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September 2006 - Article 1
Do you ever want to just get away from it all, get rid of all the roles? Take a nice beach vacation, or a skiing holiday? Joan Anderson has heard many lamentations like these and more. In her book, "A Weekend to Change Your Life," she gives concrete directions to those people, especially women, who feel spent, worn down, and drained out from all of the demands that life and other people put on them.
How does this pressure cooker happen to people? There seems to be some kind of disconnect that many people reach where nothing matters or make sense. These aren't necessarily the people who are drug addicted or alcoholic, in which case, a lot of disorientation is expected when sobriety is first attained. Working women, women who are happy with their decision to stay home with children, and even executives run into the same problem. There's a sense of being disconnected with the soul, a need to pull away from all the demands placed on them and get away. Sometimes a quick getaway to Starbucks for a double cappuccino doesn't quite fit the bill, and something more is needed. Even things that start out as deep felt desires, such as a family or a dream career, can take its toll on a person's spirit, demanding much energy from them with sometimes not a lot on the short return. That may make the disconnect all the stranger, because one having a dream career or a great family may not be sure what went wrong to get to this point. Anderson, who is best known for her best-selling book, "A Year by the Sea", knows this feeling all too well. An author with a flourishing career as well as a great husband and kids, Anderson found herself at a loss with herself during a time when many things were changing around her, so much that she lost her equilibrium and had to call a long time-out to redefine herself. After a year of solitude in Cape Cod, she returned with the knowledge that regardless of what choices a person makes and whatever priorities she has, the top one has to be the nurturing of one soul. Else, in the end, everything else will come to naught. The best way, Anderson suggests, is for a person to take time away from a busy schedule and get to know herself. Staying the course, doing the same old same old, and hoping for the cloud to pass just won't work. There may be all kinds of reasons to skimp on alone time to give yourself the time and space to think, but then again, you can always think of reasons to stay to put off the inevitable. And unless you have absolutely no contact with others, there will most likely be someone whom can turn into an excuse to stay away from your own solitude. Why would someone renege on alone time if that would make her more settled and balanced internally? The fact that she might feel addicted to being needed may be the first observation. She may fear, on one level, that everything will fall apart without her. She may also fear that it won't. Which means that she isn't needed, and would force her to confront the roles that she is snowing herself under with. But underlying all of that might be a simple fear of change. Though forgetting who one is under a sea of roles is disorientating, realizing a need for change and not exactly knowing where to go with it may be even more chaotic. It's easier to stay with the mess that one knows rather than maybe trade down for something worse. Maybe someone would ask questions of her own soul and not like the answers, for maybe they would compel her to move her life in a direction that she isn't comfortable seeing. What is good for one part of life may not be good for one's entire life, and confronting the end of a particular road may seem disconcerting. Better to stand on the edge of the known road and pretend you're going somewhere than crash through the wall and see what is on the other side. However, the longer a person remains in stasis, the longer she actually retards her own growth, no matter how busy she keeps herself. She may think that by keeping herself busy, she can keep her ghosts at bay, especially if she fills her time with "worthy" activities such as raising children, giving emotionally to her friends, charity work, or developing her career. Ignoring herself, she loses the foundation on which to build her life, rendering all her activities vulnerable to being torn down by the wind of conflict. Her life then is a metaphor for the aphorism spoken for Jesus: what profit is it to someone if she gains the world but loses her soul? Indeed, what is the profit? Profit is not necessarily the commodity of money. Profit can also be the illusion of power, of safety, of comfort. But at the expense of one's soul, what good is any of that work? How can anyone benefit from an empty vessel, whether giver or receiver? One's soul, then, becomes the highest priority, the foundation by which all activity is determined, not the other way around. Sometimes giving is not better than receiving if one isn't giving to herself as well. Depleting one's soul is no different than depleting the soul of another, as we are all interconnected, cause and effect, the product of the Great Mind. Hence, giving to one's soul is just as generous as giving to another. It provides the foundation from which all good work will bear fruit. |