel as allowed me to lump them into Beck's, "Collective Everbody," that hinders the seeker from finding their North Star - the thing that allows the, "Essential Self," to fully bloom and realize the depths and heights of their potential and grace. So far, Beck has answered the more practical questions about how to apply the discoveries that you make about your psyche into actions that could actually lead to self-improvement. The heady and flowery language about living in the moment (you know what, Eckart Tolle? When I'm finally getting that too-long-delayed pap smear in a few weeks, that is exactly the moment I will NOT be living in), about keeping your heart open (Michael Singer - nee Mickey Singer, has never had to keep his heart open during a three day training with the person that was eventually slated to take his job) and about feng motha-fuckin' shui to release negativity in your space...can only get Pragmatic Patty here so far before it's just too...but then again...I am too. Too, TOO.

Full transparency: I haven't finished this book yet, but I did flip through the supplemental exercises and I am excited about it (NERD ALERT), but also kind of...terrified (and sad). I glanced through the next exercise and saw that I needed to think of six of my happiest memories - and I struggled to even think of one that would fall under the moniker of happiest. It is times like this make me feel like I am so far from my North Star and get me to thinking that we, as oxygen-breathing mammals, never actually touch the North Star - we look at it admiringly in its splendor and luminosity, but actually reaching it is really only the stuff of myth, like Icarus and his wax-cobbled wings. And it got me to second-guess the analogy that creates Beck's theory in the first place. And it is that kind of self-sabotage that probably keeps me so far from my proverbial North Star in the first place. So I think about stars and I think about illumination. And I think about the brightest stars that I know. And then this guy...

Baby, I'm a Star

Damn, Son...you are

I listened to the entire Purple Rain album today. A few times. And then I watched the 2007 Superbowl half-time performance and cried (again. I remember having conversations with multiple people about how the world seemed less magical when Prince died). If ever there was a guy that found his fucking North Star - there he is. But you know, it's not enough to say that he found it - he already wrote that he IS the star. Maybe that's what I need to feel in my life - more than Martha Beck, Eckhart Tolle or Mickey Singer - I need to know that I can be the brightest and most luminous. That while there are things that happen to us, there are heights that seem insurmountable, there are people that aren't going to "get" us, and there are times when the goals that we have are lofty, we can still be the brightest star in our own sky. 

Everybody say, nothing come 2 easy

But when u got it baby, nothing come 2 hard