Identity Recycling Bin

Let me paint you a little picture. I’m sitting alone, but on “my side” of the bed in the Four Seasons hotel. On my right is a big dish of chicken curry (but made by Egyptians, so it really tastes very little like authentic curry and more plain yummy) a large bottle of my favorite drink, San Pellegrino, and my trusty little Sony on my lap. I’m using the menu of a great sushi place called Aqua (that I like to get brought up to the room) as a mini desk to make writing easier.

I was thinking that maybe I haven’t touched this page in so long because it’s about my life, and I really haven’t known what that IS all about for a little while now. When I came back from Istanbul I was on a high, and as well all know from statistics and common sense, those things rarely last out. So I did everything in my power to keep the up, up. I feng shui’d the ENTIRE house, landed a dream job that I adore, and got a roommate who is actually a perfect house mate for me. Notice something missing? An obvious unmentioned person?

The trick to personal success is in the name. It’s personal. We set our own standards, make our own first and lasting impressions, and we chose the path we go down. My grandma always tells me (although SHE is referring to dating an Egyptian muslin) that I “better be sure that the train I am on is heading in the direction I want to go”. And that’s really the truth of it. I was so caught up in other things, one another person, that the blinders had to come off and I needed to ground myself in real life again. The missing mention, my boyfriend M, is actually not missing at all. He’s simply not the main character in this sitcom anymore, he can be downgraded to “supporting” , to stay with the pun. I am sure many of you can end that statement with a big round of applause!

A friend of my roommates is one of the most disastrously heartbroken people I have ever met, and she confirms this story. Her boyfriend, who dumped her four months ago and she still hasn’t accepted it,  has now ended things with her twice. The first time she had no friends, no job, no goals and even her house was shared. When he left, she was left alone in the world, instead of just in the space. The awareness of this kind of dependency and focus within a relationship isn’t healthy for anyone. Not him, not her. You must have your own life in order to invite someone into it, and anything you build with another person is beautiful, but you can’t forget the foundation.

Too many of us begin to replace what we thought of us single behaviors with relationship behaviors, before we realize that we threw our identity into that same recycling bin.

setting the tone

After phone a US based perfume company to do some address verification for a held internet order, M had his ordered cancelled by the woman “assisting him”. Her words to him were that “she didn’t like his tone”, and his words to me on the subject were certainly not in her favor. This raises questions.

One fundamental difference between many Egyptian men that I had seen, met or heard of is how they deal with emotions. There is no shame here for a man to fall head over heels in love, to display infatuation or attraction, or to yell his head off when he is angry. Often in a discussion I have asked M why he is “yelling” and he has almost always responded that he is not yelling, he is being clear. There are certain cultural standards that are simply opposite; in the US, careful attention is paid to a polite tone and regulation of emotions in public settings, in Egypt, little regulation is expected unless you are speaking to a superior.

In our relationship, we have encountered this exact dilemma. Most of the conflicts arise from the way we handle our emotions, choose our words, and react. We all believe we are right in our ways and social customs, so of course I am inclined to say that “he doesn’t know any better”, to use a condescending phrase. I have lived here for a year and seen daily examples of why certain things he does seem perfectly normal to him. In fact, here, I am the one with the “high” or “difficult” standards. Whether this is an anthropologically unanswerable question, or not, some balance must be achieved between our polar norms.

In every relationship, you must make some type of observation and study of your mate. Like an anthropologist, you observe the subject in their natural circumstances in order to better explain and comprehend their composition. We examine their family relations, how they chose their friends and how clean their houses are. Every detail paints a picture of the person. But the first rule of Anthropology is to be an indifferent, and uninvolved observer. You never interact with your subjects, so as not to compromise the “natural” results of your observation.

In a relationship, our approach is usually the opposite. We begin dating with a set of our own standards by which we plan on sizing up our dates and mates. We ask for changes, teach them what we like, and watch them alter their behaviors, considering them a sign of love. In return, we do the same.

If Anthropology as a social science has the best approach to gathering factual data, for those of us without psychology background or lie detector technology at our disposal, this means that our impressions will always be a little misleading. How can we set the tone of a good relationship?

Today is the first day alone in the house with my new roommate, who has recommended that I read a book by a woman who speaks about everything in life coming down to a thought process. She says it changed her life. No matter what is going on, this book claims, you can fix the problem by correcting the way your brain processes it. Every emotion, choice, etc. is a result of these intricate brain programs. Perhaps, like indifferent and impartial observation, the trick to observing our significant others is clear thought and healthy mental habits. Like a college degree to train you for a profession, cleaning up mental clutter and streamlining your thoughts and habits can be the toolkit for proper relationships and personal habits.

good on paper

Having spent the last day finding the best way to pitch my abilities and ideas for the director of my dream job, I got to thinking about how to lay out the facts and abilities I possess. The key to writing these types of proposals is to be concise, straight-forward and actionable. You never promise what you can’t deliver but you never sell yourself short.

