The Greatest Thing By Far...

The greatest thing by far, is to have a command of metaphor
Aristotle 330 B.C.

“Can you hear a distant drum

Bouncing on the laughter of a melody

And does the rhythm tell you ...come,come,come

Does your spirit do a dance to this symphony

Does it tell you that your heart is afire

Does it tell you that your pain is a liar

Does it wash away all your unlovely

And are you ready for a brand new discovery…”

Calypso Music, David Rudder

When David Rudder’s voice bounces on the laughter of a melody and his Calypso Music unmasks our pain as nothing more than an easily dismissed liar, his specific word choices deliver us all to highly personal, and yet universal awareness. There is that resonant “aha” of insight (read inner sight). All of a sudden we know something; we just ‘get it’. Rudder’s words, delivered on the rhythm of Calypso, are a distant drum resonating with and connecting to the “living vibration rooted deep within my Caribbean belly”. 

Rooted deep within my Caribbean belly...

If you have, in the ritual of the carnival masquerade, ever blessed your body with the sparkle of sequins and beads, feathers and frills; whether in the sliver of bikini triangles or under the easy yoke of traditional ole mas, you will know yourself to be a flesh and blood metaphor of “More”; embodying divine qualities: Joy, Freedom, Beauty, Power. 

Calypso’s metaphors pulse through every pore of the pilgrims in ecstasy. It is not all wanton flesh of a prodigal citizenry as perceived by moral pundits who do not speak, or reject her language. 

All of us, we cannot help but see, speak, think, write and live in metaphors every day. If we are open to witnessing the connections, the words  will serve primarily as vehicles to deliver us into meaning. And I am finding that everything in life has meaning.  

A metaphor is “living” when I hear it for the first time; or even if again and again, as though for the first time. I still love Tom Cochrane’s 1991 hit  “Life is a Highway” and Rascall Flatt’s cover of it in this century no less; but the powerful resonance of its metaphor has dwindled into little more than a cliché.  Perhaps it has succumbed to the expiry date of cultural irrelevance. Our highways are not quite the forever stretch on the islands, that they are on the continents.

Beyond gaming with words, metaphors are a way of understanding information and expressing “knowingness”. A way even, of transforming our lives: Christ spoke in metaphors; maybe in part, to protect his own life from those with ears that couldn’t hear.  Perhaps what we humans do with words, and name  “metaphors”, is built into an essential level of our expression; or maybe even existence.

One of my most colourful friends and sometimes-fisherman, divides people into two categories: Red fish, those who swim deeply in the sea of life and Carite, those who skim the surface.

The watery depth offered a calming contrast...

Snorkeling in Arnos Vale, Tobago this year, refreshed this metaphor for me. The watery depth offered a calming contrast against the stimulating activity of life on the surface.

Recently, when offered a choice between two fruit juices, a fresh 100% orange that was unsweetened, or a packaged 10% concoction, I heard myself say,  “I like it real, even if it’s sour… over something sweet and watered down any day.” The entire comment seemed to glow in the light of a metaphor crafted by unconscious intention; as if “oops” there goes a metaphor of Self transformation. It underscores my sincere preference for unconditional authenticity regarding just about everything in life.

All dis sugar can't be good for we...

Rudder’s more poetic metaphors in “Trini to de Bone”, declared something similar for our nation when he sang,

“Sweet sweet T and T,

All dis sugar can't be good for me…

Some people say, “God is a Trini”

Paradise and all convincing me …

But look a smart man gone wid we money

We still come out and mash up de party”

His calypso anthem hints at the consequences of saccharin side effects of using only the sweet taste of personal pleasure as the primary litmus test for our quality of life.

Something about a metaphor’s magic, has nothing to do then with its word-keys. There is a need for mutuality to bring it to life. The one who listens within, learns or “gets it” and can go on to craft and share the metaphor. In the first instance it is as though we are speaking to, with and for ourselves.

