the mobius lesson

A movius strip is a looped figure, a figure eight in which the loop continues where it intersects in the middle so it loops continuously, nonstop.

I have had some repeat life lessons that can seem like a mobius strip of learning. I circule the entire loop, learn the whole lesson but then I pass through the same lesson over and over. A mobius loop. Endless.

I just figured, once again for the first time, that I am not now, nor will I ever be, an extrovert.  Not only am I an introvert, but I like lots of solitude.  I like people. I love people. I love to interact with people in happy ways. But I don't like, want or need large networks of people in my life.  I like knowing lots of people as acquaintances.  I tend to remember detail more than most people so I tend to remember conference acquaintances, to remember little details about them that few do.  I just do.   I don't try to remember detail.  I just do.

This remembrance of lots of detail can fill me up with people and I lose connection with myself.  No one does this to me. I do it all here within my being, by myself and to myself.

I tend to critiicize myself for preferring as much solitude as I do.  I 'should' have more friends. I 'should' socialize much more than  do.  I 'should' go to parties.  I should do all kinds of things I do not do.

I am very tender. I feel others so keenly.  I can only feel a few without losing connection with my self.

About a year and a half ago, I went to a boring workshop that had been billed as a playshop. It was free so I can't really complain, but it was most definitely billed as an opportunity to play a game with a new system of money.  I imagined a game, like an online game only played in a room full of people.  The game would be a chance to 'play' imaginatively in a system without money as we know it.  People's gifts to one another, people's exchanges of activity, would be the currency. Only, since it was a playshop, it would be pretend.

The guy behind this system was, I think, in the Bay Area to pitch his work to venture capitalists. I think he envisions launching a website that will be the gift economy equivalent of Ebay. I believe someone will, eventually, launch such a site and that site will explode quickly, like Ebay did, or Facebook. Maybe the guy who offered the free playshop will be the first one. And it's not just him. He works with a bunch of wonderful people who care very much about changing the economic realm of human culture who have technical skill.

But this guy is not a game designer and he must not have thought, at all, about how to simulate a playshop about money. All he did was get up in front of about forty people, on a beautiful Fall, Sunday afternoon, and talk at us, sharing his ideas about money. His ideas were not new to me, of course. I have been visioning an economic realm similar to Rudolf Steiner's vision for about twenty years. And I have worked with money experiments, offering my work in the world unconditionally in a pay-it-forward approach. And I supposed myself and my daughter in the middle class that way. And now I live entirely on gifts.  I am ahead of the curve on money.  I know I am.  I do not need the world's approval to know who I am.

But I would like to have a small circle of close friends who love me.  I would like to have a family. Since I don't have a 'real' family, I would like to have a small circle of friends that were my family, people who would always take my phone calls, and I would always take theirs.  People who would love me all the time no matter what, the way a family, a good one, does.  I don't need many. A couple best friends and a life partner.

Anyway. This money guy had all these cool, hip folks in a room, people who had come because they had picked up the excitement of his money ideas and the idea of a playshop. And then he got up in front of us and droned for over two hours, nonstop. He did not stop for any interaction dialogue with the group. He just talked on and on. And when he felt like people's attention was flagging, which it was, because it is very boring and old-school to just talk at people for two hours nonstop. This wasn't school. This was supposed to be play.

He made a rule. He imposed a rule. He said "If I tell you to stop looking at your computer, you will stop looking at your computer and look at me immediately." Bullshit. Not unless you ask me if I agree to your rule, or rules.

I went along for a long time but then, when he said "Stop looking at your computers", and expected everyone to look at him, I kept on typing on my laptop. I had tuned the guy out.  His ideas about money were not new to me, or, I think, anyone in the room.  Maybe venture capitalists liked his boring speech. I have seen this guy's Ted talk:  he learned how to be a better speaker. He began his Ted talk by engaging the audience in a little game. But that day, when I ignored his order to stop looking at my computer, he called me out and said "Give me your attention." And I said "If you want my attention, be interesting" and I kept on typing.

I heard a young man sitting right behind me say, in a stage whispered intended,  think, for my hearing "Geez, she doesn't have to be here. what is she complaining about."

I was actually giving that speaker valuable feedback. I learned decades ago that my experience is never unique. If I was bored, so were others. But most people, even hipsters who think they are unconventional and hip and unique, are conventional and sheep-like, herd-like.  The guy stopped talking soon and gave the room a break.

We never played. Turned out his software was not online, the software had not yet been created so people could play the game online.  False advertising. It wasn't a playshop. He was recycling his pitch to investors, I think, and he was being condescending. I am pretty sure everyone in that room was hip to gift economics, to a culture beyond money.

During the break, a Mexican guy came up to me and asked for a hug. It turned out he demanded a hug. In Marshall Rosenberg's nonviolent communication,  a request is a demand if you are not willing to hear no. This guy would not accept my refusal of his hug. He demanded I hug him. He repeatedly tried to force a hug on me. I had tears in my eyes.  Just a second before this cute guy had demanded I hug him, so, as he put it, I would feel his unconditional love, a friend at that phony playshop had told me something that upset me a lot.  To me, it felt like the most important relationship in my life was over. I had turned from my friend, intending to run out of that non-fun playshop, to just leave but I got stuck with the cute Mexican guy insisting on giving me kindness, unconditional love and, dammit, a hug.

When I held out for my refusal, he got online and posted a comment about how he had tried to give unconditional love and he could see my pain in my eyes. He wrote about how the pain he saw in my eyes proved I needed the 'unconditional love' of his demand that I hug him. He was sure the tears he saw were because I felt unloved and that if I had accepted his hug, I would have felt the love he had tried to force on me.

I can actually see a case for his perspective.  Each of us is free to choose love in each moment. I could have accepted his love instead of feeling my pain.

But I am not an ascended master.  I am not a rapidly emerging leader of love, as this guy actually is.  He is rapidly becoming very well known as a love leader, part of the Occupy movement and a representative of unconditional love.

I think he is sincere about being loving. And, hey, if he can build a career as being loving, go for it.

How come it is men who become the public symbols of love?  Well, that's another post.

I felt pretty bad after I turned down that pushy demand that I hug a stranger.  I am often hard on myself, berating myself for not being loving enough. I should float through the world as the personification of unconditional love, right? And there is something wrong with me if I don't.

Bullshit.  I get to be me. If I feel guided to spend lots of time alone, doing my private work, that's okay. We aren't all extroverts.  Maybe some of the most loving, most evolved beings are actually like me:  okay being alone a lot.

I am very sad and sore right now.  I have been beating myself up for months.  I am stuck. Stuck stuck stuck.  I feel and think that I am nothing, worthless. I know I could simply choose, in this moment, to be loving and happy.

Like I said, a mobius strip of a lesson.