Save Yourself

An excerpt from Radical Sanity

Save Yourself

Don’t expect some guy to save you. Do not sit around thinking that all would be perfect if only you had a boyfriend to catch your pained tears and hold a Kleenex around your nostrils while you blow your nose. Because, unfortunately, that is not how it works. The way it works is that the great guy of your dreams does not show up until things finally are perfect, until you yourself have tended to the delicate garden that is your life. (Forget perfect – just shoot for well and solid enough.) And this is a lucky thing, because when you are down in the dumps, the last thing you need is a man.

Most men who are sane and employed do not want to repair your broken pieces and make an even-keeled jigsaw puzzle out of you. But if you should happen to find yourself a personal Jesus at some local bar, and he wants nothing more than to heal your childhood traumas and absorb all your pain and spend long hours of daylight with the curtains drawn, in bed with you, mostly not having sex, do not mistake the initial warm and fuzzy feeling for true love. Accept it for the folie a deux it will surely become, and run for the hills as fast as you can, and make a point of seeking out professional help for whatever is that makes you think a man can save you.

In general, love has never a rescued a person who has not first reclaimed herself. I have a friend, in this case it happens to be a guy, whose life was floundering in every which way. He went from menial job to meaningless job for years, working as an unpaid intern at a low-rent cable television outfit and as a copy editor for the house organ of some right-minded environmental organization. He was a researcher at a magazine about birds – and he got fired. He moved from to to to to again. He wrote two unpublished (and unpublishable) novels. He went from one short-lived and inauspicious and inexplicable relationship to another.

Finally, somewhere along the line, he found within himself either the wherewithal or the disgust or perhaps even the courage to just get a job. Any job. He was not looking for a career opportunity, because at that time he simply needed to do something that would pay the rent so that he could stay in one place long enough to get settled and centered. The most lucrative setups he could find were entry-level positions on Wall Street, which seemed a hopeless last attempt at hope at the time. Amazingly enough, it turned out that he was good at his work, that he actually even had an affinity for it, which everyone at the office took note of. When his boss was fired, he was promoted to that position, and the bonuses and offers keep coming along. He was even poached by another firm. His annual earnings are now in the millions – after only a few years on the job. Meanwhile, in his newly secure state, he found a girlfriend he is crazy for, and he’s bought a town house where they can live happily ever after.

Let me assure you that this friend was a complete loser for several years that. Believe me, he was truly pathetic.

But by taking minute steps toward winnerdom, he eventually got all of life’s happy rewards, day by day, piece by piece. What people whom I don’t like very much call karma is a real, terrestrial energy that works when you work with it. If you do the right things and act as if you believe there is a modicum of hope for you, soon whatever force that controls the universe will begin to smile upon your little life and let it bloom.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 at 10:55 pm and is filed under Quote. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.