OK, so here we go on another tear through the exam­i­na­tion of how we see and do life.

I’m a lit­tle sad, because I had the per­fect pho­to­graph to illus­trate where I’m com­ing from.

I was walk­ing through the base­ment office area the other day, and looked at the win­dow. It’s cov­ered with a closed blind. I saw a face! The face of an alien! Sort of looked like like Bob Hope from the side, but with a huge cranium.

I took a photo, and just checked and I really over­ex­posed it. Zut alors! The shadow on the blind was actu­ally caused by a garbage can and the sun. I over exposed the pic­ture of that, too.

But my point is that we often con­front the boogey­man, and almost always, he’s a fig­ment of our over­ripe imag­i­na­tions. We get a thought in our heads, and heaven and earth, much less real­ity, can­not shake it.

We believe what we believe, and sel­dom with reason

Adele, check­ing things out!

I men­tioned a cou­ple of weeks ago how much I was enjoy­ing this year’s sea­son of “In Treat­ment.” I’m totally wrapped up in the sub-plot about Paul (the therapist/protagonist) and his devel­op­ing rela­tion­ship with his new ther­a­pist, Adele. With­out giv­ing too much away, Paul talks a good show, but has dif­fi­culty being open and vul­ner­albe in his per­sonal life. He gets his clients to open up, but remains hid­den himself.

A few weeks ago, he reported a dream where he was run­ning by a fenced-in yard, and feel­ing excited. He then felt stuck and pulled down, looked around and saw his father (whom he blames for every­thing bad in his life…) rapidly approach­ing. Paul has recently decided that he has Parkinson’s, so he saw the dream as mean­ing that his father was genet­i­cally pun­ish­ing him (again) from the grave.

Adele has not been so convinced.

This week, she made sev­eral won­der­ful leaps, all of which had to do with describ­ing how Paul was hold­ing him­self back from expe­ri­enc­ing joy or excite­ment, and then blam­ing his father. Paul, stuck in his sto­ries, danced and weaved, and kept chang­ing the subject.

Finally he sighed, and said some­thing about being really seen and under­stood by Adele. (He often avoids her probes by com­ple­ment­ing her.) She replied:

“I’d like to see you more clearly, but I find that you’re fairly expert at obscur­ing the view.”

This is such a good line.

We obscure the view in both direc­tions, by hid­ing from our­selves (by choos­ing not to notice, or to excuse, what we are doing) and from oth­ers (by evad­ing, clos­ing down, blaming.)

The result is “shut-down-ness” and stuck­ness. There can be no other. We are liv­ing in our heads, run­ning films (or see­ing aliens on the win­dow shades) and con­fus­ing our sto­ries and movies with reality.

Real­ity, and excite­ment, and pas­sion, come from sus­pend­ing the bull-shit and story-telling long enough to have an actual expe­ri­ence. To engage with that which we scare our­selves over, in order to “see” how much is “real,” and how much is just us, scar­ing ourselves.

Here are two sto­ries, about me as a kid and young adult, that play around with this idea.

Walk­ing the Ledge, part one

Andrea, the beach,
and the Ledge

When I was a kid, I went to church camp once a year, for a week. The camp was right on Lake Erie. In the old days, peo­ple swam in the lake. A pool had been put in, for con­ve­nience and because even the alewives couldn’t live in Lake Erie in the late 50’s and early 60’s. The water was off lim­its for all but the hardi­est, and the wooden stairs to the swim­ming area had been swept away in a storm. If you wanted down to the old bathing beach, you had to rock-climb down a 50 foot bluff.

You could, how­ever, get to the main beach, which was a 10 minute walk as the crow flies from said swim­ming area. At the end of the beach was a bluff that stretched up 50 feet or so. (The pic­ture shows the bluff tow­er­ing over the ever smil­ing Andrea…) Right where the water hit the bluff was a Ledge, about 4 inches wide, and it’s pic­tured on the photo right blow the black stripe. A per­son could walk that Ledge, which was wet and slip­pery, and end up a half mile along at the old swim­ming area, where one could climb the bluff, and hop a fence, and return to the camp.

Need­less to say, such behav­ior (which we called, obvi­ously, “Walk­ing the Ledge,) was frowned upon. That made it quite appeal­ing to me. I guess I’ve always been a bit of a gung ho kind of guy, and I remem­ber walk­ing the Ledge the first time at about 8. After that, I did it all the time. Alone and in groups.

The key was to be pre­pared. (This is not about “stu­pid” risk tak­ing, but wise risk-taking. I only walked the Ledge in bad weather a cou­ple of times (see next story) and even then, it appears I survived.)

Prepa­ra­tion was both prac­ti­cal and men­tal. You had to have the right shoes. You had to wear a shirt, to keep from get­ting scratched on the bluff. And you had to have the right attitude.

The right atti­tude was: “It’s not how often you fall off of the Ledge and into the water. It’s how quickly you get back up and con­tinue the walk.”

