Choices and Illusions (17 page)

life is thrown away in exchange for the “don’t you feel sorry for

me?” interactions. That is another part of the cookie-keeper game.

To belong to their group, you must be willing to be understanding

and sympathetic. It’s okay to top the cookie of another with a more unpleasant cookie of your own, but not if you fail to recognize the poor, picked-on nature of the other cookie keeper.

A dear friend of mine grew up in a codependent family rela-

tionship, one of those Melody Beattie so aptly defines in her books such as
Codependent No More.
It’s the relationship most of us know 94

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something about, for we probably heard many of those conditional

statements growing up. They are ones that go like this: “If you

loved me, you would . If you had any respect for me, you would not . I did this for you; is it too much to expect from you? I think if you cared about me, you would

” And so forth. You fill in the blanks. Beattie sets out

several criteria for recognizing codependence. “Codependents are

the people who consistently, and with a great deal of effort and

energy, try to force things to happen,” she says. She continues:

We control in the name of love. We do it because we’re

“only trying to help.” We do it because we know best how

things should go and how people should behave. We do it be-

cause we’re right and they’re wrong. We control because we’re

afraid not to do it. We do it because we don’t know what else

to do. We do it to stop the pain. We control because we think

we have to. We control because we don’t think. We control

because controlling is all we can think about. Ultimately we

may control because that’s the way we’ve always done things.

Tyrannical and dominating, some rule with an iron hand. . . .

Others do their dirty work undercover. They hide behind a

costume of sweetness and niceties, secretly going about their

business—OTHER PEOPlE’S BUSInESS.

Two of the keystone elements in all of this codependency are,

according to Beattie, “Suffering people’s consequences for them”

and “Solving people’s problems for them.” In other words, there is a real quid pro quo in cookie sharing, and it too is at least somewhat based on codependent patterns.

My friend gave up her codependent behavior and threw all

of her cookies away. She chose to become self-empowered and

has made wonderful strides in the process. If you asked her, she

would tell you that life is a miracle, and she is very happy today.

Still, her sister, with whom she has always been very close, has not budged. Her sister carries all the cookies she can and spends nearly 95

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every moment sharing them. despite soft approaches at trying to

turn on a light in the sister’s head, my friend now finds herself in that place where many who refuse to play these games eventually

arrive. It is hard to change when those you love the most are fixed in ways that steal your power. My friend has decided that the next

time her sister plays the blame game, she will say something to end this behavior. You see, when you stop saving your cookies and get

on with taking responsibility for everything in your life, your life improves. When that happens, you lose any and all desire to be a

cookie keeper.

Self-responsibility means taking responsibility for everything

in your life, even those events or people that do not in

any way seem to be your problem or responsibility.

Often the people who most antagonize us are the ones we

need most to teach us what we want to learn. My mother used to

say, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Call it that, or call it simple attraction, anger attracts anger, hostility attracts hostility, love attracts love, and so forth. As I mentioned earlier, what we resist we tend to become. When we see something in someone we do

not like, we need to be careful, for often they are mirrors of our-

selves. What we dislike in them is likely to be a behavior of our

own. When we are alert to this, it’s quite easy to do something

remarkable, something that truly changes our own reality. let me

digress a minute.

Self-Responsibility

When I lived in las Vegas, nevada, my local post office was

always jammed with patrons. They all seemed in a hurry, and the

clerks were absolutely rude. Many times heated arguments erupted

between patrons and staff. I decided to try a little experiment.

What would happen if I just smiled and mentally beamed light to all of
these people?
I wondered.

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Every day for at least two weeks when I stopped to pick up my

mail, I did my best to focus light on all. One day, the oldest and

grouchiest of the postal clerks, whose line I was queued in, looked up and said, “Hello, dr. Taylor.” There was a smile on his face and cheer in his voice. From that day forward, every clerk in the office spoke and smiled, laughed and joked with me. Everything had

changed. They were still snippy with other patrons for a while, but the smile and light had paid off. Somehow, unconsciously even,

they identified me with warmth and love. Within a few months,

this post office and its employees were as warm and friendly as any I have ever visited.

It is amazing what a little unconditional love can do. We are

all capable of coaching or cheering on our friends and family, but

when it comes to strangers, particularly those we think of as rude, it is often another matter. It doesn’t have to be. This is just another way to do good deeds.

Again, self-responsible means taking responsibility for every-

thing in your life. That does not mean you’re in charge of your

environment and in control of all the stimuli you encounter. It

does mean that you’re in charge of your own inner environment

and you begin to make choices—true choices that are healthy and

wise. The so-called bad luck is seen through a different lens. In fact, there’s a story about luck that I like to tell, because it illustrates well just how limited our judgments can be. First, however, to frame the story, let me tell you about one of my favorite country songs. The

song titled “Unanswered Prayers” tells of a young man who falls

in love with a girl in high school. He prays nightly that she will

see him and love him in return. She marries another man, and

years pass. He eventually meets a woman who turns out to be the

real woman of his dreams. A few more years pass, and he receives

an invitation to a high school reunion. At the reunion he sees the

sweetheart who married another. She has aged early, is nasty and

bitter, and in other ways is totally unattractive. He looks at his wife and says, “Thank God for unanswered prayers!”

