How To Make Waves Without Drowning Yourself.By Lawrence Eisenberg Published By Cosmopolitan, January 1983. Taking forthright action, except in contact sports, was considered a sin when I was growing up in Brooklyn. Not making waves was the local ethic. You turned the other cheek, carried the load of guilt placed upon you by parents (plus whatever was added by friends and relatives who had a little left over from their parents), suffered for everybody's sins, and kept your mouth shut. When you grew up, on the other hand, you were expected to be miraculously converted into a tiger in the business and romantic worlds. Well, with me the transformation never quite took. I became a schizophrenic tiger with blunted teeth and a tail that barely twitched. The result: a lifetime of self-contempt based on never speaking up in time, or enough, or at all. Meaning that, despite the variety of adult masks I'd assumed in order to fool the world, on my own gutsiness scale of ten I never got over a three. I was the doormat, fall guy, patsy, whipping boy, and several others of Santa's reindeer. But something wonderful happened to me on my last birthday, a crucial one (I was so far gone, I couldn't remember having had an uncrucial one). Instead of waking to my usual identity crisis--the standard neurotic's alarm clock--I heard a small voice, which I know now was God. And She saith unto me: "From this day on, thou shalt not walk in the shadow of the valley of gutlessness." Then She told me a secret that changed my life, and I'd like to share it with you. You don't have to be male or from Brooklyn to benefit from what I learned. All you need to be is uptight, unsure of your own value, pathologically prompt, and ever-reliable about sending anniversary cards while the world around you is doing the opposite. Here goes: I had a business associate, a woman I'd hired, who said I was tops, that there was nobody alive with a sharper tongue or a quicker mind. After a while, though, I began to hear what she was saying behind my back: "He lives in fantasies ... Without me, he couldn't function . . . He doesn't care about his associates. He could fight harder for them." (Two weeks earlier, I had managed to get her a fifty-dollar-a-week raise.) I did nothing but pray she would change. A few days before my birthday, I gave her two extra days off to go away for a long weekend, reminding her to be in early on Monday for a major project. On Monday, she called in sick. When she returned--well-tanned--on my birthday, I gave her a lecture on fairness and loyalty. She said I was being petty and that several of our other associates had, in fact, been saying just that for some time, but she'd never told me because she'd wanted to spare my feelings. I thanked her, said I was equally concerned about not hurting her feelings, which was why Iwouldn't go into my specific reasons for firing her. I never think of her anymore. Then there was my good friend with whom I'd faithfully maintained a relationship that dated back to college days, when both of us were seventeen and in the same fraternity. For years, I would call this friend, meet him for lunch or invite him to dinner, where he would spend most of his time putting me down. Every time I had a small success, he would caution me about the dangers of allowing my ego to rave on unchecked. Always for my own good, of course. If I sold a story, he'd remember somebody else he knew who'd gotten more money for something similar which had taken half the time to write. Whenever he read something I'd written, he'd find all the typos. And when I sold my first novel, he told me how ridiculously small the advance was, advised me to turn it down, and insisted that whatever I did I was bound to get in trouble with the IRS (I was so upset at the time, it didn't occur to me that this made no sense). On the day God spoke to me, I told my friend that I'd just been offered a luxurious, all-expense-paid trip to Tahiti in return for writing a few thousand words and, by way of congratulations, he told me that he'd heard the South Pacific had become disgustingly commercial, adding that he hoped my plane wouldn't be hijacked. I told him he was a sick, pitiful failure, blinded by jealousy, and added that I was only telling him this for his own good. I haven't heard from him since, and I don't miss him. Then there's my aunt, who, on my mother's death, appointed herself surrogate mother, to make sure my lifelong education in guilt wouldn't be interrupted. For twelve years I dutifully telephoned her three times a week to get the benefit of her advice ("How can you sleep nineteen hours straight without getting up to eat? You could faint in your sleep"). This aunt had a son. my contemporary, who was a failure as a son, a husband, a father, an employee,and a human being. She was always telling me how lucky I was and how unlucky he was, applying the guilt with a trowel dipped in chicken soup. Two years ago, she began to borrow--and not return--money from me to give to him(after all, I was so lucky), each time saying she could only ask me for these loans, since I was like another son to her. One day I discovered that: (a) she'd been borrowing money from everybody