Take It or Leave It

I grew up somewhat sheltered. Well, very sheltered.

I’ll never get over the first time I was offered some weed. I was 14 or 15. It was Halloween night 1971 or ‘72, and I had gone out with two female friends from my Bible Study group. Being good Christian kids we weren’t out to cause problems, just hang out. We headed over to a park where we just sat and talked with only a few lights from the street and neighboring houses illuminating the area. A few minutes later, a boy from our school came by, said “Hey” and walked a little away. A few moments later, he pulled a plastic bag from his jacket pocket, and from what I could tell by the scant light and my naïveté, began rolling a joint. I was in shock, as I had heard of weed but never expected to encounter it way out in the middle-class suburbs where we were living. And from someone my own age! My face must have registered my shock, but he did what any gracious host would do and offered me a hit. I politely declined and my friends and I left shortly after.

My second exposure to weed was a few years later during my first year at college. I had been assigned to a co-ed dorm at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. These new living arrangements had already elevated my anxiety due to my Christian upbringing. But, I knew right from wrong and vowed not to yield to sin. The dorms at Occidental were co-ed by section; most dorms designated certain floors for one gender only, or in my dorm’s case, the north half was all women and the men lived in the south half. The lobby separated the halves on the ground floor, while a door separated the halves upstairs. My room was next to this door. It seemed the two rooms across from mine, both single rooms, were occupied by stoners. They would close their room doors and smoke all night with the lovely pungent aroma drifting into the hallway. The women would close the hallway door effectively trapping the smoke in that corner in front of my door. Many nights I would come up the stairs and walk to my room through a haze of pot smoke and end up with a major headache, and a possible contact high. 

Fast forward to a few years later after I’ve met my first partner and his friends. They were heavier into pot as well as cocaine. My first instincts were to flee, but as I pointed out in another post, I finally had a boyfriend and was happy. I was seeing a therapist at the time who kept telling me I couldn’t save the world in spite of my Christian obligation to do so, but I could only save myself. She directed me to Al-Anon as a supplement to our regular sessions.

(For those unfamiliar with Al-Anon, it is not the same as Alcoholics Anonymous, commonly referred to as AA. Al-Anon is for family members and friends of substance abusers to aid us in identifying our enabling character traits in order to empower us to take what steps we need for our own sanity and control of our own lives.)

I found a somewhat local gay group (we didn’t use the term LGBTQ… in the olden days) and went to my first meeting. I attended frequently for approximately six months and learned much about myself. One piece of advice, or wisdom, that stuck with me is “Take what you like and leave the rest.” In other words, take only what advice, help or other pearls of wisdom that resonate with you and ignore what doesn’t. It’s kind of like shopping, you should only buy what you need. 

I’m learning to apply that advice to all of life.

When I scroll through social media, I’ll look only at what pertains to me at that time. Otherwise, I might end up spending too much time or becoming severely depressed over the news items.

As I read articles on spirituality, and specifically the paths I’m trying to blend, some of the information can be contradictory, which makes my path even harder to navigate. So, I’ll stick to what resonates with me and file that away, leaving the rest. After all, am I not finding my own inner truth? Am I not the only one who knows what I need?

I realize we are all different with different approaches to life, politics, religion/spirituality, etc. I understand and accept that we all believe our own truths. I know we all want to share and help, some of us a little more enthusiastically than others.

But, what’s good for the goose isn’t necessarily good for the gander. Buddhism teaches that the opposite of what I know to be true is also true, meaning what the other person believes is also true, but for them, from their background, their upbringing. 

I wish we all could live only with what we need and leave the rest behind. And be content with that.

This “taking what I need” philosophy has become somewhat difficult when I interact with people. For example, when I hear a certain pair of words I get quite upset.

And not just a simple little upset either, but full on rage. Now, before you picture me as a raging bull in a china shop, I do control my potential outburst. At least, physically. Well, outwardly physically. Inwardly, my heart is racing and I’m breathing slowly and deeply to bring my blood pressure back down from near stroke range.

And I wonder what is it about those two seemingly innocuous words that simply sets me off?

The last time someone uttered those two words, I heard nothing else past that point. Okay, I did. But, what followed was still lost on me.

Through it all I was able to grasp the positive intention behind those words, yet the meaning itself overtook the intention and ran right over it like a locomotive over a Volkswagen.

So, what are those two words? “You should...” or their more demanding sibling, “You need to…” Or even the evil twins, “You should not…” and “You don’t need to…” raise some sort of anger in me. Even the less demanding “You can’t…” riles me up a bit.

I am trying to work through some long held negative energies and beliefs I hold about myself.

No one knows my past, nor my present. No one knows my journey at the moment. There are times I don’t even know where I am for all the bumps and curves that come my way.

When I hear any of those words, in spite of the positive intention, they come off like someone telling me how to walk my path according to what works, or worked, for them. But, I’m not them and they are not me. I am me whoever I am becoming at that particular moment in time.

I’m working on separating the intention from the meaning, on taking what I need (the intention) and leaving the rest (the meaning).

“Thank you for your suggestion.”

“I’ll take your idea into consideration.”

Maybe I can (should?) offer a simple explanation that I view those words as an unsolicited attempt to tell me how to live my life; how to force their opinion on me. And to kindly refrain from doing so in the future.

If they can, we can move forward. 

If they can’t, I hope they have a very nice life.