Marianne Williamson’s Miracle Thought of the Day reminded me this morning of the power of prayer and blessing. Being that I am going to an interview today, I thought it was a good time for a prayer. 
Dear Yah,
May Your spirit guide my words and actions today.
While I could easily become anxious and let the hamster run on its wheel churning over things to say/not to say,
I know that that is wasted energy.
Instead, may my focus be outward towards others.
May I see ways that I can be a blessing to others–to everyone I meet, including the man I will be interviewing with.
I know that some opportunities You put in my life are better than others. I think taking the job I have right now might not have been the best idea. Yes, there have been benefits, but I think I pushed for it too much. I don’t know that I was truly listening to You.
During my interview today, may they hear what they need to hear to make their decision easy.
If they decide I’m the best candidate for the job, please make it obvious to me, what my response to their offer should be. Help me see and hear what I need in order to make the best decision for me.
Thank You, Yah, for this opportunity. Help me handle it in a way that best serves You.
I’ve been doing some thinking lately about following my dreams. I posted here a few months ago about how I had reached a point where I was almost afraid to dream. I have been a dreamer all of my life. Being almost at a mid-life point, I can see that I have been successful in making many of my dreams come true. Each successful dream lead to the creation of a new dream. It wasn’t that I was unhappy with how my dream came to life or that I needed another rush — it was more that I was ready to take the next step, to progress further.
Three years ago I thought I had brought a 10-year-old dream to life when I accepted a job with a textbook publisher. My dream was to write my own math textbook series. As I learned more about the business, I knew that the well-known textbooks were published by a team of authors, mostly people well-known in the field of math education with lots of letters after their names. While they helped conceive the series, a much larger team of worker bees were in charge of making it happen. While I don’t have the credentials (and don’t aspire to earn them) to be an author, the job I accepted allowed me to be a worker bee who had a little bit of creative input.
This job, the job I thought was my dream job, hasn’t worked out as I had hoped. I have been pushed farther and farther away from the creative process and not quite into the role of drone bee. While worker bees have a role, a function — the drone bee is given only one real job and, upon completion, dies. (Ok, so that’s quite a bit overly dramatic for my scenario, but I was trying to stick with the bee comparison.)
Because my dream didn’t work out as expected, and had a negative effect on the non-work aspects of my life, I had felt that my ability to bring forth positive dreams had dried up. Yes, I know how silly that sounds even as I type this. I imagine having a magic lamp that has run out of wishes, but tries its best to create something when you ask for yet another.
Since I didn’t trust myself to dream, I moved into the habit of looking for anything that appeared to be better in any way. When I saw job openings posted, I would turn myself into a pretzel to write a good cover letter for my resume to make it sound like I had all the skills and talents needed and I would be perfect for the job. I would convince myself that the job was the perfect job and well suited to my old dream — when, in fact, I had morphed my dream to fit the job description. It took applying for many different jobs and much soul searching before I came to this realization.
I am determined now to take a closer look at new opportunities that come my way, hold them up to the light and ask, “Does this match my dream?” My dream is still to create a math textbook (etextbook, in this new era) series. I have applied for a couple of jobs that may fit the bill — one more so than the other. One job opportunity I have decided not to pursue because I realized I could try and force it to fit my dream, but it really didn’t. Another job, that I applied to months ago, thankfully contacted me to let me know they decided not to hire. I think I would have been a strong candidate for the job, though it would have definitely required me to turn myself into a pretzel.
Over the years, I have learned that dreams are trick business. You really have to know what you want before you rub the magic lamp. Even then, you can never predict the outcome. If the outcome is not as you thought, it’s not time to give up. It’s time to clarify, focus, create a more crystal clear image of your dream before you rub the lamp again. I refined my dream and I rubbed the lamp. We’ll see what the genie cooks up this time.
Men talk with big voices. Men are not taught about the “indoor voice”. They, in general*, have no trouble voicing anything they feel needs to be said.
A friend of mine told me about the book Liquid Light of Sex. The title of the book is deceiving. This book isn’t about sex. It is about the difference between genders as we transition in mid-life. I mention this book because of one interesting fact my friend and I discussed and it has to do with voices. Women, in general, have touble with the voice chakra. Where men’s throat chakras are generally open, women’s are more constricting. Woman have a hard time speaking their truth, speaking what needs to be said.
As I sit here in Panera being bombarded by the voices of men who sit 10-15 feet away from me, I can’t help but be reminded of this fact.