Falling off of the Ledge was a part of walk­ing the Ledge. Some­times you fell off a lot. Other times, the walk was pretty easy. If you fell in, the rule was to keep your mouth and nose shut (it was Lake Erie in the 60s, after all…) keep your head up, swim with the tide, and haul your­self back up.

If you only con­cerned your­self with falling off, you’d never start.

Falling off is a part of everyone’s life, if they try in the first place, as opposed to giv­ing up before the thing begins. Get­ting back on after you fall off is the mark of a per­sis­tent hero.

Those who fall off and sim­ply bob in the water, wait­ing for res­cue, or who turn back too soon, gain noth­ing.

So that’s the first point. Here’s the other. You are known by the friends you keep.

To go back briefly to “In Treat­ment,” Adele describes Paul is being holed up in his office, his cave, unwill­ing to inter­act, at a deep level, with any­one. He hides behind his wis­dom and com­pas­sion, and emphat­i­cally hides behind his stories.

It not only takes courage to strike out and take risks; it takes courage to be will­ing to receive friend­ship, inti­macy, and some­times, help. I can’t tell you how many peo­ple I know who are so invested in how “spe­cial” they appear that authen­tic­ity files out the win­dow. Choos­ing open­ness and form­ing a bond, even if for a moment, is often the thing that gets us back on track.

The fol­low­ing story is a segue-way off of the first. I guess all I have to say is that I have always assumed I could do any­thing, and once in a while that leads in non-helpful direc­tions. Even with some­thing as sim­ple as:

Walk­ing the Ledge, part two

Sandy was one of my first girl­friends. We broke up when I went away to Col­lege. Then, I got mar­ried and divorced, all in 3 years and a bit. I stayed in Chicago dur­ing the school year, then returned to Buf­falo for the sum­mer. One Sum­mer, I ran into Sandy at our Church pic­nic, held (where else) at our church camp … the one with the Ledge.

Sandy popped up next to me, in the swim­ming pool. Being the obser­vant sort, I imme­di­ately grasped that
a) Sandy had long hair–well past her der­rière– and
b) Sandy had blos­somed, if you catch my drift. I was enam­ored all over again. (Dar­bella was just with a bunch of kids at “Foot­loose.” One cast mem­ber said, “There’s a party in my pants.” On that hot Sum­mer day back in 1971…)

After much gig­gling and goof­ing around, we wan­dered down to the beach. Just before the romance had a chance to kin­dle, a bunch of our friends showed up. They wanted to walk the Ledge.

Nor­mally, I led such expe­di­tions. I, how­ever, wanted to hang out with Sandy, so we vol­un­teered to take the rear and res­cue strag­glers. As it turned out, this was a good thing, because a storm was blow­ing in across the lake, and the waves crash­ing over the Ledge and smash­ing on to the bluff were peak­ing at 3 feet.

Some­body decided to per­suade a young woman to join us for her first Ledge walk. I was too trans­fixed by Sandy to think that one through. The “first timer” left with the group. Sandy and I started walk­ing a few min­utes later.

We came around the first bend to see a huge wave knock the young woman off her feet, toss her into the bluff and then drag her 20 feet out. I dove in and pulled her back onto the Ledge. She wanted to go on, but she was really scared. By the time she made it half way along the Ledge, she had been knocked off three more times, and each time I’d gone swim­ming and pulled her out. That was enough. She wanted to go back. I told Sandy to go on ahead … I’d take her back. The young woman was ter­ri­fied of get­ting knocked off the Ledge, so we swam back, fight­ing the tide and waves. I saw her safely to the beach, dove back in and started swimming.

Except by this point I was beat. I was get­ting kicked around by the waves, swal­low­ing water, and I was tired from haul­ing the young woman around. I kept going, dri­ven by my hor­mones. I decided to get up and walk the Ledge. No sooner did I get to my feet than a huge wave knocked me back in. I went under, hit an under­tow and when my head popped up, I was 50 feet out and head­ing for Canada.

I fig­ured I was dead. And at that moment, a hand encir­cled my wrist. I was flipped onto my back, and Sandy towed me in. She’d waited for me. 

And no, the rela­tion­ship never went any­where, but for that moment, I was glad we’d tried.

The key is to, as I put it some­times, to “do it alone, in groups.” It’s why I’ve been glad for and grate­ful to, my Haven Friends. And espe­cially to Dar.
Some­times, my reach has exceeded my grasp and know­ing that some­one has my back is life-altering.

This week, have a look at what you’re avoid­ing, how you are shut­ting your­self down, and what you might do differently.

Then, exam­ine the qual­ity of your rela­tion­ships. When con­sid­er­ing a prin­ci­pal one, ask, “Do I trust this per­son uncon­di­tion­ally, with my secrets and my life?”

Keep push­ing, with verve and with a speck of cau­tion. Life is short, and wait­ing for it to arrive is sim­ply and plainly silly.