..

A note from Bert:

Regular readers of this blog (or monkeys, as I like to think of them) may recall that my coauthor Steve has identified three alternatives to control addiction. 

He calls them surrender, responsibility and intimacy.

And he believes they represent what is bravest and most grown-up in the human personality.

“To get good at the alternatives,” Steve says, “is as healthy as a human being gets.”

I’m lousy at all three. 

Naturally this embarrasses him, since he’s this big expert on control and all. 

So in an attempt to improve me (who’s controlling now, Steve?) he decided I should pay some attention to people who are better at these alternatives than I am.

And to help me with this, he created a new Monkeytraps feature, which starts today.

It’s a collection of articles, videos, interviews and whatever illustrating how people practice the three alternatives.

I asked him what these people have in common.

“Willingness to go beyond,” he said.

“Beyond what?”

“The ordinary, the safe, the predictable.  They’re willing to step out of their comfort zone and try something unfamiliar or risky.  To have a new experience.” 

He calls this collection Beyond Control.

I’ve seen some of the things he’s scheduled.  They’re kind of cool.

We hope you think so too. 

If you do, please write and say so.

Love,

Bert.

* * *

.

.

And so when I moved to New York City after college and got completely sucker-punched in the face by depression, I did the only thing I could think of at the time. 

I wrote those same kind of letters that my mother had written me — for strangers — and tucked them all throughout the city, dozens and dozens of them.

I left them everywhere, in cafes and in libraries, at the U.N., everywhere. 

I blogged about those letters and the days when they were necessary, and I posed a kind of crazy promise to the Internet:

that if you asked me for a hand-written letter, I would write you one, no questions asked.

~ From Love letters to strangers 

by Hannah Brencher (4:53).

.

Here’s a newspaper article about Hannah’s letter-writing project:

For North Haven woman,

writing love letters a labor of love

And here’s her remarkable blog —

The world needs more love letters

— where she writes,

We’re going to tell you that we write and mail love letters, handwritten love letters, to strangers in need all over the world. We’re going to invite you to request a love letter for someone in your life who needs one. And we’re going to insist that you step out of your own shoes of Comfort & join us. You are going to think we are a bit crazy. A tad loopy. But you’ve been looking for a website that leaks love all this time… so we aren’t worried you’ll leave us.

It’s not about stamps. Not about stationery. It’s about your neighbor. The cracked parts of your own story & how you can use them to lift someone else. It’s about the stranger enveloped in sadness. The chance to pull off Twitter & step away from your networks to turn your best love letter into a lamp… a lantern… to light the path of someone who needs to read it tonight.

.

So is most of what

falls in between.

.

But we can’t

accept this.

.

Because we’re

the monkeys

that control.

.

So we spend our lives

trying to get control, 

like fish

whose fondest wish

is to walk on

the land.

   When his wife warned him

   to wear a hat while shoveling

   snow he replied “All right,

   all right” and caught a cold.

.

   When his boss warned him

   to stop coming late to work

   he replied “All right, all right”

   and got fired.

.

   When his therapist warned him

   his stubbornness was killing

   his marriage he replied “All

   right, all right” and got divorced.

.

   When his bartender warned him

   he was in no shape to drive

   he replied “All right, all right”

   and got busted for DWI.

.

   When the judge warned him his

   drinking was self-destructive

   he replied “All right, all right”

   and died driving drunk.

.

   So now he stands before God,

   awaiting judgment.

.

  “Look, God,” he says.  “I know I

   screwed up.  I was rigid and

   stubborn and stupid.  But I’ve

   learned my lesson.  Please give

   me another chance.”

.

.

The power and the appeal

.

.

.

.

.

.

of the American dream

.

.

.

..

.

grow from its promise of control.

.

.

.

.

..

.

.

Because it gives us hope that,

.

.

.

.

.

despite all contrary evidence,

.

..

.

we really can 

determine

our own destinies.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

* * *

Oh, and by the way:

Please welcome my new grandson,

Wyatt Michael Trahan

(9 lb, 6 oz).

.

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “What’s the first thing you say to yourself?”

“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh.  “What do you say, Piglet?”

“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully.

“It’s the same thing,” he said.

