A Resilient Condolence: Thoughts and Prayers, Complicity

I lived almost my entire life believing that my dad was as perfect as possible. He never lost his temper; he was neat and meticulous in everything he did, and rarely drank. I oriented my life on his approval, following in his footsteps as best I could.

Professionally, I became a member of his society. Where he did research, I didn’t bother, and did as he did with furniture, politics, finances, and more.

Still, disapproval was apparent.

After more than forty years of attempting and failing to achieve approval, I realized that I’d become absolutely miserable. It wasn’t only the disapproval, but also the experience of the times when I did get it right. It didn’t feel right at all, maybe in my head, but not in my body.

When full-on depression took hold, it was more accurately the condition that I couldn’t mentally force my body to do anything anymore. My willpower was used up, my ambitions and reasons for doing anything had evaporated, and, newly laid off, life came to a complete stop.

Who cared if I got out of bed?

In the silence and the space, there were few alternatives but to accept that the compass I was using for life had led me to a dead end, and I needed thoughts and prayers for a new one.

In the space, I got a new corporate job and moved home to be closer to both family and the job.

However, my grandmother died after I signed the purchase contract for the home. My dad, waiting for that day, moved across the country. Before moving day, there was no remaining family. The compass was gone.

Or rather, the apron strings were severed, and it was time to grow up and into a more level-headed perspective.

Avoidable Collisions

When you are raised to be a people-pleaser, I hope that you, too, one day run out of people in the audience. Only then, when looking for someone to please, look in the mirror and say, “Me.”

Thoughts and prayers that you make yourself proud, yourself happy, yourself fulfilled.

When you try to follow in anyone’s footsteps, you will fail. Your gait is off, and your stride is a different length. In looking down to ensure you land appropriately rather than naturally, you will miss something, and that something you miss might be as big and dangerous as a moose standing on the dark highway ahead of you. By the time it comes into the sight of your headlights, it might not be enough time to slam on the brakes.

By the time I was forty-four and realizing this, I was lucky to be in a financial position to slam on the brakes. I was able to leave a career I loathed, and quit spending my time in a toxic environment with similarly miserable people, forced into complicity for many reasons.

Lucky? I was prepped for it. Saving was a power I’d realized early. I’d witnessed the way the need for money drives decisions. I had thoughts and prayers not to be forced, ever. When the day came to pass, the dead end and the resources just barely met, but that was okay, because I was skilled at making a little go a long way.

Adjusting the thermostat to an uncomfortable chilliness, shopping for specials and staples, and eliminating entertainment and other frivolities were things I could do. Comparatively easier than being an employee and far preferable to skidding into homelessness.

It’s a lot easier to change the course of events when you can see them on the horizon.

Apologetic Conditions

When things happen to you that make other people say, “I’m sorry that happened to you,” you need to ask yourself which stage of grief you are currently experiencing.

“Good grief!”

You are grieving a relationship, a perspective, a future that will not come to pass, an identity that is no longer you. Have you put your finger yet on what changed as a result of that experience? You are changed for it, and that means going through the stages of grief.

I’m finally at the position where I have accepted the loss of my father from my life, whether or not he is still alive. Yet, I know I will cry and be wrecked when I hear of his passing because it’s the final drop of hope gone.

First, I was shocked. I’d wanted better if I had been warned what to expect, and I got exactly what I’d been warned to expect. If I were perfectly prepared, I would still be blown away. Denial was blown away.

As realities came crashing through the wishful thinking, I got angry. I was angry with what was, what is, and what will always be.

I tried different approaches and thought that if I were just better, things would change.

But people don’t change, and I’ll never be rich or famous enough to prove that I’m worth the attention, approval, and appreciation I sought.

Never is a condition that can’t help but produce overwhelming sadness. My mother’s dead now. That’s a never that’s never going to change. Everyone dies eventually.

 Thoughts and prayers. What is that exactly? An intention that may or may not come to fruition.

I don’t think people follow through, because I know I’ve sent both, and they both work immediately and precisely the way you send them.

Admirable Conclusions

I’ve learned through the mistakes I’ve made, sending thoughts and prayers. There were boomerangs I’ve sent that came back on me, like when “I wish I didn’t have to see that,” was a prayer answered with the steady, progressive loss of my vision until I woke up and took over answering that conclusion.

If you don’t do the work, you may not like how it turns out. If you want something done right, do it yourself, because you don’t have the communication skills to express your vision to others clearly.

I was told to “park where it’s already been plowed” when I came back home. Coming back home, I saw two choices, and I picked the one closest to my default parking spot. I was asked whether I had forgotten what I was told, only to start a long conversation about the proof that there were two choices, not just the one imagined.

What does your imagination immediately leave out or lack? When you can’t see the whole picture, people will surprise you, and events will not unfold as you have expected them to. Still, if you are going to play conductor with the orchestra of the future, you should be clear with your instructions and attempt to intervene only when intervention is clear, precise, accurate, and required.

I don’t think people get around to actually doing the “thoughts and prayers,” or if they do spend the time, they don’t know how to do it effectively and efficiently.

I know I’ve learned through a few oopsies, a handful of Urkles, and more than one, “How did you do that?”

So I’ve learned, when I overhear, “We bring her because she controls the weather,” and everyone just nods like it’s not an outrageous thing to say.

Growing up, I’ve shed the arrogance of adulthood and remembered what I knew as a child.

