Social Currency

Dun dun dunnn! It begins on a grossly personal level... breathe in J, and out. I have been thinking about my position here, now almost a solid YEAR back in my parents' home and completely out of the adult identity that I had created for myself in other countries. I have never lived here as an adult, and now that I am, I'm doing so as a dependent, or relative dependent after 8 months of unemployment followed by three weeks of work, one paycheck and then two months of unpaid, bed-ridden sick leave. I have talked about the dissapointment with many of my old friends here as a main source of my contention, but I was just recently trying to dissect that. Have I considered myself to have lost my best friends in the world? No, my best friends in the world are all over the world, and I still have them. What I have lost is some of my social currency, here.

I have been living in a social state which I consider to misrepresent me. In other words, the value I see myself having is not being supported by my environment. The result? Lower esteem of self. Lower energy levels to do the very things that would increase the support (going out, socialising). I reflected today that there are elements that I hadn't even considered - the fact that I am the middle child with an older brother and younger sister, and they both aren't living in the country. I hope you'll allow me these few moments to be personal. What I realised is that I'm a new creature here. I am trying to buy into a social market with a currency that became obsolete the moment I left in 2004, with an ever stretching chasm. The teen-aged, middle child, socially connected, young woman is not who I am. I have come home as someone new - I'm much more educated, have more work experience, my experiences in "life" have grossly broadened my perspective, my friends/love experiences have changed my life, I'm no longer lucky/blessed enough to be plugged into some natural peer socialisation with the presence of my siblings. To quote a song I like, I am not who I was, I am new.

This has gotten me to thinking; are we misusing our currency? Or worse, using currency that is no longer accepted? I think that we all go through points in our life when we are using a tape measure to evaluate ourself that was made to measure an NBA all-star, or trying to shop at Walmart with the leftover Rupees from our recent Indian holiday. Your height is disproportionately low because the scale wasn't made for you. The currency isn't accepted because it wasn't made to work there. Consider the passage below.

I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.^d 4Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, 5so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.

6In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you. 7If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well. 8If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift for showing kindness to others, do it gladly.

9Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. 10Love each other with genuine affection,^e and take delight in honoring each other. 11Never be lazy, but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically.^f 12Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying. 13When God’s people are in need, be ready to help them. Always be eager to practice hospitality.

14Bless those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them. 15Be happy with those who are happy, and weep with those who weep. 16Live in harmony with each other. Don’t be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don’t think you know it all!

17Never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. 18Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone. (Romans 12:4-18, emphasis added)

I'd like to use the bold text as my five qualifiers to evaluate social currency.

1.) Don’t think you are better than you really are. Now, I'm saying that there is no way to avoid doing this over your lifetime, but when you notice, STOP! You are only you. By all means, be the best you, but don't forget that there will always be people better and worse off than you. Measure yourself by the faith (the substance of things hoped for) that God has given you. This is separate from what you wish you were but know you're just NOT.

This is a bell curve. In psychology, (in research really!) you want EVERY piece of research you conduct to produce numbers that make one of these, because this is what we call "normal distribution" - it shows how MOST people find themselves in the middle. The VAST majority, with only a few people (</> 2 sd's from the mean) being in the lowest or highest range.

2.) God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. In keeping with this knowledge that talent and gifts are on a spectrum, and we are likely not at the end of it for everything, I do believe that YOU are two standard deviations above the mean in something. My idea is that when you find the thing that you are EXCELLENT at, this, is your currency. This is/these things ARE what you were made for; a unique cocktail of things exist in you to change the world. Find them.

3.) Don’t just pretend to love others. When you feel good about yourself and where you are, your (social currency) stock is high, it is EASY to love others, because they're helping you to feel good. It is difficult to love others when you feel like crap, but it benefits the giver of love to perform. To reference Paul Zak again, even the simple acts of sending a facebook message or chatting with someone we love increases oxytocin levels in the body (sometimes drastically!). Oxytocin is part of the brain's reward system (it makes you feel good).

4.) Bless those who persecute you. I am using this particular quote, but really the whole paragraph is helpful. I'm going to summarise it by saying that this represents the importance of community, and how your input can change not only the environment you, and everyone close to you experiences, but also your social currency. The object of this is to create less contention and more peace. When you add value to a space in any way, your stock goes up. 

