Loaded: Money and the Spirituality of Enough by Heather King

Author:Heather King
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781616369590
Publisher: Franciscan Media
Published: 2016-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

HUMAN FREQUENCY

“He travels fastest who travels alone” had for years been my credo. People slow you down, I told myself. People are messy. People want things from you. Which may be true in one way, but is not true in all ways.

Because even us die-hard introverts can’t heal on our own. Because at some point the question becomes: Where are we traveling to?

The word companion comes from the Latin cum pane: “with bread.” Companions are as essential as bread. Companions will move us forward. Making more money is lovely, but companions will share our heart.

That being said, I don’t do community well, our culture does not do community well, and LA in particular does not do community well, which makes this a challenge. Then again, the problem—I can only speak for myself—may be pride. To admit “I’m a grown woman or man and I can’t stop watching Internet porn, or scarfing Vicodin, or squirreling away every spare penny” requires a terrible vulnerability. To ask for help, invite people in, or show up in any way beyond our immediate comfort zone means taking an extreme risk.

Here’s an extreme risk I took shortly after beginning this work: I conceived of the idea to get together a monthly roundtable of artists. Having longed for creative community, I was quite proud of myself. For three months running, I spent seventy bucks or so of my own money and several hours preparing. I shopped, I cleaned the house, I cooked, I hummed with happy expectation, I cleaned up after.

The first time was great. The second time was pretty great. The third time people didn’t bother to answer the invite, people e-mailed ten minutes after the thing had started to say they couldn’t come, people texted in the middle to say “I’m lost” (my place is not remotely hard to find), and then showed up without the dessert they’d promised to bring.

I quietly realized that for whatever reason (I should say that, not wanting to be a “snob,” I’d let a couple of people come who weren’t strictly in the creative arts and were in fact borderline personality or drunk), my precious plan, my brave plan was not to bear fruit.

With my “tortured sensitivity,” I could have shut down to any notion of community. I could have succumbed to my wounded pride. I could have felt pathetic and sorry for myself.

Instead, I realized how dear my friends had been to show up with all the good food, good cheer, and ideas for good art that they had.

I thought, Let me try something else.

I started writing this book.

ACTIONS

1. Make a list of five things you’ve been telling yourself you’re going to do for over a year: cleaning out the garage, getting a dental implant, taking a weekend road trip. Then get really quiet, summon up all your courage, and take a small first step toward doing one of them.

2. List ten situations and/or personal characteristics in your life that, by yourself, you have the power to change.

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