                                              ~ A.A. Milne

Hurricane Sandy’s descending on us as I write this, which reminds me of something I wrote last year just after Hurricane Irene.  So I thought I’d tweak and repost it before the lights go out.

Stay safe, everyone.

* * *

Hurricane Irene swept through here the other day, reminding me of a conversation I’ve had with many clients over many years.

“Let’s say you’re a tree and a hurricane is coming,” I say.  “Which would you rather be, an oak or a birch?”

I sit back and watch them do a mental comparison:

Oak…

versus Birch:

“Oak,” they usually say.

Then I remind them what can happen to a rigid oak in a high wind:

All this tree-talk is metaphorical, of course.  We’re really talking about people and how they cope.

Specifically, how they view the idea of control.

Oak-people see control as essential to their sense of security.  They have a picture in their minds of How Things Should Be, and deviations from that picture make them uncomfortable.

This leaves them uncomfortable much of the time.

It also leaves them rigid and unbending, resistant to change, and likely to confuse strength with inflexibility.

Birch-people see control as essential in some situations and dangerous in others.  They’ve learned to learn to recognize their own preferences as that — preferences — and to become less insistent on forcing life to meet their expectations.

This makes them more elastic, more able to accept change and weather adversity. When life blows them over they bounce back up.

They go with the blow.

Me, I’m an old oak, trying to become a birch.

Not easy work, psychologically speaking.  But I prefer it to being repeatedly uprooted by all the stuff I cannot control.

And you?

Which kind of tree are you?

And which kind of tree would you like to be?

* * *

(New to Monkeytraps?

Then this post won’t make much sense to you.

You’d need to know that (a) Monkeytraps’ author is a therapist named Steve who specializes in control issues, and that (b) its coauthor is Steve’s hopelessly control-addicted inner monkey, named Bert.

That’s Bert above, post-bite.

Bert speaking:)

I had to write this.  I need to vent.

I’m so pissed.

At what?  At that moron.

Which moron?

Steve.

Do you know what the moron plans to do on November 1st?

He’s going to start writing a novel.

A 50,000-word novel.

Fifty thousand words.

And he plans to finish it in thirty days.

He’s been considering this for years, ever since he heard about this NaNoWriMo nonsense.  But each year I’ve been able to talk him out of it.

NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month.  It’s this weird project where people commit to, well, writing a novel in a month.

Even if they’ve never written a novel before.  Even if they’ve no clue what they’re doing.  Especially if they’re clueless.

It’s the brainchild of a writer named Chris Baty (thanks a load, Chris), who created it in 1999 and later wrote a book about it titled No Plot? No Problem.  

Baty’s got some strange ideas.  One is that

Literature is not merely a spectator sport…  Fiction writing can be a blast when you set aside debilitating notions of perfection and just dive headlong into the creative process.

Another is that

The biggest thing separating people from their artistic ambitions is not a lack of talent.  It’s the lack of a deadline.  Give someone an enormous task, a supportive community, and a friendly-yet-firm due date, and miracles will happen.

So he created this organization and set up this website where people go and sign up (god help me, Steve registered last night) and get tips about writing and support each other in forums and all that communal crap.

Damned stupid idea, if you ask me.

Hey, I’m already busy.  I can barely keep up with the shit Steve makes me do now.

The practice.  The blog.  The slideshow series he’s developing.  The book about control he’s been wanting to write.

And then there’s the house (falling apart) and the lawns (full of leaves and pine needles) and the cars (both on death’s doorstep).

What’s worse — now get this — Steve’s daughter is about to have a baby.

Due on Election Day.  I mean, I’m happy about that and all (though being called Grandpa is a bit unnerving.)

But it’s got to complicate my life further, right?  Having a grandchild will change my life in ways I can’t even imagine now.

But let’s face it.  The real problem here is,

I’m a control addict.

Doesn’t he know how much pressure this puts on me?

How many things this forces me to not control?

Like the time and energy this will cost me.

Or how the family feels about my being MIA.

Or what readers think of what I write.  (I don’t have to show it to anyone, Steve says.  Like that ever stopped me from worrying before.)

Or whether I can even write at all.  What if I get blocked?  

(Shudder.)

