The personal effects of mom were examined and mostly discarded by us. Not that we are disrespectful or anything like that; there is only so much room in the house and only value from mom’s point of view. There were, however, many pictures of us as a family as we were growing up. Many of these were not new to me and I enjoyed seeing them again. I can only say that it makes me feel sort of ordinary. We weren’t well-to-do that’s for sure. The clothes and settings in which the pictures were taken is proof of that; and yet I never felt disadvantaged, not even in the slightest bit but rather neutral about the whole issue of who and what we were. Our status was always ok.
The question of status started to dawn on me in the last few years we were in Newport News. We had little or none there, of which we were aware, that’s for sure, didn’t need any, didn’t want any, and didn’t care about it. I enjoyed some celebrity as a muckety-muck in the shipyard but was well aware that there was a tier of higher status people. There were those who had the highest level of positions, mine was in the second tier, second highest, and I was pretty happy about that. Then in Houston, there was none even though we enjoyed a relatively high position in the company. It was like the Pentagon where officers are the norm. Then in Wisconsin, and in Europe, there was none; we were not in a social circle other than the sorority in Houston. There just didn’t seem to be a fit for us; that had been true all along, even until now. When we came here, it became something of an issue with me because we had to establish ourselves as members of the small business community vending to other business entities.
We joined the Chamber of Commerce, the International Cultural Center, the Rotary Club, Sales and Marketing Association, the Kentucky World Trade Center and I became the Honorary French Consul for Kentucky. We participated and Carola was most uncomfortable at most of the events.
I’ve examined this before and found that while I am a willing participant in and joined social circles, Carola is not and didn’t want to participate. It is more important to me to not put her in situations where she isn’t comfortable. She eschews what I would like to do and we’ve pretty much gone our separate ways except that I support her and the sorority and she has lent some support to me and mine. We are two different people, that’s for sure.
What’s new now in my thinking is an understanding that we are indeed independent of social status. There are many around us who give a lot of thought to it, who interact within a societal group, who are invited here and there to parties and events and know each other’s name rank and serial number but we don’t; in fact we are not parties of interest, have little or no influence and power. You won’t see us in the newspaper on the society page, although you will see us in the front row here and there when it is appropriate. When we do it’s because of a specific little reason and not that we are generally famous, rich, and powerful. We get our few moments in the spotlight and it’s fun when it happens; we don’t kid ourselves into thinking that we are generally well-known.
There are those to whom being socially involved is important, and furthermore it is important to them to be involved with only those who reinforce their self esteem. I noticed at Milestone at the noon class that there was a group who socialized with evenings out and going to events. These were people who were born and raised here and who had a long history with each other. To join into this group was possible but not practical; one would be a Johnny-come-lately for at least a generation. Those who seemed to express a need/desire to form such a social circle were not deemed desirable in my view so we didn’t/don’t.
This writing today seems to be going nowhere but it is clarifying something for me. My sense of self-image, of who I am v. what I would like others to think I am is s.t. that gets in my way from time to time. It is one of the big distractions in the 4th Way and even has a name. It is called Inner-considering and is closely aligned with what others may call self-consciousness but it goes a little further than self-consciousness. All of what I said about seeking approval/ avoiding disapproval is tied into it as well. And it has nothing to do with what others are thinking but is entirely what I am thinking about me.
It occurs when certain personae get into inner considering and, if not recognized and stopped, cause much wasted psychic energy. This is an important realization and one that will tend to allow me to increase my reservoirs of psychic energy by not spending it foolishly on this sort of thinking.
The horse trials analogy, doing a cross-country obstacle course, is in play all the time. My approach to life has to be that, to take obstacles as they come, handle encounters and situations extemporaneously as they occur without forgetting that the rider has the option to walk the course, i.e. the desired result can be described based on what I want but then handle the details of situations as the arise.
This is my planning evolution file. I do it for the year and then the week. What needs to be reminded, recalled, restated, repeated are the desired states, and although I do this on Sunday mornings, I don’t do it in the required meditative state. This allows communication with Master. Doing this and the elimination of cynicism, replacing it with admiration, and judging, replacing it with forgiveness, will do much to allow this being named John Lina, to accomplish whatever it is he wants to do.
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