I didn't apply for the job, because I realized, after reading the listing, that the hours are not evenings and weekends, but include evenings and weekends. The job is leading nature walks around county parks for senior citizens and stay-at-home-folks who like to be talked to about nature-y stuff. Mostly these walks take place during the daytime, but sometimes they take place on evenings and weekends. Of course, that wouldn't work since I am the child watcher, which I prefer anyway.
So thinking back to my earlier thought conclusion that my life is ugly when viewed through the lens of an ambitious, career-oriented person. First off, today i really don't care at all if it is viewed by someone else as ugly, it's my life and i don't have to apologize to anyone for anything.
I think, that I felt that my own husband viewed my life that way (he doesn't).
Yesterday I asked him, "How will you connect with all people? This is the Shift, and if you don't expand yourself to be connected with all humans, you will miss out and you will continue the rest of your life shackled."
His face so beautiful when he receives the truth, radiates a sprite-ish smile, like a child who has been tickled, I laugh. He is bent over, reaching into the fridge, looking up to his left side, so his face is even pinker than usual as the friendly creases appear, but without the laugh I expect in return.
"I can't. It's not normal. It's not natural. It's not who I am. Read Cormac McCarthy and you'll understand who I am."
Later that night we are clearing dinner and Old Nebercracker (think Eeyore) is watching 60 Minutes, during the commercial breaks of some football game of course, and the story is about the innate bias of baby humans. The experiment was elegant. Offer baby (age appeared to be around 6-months) cheerios or graham crackers. Baby chooses cheerios, for example. Then show two different colored cat puppets, each eating either cheerios or graham crackers, to baby. Offer baby to play with one or the other cat. Baby chooses the cat that eats cheerios. Next show baby the cat that ate graham crackers trying to open a box. Two toy dogs, each wearing different colored shirts, either help or hurt the cat. Which toy dog would baby like to play with? The one that hurt the cat that ate graham crackers! The researchers concluded that it meant that the babies wanted to punish the cat who chose a food unlike their choice. The way the blue-shirt-dog punished was by stomping on the cat, who flew through the air before landing on his head. I wonder if babies thought that looked like fun, rather than punishment, but that is not the point. Babies prefer people who like the same things as them. This is a survival mechanism, no doubt, to be appearing at such a young age.
Erik did not miss the opportunity to link this baby study to what we were talking about earlier. That people cannot connect with all of humanity. I told him it was evidence that babies were corrupting our society. Either way, I see his point.
And still I wonder, does this mean I won't make it through the Shift? Pretty sure this means it's a no-go. But I always imagined that I would be one of the ones left behind. I start to look at my life and think that I see patterns that show a tendency toward darkness, like somehow I strove for authenticity and artistry and sublime tendencies and goodlove, but in the end I came up short. "Nah, you just go on," I feel like I'm saying to all my enlightened soul brothers and sisters, "I'll be fine right here." Because I always felt the most connected to the earth dwellers, the mud slitherers, the moles and weasels, the creeping sort.
And this is the point in my thought process where I feel deeply connected with my Catholic Spanish matriline. My mom's mom is a lifelong Catholic and as she is dying she feels that she will never go to heaven because she is such a horrible sinner. How different is *my* thought process from that? Pretty much the same thing. Hmmm... Now I see it, but can I step out of it?
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