In fact, how do we all put ourselves down on paper? We have all often spoken of significant others, or dream lives, in the format of checklists. He or she must have these qualities, and never those. Yet as with pitches, there is usually something missing when we allow precision to dictate our possibilities. At the end of the day, our projections seldom come out to be as we expected. This is usually for the better.

As I sit now, I am watching a movie in which a leading lady has just said that sometimes in life we must make decisions, and that opportunities do not always come to us at the right moments but yet, we must seize them or say goodbye. Spontaneity is an amazing tool in life, and sometimes the best thing we can do is loosen up the reigns and live in the day. If not to neglect our goals and deadlines a little in the hopes of encountering unexpected delights, then to look for silver linings and affirmations. Sometimes being caught off guard turns our “good on paper” plans into adventure novels, but the difference is that while we write our business plans before action, the adventure is usually recorded after we have learned from it.

the eye

Sometimes we need to stop and collect our thoughts. Some people label this feeling as “being in a slump” or “not ourselves” and have no problems making those close to them aware of their temporary funk, while others simply feel out of sorts but trudge forward dutifully without ever really putting a label on it. Of course, there are all combinations and variations of this, but we’ve all been there. Periodically, I believe, we all wake up to find that the bearing we set, and the course we are on, needs to be adjusted. Perhaps we have changed destinations all together. The deeper the change, the more difficult this transition can be depending on what was lost and what was gained. But there is also another type of change; the kind that happens gradually, that can ruin marriages, careers and friendships if not monitored, because with every day that passes we evolve and if we do not keep our loved ones and our goals “in the loop” we can easily wake up one day and not recognize ourselves, why we are in our jobs or why we are surrounded by those we are surrounded by.

For me, I feel rather like a snake shedding its skin. I slip into a period of deep observation. I Feng Shui, I diet, begin exercising (which I’ve always had a hard time keeping in my regular routine) and I set strict goals and to-do lists. If I didn’t live alone, I’m sure about this time someone in my house would label me as a neurotic or obsessed, because everything is in its place and my schedule is a strange and impulsive mix of impulse and regulation. We all have our different patterns. During this time, you may have noticed, I really produced rather little in the blog. This is not due to lack of intuitive, mental or romantic activity, but rather it is like the calm before a storm or perhaps, the eye of it.

Surrounded by chaos, these periods of deceptive silence can help us to fine tune our characters and to become the person we will be tomorrow. Without staying current on our emotions and desires, we can set out in a direction only to find we have ceased to care about reaching it; this is, I suppose, the reason people often say that “it is not the destination, but the journey” that matters.

clean slate

The idea that a person can completely start over is sometimes an appealing one; it isn’t always apparent that we are who we are because of the difficulties we have faced, or that there are differences between progress and ignorance. How much easier would it be for all of us if we had no painful memories in our relationships, or of our own mistakes? Like facing the jury, sometimes the people in our life are so aware of our vulnerabilities that it becomes difficult to function. It may be that they are judging us; it may be they are there to help and offer kind advice, but it may also be the case that we are so aware of our own shortcomings that the eyes we feel upon our every move come from within.

If every person has a sense of what is right and what is wrong, and if we all can be guided by that moral intuition, than is a clean slate possible? Can you just wake up one day and decide to move cities, restart personal relationships or recreate yourself? Given that a clean slate would mean no reminders, no memories and no habits based in the past… it is implied that in order to restart you must genuinely have no trace of these things within yourself to then avoid being reminded of it by that inner compass. Perhaps these negative memories, fears or trust issues, and paranoia of being judged are really a sign from your gut to reinvent yourself. We are never really free from that which we flee from so long as we bring it with us. Just as diseases, animals and plants passed undetected into the “New World” upon the ships bringing the first settlers, sometimes we have our own stowaways that (though invisible) modify our distant futures and fresh environments. We now look back and note, historically, that the consequences of new worlds and new movements always have hidden side effects. The anthropologist or politician always brings their own views to an issue or idea, no matter how hard they try to isolate their study to the facts. Is it the same in our microcosmic lives?

at last

Etta James once said, “At last, my love has come along. My lonely days are over” but perhaps her mother never told her that unless you get comfortable in your own skin, able to love yourself and know what you want, you will always be lonely. Not because you will never find love or other such notions, but because a person who is discontent and unsure of what they feel and want my be in a room filled with others to talk to, love and be near to but if you believe that those surrounding you don’t see you as you really are, you feel as if they aren’t even there.; you feel lonely and unappreciated. When we understand ourselves we are better capable of dealing with life; we participate in healthier relationships and we know our own limits and standards. At the end of the day, regret exists mainly when we feel we could have changed an outcome by our own actions.