Metaphors are not the exclusive domain of ancient philosophers and genius Calypsonians. We earn transformational power by our sheer willingness to pay attention.  Personal insights sifted from the  metaphors we live and speak in everyday life, can and do instruct our self-awareness and growth. Culturally specific experiences are our customized lessons for embracing a deeper and more meaningful reality.

(Joanne is  also a children’s book author. Her 2010 releases  Pink Carnival! and The Donkey and the Race Horse are available online. http://meaningfulbooks.blogspot.com/)http://shecaribbean.com/

The Perfect 10 - Settling Old Scores

I believe every woman knows she is perfect, whether she externally matches the popular standard of  ‘Hot’ness or ‘Not’ness. A still, small voice of genuine self-love stirs her Sleeping Beauty. The thorny bramble of inherited lies and myths may dominate because she expects some (br)Other to champion her  pilgrimage through the fairytale. I believe every woman deserves to be a ‘10’ to at least one person in her life, and that person should be herself.

Tiger Woods dissed Elin’s  Swedish blonde-haired, blue-eyed 10-ness, and Rhianna’s West Indian perfection couldn’t slay the woman-eating dragon unleashed by her  rap prince. Physical beauty and authentic love are not mutually exclusive it’s true; but we persist in a dead end direction. We pamper the fruits and ignore the roots of our existence.

Growing up in the 60s around U.W.I., Trinidad, my playmates were children of expatriates. Their diverse cultures were an education; and none so  life affecting as that wave of media sweeping the globe: Playboy.  There they were, in Cecily and Amy’s family room. Stacked one on top the other, the magazines measured up to our (eight year old) ears.

I had never encountered or been told “No” to this specific, new thing but when Cecily unfolded the full color centerfolds, I debated the impressions unsettling my “innersense”. My own girlness reduced, the world felt unsafe for soft, pink beauty. I threatened to tell, but my friends didn’t flinch.  I called their bluff only to experience a deeper shock. Both their parents appeared nonchalant about the stack of naughtiness, “It’s natural dear. That’s all right.”

Staving off moral analysis, the negativity was rooted in the anxiety I felt.  Would I ever measure up to their parading perfection? These women the Daddies desired and the Mummies competed against for the oxygen of male attention, had nothing to do with my world. Why had they  been invited into our homes? Why no " Wife and Mother "  the standard of beauty in the home? I have wondered for decades.

Such over exposure, tacitly condoned even more today, plants seeds of profound insecurity into vulnerable childhood psyches; seeds that take many years of conscious self-inquiry to uncover and neutralize. And not before  we emulate as “natural” these trinket-sized icons of female power.

At thirteen, I pressed my brother’s best friend to rate my beauty on a scale of one to ten.

“You know how beautiful you are.”

I flip flopped inside. Maybe he didn’t want to hurt me? Or was it that he couldn’t handle me feeling too good about myself? Eventually, I got an ‘8’ and pretended to happily accept. A gnawing feeling persisted though.  Why wouldn’t he withhold a notch or two for the sake of his own pride and dominance? His admiring glances towards me were no secret. With further prodding I got him to rate a friend or two at a mere ‘6’, ‘7’ at best. Having won the competition I’d staged, I passionately argued in their defense. They were in my eyes, perfect ‘10’s. My insecurity prodded me into joining the game of feeling “more than” at the expense of my sisters.

Immaturity dictated throughout my twenties. My sense of self was derived mostly from ensuring that I never held the raw end of that see-sawing yardstick. It could be lonely, exhausting and expensive, but all that mattered was securing a position as high up the “10”-scale as possible.

With Grace, the next decade of self healing, provided revelations of true, uncontrived beauty within. Once upon a time I made a spontaneous apology to someone I had ridiculed as “narrow minded” years earlier because of his religious beliefs about contraception. The poignancy and potency of my self-admission may have been lost to the activity of that day if I had not, on the way home, seen a traffic-stopping woman. My attention automatically poured in her direction. Habitual thoughts of comparative stupor triggered that secret covenant. The one we make  entrusting our eyes as a wholly reliable scout of facts. This time however, the illusion  was shattered by the reality of the preceding moment when I had admitted my wrong-doing to a person I had hurt.