Yet, what works isn’t outrageous or new. You decide what you want, write it down, feel how awesome it would feel, and send that feeling out on a wave.

Deciding what you want is difficult because that’s where the oopsies happen. You have to desire it completely, open to the full range of how it could happen.

Professionally, I’d learned about problem statements and the freedom and perfection of constraints. It would happen when I’d ask a leader, “So, no matter how I do it, if I solve this problem, you’ll be happy?”

They’d say, “Yes, if…”

When all the “ifs” disappeared, I’d have my problem statement. With the universe, I try not to use my words until all the ifs have disappeared. There’s a lot of fun when you get to do it your way, and everyone wants the chance to do it their way – especially the universe, because there’s more than just your order on the table.

You’re not the only person around here, you know, you’re especially not the most special.

You’re just one of us – someone with consciousness and the power of a level-headed perspective, if completely without the manual.

You wouldn’t read it if you had one. I know, because I wrote the manual, and thoughts and prayers, you’ve downloaded it.

Adulthood teaches you to fill your days to the point that you are without time. Being an adult means that you are discerning with your resources, and merit and credibility matter before you listen to someone’s ideas. They have to rank, impress, and show you the proof that they know what they are talking about. It’s your filter, and that filter might not be helping you.

The Manageable Mainstream

That filter is keeping you in the mainstream, easy to manage, because anything that follows a formula is, by definition, easy to manage.

Being easy to manage means there is a wealth of information on how to trick people into buying your book. When you put all those tricks together, you are there thinking that a book has checked all the boxes of being worth your time to read it, when you are only tricked into buying it – no one cares if you ever crack the pages.

It’s a market, and it’s all about profits. Buy the book. Put it on your shelf. Impress the people who see it in the background of your Zoom calls, increase your YouTube channel’s following, and let people assume you’ve read it.

Save yourself the time of actually reading it, because the title sums up the entire call to action. Jump to the action, forget learning the arguments.

Blink, and it’s done time and time again. Use your middle initial to sound more credible, they say. Rowling invented an initial, because why not use every trick in the consultant’s book when you have a goal and a need to achieve it.

The manageable mainstream falls for the hack and indeed follows them. They say, “thoughts and prayers” because that’s the acceptable and repeated refrain that doesn’t get anyone cancelled, and horrors if you are cancelled.

Perhaps the thought feels the same way it does from the top of a building looking down – rubbery knees and a butterfly stomach. Fear? Or excitement?

The confusion is uncomfortable; I do know that. So, we follow well-worn paths while knowing they are so worn as to be threadbare.

“Manageable” was always an illusion as everyone grows up, grows out, and moves on.

The Baby’s Mind

The emperor’s new clothes, the cloak of the mainstream – neither will keep you warm on a cold winter’s night. It might be your dark night of the soul, waking up at 3 a.m. because something doesn’t feel right and your body knows, if not yet your consciousness.

Thoughts and prayers that you are sleeping like a baby. One who hasn’t lived long enough to have made any mistakes, learned how to interpret the world, or even been responsible for any decisions.

The body shares its truth in many ways. Sickness, even diseases like cancer, can be the body’s communication tool that something is off kilter with the unconscious perception of reality. The body keeps the score, says Bessel van der Kolk. The body never lies, writes Alice Miller.

In my life, I recognized a perpetual cycle of lashing out. My mother to me, her mother to her. For my older sister, I know she went forward with the resolution of “No more.” I personally didn’t want to test myself, because the risk and consequences of failure were too high. We didn’t experience the same family, childhood, or lessons, as no two siblings ever do. I hope this difference enables her continued success.

As an adult, it can be difficult to realize that there are some adult skills you don’t have. Admitting it now might put you in a class with children as your peers.

My grandmother learned how to write a cheque in her eighties. Women of my age, the year I was born, weren’t permitted by law to have a credit card, land, or loans. I’ve had the privilege of experiencing all of them. My grandmother showed me, “You’re never too old to learn.”

The Child’s Model

Miller “urges society to realize that the Fourth Commandment – “Honor thy father and thy mother”- offers immunity to abusive parents. Indeed, she argues, it is healthier not to extend forgiveness to parents whose tyrannical child-rearing methods have resulted in unhappy, and often ruined, adult lives.”

According to my mantra, first lazy, then stupid, lastly cruel. Did stupidity or ignorance explain my unhappy, ruined adult life?

I had to ask.

“Why did the consultant recommend custody to mom rather than you?”

He laughed and used the words, “Controlling and authoritative.”

More, he was proud, not chided into change.

So, the court decided a physically and emotionally abusive mother was better than a controlling and authoritative father. Today, I can agree. The first results in damage that everyone can see and understand, while the second is invisible and insidious. Thoughts and prayers for either.

What a sad choice and a disappointing realization about both the system and the father.

I felt the same way when I found out that I wasn’t asked to testify about my mother’s violence because they wanted to protect me.

I was being thrown down stairs, and they wanted to protect what, exactly? Sticks and stones, and I was supposed to be more afraid of the courtroom? Years later, when I was supposed to be ready to testify against my sister, I discovered that, yeah, it’s scary. Innocence might not save you, but what’s the other option?

Ensuring I’d be sent off to live with her? Controlling and authoritative is hurtful. Controlling and authoritative with the intent to harm is tyranny.

It lasted until the first day my older sister took a blow of her own. She was always someone to look up to for the way that she’d always get her way.