Shift – A Game About Love, Fear and Life

Whenever I’ve hosted Thanksgiving, I’ve read Marianne Williamson’s quote. I love it and will read it over and over again every year. I’ve even brought it to friend’s houses and forced them to hear it.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.’ We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we subconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

– From A RETURN TO LOVE

This year I asked the group to switch things up. Instead of just saying what we were thankful for, I wanted us to each acknowledge ourselves. What did we do for ourselves this year that was beneficial? How did we support ourselves? This exercise proved interesting for some who had issues with acknowledging just themselves when this was supposed to be a holiday about thanking others. I think I would have had the same response a few years back.

Every year I used to pick a word to work on, to be conscious of for the year. I’ve had Trust and Forgiveness and Play yet I think I spent at least 3 years on Self-love. It was impossible for me to consider myself first and to acknowledge myself. Self-love was a concept I couldn’t get. I might have found it narcissistic however, I think the truth is, I just found it difficult.

This Thanksgiving, I chose to thank myself. I believed in myself and I kept going when I could have quit. I saw my vision and believed it was worth sharing. I truly am thankful that I was able to listen and follow my own path and stick with it for 4? years.

I don’t feel selfish speaking about my accomplishments now. I feel grateful that I can be my own champion and that finally, I am able to give thanks to me.

“And above all else, to thine own self be true. . .” Shakespeare

Man oh man…I am tired… exhausted. And, yet, I continue. Guess my pain tolerance and ability to juggle plates can be seen as impressive. I’m aware that I don’t want to be one of those supermoms that gets everything done at the cost of losing herself. Yet I persist. I had kids this week- on loan. And they were great- so easy. I mean at 11 and 13, I could do things like drop them off at Harry Potter because it gave me 2hrs and 45 min to get stuff done. Anyway, it was interesting to have kids and keep the house, feed us, take interviews with the newspaper while I waited in line at carpool and deal with the hiccups of getting a game to market days before Thanksgiving.

So much going on. So much potential for a nervous breakdown. And, ironically, this last week or so, I’ve been faced with different, hard decisions… I’d say challenges yet I’d rather call them opportunities (this is what my teacher Dorothy would have us call it and I must credit my source). So opportunities a plenty and my true desire was to crawl under the covers and not deal. However, one of the great things about being so absolutely involved (doesn’t that sound better than overwhelmed?- speak in the positive Nikki) is that there’s no room for indecision. There’s no time for me to screw around and not make things work.

In all these situations that on there own would have been monumental for me in the past, I was forced to just face them head on. I noticed from the scraps of paper in my car that I approached each situation in a similar way. I wrote down “What do I want?” I ignored the drama and focused on, “What is the outcome I want? How can this be better? and How can we make it work? And, in every situation, I really have to say that having walked straight through it, the other side was actually so much better than I could have anticipated.

Things have gone really well given the circumstances. And maybe that’s what makes things so worth having.. the getting there. Besides getting picked up by the press and a number of other amazing feats, I held the game this Saturday. The game that I spent 4 years of my life thinking about, actually came back from the manufacturer in a shiny box waiting to be unwrapped.

I can’t explain what it feels like to unwrap a present that I’ve been waiting 4 years to open. Think I already got what I asked for this holiday.

Camus said, “Live to the point of tears.”

And I think I am really understanding what that means.
Though today is Thursday, I feel like Sunday was years ago. We’ve been up, we’ve been down, and we’ve even been snowed in.

I have found myself experiencing tears of joy because of people we’ve met, accomplishments we have recognized, and most importantly because I’m so overwhelmed and impressed by all we have done and are doing. Likewise, I have found myself experiencing tears of of exhaustion, frustration, and probably even a little self-pity.

But in the end I have lived. And I’ve lived fully. I have lived to the point of tears.

Some movies are good, some movies aren’t – while some leave you laughing and others leave you changed. 

I didn’t walk out of Jarhead raving about what a good movie it was, or how hot Jake Gyllehaal was, but more trying to find the lesson to carry with me.

Interestingly enough, when "Desert Shield" and "Desert Storm" occured, I was in second grade, and really only have one memory of talking about it with my parents – and then as soon as it began, it ended.  That was my impression of war.

At 23, I have a much different perspective of war than I did at age eight.  I now know people who are fighting for us – a highschool boyfriend, a close friend, and even my step-brother.  As I have heard it compared, this is my generation’s Vietnam.  ("Every war is different, every war is the same." Swoff)

I’m so scared of violence and fighting.  And I will say time and time again that peace is the answer.  I believe Gandhi when he said, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind."  I, more than anything, support our troops who are over there doing their job, protecting us.