That still small voice coaxed the new growth within, “She looks beautiful, but has she been beautiful today as you just have?”

My Prince was unraveling my specific thicket of feminine F.E.A.R (False Evidence Appearing Real). I had begun learning how to choose my true self, without rejecting or competing over physical beauty.The choice to be humble and sincere with a  fellow human being was making its way onto my five star list.

The Pretty Princess measurement syndrome does not have to take decades, as it did for me, before giving way to the Queendom that awaits. There, the true King will remind  us at every stage of our lives, “fall in love with yourself again and again”. 

In the sprit of the metaphor in which each of us is an original snowflake or better perhaps, to look to our own bodies, each as unique as our own finger print  - I believe each woman is created to be her own standard of beauty, without rejecting anyone else’s.

You will know you’re a ‘10’ when  being  BEA-U-TI-FUL spells itself: BE YOU TIL FULL.*

(*Spiritual Dictionary at www.namastepublishing.com)

Mutuality: Love's Missing Ingredient

"A woman's heart should be so hidden in Christ (God) that a man should have to seek Him first to find her."

From Christians by Maya Angelou 

On considering the many social mores and religious rules, I have found that nothing gives marriage a bad name more than bad marriage. Marital union, the hotbed of sex and money issues, cannot withstand a ‘fake-it-to-make-it’ approach. There is something in this context then, to be said for divorce and common law relationships.

Alex Grey www.alexgrey.com

A greater truth seems evident however; few of us may feel innately wired for a lifetime of flying solo, but I’m pretty sure no one I know consciously aspires to one day disavow their forever love. It would be disingenuous therefore to suggest throwing out even our infantile hopes for lifelong monogamy with the bath water.  Yet in the absence of everyday examples there is little evidence that ‘happily ever after’ is even possible.

Alfred Korzybski, the late American scientist and philosopher is quoted as saying: the map is not the territory. So true! And when it comes to a lifetime of failed adult relationships I feel I could, having covered a lot of ground, draw a map of universal error in that regard.  Over the past seven years of choosing celibacy I have spent much time contemplating the many disappointments into perspective. Even so, I claim only to speak for myself.
In a book on relationships, Kevin Keyes Jr. (20^th century Living Love self-help author, who gathered his wisdom through four marriages) shared an insight that serves my own understanding. He points to the folly of choosing a partner based solely on love. After all, we do not buy a car because it has a steering wheel he chides; and in his benevolent and inclusive world view, Love, like a car’s steering wheel, is a given.

Keyes is putting emphasis on the value of choosing a partner. He is not simply saying love itself is not enough. As we grow self aware the beauty of Life awakens a loving spirit more and more often, and maturity will seek to moderate this urge for expansion with discipline and wisdom. So if love is steering everyone’s course, how do we choose and find contentment with just one? Keyes points to a value even more essential than compatibility: mutuality.

At a school’s sports day I saw a six year old  paired with a buddy twice his weight for Body Ball. I watched them try to control an over sized ball between their bodies without using their hands. Nothing illustrated “unequally yoked” like that picture of them huddling and waddling their way up the 50 yard line to the finish. The competitor in me cringed. I fantasized that a false start would be announced and the injustice of the incompatibility corrected. But the game was well underway.

I agonized as one struggled with the other to pick up the pace. They knew that a fallen ball would disqualify them and they would lose any chance of completing, far less placing. Amidst the parental passions and politics of school sports days I witnessed one of those grace filled moments when mind gives way to heart. In a moment of enlightenment, I watched as the children made an inner decision; one deliberately slowing to keep step with his partner, the other pushing himself against his limitations. Once the wobbling sphere between them was comfortably secured, the apparently mismatched duo tottered their way to a bronze!

No time for therapy, no room for blame and shame arguments, these First Graders accomplished in seconds what I could barely conceive through decades of voluptuous effort. With eyes fixed on a shared goal, they completed the course with a medal victory and a growing friendship to boot.

And I got to witness a living metaphor of mutuality in action.

