A Resilient Investment: The Abundance of Authenticity

I am practiced at suffering in silence, and that, too, is no longer required. I might have had limited options as a child, but not today.

Growing up, I remember that there was no money for my interests because all the money was going to my sister’s dance lessons, costumes and the like. Moving from Alberta to Ontario for me was a crying shame, because after two years of French lessons, I’d have to wait two more years before starting again. There was no discussion of private French classes. It wasn’t a thing, like piano, dance, and baseball were.

As an adult, when I took a hiatus from corporate life and was doing the work that resulted in What Could Be, my father called to tell me he’d decided on my birthday present. He would give me a membership to a stock study program so that I could learn how to invest and choose stocks for myself.

“Okay?” he asked.

Until that moment, I’d been relying on his investment advice. It was a large portion of our relationship, having something to talk about and discuss together.

Personally, looking at my stocks feels like looking at my flesh. The one time I cut my palm open and actually looked, I saw my insides. My knees turned to Jello, and I almost fainted. For me, my money represents my lifeline, and the emotion runs so deep that mathematics alone isn’t going to cut it.

I felt a punch in the gut between those three facts and couldn’t hold back my tears. At least it was on the phone, and I knew how to use mute.

Finally, I managed all I could, “Okay.”

It was totally not okay, but that girl I used to be was quite a liar.

On Fire

Immediately upon receiving all my login credentials, I called to ask how long I could put the whole thing on hold. I never took the course, and it was good money wasted.

Sure, I could imagine that the idea behind the gift was to grow up and toughen up, to quit needing to lean on a parent.

However, especially in my thirties, I struggled with having real conversations with my father. No matter what I said, I felt his responses were a one-way channel of advice, yet the advice wasn’t always landing.

Like the advice to spend my time on the stocks and not on whatever it was I was doing, and that’s the extent he knew about it. I had a blog, which I couldn’t convince anyone to read or share, not even family or friends, yet all my family and friends were eager to tell me what I should be doing. This time around, I’ll stick with strangers. They are so much more inviting, accepting and open.

“You should get your Master’s,” another said. Maybe she was right. Perhaps I should have gotten a certification and paid for the credentials. People pay more attention to those who’ve been vetted in the mainstream manner. But then, I would have had to get a book deal to pay off the investment.

But I’m not mainstream.

I’m also not without my own compass. As lost as I was, I always knew where I wanted to be – I simply had no idea how to get there. People who gave me advice pointed out current open doors, but ignored my desires.

Sorting advice then was my job, and that meant sorting people.

Who had my best interests in mind? I did. When the advice I received ran counter to my own goals and compass, I mentally fired that person from the role of trusted advisor.

“Who are you to me now?” I would wonder.

On Course

To feel invisible and ignored is to expect to be seen and accepted and fail to achieve that expectation. The realization freed me: “Why did I expect it?”

People will show you who they are, and I’ve learned that I am best off accepting the information on offer instead of hoping, wishing, or manipulating for something different. Maybe it works for you, but my energy is best spent on myself instead of others.

I expect the people in my inner circle to help me along my desires and not steer me off my path in favour of their own too often. When I identify the magnets that are pulling me off course too radically, distance will be introduced as needed.

One so-called friend told me that if anything bad happened in her relationship, she’d simply pack up and move in with me. Instead of saying, “No, you won’t,” I simply did not return the following email. One unreturned email later – that was the strength of this relationship – I had no future worries of uninvited suitcases on my stoop.

When it was my turn to be rejected via an unreturned email, it was mine. I’d asked for an apology from my father for a specific list of hurts that I’d listed and tried to stand up for myself, in the hope that our relationship could take a turn. For me, it was a last-ditch attempt to change a relationship that caused me perpetual pain.

Of course, it didn’t happen. What hurt me more was realizing that I’d expected more, but instead, I had to greet the reality of the personality and not my idealization.

When someone has minimized, rejected, belittled and ignored you, it’s par for the course for them to continue to do it, for whatever reason.

