Worthiness & the Law of Attraction
(Excerpted from Conversations with Mom: An Aging Baby Boomer, in Need of an Elder, Writes to Her Dead Mother)
By Betsy Robinson
Dear Mom,
Everything is basically okay, and I seem to have a problem with that. When I was in my twenties and spent all those years in therapy, my therapist kept telling me that my thoughts weren’t things, that thinking the thoughts I thought didn’t hurt others—which was my fear. Gradually I came to accept that and stopped being so afraid of my thoughts. And as you know, I’ve had my share of bad ones.
Although I’ve never been in debt, I worry about destitution.
Although I’ve consistently gotten better and better jobs over the years and even had a situation where I worked from home and had complete privacy, I’ve worried about being trapped in an office and having my life taken away.
For my first fifty-four years, I had this “very strong knowing” that I was going to die at fifty-five. And I didn’t.
All this proves what my therapist was telling me and tells me that the Law of Attraction is, at the most basic level, bullshit. If my thoughts were things that caused reality, I’d be broke, in an office, and dead.
I don’t know why I’ve been so lucky, and maybe if I believed in the Law of Attraction, I would believe that despite my lousy thoughts, I must subconsciously feel so powerfully worthy, that that is why life has been so benign.
The trouble is I don’t believe that. And I feel unworthy. I don’t know why so many times, those around me have been cut down, and I’ve walked away unscathed. I don’t know why, despite my chronic sense of precariousness, I’ve always been safe. I do believe in karma, or Newton’s Third Law (for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction). So perhaps my actions are smarter than my thoughts. Nevertheless, I feel unworthy and extraordinarily lucky. I wish I just felt lucky and grateful.
What do you think about all this, Mom? What do you think about your own life—getting married to a lunatic, running for your life, being broke and drunk with a bunch of kids, and then turning the whole thing around, plus having a rich brother to support you when the leukemia and emphysema finally flattened you? Do you think you were worthy? Or just lucky?
Love, B
∞
Dearest B,
Sometimes you are such a poop face. So blunt. You really must learn to soften that, my sweetness. It is quite off-putting, but I will attempt to answer.
In all honesty, no, I did not feel worthy. But I made up for my lack of worthiness with ferocity—ferocity for life. I grew up in another time, a time when it was unthinkable that a woman, let alone a Jewish woman, would say she wanted to be a copywriter. Yet when I walked into my first agency interview and saw all the women typing, the ferocity took over. And fortunately it charmed the man who hired me to be one of the first women writers in advertising. Your father and I connected through mutual ferocity. His charmed me, and, for a time, he seemed to love mine. Ferocity made me flee with you kids, and ferocity got me sobriety and a job, and more jobs. But eventually, I believe, ferocity killed me. Because beneath ferocity is terror. And terror kills.
I wish I could have taught you to feel worthy, but I didn’t have it in me to teach. I cannot teach it to you now. Finding that is your job. But I can tell you that there are no accidents. It is not a mistake that you are alive and well. Nor is it luck. Can you believe that? Can you believe that an incomprehensible matrix of forces has created the fact that you are alive and well, and your own actions are a part of that, but hardly all? Can you believe that something that is you but is much more than you could be intelligent and compassionate and intentionally kind? Why is it so for you and not those who suffer unspeakable injustices? That I can’t answer. Some people say it’s karma from other lives, some believe it’s “God’s will.” Some try to give the suffering purpose in order to tell a story about it that makes human sense. I can do none of those things.
All I can tell you is that you are who you are because it is right. You have the life you have because you are part of something much bigger than you can imagine, and the part you play requires the life you have. It has nothing to do with being worthy or unworthy. It simply is. My life simply was. I did the best I could. You are doing the same, are you not? Let that be enough.
Love, Mom
About the Author:
At the age of sixty, editor and writer Betsy Robinson craved an elder to advise her about her unemployment, her fears, and her shame. Who better to call on than her dead mother . . . who had once before made her spirit presence known.
In her new book, Conversations with Mom: An Aging Baby Boomer, in Need of an Elder, Writes to Her Dead Mother, Robinson and her dead mother continue the writing partnership and collaboration that forged their unique friendship.Contact the writer at BetsyRobinson-writer.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment