It’s Becoming Visible to Me Now: The Mind Control Workouts Are for Life, Same as the Physical Workouts
By 7:02 a.m. the other day, I was convinced that I am invisible.
In fact, I was ready to go share my startling discovery with our new neighbor, who tells me she works from home for the United States Department of Defense (I didn’t realize our area was so dangerous). I could get a job there too, I reasoned. Surely my country — and my neighborhood, apparently — could use someone who can go unseen in plain sight and unheard in plain earshot.
I had accumulated the, ahem, evidence to support my conclusions in an impressively short time span: the 32 minutes between 6:30 and 7:02. On top of the stress I’d been feeling for days, weeks, especially following my mom’s death in early May. And on a lousy night’s sleep to boot.
Not that any of that matters.
The three youngest of our four kids were up for school, as usual, by 6:30. And, as we do every weekday morning at our house, my beautiful wife Adrianne and I were busy helping the two eight-year-olds get their breakfast ready, so that I could get all three kids on the bus by its arrival at 7:06. Not 7:07 or 7:08 or 7:09 or 7:10, as the kids seem to believe. Or whatever time suits them, as though there really is a Magic School Bus. No. It’s 7:06. It’s madness, insanity, but the bus actually does come at 7:06. Occasionally a bit sooner. And, shockingly, it doesn’t sit and wait for kids who are late. Instead it rudely and brazenly pulls away and disappears into the distance — thus leaving the parent in a cloud of smoke as the aggravated bus driver du jour.
Not that any of that matters.
*****
“Whoosh.” A cupboard door flies by my head as I’m making daughter Katie’s sandwich at the counter.
“Sorry,” says a rushed Adrianne, who is fixing son Kian’s breakfast and is desperately trying to get out the door herself so she can teach her first-graders an hour later. Not just any first-graders, mind you; first-graders who can sniff the end of the school year in the air like bloodhounds tracking a wounded racoon.
Not that any of that matters.
I’m already annoyed.
It’s only 6:32.
Minutes later we’re discussing what the kids should pack after school for our evening drive to the north shore of Lake Superior. It’s that time of year, and that type of place, when/where you could easily need summer clothes one moment, fall clothes the next.
“Should I pack a swimsuit?” Kian asks, speaking half garbled English, half mouthful of toast.
“Yup,” I say immediately, congratulating myself on my interpretation skills and thinking of an indoor water park we once tried out in the area we’ll be visiting. But not bothering to share this thinking with Adrianne.
Adrianne, meanwhile, at the exact same time starts talking about how she’s not sure we’ll need our swimsuits. In Duluth, Minnesota. In May. On Lake Superior, average annual water temperature 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
“What do you think?” she asks, turning to me.
“I just got done saying yes,” I grouse.
“I didn’t hear you,” she replies in return.
“You don’t seem to hear me at all lately unless I shout,” I whisper to myself. Conveniently ignoring the facts that a) I had blatantly, albeit unintentionally, talked over her — mumbled would be a more apt description — when I was saying “yup”; b) the damn peanut butter crunch cereal box really does crinkle extra loudly when moved or shaken — which son Theo had been kind enough to demonstrate during the exact moment of the swimsuit-vs.-no-swimsuit debate; c) Adrianne was conflicted and emotional, like all caring teachers are at the end of the school year; d) I too was conflicted and emotional — and wiped out, as was everyone else in their own way.
Not that any of that matters.
At 6:53 I walk Adrianne out to the car, as I do every weekday morning, and tell her I love her — which I do every morning, and always will. I’m feeling bad about the way I’ve acted. But not invisible.
Yet.
The kids back inside help me get there, God love ’em.
Kian won’t go into the bathroom to brush his teeth, despite me telling him to do so several times. He has also committed the crime of waking up in a comparatively energetic, happy mood — and of being an extravert too, thus sharing his antics and his running commentary with the rest of us.
Katie takes forever to eat her breakfast, interpreting my repeated instructions to “hurry up” as a direct order to — wait … for … it — ssssllllllllooooowwwwww dddddoooowwwwnnnn to 16 rpms instead of 33, not unlike the covert squad of impossibly pokey drivers who are dispatched to be on the road, directly in front of you and you alone, when you’re running late for your job interview.
At least Theo is actually normal.
Ha ha! Just joking.
Theo keeps egging Kian on, despite my multiple admonitions to stop, then tops off his performance by sitting stone cold on the arm of the living room chair at 7:02 when, mercifully, I can finally say “OK, guys, let’s go” and head out to the bus stop.
“OK, guys, let’s go.”
Nothing. Not from Theo, at least. He just sits there, caught in a tractor beam that has come down directly from Mars and through the roof of our home (I’ll be letting our neighbor know about this security breach), enveloping his body in a paralyzing magnetic force field.
“We gotta go, Theo!” I bark, loud enough to break through and get us out the door.
“Four for four so far,” I conclude to myself, with only one family member to go — son Isaac — later in the morning.
“Surely, even if he happens to see me and hear me today — law of averages — I am at least 90 to 95 percent invisible.”
*****
This is the sludge of everyday life that we conveniently neglect to share with the world; the reality we just don’t write about in our Facebook status updates. No, we tend to focus on the positive there, choosing not to publicize the whole story — the real story — or anything close to it.