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“Thank God for unanswered prayers!”

So here is the story.

Luck

An old rancher back in the Civil War days was just

barely getting by. His wife had died giving birth to his

only son, and he himself was somewhat crippled with ar-

thritis. His son, therefore, did most of the work around

the ranch. now, this rancher was a really nice man, and

everyone in town liked him.

One day, the boy was out tilling the ground when

lightning struck near the mules. The mules bolted, and

the old harness could not hold them. The harness broke,

and the mules ran off.

Without the mules, the rancher and his son would not

be able to get their crops in, and they were barely making

ends meet as it is was. The whole town turned out to com-

miserate. “Such bad luck,” they said.

But the old farmer said, “Good luck, bad luck; who

knows?”

Good luck, bad luck; who knows?

The next day the mules came running home, and be-

hind them came a whole herd of wild horses. The farmer

and his son seized the opportunity because horses were

worth a lot of money. Armies on both sides of the Civil

War were paying a lot of money for horses. They ran out-

side and opened the corral gates. When the horses and

mules were inside, they closed the gates.

This time the whole town came out to congratulate

them. “Such good luck!” they said. But the farmer just

said, “Good luck, bad luck; who knows?”

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The next day the son went out to break the horses,

as nobody would buy a horse he could not ride. Howev-

er, the very first horse he mounted simply sunfished and

switched over. (This means that he went up facing west

and came down facing east and then reared completely

over backward.) The boy was lucky he wasn’t more seri-

ously hurt, just a broken arm and collarbone. This time

the whole town came out to say, “Such bad luck.”

The old farmer simply said, “Good luck, bad luck; who

knows?”

The very next day, the army marched through town

and conscripted every able-bodied man. Of course they

did not take the farmer’s son, because his arm and collar-

bone were broken. The whole town turned out again:

“Such good luck.”

The old farmer simply said, “Good luck, bad luck; who

knows?”

The army was heading to Shiloh. not many lived

through that battle. You just never know what is good luck

and what is bad luck. But when your bones are broken,

you tend to think only of the pain, the inconvenience, the

discomfort, and so on.

I was first told this story many years ago. Recently I learned

it was actually a Sufi story and that Jonathan Robinson wrote a

poem based on it. That poem, titled “The Old Man,” is a slightly

different version of the story above. In honor of the true story, here is the poem:

Once long ago, there lived an old man.

He had no money. He had no plan.

All that he had was a horse oh so grand

and he and his horse lived off the land.

The King offered riches for this horse oh so fine,

“I’ll give you money if you’ll make your horse mine.”

But the old man said, “My horse will not be sold.

He lives with me. He lives free and bold.”

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Then one day the horse was plain gone.

“The horse has been stolen,” the townsfolk cried on.

The old man said, “Friends, don’t look so sad,

Though the horse may be gone that may not be so bad.”

“You foolish old man, look what you’ve done.

You had a fine horse and now you have none.

A curse it is and a curse it will be.

You shouldn’t have let your horse wander free!”

The horse soon returned with others by its side.

There were 12 now of beauty and pride.

The townsfolk said, “Old man, you were right.

You are blessed to have horses of unearthly delight!”

“I have now 12 horses, yes, that is true,

But that does not mean I am blessed with them too.

It is too soon to judge; who knows what will be?

Try not to make stories from the little you see.”

As it came to pass, the old man’s only son

Tried riding a horse, just for fun.

Yet he broke both his legs while playing this game

And the townsfolk cried, “Oh, what a shame!”

The old man said, “Friends, don’t speak so soon.

You hear just one note, yet you sing an entire tune.

Who’s to say what the future may hold?

My son’s legs are broken, but the future lies untold.”

Soon there was a war, and the young men of town

Were all sent to fight and were shot down.

But the old man’s son was saved from this plight.

He had broken his legs; he was forced not to fight.

And the townsfolk cried out, “Again you were right!”

But the old man replied, “Have you no sight?

Only God knows what is and will be.

To live and let live is to live and live free.”

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To live and let live is to live and live free.

Either way, poem or story, the moral is clear: What often

appears to be bad luck simply is not. Most of us, if honest, have

everything we need right now—and now is our only certainty.

If we choose to live in “now” with a gratitude attitude, taking

what comes to us as the old farmer might, we’d be happier and

live longer, healthier lives. That is just a fact. Why would anyone choose otherwise?

Humankind is unique. We all have the ability to think about

the future. What about tomorrow? What if ? (You fill in the blank.) All of this is worry over possibilities that we might actually be creating because we worry over them. It is clear that there is no pragmatic value in keeping cookies, playing the blame game,

or disenfranchising ourselves while poisoning our bodies with

chemicals on account of so-called synthetic threats.