5.) Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone. Tell me this: have you ever noticed how difficult it is to live in peace with everyone? The extreme of this is being a "yes man," but I don't think this is what the passage describes. Even the wording suggests that this is not even always possible, but the previous paragraph warns that we ought not to think that we know it all. Sometimes, I think, that means trying to see things from another perspective, even the one most abrasive to us. How will this help your currency? If you are the peace maker, if you can have conflict without defamation or aggression then people will gravitate to you. You will be sought out. Also, you'll be a less disrupted individual - everyone's chaos is not yours, and you don't have to take it on. You'll still notice it, but when you keep a peace mantra going on internally, I think you'll find that the external starts trying to catch up. Stock: raised.

So, are you trying to buy with Rupees in a store using Dollars? Are you measuring yourself with an appropriate scale? What is your social currency? Are you striving to refine it, if you're aware of what it is, or to discover it if you aren't? I'm excited to start my nearest Monday with this change in perspective. I am not who I was. I am new.

Miracles

An overcast day in paradise.

Why! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the
water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love--or sleep in the bed at night with
any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds--or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down--or of stars shining so quiet
and bright,
Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring;
Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best--
mechanics, boatmen, farmers,
Or among the savans--or to the soiree--or to the opera,
Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery,
Or behold children at their sports,
Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old
woman,
Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial,
Or my own eyes and figure in the glass;
These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring--yet each distinct, and in its place.

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the
same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women,
and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

To me the sea is a continual miracle;
The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships,
with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

- Walt Whitman

You're right HERE.

I've had a week. I think I've referred to the last twelve months as "THE worst year of my life" at least a couple times this week, to my mum and my best friend. Now, I am a really upbeat person usually; I even get teased for being impossibly positive, so when I have moments like this, it is difficult for my loved ones to watch. This week I looked at my thigh as I attempted to get up from a laying position stomach down, and what used to be my athletic, toned sculpture of a thigh was a pathetic, dangling, skinny thing. I went to the doctor on Thursday and he said that my Vastus Medialis muscle - the thigh muscle on the inside of my injured leg, was not activating due to the month of inactivity before my surgery. He said that I was about two weeks behind his expectations at this point. Directly after seeing him, I saw my physical therapist and she hooked me up to electrical stimulation, attempting to stimulate the muscle. She turned up the current - once, twice, three times. Her hand is resting on my thigh as she waits for some response from my muscle to indicate that the current has stimulated the muscle and it is contracting. She said "Jane, I'm getting nothing" and turned the machine higher. I can feel the tingling, it's uncomfortable-bordering-painful, but I am hurting much more on the emotional level. REALLY? NOTHING? I am a horse of a woman and in four short weeks my leg is gone?

The funny thing is, I've read ALL the literature I can find on ACL injuries, surgeries and the process of rehabilitation. I know everything from the best case scenario (when you can finish your final athletic season with your team) to the worst case scenarios (where they miscalculate the length or angle of the implant and it has to be redone, arthritis, second and third surgeries, etc). I know that I am at neither extreme of the spectrum. I know that the process is slow, and can be really slow. None of this is what I came here to blog to you about though. So I had a bad week. So I cried and said that this has been the worst year of my life. This happened. This happened days ago. I'm telling you about it. What I've come here to say today is that while emotionally, and in terms of my esteem of what I've accomplished and have achieved this year, I have felt as though I've fallen short, some grossly important things have happened with me this year. This has been my transition year. My theme for the year was "It's time to admit to your dreams," but what I learned this year was that I needed to get more comfortable in my own skin. All my friends know me for really encouraging them to be who they are; I absolutely LOVE the diversity of a different opinion and way of doing things and I HATE people to try to be something that they are not and expect me to buy into it. I celebrate the differences of people's unique mindset and personal input everyday (it is even a part of my job!) but somewhere along the line, I forgot to do it for myself in terms of my emotions.

