How I See It Sometimes: Naked Jacuzzi or Jello?

How I See It Sometimes: Naked Jacuzzi or Jello?: I find days slip away from me.  I have good intentions like all of us, but sometimes I think tomorrow is another day!  I'm ...

Naked Jacuzzi or Jello?

I find days slip away from me.  I have good intentions like all of us, but sometimes I think tomorrow is another day!  I'm sure you can relate?  Procrastination is a bitch.  So is Karma.  I believe they're related.  So here I go, learn from the past, live for today--and tomorrow if you're wise!  I've been thinking a lot about relationships lately, particularly friendships.  This piece is dedicated to those solid friends who get showing up is better than false platitudes and a 1000 "I love you's" in a row. The dear old friends and new, standing tall through thick and thin.

I've had the opportunity to be around 2 juxtaposed social groups:  Mormons and CCs (not to be confused with sissies) or rather the "Conscious" community--at least that's what they call themselves as if the rest of us are, well, I don't know?  Unconscious?  

Anyway, both groups are extremely different in their views on how to bring about a good life.  And both groups fear each other—or rather tolerate each other, which in my mind is just a way to patronize others and hide extreme dislike towards said others and how these others choose to live.  Oh, it's done in the name of fairness, you know giving others space to do those awful things that are only “tolerated” by the group that knows better.  Truly if you think about it, the word tolerate is ridiculous in most contexts.  Let's just say love is a better word and love is a verb as well as a noun.  However, it’s felt in action—as a VERB. 

So, back to these two very different but not so different groups.   One group is conservative, traditional, rule followers; the other is liberal, non-traditional, rule breakers—well at least the social norm rules. As it goes, Mormons like ice-cream socials, clothing mandatory.  CC's sometimes like clothing optional co-ed social events (think Burning Man) where some people are in bathing suits (me but NOT in that Jacuzzi!) and some people are in their birthday suits (think old men, 60 plus), everyone all innocent of course.  Yes, it's kind of gross depending on how you look at it, I guess.  I try not to look, sometimes unsuccessfully unfortunately.  Anyway, if we drew a line we’d find Mormons (even most God centered religious social groups) on the far right and the CCs on the far left. 

So, the strange thing is this: Many people of the far right (Mormons) and also of the far left (CCs) are similar, at least in how they handle friendship--if not in the way they handle clothing.  This summation comes from my either limited or not so limited experience spending time within both social groups.  At best, I’m left wondering why these groups are so similar in this regard:  Love you when you’re up; leave you when you’re down.  I think Eric Clapton says it best:  

Once I lived the life of a millionaire,

Spent all my money, I just did not care.
Took all my friends out for a good time,
Bought bootleg liquor, champagne and wine.

Then I began to fall so low,
Lost all my good friends, I did not have nowhere to go.
I get my hands on a dollar again,
I'm gonna hang on to it till that eagle grins.

'Cause no, no, nobody knows you
When you're down and out.
In your pocket, not one penny,
And as for friends, you don't have any.

When you finally get back up on your feet again,
Everybody wants to be your old long-lost friend.
Said it's mighty strange, without a doubt,
Nobody knows you when you're down and out.

Let me put it to you this way, when I was Mormon I went to church every Sunday.  Then I stopped.  Whenever I'd run into someone I knew from church, I'd get an ultra-sweet voice saying, "I miss you!"  I'd think "Really?  You have my number.  I haven't heard from you in more than a year."  As much as I wanted to say that, I'd  say something like, "It's good to see you.  How are your kids?"  I didn't miss these people, not really.  If I had, I'd have called them to walk or go to lunch.  So why would I say I missed them when I didn't?  And why did they say they missed me? I know politeness goes along way, but doesn't being polite include honesty?

I don't have all the answers, but I think where these Mormons get it wrong is in their need to be nice, pleasant, agreeable.  So, their overwhelming need to please overrides sincerity.   Ummm, how can I say this gingerly?  Look they were insincere, which in my mind is pretty damn close to lying if not the same thing.  Let's just say I saw through them, which only made me want to stay away from church even more.  