Or my mental state.  (I’m already obsessing about how to start the damned story.)

Or my physical condition.  (I get tired just thinking about it.)

Or my emotional health.  (What if I get depressed?)

This whole idea scares me shitless.

I feel like he’s just taken a enormous bite out of my peace of mind.

But.

The moron’s made up his mind.

What’s can I do?

Only…surrender.

Breathe.

Do my best.  Let go of the rest.

Go with the flow.

Like he always tells me (and everyone else) to do.

(Sigh.)

That moron.

.

* * *

The creative process must be explored not as the product of sickness, but as representing the highest degree of emotional health, as the expression of normal people in the act of actualizing themselves.

~ Rollo May

Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating.  It is sufficiently difficult and complex that it engages all your intelligence.  It is life at its most free.

~ Annie Dillard

New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity. 

Therefore, O man, increase your necessity, so that you may increase your perception.

~ Rumi

As an improvising musician, I am not in the music business, I am not in the creativity business; I am in the surrender business. 

To the extent that we feel sure of what will happen, we lock in the future and insulate ourselves against those essential surprises.  Surrender means cultivating a comfortable attitude toward not-knowing.

~ Stephen Nachmanovich

* * *

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel.

In 2011, we had 256,618 participants and 36,843 of them crossed the 50K finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

~ From About NaNoWriMo.

.

* * *

Self-care is something I preach to all my clients.

Most of them have trouble with self-care.

Most of them don’t love themselves enough to stop working and rest and relax.

Most of them put the needs of their job or their family or their house or their spouse ahead of their own.

And I have this thing I say to the most stubborn clients.

“You remind me,” I tell them, “of a guy I know who wants to drive from New York to California. 

“Except he says, ‘Gas is too expensive, so I won’t buy gas here. 

“I’ll wait to buy gas when I get out to the coast.’”

~ From Gas in California

* * *

Compassion really involves three basic components:

noticing suffering,

being kind and caring in response to that suffering,

and remembering that imperfection is part of the human experience, something we all share.

.

And is this the same for self-compassion?

.

Exactly the same.

With self-compassion the most important step, actually, is to notice your own suffering.

And a lot of people say, “Isn’t that blindingly obvious?”

But in fact it’s not.

Especially when your suffering comes from your own self-judgment and self-criticism….

.

~ From

Self-compassion, part 1

by Kristin Neff

* * *

To some people, surrender may have negative connotations, implying defeat, giving up, failing to rise to the challenges of life, becoming lethargic, and so on.

.

True surrender, however, is something entirely different.

.

It does not mean to passively put up with whatever situation you find yourself in and to do nothing about it.

.

Nor does it mean to cease making plans, or initiating positive action.

.

Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to, rather than opposing, the flow of life….

.

It is to relinquish inner resistance to what is.

.

~ From

The wisdom of surrender

 by Eckhart Tolle (9:33).

*

* * *

.

To laugh is to risk

appearing the fool.

.

To weep is to risk

appearing sentimental.

.

To reach out to another

is to risk involvement.

.

To expose feelings

is to risk exposing your

true self.

.

To place your ideas

and dreams before a crowd

is to risk their loss.

.

To love is to risk

not being loved in return.

.

To hope is to risk

despair.

.

To try is to risk

failure.

.

But risks must be taken.

.

 Because the greatest

risk in life is

to risk nothing.

.

The person who risks nothing

does nothing, has nothing,

is nothing.

.

He may avoid

suffering and sorrow,

but he cannot learn,

feel, change, grow,

or live.

.

Chained by his certitude,

he is a slave who has forfeited

all freedom.

.

Only the person who risks

is free.

.

   ~ William Arthur Ward

.

* * *

Guess:

.

Dismissed from drama school with a note that said “Wasting her time.  She’s too shy to put her best foot forward.”

*

*

Cut from the high school basketball team, he went home, locked himself in his room, and cried.

*

*

A teacher told him he was too stupid to learn anything, and he should go into a field where he might succeed by virtue of his pleasant pesonality.

*

*

His fiancee died, he failed in business twice, he had a nervous breakdown, and he was defeated in eight elections.

..

~ From Life = risk (1:19).