From age ten on, I learned how to squeeze, jostle, and sneak my way into the spotlight. I had siblings who were instant stars to everyone because the cameras loved them — handsomer, more athletic, brighter, sweeter, funnier, sights for sore eyes, as comfy as an old pair of socks. At age ten, I developed a fear of obscurity and discovered ways of grabbing some of the kleig lights. The one that worked in a bigger way than any others was going for the gold in academics. I wasn’t the brightest bulb in the family, but worked harder than anyone (and cheated some) to make the grade. In adulthood, I quickly transferred going for the honor roll to going for promotions at work. Over the decades, I went from a regular employee with no title to earning titles like Supervisor, Manager, Director, Vice President, and Chief Learning Officer.
A major challenge of the senior years of life is how to let go of hanging on to a lifetime in the spotlight. It feels like stripping for an ex-exhibitionist who now has nothing but flab to show instead of toned muscles. It’s embarrassing, it’s humiliating, it’s downright depressing. So long as I think I am my title and my achievements. What’s a workaholic to do when he runs out of work, when no one recognizes his work? Why, he works harder, of course!
This will be my condition, as long as I’m frozen in the habits of a lifetime. I have a window of optimism in the words of David Richo, from his book “When Love Meets Fearm Becoming Defense-Less and Resource-Full” (Paulist Press, 1997) that goes as follows:
“In the spiritual view the void is also presided over by the Holy Spirit that brooded over the original waters of chaos to bring about the creation. The Holy Spirit is the female power counterpoised to the trickster — male energy. The female dove broods over the unhatched young in order to bring them to life. During this gap, the old is dying but the new has not yet been born and our limited consciousness does not even know if it will be born.”
My entire life was about working hard to prove my worth. “Lazy” is one word that never ever felt insulting to me because I don’t even know what it means. I am also beyond feeling proud I am not lazy because I don’t know any other way to be than to work.
The problem has never been whether to continue working or not, but whether to work for the spotlight of recognition and appreciation or be able to do without the perks of feedback and acknowledgement. It took a while for me to adjust to a life without titles, but continuing to work where no one says anything good or bad feels like the equivalent of being in total isolation.
My choice is to rattle people’s cages and demand a yay or nay or else, or to make my ascent to obscurity, where what matters is what is beyond and outside of publicity. All my life, I wanted my work to be a form of service, not realizing that at least half of that service was to the dysfunctional, controlling, fear-driven ego. The other half was inbred, authentic, and comes from a pure place, a natural God-given drive to find my relatedness to others.
Now, I am entertaining this question:
What if there has been a Divine Plan all along that saw me through bouncing around like a pingpong ball from achievement to recognition? What if all that thrashing about that fed my ego served a grander plan beyond my ego? What if the absence of spotlight and feedback remains part of a grander plan? What if my ego noise has also been accommodated by that plan, one that would follow its own course, whether or not I behave like a pig squealing its way to obscurity and enlightenment?