We cannot always look to others to figure out why we are angry, why things aren’t working or what the problems are in our lives. This sounds obvious, but how many of you right now have a giant problem in your life that you have pinpointed as, or attached to, another person? Spending time figuring out how others anger you, frustrate a situation or what THEY can change may be helpful but it may just be a vicious cycle. For the purpose of humoring me, think about your BIGGEST problem. Then force yourself to leave others out of the issue and look at how you handled it or at your own habitual actions. What moods, reactions and choices do you bring to the problem? You may not be able to bring about a resolution any faster, but you can boost your integrity and give yourself peace of mind.

comatose

Doctors use a rating scale to determine how severe the condition of a coma patient. Based on the best results in the categories of Eye Opening, Motor Skills, and Verbal Response the severity of the situation is numerically assessed based on body language. If a doctor can use a set of values to judge how able a person in physical pain is to recover from their ailments and accidents, can we rate our partners behavior at other times? In medicine, a coma is defined as not opening the eyes, not obeying commands and not uttering understandable words but how do we know when our partners have entered a relationship coma? See how your love life stands up to the Glasgow Coma Scale. Has your relationship gone comatose?

Category 1: Eye Opening = E

In times of difficulty, does your partner learn from their mistakes?

Yes – 4

When I make a good argument – 3

After things get ugly – 2

No Response – 1

Category 2: Best Motor Skills = M

In times of difficulty, does your partner stay to work out the problems and make a physical effort?

My partner makes time to resolve problems with me, even when I am overly upset– 6

My partner usually will see when I am upset and make time to work it out together– 5

My partner usually listens to me and offers responses patiently, but sometimes won’t make the time if other things take priority– 4

If the conversation is short, but my partner gets sick of problem solving dialog quickly or doesn’t like to take the time – 3

The problems don’t seem to faze my partner and they don’t take it seriously, no matter how upset I get – 2

No response – 1

Category 3: Best Verbal Response = V

Yes, my partner generally addresses the problem and don’t digress into name calling or blame – 5

Somewhat, but taking responsibility and admitting their role in the problem isn’t their strong point – 4

Kind of but once we bring up a problem my partner becomes irrational, feeling they are being blamed – 3

The problems don’t seem to faze my partner, no matter how upset I get – 2

No response – 1

E + M + V = 3 to 15 Coma Rating Scale;

• 90% less than or equal to 8 are in coma
• Greater than or equal to 9 not in coma
• 8 is the critical score
• Less than or equal to 8 at 6 hours – 50% die
• 9-11 = moderate severity
• Greater than or equal to 12 = minor injury

knock on wood

When your mother told you to finish your food and reminded you that there were starving children elsewhere it was meant to reinforce the awareness that things could always be worse. When I came home today from my two weeks in Istanbul for “thinking” about my relationship, the friend I let stay in my apartment during my absence told me news that may not make me finish my food but will make me realize that things could always be worse in my love life. Today I came home to hear that in the two weeks I was gone, my friend had not only undergone the emotional roller coaster of bad fights but she had discovered that she was pregnant and had already had the abortion.

I will not get into morals and religion or other factors surrounding this kind of story, but I will give you some background. My friend is a not-terribly-close association formed back in the fall when I, omeone who loves to live alone, decided to be social and give apartment sharing a shot. I had the top floor of the house, while she and another girl had the bottom. The events of that fall, as some previous entries allude to, were generically dramatic as you might expect from females living together and females sharing dating experiences and lives. I made it out safely (no cat fights for me) moving out in January and into my new place in Zamalak… yet again alone. Whew. By summer, I invited the same girl to take my spare bedroom as financial family troubles were making life difficult for her after she had already let her grades drop due to her dysfunctional relationship. This is the key to this story. Her boyfriend, an Egyptian military officer nearing the age of thirty, who has a recently “kicked”? coke habit, aggressive tendencies, cheating habits and flirting tendencies was fighting with her regularly. Or I should say, they were fighting. Surprisingly, these fights were NOT about cocaine use or messing around, but usually a power struggle. Same old same old, you know the drill. My friend loves the chase and admittedly may only want him because he’s bad news. I guess she caught him. I shouldn’t joke… but what I mean to say is that this was already a troubled relationship before the incident. About a week ago, after a huge fight in which she was pushed off a bed, she realized she was three days late for her period. Three pregnancy tests later, she knew why. She said he was great before, during and after and she seemed almost proud to tell me those little nice things he had said as they went through this, as we all do when we know a bad story will taint the opinions of our friends, but cant seem to stop telling it anyway; so we add in a few justifications. The day after the abortion, he brought up a month old fight and was back to going out with his friends and acting as he had the day before. Not only that, but after he went out he called her at five am to see her (still not ok… as she expected to see him that night, per a conversation they had the day before) and picked a fight about trust because her brother had left the beach house where they were staying, but had invited two of his friends to stay and await his return the next day. Jealousy.