I have no first hand experience with war.  So I can’t watch a movie like that and say that is how it is, or isn’t.  I have no judgement.

But much of what the movie says is still echoing in my head. 
And many of the images will stay with me.  (seeing the flames of the burning oil fields, Swoff says, "The Earth is bleeding.") 

But mostly what stays with me is the mirror, the reflection of our past in our present.  The movie speaks of President Bush (our current President’s father), the toll of war on our psyche, ("For most problems the marine is issued a solution. If ill, go to sickbay. If wounded, call corpsman. If dead, report to graves registration. If losing his mind, however, no standard solution exists." Swoff) and the fact that "we are still in the desert."  (Swoff)

If LIFE is a GAME, THESE are the RULES

 1. You will receive a body

2. You will be presented with lessons

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons

4. A lesson is repeated until learned

5. Learning does not end

6. "There" is no better than here

7. Others are only mirrors of you

8. What you make of your life is up to you

9. Your answers lie inside of you

10. You will forget all of this at birth

- by Cherie Carter-Scott, Ph.D.

cool stuff.

Feel like ranting a bit. Still annoyed that there’s no national coverage of the Hurricane that hit South Florida. It’s 11 days after the hurricane hit and people will be without power for a bit longer- they say it might be until the 21st or later. I can’t get through to my Dad who lives in the Grove because they have no power or phones. I’m sure he’s fine… it’d just be nice to get some info on what’s going on down there.

I did find a site with an article http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Nine_days_after_Wilma_Southern_Florida_1102.html.
It’s just interesting what information we receive.

For example, I stayed up late Monday night reading about Referendum C and D (and the other bills) so I could make an informed decision. Did you know that if you look hard enough (in SF this actually came in the mail) you can find explanations of the bills and the arguments for and against them. A 6 word ad just doesn’t cut it. Especially when it’s so easy to alter the true intent of some of these issues with words like, education and health care.

Anyway- I looked up where I needed to vote. I was actually on 3 or 4 sites including the Boulder County Clerks that told you where the polling locations where and none of them said that this was a mail in only vote. Turns out, I could only go to the clerk’s office to cast my vote if I hadn’t through the mail. I happened to move recently and never received a mail in ballot. So I along with hundreds of others, went down there thinking the process would be simple. The traffic was backed up down the street and out onto Arapahoe. I had to park at a nearby grocery and walk there. The lines were long and it turns out that people from even Longmont had all been sent here to cast their votes.

Only problem was, to be able to vote, I had to fill out another form because I had moved. People on line said they had been sitting there for over 2 hours. 3 hours and the polls would close. There were so many of us frustrated because we hadn’t factored in the 2-3 hours for processing. I had dinner guests coming over and although I pushed dinner back an hour, I finally had to make the choice to leave without casting my vote.

I’m griping and I know it. I just wish the information was made public. How many of us went on line and created our day going to our local polling place because none of the websites said any different?

What’s up with our government? Information is power and I guess we need to really seek it out on our own so we truly know what’s going on. We just got to be on it.

Add another word to the dictionary: girlcott.
I think it is fantastic — or at least a fantastic cause to support.

We’ve all seen the shirts –
        "With These Who Needs Brains…"
        "I hope you can make more then I can spend…"
        "Last night I had a nightmare I was a brunette.."
    not to mention worse (that will be left unmentioned).

So now a group of girls are starting a "girlcott" against Abercrombie & Fitch, so they will stop selling the fore mentioned shirts and appologize.

We see these messages when we turn the TV on or listen to the radio – and now we are willing to wear these messages across our chests.

I’m not gonna lie, I think some of the trendy screen printed shirts are cute – I even own an "everybody loves a midwestern girl," "keep the spirit alive, high five," or even one with a little pig asking us to "hug me, don’t eat me".  But I don’t think I could ever consider wearing a shirt that could possibly offend another.

It’s not that I hope to see Abercrombie & Fitch go bankrupt or close – but maybe to think twice about the message that they are sending out – especially to our younger generations.  Wasn’t it just a couple of years ago when A&F was in trouble for having more close than skin in their catalog’s?  Apparently they believe in the idea of "no press is bad press."

Why don’t we spend our time, efforts, and money building each other up instead of degrading one another?  Let’s become more powerful role models than these shirts and continue to spread the word.
(but my favorite shirt i’ve seen so far is "save the drama for your mama." lets live by that.)