Last year, in my last semester of gradschool, we were taking the Meyers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI), a personality test, and our professor was trying to get us all involved in the process. He made us line up at the front of our lecture theatre so we could see where we all fell; you know, get to know each other as colleagues and classmates. I remember for the spectrum of preference Thinking versus Feeling I placed so far on the T side that I was the last person in the line. There was a lady in our line up who passed me as we took our positions, she moving further to the Feeling side and me moving further on the Thinking side. She laughed and said "Ha ha ha! Jane, you would be all the way on the T side eh? Heh! NO heart!" I don't think I responded at all to her speech, and the funny thing is, that was a poor interpretation of the scale - it is measuring  the preference you have for making decisions; whether you prefer to act based on feelings first, or on a consideration of all the facts, not on your capacity for feeling or thinking. Nevertheless, I considered her statement. She of course was a well meaning lady, I'm sure she had no ill intention as she made her light-hearted comment but I considered how fundamentally wrong such a statement was. I have no heart? ME? I realised that something about the way I was coming across was devoid of any real emotion, that to the untrained eye, to the ignorant bystander, to the deaf, I didn't have any feelings.  How horrible! I thought.

This was something I'd been already seeing and working on, but her comment kind of confirmed my fears, that I was so busy achieving and being/striving endlessly toward excellent that I was not present in today, I was not even being seen in one of the ways that I fully exist - as an emotional being. I vowed to change that. For me, one of the first steps I took in this direction was to choose people that meant the world to me, to choose people I trusted and then really make the risky step to need them. For the first time in my life I began to depend on the emotional support of my beloveds. I began to include more I-am-sads, more I-am-having-a-bad-days in my dialogues. I cried in the presence of other human beings for the first time in maybe  a decade.

Now, this is my story. You all are witnesses to a massive transition in the life of this Jane. I have been surprising my loved ones with more honesty about my feelings and more expression and I have been growing so so much. I feel MUCH better; lighter. I had become so wound up, like an extended sling shot, forever poised for the next target, but that is only good sometimes. If I am to be a real hunter - i.e. someone active and functional in this world, as opposed to forever in search of the next (a trainee playing target practice), then I don't aim at a bull's eye, I aim at my prey. I extend my sling, shoot and capture, then I walk again until it is time to hunt some more. This is a funny metaphor from a vegetarian, but never mind that. There is a time for everything under the sun. My meditation this week is on the idea of going ahead and letting your self out. There is, I believe a REALLY good reason why you are the way you are. I believe that you can benefit the world around you the very best, the most optimised way when you maintain that truth to who you are. People like you more, you grow faster, you learn more. That isn't even mentioning yet how beautiful you are when you just let your guard down enough to be truly seen.

My challenge to you this week is to trust someone in your life enough to allow them to see you a little clearer. Talk about a dream you have. Make a statement of your feelings. The interesting thing is you may find that someone in your life already sees this in you, but your protecting it robs you of the opportunity to revel in the fact that someone sees you clearly and loves you, perhaps even loves you for it. There's a neuromodulator called oxytocin which scientists including Paul Zak, PhD., have identified as having a major role in relationships. Particularly, they have recently supported its role in morality and trust amongst humans. It has even been shown to make some animal mothers more nurturing. His suggestion to a better world: give eight hugs a day to boost its levels in your body and improve the person you are. Mine: find God, love others and be who you really are. 

Be Afflicted

Source

Today I feel sad. Today I have a trigger in the tragedy of someone else's life, nevertheless, the sorrow is mine. What fool came up with the idea to compare your personal struggles to those of others and contrast them for severity? "There are many people who have it so much worse than you!" That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Who feels good that others are hurting worse than them? Or, what help is it to consider that the wretchedness you feel is not even justified, because look, here person X who just got hit by a bus also has no insurance and twelve kids? Bull crap.

This is my meditation at the moment. I began writing this post about a week ago, and titled it from an earlier verse (4:9) of the chapter below, but here, today this is where I am focusing my heart:

Warning about Self-Confidence
13Look here, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.” 14How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. 15What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.” 16Otherwise you are boasting about your own plans, and all such boasting is evil.
17Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.

(James 4:13-17 NLT)

Today, all I'm saying is that you never know what can happen, and nothing is guaranteed. Live your life everyday. Know what you ought to do and then do it.