The Viable Alternative

If you aren’t friends with me on Facebook, this is your lucky day, because you get to hear about an incident I had on the subway a few weeks ago.

If you are friends with me on Facebook, and have already heard the story, guess what? This is your lucky day too, because you get to hear an encore. (Oh stop, you know my stories make your day)…

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I was on my way to catch a train to a seminar in Brooklyn given by a childhood friend, whose friendship I may have to reconsider if she ever invites me to anything on the G line again.

Just kidding.

In any case, as I was running down the stairs in the Columbus Circle station, I see the C train, the train I needed to get to my destination, already on the platform whose doors are closing before my eyes. Already running late, and too far away to be able to catch the closing doors, I both curse under my breath and out loud, knowing that I’m going to miss even a larger chunk of her seminar.

Well, as fortune has it, as the train doors close, the conductor opens them again. However, though I’m rushing, I’m still a bit too far away to catch them, but I see another young and healthy passenger who the doors initally closed on, make a feeble attempt to walk towards the doors as they open again. As she walks totally nonchalantly and lethargically towards them, I yell at her to catch them.

She instead was moving so lackadaisically that she just decided to let the doors close in her face without a single ounce of effort to catch them, and goes back to her waiting spot, and we both miss the train.

I WAS FUMING and gave her this dirty, confused, frustrated look that exclaimed, “Com’on! Seriously?!”

Another female passenger saw this and smiled at me. I knew immediately she was thinking/feeling the same thing.

Ugh!

What angered me so much is how people can be so WEAK and not fight for something. Here was the chance to catch the train which you were given a second chance to board when the doors reopened and you just decided it was too much work to exert yourself THAT much more and just decided to GIVE UP.

To me, she was a symbol of all those in this world who just passively lie down on their backs and let the world roll over them without them trying to get up and fight back.

Utterly sad and pathetic.

I don’t hit girls, so I stood there on the platform wishing I could hire another female to beat her up, or she could morph into a man so I could beat him up. I was just so disgusted at the “weakness” I witnessed.

Okay folks, I’m starting to enjoy reliving this anger again a little bit too much, so let me shut up and make my damn confession already.

In case you probably haven’t already figured it out, my borderline “psychotic” response to this subway passenger had absolutely nothing to with her and everything to do with me.

Oh com’on, albeit shocking, it’s not THAT shocking now.

This extreme response could never be about someone who I probably had at most a 5 second INDIRECT interaction with.

See folks, though I may act like an idiot from time to time, I at least know in hindsight when I was being a bit ridiculous. This was one of those times.

Truth be told, this incident triggered childhood memories of experiences I had with my mother.

Awww poor Mommy, this is the second post in a row I’ve written about my Mom so I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about her. She’s a loving, kind, nurturing woman who was my biggest supporter and comforter during my teenage years when I thought I was NOTHING.

Anyway, what was triggered on the subway were memories of me coming to my Mom as a kid and asking her for money to buy something, and her always telling me over and over again complete resignation how she was “broke.”

What was also triggered were the times when she would promise to take me somewhere or do something for me only for her to eventually break her word because her back hurt, or she had a headache, or she said she was too tired.

In me was the time when my Dad was away to visit relatives out of the country years back during the Christmas holiday, and during that time, the main water main to our house broke so that we didn’t have running water for two weeks, and she was helpless to do anything because again, “She didn’t have any money.” Luckily, the water in the basement still worked so we had to bring water up from there to bathe, flush the toilet, and cook just like we were living in some Third World country.

Thankfully, a family friend intervened and paid for the pipe to get fixed and then my Dad, who had no access to any telephone while he was away, reimbursed him when he got back.

In me was the time when I was 16 and we just got back from a family trip to DC, (my Dad had dropped us off and went somewhere), and there was no food in the house, and my Mom, as you guessed it, didn’t have any money on her to buy food, and one of my sisters had money and gave it to my Mom to order some Domino’s pizza so we could eat. I was so disgusted I said to my Mom, “You mean if she didn’t have $20 to give to you we’d all have to starve?”

In me were also all the times when I wanted to go do something on my own and she’d immediately shut it down because of all the possible terrible things she would concoct that might happen to me.

There’s a quote that I’ve been trying to find that was made by some famous figure from Ancient Rome that basically says the crime is not in being poor but not trying to rise out of poverty.

That’s how I saw my mother.

In these different incidences, I saw in my Mom what I interpreted as this weak resignation to her situation with no resolve to fight or improve it. I saw no determination to improve her situation but rather just self perceived helplessness. I saw a person who was too weak to keep her word. That in turn caused anger, disgust, contempt and frustration in me because, as my primary caretaker who was my access to the greater world out there, she made me a prisoner in her own limited world of fear, doubt, helplessness and resignation and there was nothing I could do about it.

That day when the girl refused to catch the train doors, or whenever I see friends put up with utter nonsense in a relationship in which they’re too weak to stand up for themselves or too weak to leave, or when I see someone quit on a goal or endeavour when things start to get “too hard,” or anything that reminds me of not wanting to better yourself or fight for something better, what gets triggered are those very feelings I felt with my Mom as a child when I was “subject” to her own resignations to her situation.

It’s funny, as I was reflecting upon all this, realizing that I was being totally judgmental to that girl in the subway as well as others who trigger these feelings, I felt utterly no desire to change this, which was quite different from how I reacted to the realization in my last blog.

I thought to myself smugly, “You know what, who cares, I kinda like being judgmental, it feels good, plus it’s not hurting me or anybody else.”

Having the sense that there was something “off” about me “liking” being judgmental, I asked myself why I liked it, and I came up with another discovery, judging these people gave me a semblance of power that I didn’t have as a kid. It’s a way to compensate for the powerlessness I felt in those past situations, and I also bet that it’s also a way to help me hide from those feelings.

Growing up, I would protest to my Mom her breaking her promise, or her always not having any money, and as I got older, I spoke against her utter seeming willingness to just “accept” things helplessly, and I would often get threatened with getting a smack or a full beating, or at times actually get beaten for “mouthing off” or being “rude and disrespectful.”

Maybe I was being rude and disrespectful, but I think the bigger “sin” I committed was having the gall to point to her a part of herself that she didn’t want to face.

So, though I admit to “liking” the feeling of judging others who trigger my childhood resentment towards my Mom, I can’t, as someone who’s committed to being “whole” and emotionally healthy, intentionally accept such behaviour in my life anymore, now that I’m aware of it and know why I do it.

That would be weak and also hypocritical.

Judging others or any other behaviour that we engage in to get a feeling of “power” in order to fill in an internal void is weak.

I’m faced now with the conscious choice of taking my power back the RIGHT WAY by gradually learning how to become comfortable with those feelings of helplessness that get triggered within me by the situations that I described earlier rather than running from them by judging and getting psychotically angry at others.

Again, this is going to be challenging because I get “satisfaction” out of being judgmental.

Also, giving the anger already within me from these situations a healthy outlet won’t hurt either.

This is The Viable Alternative.

Hope this helps,

Ike Love