Admittedly, I am still dealing with the map here; haven’t traversed the territory in an intimate relationship - yet. Nearing a half-century of experience, in this life (smile), I remain unconvinced that truth and its off spring, true love, can be inherited through a belief system superimposed upon all manner of back draft and understory.  I know by now too, that reality follows belief. And the reliability of our beliefs depends on an ownership honestly earned through sincere investigation… “Know thyself”.

By reconciling my essential need for love with an equally legitimate desire for the restoration of feminine dignity, I have come to know that our impulses for union and a healthy individuality are not mutually exclusive. The former rests upon the well being and security of the latter which any mature partner would willingly support.

Founded on the individual’s divinely endowed sovereignty, Love and Freedom are synergistic.  So, putting all grief stories aside, these personal recognitions pave for me, a renewed faith in the possibility and pleasure of   life long love and fidelity with one partner.

"FREE" - a blank cheque for All

In a time of bargain hunting, discount vouchers and telecommunication price wars and promises of FREE Talk - Are we really claiming, exercising and expressing our essential human freedoms?

FREE – a blank cheque for all.

(First print publication: SHE Caribbean 2010)

“FREE” can only be written about freely.

Planting its word seed to gestate in my mind and heart I jotted thoughts and images that sprouted:

“FREE” - African slaves; rebellious teenage; carefree versus careless; natural hair; body water flowing into lover’s crevices; sun kissing SPF-free skin; go barefoot; go naked; chores undone; succumbing to afternoon siestas; breast milk.....

“FREE” - Exists to lend its fruitfulness to free-dom - something only men have. What -dom? King-dom. Why not Queen-dom? Because I never knew I was free; worry-free, money-free, sexually free. Carnival here and there is our cultural expression of “FREE”; this idea of FREE is a high price to pay then for sacred sexuality spilled about.

“FREE” - Land of the “FREE” and brave; places we call “Away”, their borders are closed to me. I am missing “FREE” - free to feel safe that my locked door will stay shut until I alone turn the key.

“FREE” - uninterrupted; the opposite of marriage; jail break from promises that seduce the sun to trade her sky for the sparkly ceiling of domestic baubles; like a tiger who trades the wild for a bowl of milk. The opposite of lonely, companionless Singledom; free to hug and kiss, a listener as long, slow and as deep as...I am.

For “FREE” to exist at all, “freedom” must be exercised. How can you know freedom of speech if you never speak your truth?

Mandela was free, in a cell.

“FREE” - Being happy when there is no external evidence that you could or should be.

Heaven. Bliss. Acceptance that neither adds nor subtracts a thing; Free to laugh like a wajang, dance like a nerd; to mismatch colours.

“FREE” – is it always immersed in ‘against’ something or someone? Free from rebellion and status quo, from the duality of justice and injustice too then; not just the opposite of conformity, something else altogether.

“FREE” – not enslaved by perfectionism. Could I experience a sense of Self so freely, so as to qualify to say something useful about our deepest human longing? Freedom is deeper, more expansive and dutiful than love because true Love must find her foundation in being free. Make do then, with snippets and glimpses in this breath, that thought, a word here, a moment there.

“FREE” – my child, until I shroud him with fearful opposites. “Look Justice, my son! It is raining. See Heaven pours out freely on all creatures great and small, all people fat and tall?” He looks out the window, thoughts wandering freely, deeply. Childhood shimmers in original innocence, warming the adult into enlightenment. I see he grows tall but shrinks inwardly under inherited parental laws.  Until, choosing freely, he will steep himself in enough earth-shit to grow a decent lifetime of psychological stuff to work through. Life’s messiness is priceless, fertile manure - a pure, free must.

“FREE” will. I relish exercising mine robustly. None will escape the consequences of Love that loves so freely. Mother trusts her Creation so deeply, she can and does let it go into the absolute care of free will. Her offspring has no choice. Each will essentially and eventually return, inevitably.

“FREE” – Eternally. We are never extinguished, though ever clouded here on transitory planes.

And so I come to it - Trust, Love and Freedom are interdependent, and One.

The seeds planted, blossom fully.