On Expectation

Of course, they may change one day. Just like they may win the lottery one day. Neither have anything to do with you.

I iterated through many versions of, “Maybe they didn’t hear me, or maybe I wasn’t clear,” before I realized that my choice of words hardly mattered.

If there’s one thing I understood better in my earlier years, it was this piece of advice—just like Oprah finally heard Maya Angelou say, “Believe people when they tell you who they are.”

I learned to trust people by learning what to expect and trust my expectations. Words and actions speak volumes when you stop colouring the truth with your wishful thinking.

Not all shades are pink. Some people might wear rose-colored glasses and see positivity and hope where there should be nothing but mourning and moving on, but others wear blue ones. The blue-shaders see despair and negativity when objectivity would let a little light in.

At the hunting camp, every year, they let the dog Bart lead the hunt. For eight years, they’ve been stumped, with everyone complaining that Bart only knows how to run deer to the neighbours, all whom gleefully fill their tags. This year, I asked, will it be the ninth, or no?

(In the movie, The Cutting Edge: “You say nein alarm.”

“Yeah, nine alarm. I’m just about four hours late for the Olympics, Rita.”

Her name wasn’t Rita, it was Gita. Namen, Gita. Nein means no in German.)

When you are factual about what to expect, you can do something to change it. Hope isn’t a strategy.

If you really want to change someone else, instead of controlling or manipulating them, understand why they are doing it. There’s always an underlying reason, one that is more scary and shameful to admit than to look ignorant and hopeful.

Instead of settling for hope, choose curiosity and find abundance.

A fear of confrontation means a history of failure will translate into a predictable unproductive hunt until the day Bart is no longer fit for the job or external forces intervene and create room for a new future. Phew, everyone will sigh with relief. Someone finally did something, even when that someone had to be God.

Thank you, God, for your interventions. Does it upset you when your efforts are ignored and you feel invisible, as I did?

I ask on behalf of my lawn, which I am trying to recover and return to the beauty of your design after being under a stronghold of capital colonialism for at least a hundred years. Grass was planted, which requires irrigation and cutting, and I know of only one purpose for it, which is to save and perpetuate the economy.

Elsewhere, there are wild strawberries, violets, plantain, lambsquarters, and many other edible and useful plants. These are all called weeds if it’s your intention to grow grass. What an upside-down perspective!

These days, I can’t stop pulling out grass from my gardens, and I can’t even put it in a salad. When you get curious as to “why lawns?” the answers that lead to the rich getting richer might shock you into realizing their driving need to squash abundance, because anything plentiful is a threat to their model.

Yesterday, I noticed a point of inflammation on my partner. A few paces later, I picked a leaf of plantain, chewed it to a pulp and put the pulpy spit-soaked green patch on his red skin. When it fell off about twenty minutes later, the problem had been brought to the surface. By the next morning it was almost fully healed.

Natural Solutions

“Phew, that had been bothering me for three days,” he said.

How long do you let things bother you?

Instead of the lawn, I was supposed to head across the street to the pharmacy, shell out coin for a tube of chemicals that travelled a long distance in some disposable packaging to get to me, that I only would have known about because of some memorable marketing interrupting my news programming.

I’ll take the abundant world over the commercial world, thank you.

As I said, I am not mainstream, and I am grateful for it, humbly acknowledging the luck of my existence.

I am so lucky that my lettuce garden erupted in dandelions. Baby dandelion leaves everywhere, as I did not get around to mulching it before the white heads took flight. Today, that is going to become lunch.

Lucky, because my lettuce seeds did not experience the same conversion success from seed to plant. Lucky, because in a salad, we aren’t going to notice anything amiss. You might be buying dandelion greens in the grocery store.

Someone else might have said, “Look at all the weeding you have to do!”

I laugh, thinking, “Get to do.” And it’s only a weed if you aren’t going to eat it.