Why do woman have a harder time finding their voices? Is it a societal thing? I know many women who have been admonished for speaking too loud or too anxiously to too shrill, or too…any number of things. I don’t know that men receive these same messages. Lower, deeper notes are, in general, more calming than higher, soprano notes. Is it the sound that people react to rather than the voice?
The men in Panera have deep voices. While the notes are pleasant, being surrounded by them is disconcerting. It feels as if there’s no way to get away from the voices.
When woman find their voice, it can be sarcastic, annoyed, or defensive. I have experienced this myself. I have said a lot of things to the overly, loud men in my mind and it has all been affected with a whiny tone. It’s not as simple or straight forward as, “Your voices are quite loud this morning. I have to sit here in order to plug in my computer, but I feel like I’m part of your conversation. I want you to have your privacy. Could you possibly turn down the volume a little?” No, the voices in my head are saying things like, “Do you even CARE that you are disrupting EVERYONE in this cafe?”
Luckily, the cafe is at a lull and I found another place to sit with a small wall that separates me from the men’s voices and I can actually hear myself think. Besides, it really is MY problem, not theirs.
Women’s voices may be pinched or defensive to begin with because of staying quiet most of the time. We aren’t used to saying what we need to say, so it comes out with a lot of pent up emotion behind it. The water has been rising and the dam finally bursts. I remember learning this from my childhood. My mom rarely told my father when she disagreed with him. She had no voice. Then something would happen that would be the tip of the iceberg and she would blow. Afterwards she would give my father, and sometimes the rest of us, the silent treatment It would leave my father very confused. All he knew was that she was overreacting about something very minor and he had no option of discussing it with her to discover the real problem. Nothing could be resolved.
I picked up this style of non-communication from my mother, though I have made attempts to find my voice sooner, temper myself if I reach a point where I blow, and calm myself enough to discuss the situation afterwards. I still have a problem expressing myself in the moment in a positive, non-reactive way, but I’m working on it.
*Throughout this post I have discussed women and men in a general way. I have tried to sprinkle in “in general” when I make statements that sound like all men or all women are a certain way. I know that there are exceptions to the rule and that maybe the group of women who have trouble finding their voices in a positive way is smaller than I think it is. I sense it is something that is evolving.
The past few mornings I’ve woken up to snippets of dreams. I can’t quite capture the full dream, I just get a scene or an image, or, in one case, a few bars of a song.
The piece that is stuck whirling around in my head is the song — “Money makes the world go ’round, the world go ’round, the world go ’round. Money makes the world go ’round, that frightful, dreadful sound…” And there it ends. I know that “frightful, dreadful” are not the actual lyrics, but that is what my head is singing.
Often times I have pieces of songs show up in my head for no apparent reason. Sometimes my head gets the lyrics right, sometimes it doesn’t. But when it changes the words, it’s for a good reason. Just like there’s a perfectly good reason a purple elephant shows up in a dream, there’s a good reason why my head changed the words to this song….I just don’t know what the reason is.
There is a snippet of dream that I think the song is tied to. I was watching what appeared to be a scene from a sit-com. While the daughter was out of the room, the mom was “stealing” $15,000 of the daughter’s money — they had been playing a game like Monopoly, so this was only play money. She was going to put the money away for some later time when she vowed she wouldn’t spend it on paying bills. She would buy something they had always wanted. In the dream, I somehow knew that she would put this play money away and, to her surprise, years later, it would have turned into real money. I think the “money makes the world go ’round” song was playing in the background. I know that the daughter came back in and the mother was trying to hide the money she had taken, but I don’t remember anything after that.
Sometimes I can interpret my dreams if I talk about them and try to put myself in all of the roles. As the mother, I have playfully taken something with absolutely no value. I have good intentions for what I have taken and, unbeknownst to me, what I have taken will turn into something of value in a few years. Hmmm…I think that would be a good dream, until I think of the “frightful, dreadful” words to the song in the background. The undertone of the sit-c0m scene was one of greed. The family didn’t believe the mother that she would truly use the money for good. I don’t know if they were concerned about her taking it. They knew it had no value, yet they were concerned. It was like the mother was falling back into a bad habit. I remember “hearing” them thinking “There she goes again.”
Am I taking something that has no value…and convincing myself it is ok to take this thing? And is this thing I’m taking leading to something dreadful? Is it causing me pain in the long run?
Interesting. The song has cleared out of my head, for the moment. I think I am on to something, but I think I want to hum on it today and see what comes up. I’ll update this post if I discover anything.