Imagine if we had the courage and the gumption to actually share the truth someday. The truth truth. About our kids, for instance:
FACEBOOK — What’s on your mind, Pete?
I am surrounded by deaf, blind miniature humans who can’t understand, let alone carry out, the simplest of instructions or requests, despite hundreds of repetitions. Their hearing and sight work, albeit temporarily, only if they are offered money and/or Dairy Queen Blizzards. I’m starting to understand why some species eat their own young. Nobody won a prize or did anything photo-worthy for me to share here. In fact, everyone around me is insane. And soon I will be too, if I’m not there already.
Of course, the kids could do the exact same thing where I’m concerned:
FACEBOOK — What’s on your mind, Pete’s kids?
Dad is crabby as hell. Don’t be fooled by that smiling picture on that book of his. He’s a pain in the ass to live with and be around sometimes. He has problems. Lots of them. He’s a good person, but he has his less-than-good times like the rest of us. And trust us: He’s so not invisible! He gets worked up over small things. He forgets that kids are contractually obligated to ignore and/or disobey their parents — just as he was when he was a kid, despite his best efforts to forget or claim the opposite (Grandpa Chuck filled us in). He loses his patience sometimes because he’s exhausted and the rest of us are exhausted and he forgets that fatigue is the enemy. Sometimes we feel invisible — make that way too visible. He’s not the only one.
*****
When we finally get out to the bus stop at 7:03, the neighbor girl and her dad say hi to me, thus blowing my cover, destroying my newfound cloak of invisibility, and quite possibly costing me a well-paying, prestigious government job complete with security clearance.
Actually, though, I am already at work, albeit grudgingly. On a critical task that sounds like defense work but isn’t.
Mind control.
Not of my kids’ minds, or Adrianne’s, but of my own.
It’s a far better way to serve my country. And my loved ones. And myself.
I’m only invisible in my own eyes and ears, I begin. So when I say that by 7:02 I was convinced I am invisible, what I really mean is that by 7:02 I had convinced myself I am invisible. Big difference: One fate is thrust upon me; the other I invent.
If you can invent, you can re-invent, I reason. So that’s what I do, starting right then and there at the bus stop. And for more than an hour after that. I work — hard — on my thinking. And I become all better.
Ha ha! Had you going there, didn’t I.
I am better for a while. Then I have to do it all over again while we’re at the North Shore. And again, with Adrianne’s help, on the way home. And the other night before bed. And even yet again this morning as I still wrestle with my thinking at this very moment, and the frustration of having to repeat my mind control exercises again and again and again.
Is there ever a finish line? A point where you say, “I got it!”? God, why can’t it be like mowing the lawn or vacuuming the living room so that I can stand back, let out a satisfying sigh, wipe my sweaty brow, and admire a job well done — keyword “done”?
*****
“You should write about all of this,” Adrianne suggests as I’m in near tears, days later, at the kitchen table.
Ha ha! I figure she’s yanking my chain.
“How the hell am I supposed to write about something I clearly don’t understand myself, let alone actually live out consistently in my own life? Can you say credibility problem?”
“That’s exactly why you should write about it,” Adrianne counters. “People don’t expect you to have all the answers. They expect you to be real.”
That’s actually believable, I reason. Risky, but believable.
Might as well give it a try…
*****
Here I am, folks. And here’s what’s real:
FACEBOOK — What’s on your mind, Pete?
I’m 49 years old, and I have more questions than answers. I have just as much pain as I do joy. And I’m far too prone to fall into the trap of believing that only the overconfident, self-promoting know-it-alls win in life.
Mind control is often an oxymoron for me — unless and until I’m willing to do the work necessary to control my mind. When I do, I’m able to see that you actually don’t need to be an overconfident, self-promoting know-it-all to win in life. You can just be yourself. Your real self. Because then people will see themselves in you, and you in them, and feel better — real in their own right.
Over the last two years or so, I have built a healthy eating and daily workout habit that has dropped me down to a muscular 198.4 pounds instead of the obese 270 I used to be. I’m in the best physical shape of my life because I’ve made peace with the idea that I have to work at it every damn day, for life.
But I can’t yet — yet — seem to fully accept that mind control has to be its own healthy eating and daily workout habit. For life. For some reason, I’m expecting — demanding — the fast-track option on this one. No different than kids who, to pick a random example, expect the bus to wait outside for them indefinitely each weekday morning. I’m acting as though I can find a bag of psychological good health on aisle 10 at the grocery store, next to the oatmeal. On sale. No coupon necessary.
It isn’t working. And it’s never going to.
I have to do mind control workouts every day for the rest of my life.
But at least the results will be visible.
And I won’t feel I’m not.
I’m a writer. An essayist, to be more exact. I tell stories here—true stories, from my own life, in hopes they will make a positive difference in yours.
I share laughs and tears, insights and observations, frustrations and realizations, relying all the while on the storytelling wisdom of Julia Cameron, author of The Right to Write.
It is a great paradox that the more personal, focused, and specific your writing becomes, the more universally it communicates.
This brilliant. And brave. Thanks so much for sharing.