Life has authored me only to stumble upon someone else’s perfect sentence: “______” is claimed, not assigned.

You are FREE to fill in the blank.

De light is everywhere!

Nothing and no one  is ordinary.

SELF MATTERS: discerning the difference between self care and selfish extravagance

Living Metaphors: SELF MATTERS

First Publication: SHE Caribbean  Winter 2010

Joanne Gail Johnson

780 words

“Please secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others.”  

The familiar  “In Case of Emergency” flight attendant’s announcement. is a relatively modern phrase. As a living metaphor it is often used to express an individual need  for legitimate self care. The greater wisdom is all but lost when  applied with a  “Once I get mine, you can get yours” attitude. Self care is supposed to ease our tensions after all, so it’s a no-brainer to see that referring to an unspoken rule of “me or them”in daily life, will only accrue stressful conflicts. Our in-flight wisdom after all, was originally intended for life or death  situations. 

Intuitively we reach in this direction because we know that relationship with the self lies at the core of every other relationship. When we say a  woman takes good care  herself however,  we usually mean in the context of cosmetic beauty, fashion and spa rituals: i.e. the cherries on top, not the sustenance of life. 

I once read a beautiful contemplation: On becoming a woman the author, experienced the fulfillment of her femininity through recognising that her helpfulness was more relevant to her happiness than being decorative. We are taught it since birth. A “good woman” is one who constantly serves others and denies herself. But  even the best intentions  may be an effort to  disguise self loathing; to earn approval that masks low self esteem; and works of charity  may temporarily pacify  guilty or undeserving feelings about the luxuries and privileges we do  enjoy. 

A wise friend recently pointed out, “Being overtly selfless could actually hide a selfish desire to be  (or look) better than the other person. The simplest form this took (in our family) was when a plate of varied cakes was on the table it was a constant "You choose", "No, you choose", which entirely spoiled the occasion. I found it so liberating when I met my husband’s family who would say "I'd like that one, please"!”

Being unable to trust ourselves to give and receive in a balanced way can induce  financial, physical and emotional exhaustion, as with any other indulgence.  So how do we discern the difference between self care and the selfish extravagance which often induces both legitimate and unnecessary guilt?

Mother Theresa is quoted as saying we can do not great things only small things with great love. And an old Zen Master has said, “Before enlightenment, chop wood carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood carry water.” In different words, they both point  to the god of small things. 

As a mother I am finding myself constantly called to honor my  goddess of  the mundane.  Everyday chores  and household management require no end of  attention to seemingly insignificant details: that little plastic dinosaur poking out from under the couch, the bit of plasticine stuck to the tooth brush before it goes into someone’s mouth. There is an excuse everyday to justify a dash out to the spa; at every turn an exasperation to warrant self pity and  a new dress. But how do we choose ourselves without  shattering future financial goals and love relationships? And can’t we perform our necessary duties in the presence of grace and  without being mean to or stingy with ourselves?

In Focaults Askeisis: an introduction to the philosophical life, by Edward F. Mc Gushin  self care is referred to   as an art of governance; and  “the right, the capacity, the duty , the privilege, and the art of governing others are founded upon the proper government of oneself.” This clarity reminds us to put  our essential human need for the deep  nurturing of our inner lives  at the top of our to do lists. Such self care may not be easily learned or taught , yet may be innate.

During pregnancy, I recall how easy it was to attend to my body temple with reverence and respect.  Taking care of myself  at that time was symbiotic with taking care of  another human being. Service to self and service to others are not  contradictory ideas. As we grow healthier, happier, stronger and more organised, our relationships improve and the quality of our giving to others is untainted by secret resentments. We no longer find ourselves ragged from constantly tapping into our reserve supplies; well, except in that rare case of an emergency. Rather, we begin to give   from excess. 

I am finding the more healthful metaphors about appropriate self care are feminine in nature: overflowing fountains; a heavy laden mango tree with fruit for all, that rests out of season and then bursts to life again; and  the most intimate and accurate -   the knowledge of the pregnant body, when self and other are immaculately one.

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