So, I left my marriage and the church.  If you're Mormon that's when you find out who your true friends at church are.  I found out I had very few real friends in the Mormon church.  I don't know maybe the rest of them thought divorce was catching?  Or maybe as my Mormon marriage counselor said, “Some of them may fear you because you represent change and they too are in unhappy marriages; but are afraid to leave their husbands and are in denial.  You scare them.”  Anyway, I don’t know if he was correct, but I sure did find myself alone pretty fast in that social circle.  Thank God for the handful who really do love me and weren't just paying me lip service all those years.

So now we move to the far left.  I had the recent pleasure or displeasure of spending time with some CC individuals at a party--everyone was clothed, thank God.  The host was a sweetheart, but maybe that's because he's from a part of the country where manners are still part of one's upbringing.  At any rate, I was left by my boyfriend for 2 hours, while he got a massage from a woman he just met.  More on that in another blog, to be continued after this one.  

While he was getting a massage, I had the opportunity to meet 3 different CC peeps. Then I took a nap on a sheepskin rug surrounded by crystals and a large Buddha statue because, well, I was bored out of my mind.  Was it because while talking to, or shall I say being talked at by these 3, I was amazed at how much these brilliant progressives liked to talk about themselves, incessantly?  Well for sure, not one of them asked me a single question, nor made any indication they were interested in anything other than being admired by me.  So I sat listening while they listed all their "downloads" and accomplishments within the predominantly vegan conscious capital world.  Next time I get insomnia, I know who to invite for a sleep-over.

I did learn one thing though.  I asked one of them why as a vegan he didn't eat eggs.  I was told it was because they have potential life.  True story.  But it's the lives of chickens!  Does anyone see irony here?  Question of the day:  Abortion or an omelet?   Hmmm, what a dilemma.  Which is the lesser evil?  Which do I tolerate?

I wish I could say it gets better but it doesn't.  After this party, I went to lunch with a new friend, who happens to be in the CC community, entrenched for years practically a founding member for all the right reasons.  He has been in a funk recently.  Having ridden high on innovative projects and promoting events, he has over the last year or so lost many prospects and the love of a woman he had been living with.  Let's just say he's fallen low.  He decided to reach out to friends in a heartfelt letter, not asking for hand-outs, but merely opportunities for work and connections.  Everyone he reached out to had been in their past someone my friend had helped to make the right connections; some of whom have been helped by my friend to catapult into extreme money-making business ventures.  As it goes, all are in positions to assist my friend in getting his feet back on the ground.  All but one person didn't even respond to his letter.  Almost all of his "friends" blew him off.  Only one person answered and that was to basically say, "Sorry dude, really busy now.  I can't."  I was floored.  

When I told my friend Tiffany about this scenario in comparison to some of the ones I'd experienced as a Mormon she said, "Well at least the Mormons will bring you Jello when you're sick."  They will.  They are duty bound, which when you're sick is all that matters.  So there you have it.  Naked Jacuzzi or Jello?

Let's face it, I do have dear friends in both the Mormon community and the CC community--after writing this the real ones will stand by!  At any rate, there are truly great people in both communities.  I guess I’m just not “aligned” with either group as a whole that much.  Jacuzzi and Jello are just not my thing.  Maybe a Jello Jacuzzi is what I need!  At the end of the day, my folks land somewhere in the middle, living simple but spectacular lives doing good where they see fit.  

My real friends get what service, generosity and reciprocity feels like.  So they do it.  And I find they’re the ones who love the most without really talking about it much. They're the "got your back" no matter what types. They love as a verb and this manifests in their actions.  In my life, they seem to be the ones who are there when I or anyone they love needs them.  

The far right and the far left do love too, but as a thing, a noun.  They talk a lot.  Yet it’s my experience, they often forget love is an action word, a verb.  At the end of the day, you can speak about love until your blue in the face, or sit cross-legged gazing into the eyes of another while placing your palm on their heart as they do the same to you and you can do this until the cows come home...but that isn't love.

Love is meaningful as a verb.  It manifests in sincere actions, always--or it does not.  At least that's how I see it sometimes, today and always actually.  Nobody needs a naked Jacuzzi or Jello.  Not really.  But everyone needs love working in their lives, reciprocating health and well-being amongst one another.  Love lifting each other up.  There will be a time or two when you're down and out.  So there will always be a need for love as a verb.  And that's how I see it sometimes.