she knew, telling them they were similarly-special, and (b) the money I was lending her went to take care of Mervin's gambling debts. I said nothing, but then she made the mistake of calling me on my birthday. Our conversation went something like this: SHE: Do you know why I'm calling? ME: To wish me a happy birthday? SHE: Go on; today isn't your birthday. Listen, I have to have fifty dollars right away for Mervin. ME: Dear Aunt Yetta, why don't you tell Mervin to buy a pair of hot-pants and walk up and down Eighth Avenue? I'm not sending you any more money for that loser. SHE: You ingrate, I've been like a mother to you. ME: Mother is only the first half of the word. (CLICK) I don't hear from her anymore. I don't feel the loss. Then there was the man on whose payroll I remained for several years,despite both his spectacular unpleasantness and a notable absence of raises because I was so "comfortable" with the job (read: "in a rut"). So, on my birthday, I finally asked him for more money. He told me to give him some evidence that I deserved it. I answered that I was too old and too smart to do auditions and that he knew what he could do with his job. Then I walked out of the office and went home. Hours later, he telephoned, all the customary arrogance gone from his voice, and sheepishly asked me how I was feeling. In the next breath, he said he'd given my request careful consideration and had decided to grant me a raise. Not great, but enough to get me through till next month, when I'm leaving for another job. And then there's my teen-aged daughter who, when I remarked that 3:00 A.M. was rather a late hour to be just getting in from school, said I was a fool,a pedant, an egomaniac, and that I hadn't given her any love since the age of four. Patiently, I waited for this stage to pass. On my birthday, after an unpleasant but typical exchange, I decided to hold up the stage and told her that the many gray hairs on my head had come not just from the natural process of aging but from her illnesses and my concern that she be happy. I told her about the reservoir of tears shed every time some boyfriend had given her a hard time, how my heartbeat had a way of pausing when she looked sad. I added that it might be a good idea for her to learn a little about how to demonstrate love instead of contempt. Furthermore, if she didn't like what I was saying, she could move the hell out of the house and find a less foolish, pedantic, egomaniacal father. A few hours later, she baked me chocolate-chip cookies. I also have a wife who has, throughout the years, been outraged at the amounts of money I spend going to lunch. She has tsk-tsked at the good times I sometimes had in the office ("Don't you ever do any work there?") and complained that her days were nowhere nearly as interesting as mine. The day before my birthday, I told her that at this critical point in my life I had only one question: Is that all there is? She said that since I had a better time than most, what the hell was I complaining about? I told her that what I didn't have was more important than what I did have, that success only had validity in terms of one's own expectations, and that I felt a chasm away from it. Furthermore, I explained, the lavish lunches and all that fun in the office had been handsomely paid for in the business world's coin of anxiety and frustration. The night of my birthday, after firing my associate, saying farewell to my friend, hanging up on my aunt, telling my boss to dump his job, and giving my daughter the declaration of my independence, I told my wife I'd been invited to a party in Beverly Hills and thought, just for the hell of it, I'd like to fly there for the weekend. She said she could think of fifty better ways to spend the money. Well, I didn't go to Beverly Hills. Instead, armed with only a shaving kit, I boarded the Concorde for Paris, alone, and stayed a week, charging everything to credit cards. (I'm not sure how I'm going to pay the bill, but residual guilt will find a way.) Yesterday, when I landed, my wife met me at the airport in a limousine and served me champagne and kisses all the way home. I went to my psychiatrist today to tell him all these stories. "Good morning, Mr. Eisenberg," he said. My head exploded and I yelled, "You call yourself a doctor, you pompous, insensitive clown? For five and a half years I've been sitting here whining my guts out. You know more about me than any human being ever will. Why the hell has it never occurred to you to call me by my first name?" He smiled and replied, "Well, Larry, you never said that was what you wanted." You never said that was what you wanted. This brings me, at last, to God's words to me, which were, simply, to pretend I'd just turned seventy-five and had one week to live. And while my one-day explosion/ Oh, one more thing--I had a wonderful time writing this, I'm being well paid for it, and having it published makes me proud and happy. And if you don't like it, you know what you can do to yourself. # Copyright Lawrence Eisenberg. 2008. All Rights Reserved **************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** |
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