When your perspective shifts, so does your world. Be careful how you classify things, because the world will shift toward making you more comfortable.

Do you “have to” or do you “get to”? If it’s the former, who is forcing you? Follow that rabbit hole until you find your own choices about who you are and what you believe.

Don’t be surprised if “what you know for sure” is scrutinized, researched, and updated with new information that wasn’t available when you last made up your mind. Research gets updated, honed, and even debunked.

Normal Challenges

Some of it never was scientific, but political.

(“Dandelions are weeds.” Really? Sure, if you sell the chemicals to kill them, and have laws declaring their presence on your lawn as illegal. In life without capitalism, without corrupt politicians, not so much. “Dandelions are food.”)

Roasted dandelion root has a coffee-lie taste and similar stimulant effect. It also has vitamins, potassium, and has been valued over the centuries as a remedy for liver and kidney problems.

If there’s a challenge to the coffee trade that is free and plentiful, what a threat! The jobs that might be lost if beans no longer had to come from overseas! (What about the Canadian jobs that would be created, such as growing, harvesting, cleaning, drying, roasting and packaging dandelion root tea? First, come up with a better name, like Taraxacum officinale, or Taraxachino.)

How’s that for a net-zero project, Carney?

Every politician must solve boredom. A bored population is a dangerous one. Feed them, entertain them, overwhelm them, but do not bore them.

No one wants to pay for shipping, so let’s stop burying its cost in the price and its impact in the taxes.

You can embrace abundance at its source or buy a pound of it from China for $21. In capitalism, there’s always a market for someone who doesn’t want to get their fingers dirty. Some’d rather pay than learn what a dandelion looks like and where it grows.

Others will also prefer to go broke rather than to bend over and get on one’s knees.
To each their own.

It can be quite a challenge to live and let live when you see the wasted abundance all around you, while people go to bed hungry, hurting, bored, and broke.

Are you too good for that?

Necessary Action

Learning involves four steps:

1. Not knowing what you don’t know. So much so that you don’t know what questions to ask, for example, you may not even know the terminology specific to the domain.
2. Knowing what you don’t know. Now you stumble. Your questions are precise and timely as you try new things and find holes where you assumed skill would exist.
3. Knowing what you know. Confident, skilled, you execute smoothly or at least know enough to pass the test.
4. Not knowing what you know. Encoded, you forgot the answers to the questions because it became a useless waste of space, and more was needed for the burgeoning life lessons that took the place of the tangible, rehearsed, accepted string of words.

Unlearning what you were taught and now know to not be true might also be a four-step process.

1. Recognizing the lie. Yep, your words came out unfiltered and automatic, and you can’t grab the words back. You can do many things, and when your heart sinks because you betrayed yourself, tune into the disconnect. Now you know what you didn’t know.
2. To know what you know, what is the truth of the betrayal? To answer the question, it might take a twenty-four-hour monologue to find a truthful single sentence that serves to set you free.
3. Not knowing what you know is to remove the manifestations of that truth from your life—for good. When the truth sets you free, it transforms how you live. Your priorities change, your values might shift, and your relationships transform.
4. To not know what you don’t know. With repaired innocence, you can embrace the world as it unfolds without expectation or worry.

At least, that’s what worked for me.

Those lies you think are white might be more detrimental than you think.

If I were better at burying my emotions or putting my tears into boxes, I might not have realized the damage I was doing by being an obedient daughter instead of an authentic human.

I hope you don’t have to choose, because it was one of my hardest choices.

Yet, I know it was all with good intentions. That’s what paves the road to hell, they say, and I’d have to agree.

I hold no ill will, merely space for my health. Living life with a diet of broccoli getting shoved down your throat might be good for your body, but it will kill your spirit.

Let’s nurture. Let’s nature. Really, let us. Because monetizing everything and creating markets doesn’t seem to work well. Perhaps the abundance of authenticity might lead the way for you as it did me. Be sure to download and skim through Rare and Remarkable Authenticity and please let me know what you think.