It’s often tempting to say “thank god that wasn’t me”, or to wallow in pity and indulge our tears and grievances, but at the end of the day there IS always something worse. The age old argument of whether the glass is half empty or half full, optimism versus pessimism can make a difference in your outlook. If we sit around saying “well it could be worse…” all the time, we may become far too passive, while if we sit around expecting the world to end each time we don’t knock on wood, the chances are that we will be looking for a chance to say “Ah ha! I knew this would happen”. Sometimes the best thing to do is to take a little dose of reality. It’s all around you if you take off your bias. Knocking on wood and being grateful for what you have is a great thing as long as you realize that sometimes all it takes is good judgement to avoid those little “coincidences” we all fear.

The last two weeks have been a series of incidences that make me wonder about knocking on wood, wearing the evil eye as they do in Turkey (and many places) or saying Mash-Allah as they do here in Egypt (and in Arabic)… when I commented on my friend’s brakes in Istanbul, we almost immediately had them tested when we were rear ended, when I mentioned a song it would come on or when I joked about bad traffic we inevitably hit some ourselves. Yes coincidence, but there are just as many people who believe that sometimes you should be careful. Called hubris by the ancient Greeks, a self-centered pride and confidence is always followed in Greek episodes with the guilty person falling from pride in a devastating or humiliating circumstance. Though this is far less of that, hearing about what this friend had gone through DID give me that hard reality check. Three weeks ago, exactly four days before my friend got pregnant, I warned her that her sex life was high risk and that she COULD get pregnant, even during her period. The next day her period began, and two days later she got pregnant. Should I have knocked on wood?

fake it til’ you make it

There are few clichés I truly believe in, but it would seem that, like animals, humans have a natural ability to sense the value one places on themselves and treat a person accordingly; self confidence or insecurity is highly perceptible to the human subconscious and causes those we interact with to adjust their own opinions and responses. If each person is like a puzzle piece with an edge or curve for how they handle and carry themselves in life situations, then meeting each other, dating and networking is like the search for border pieces and center pieces, we look and feel where for a fit or identifying feature and our minds automatically sort through the identifying characteristics we see before us on each piece hoping to end up with a clear picture and all pieces sorted into an organized and recognizable image. It’s the reason some people are said to have that “je ne sais quoi” or others simply “rub us the wrong way”. As we live our lives, whether we care to admit it or not, we are determining the worth of those around us. This begets the question, what puzzle piece are you? Every habit or and every word you speak changes you and changes your life. Dramatic, yes, but vaid: like a game of table tennis, we go through life volleying back and forth as we interact in different situations with the people in our lives, serving up the behavior that we think will best suit our partners game technique. If we can win, we will and if they can beat us, they will. Even calling a truce is determined by the expectation of a drawn out battle and the pro’s and con’s of taking a draw versus struggling for a victory are weighed at every step by our minds. We all narcissistically believe what our brains tell us, and so legitimize what we deem to be the best or legitimate behavior. In terms of our personal relationships, this can be a key realization and tool for change. Most of us have dated or been adored by someone who we just couldn’t muster up any feelings for, or for some unexplainable reason, kept feeling there was something better out there and so we didn’t value the relationship. We have wondered why the one that is available isn’t the one we want or why someone is perfect in every way except that we feel no attraction at all towards them. We have all moaned about the fact that the one we love isn’t behaving himself or why we just can’t get what we want, analyzing the situation over and over and trying to discover new ways to get ahead of the problem. They say that at any given moment in a relationship, one person is always more in love or more in pursuit of the other; that no two people are ever mutually interested to the same degree at the same moment. Whether or not you are pursued as mutually as you are pursuing, however, can be the difference between emotional distress and lasting bliss. Hefty claims, but think about it. The reason you want the person who is hard to get is that you are associating their distance or loftiness with confidence and worth; you don’t want what you can have, simply because you assume that if it’s too easy, it’s not worth having.

Look at your relationship and consider your partner’s behavior. No, you can’t “train” someone into being something they are not, but you can change yourself and that will change how you are treated. The best thing you can do for your relationship is improve yourself. Stop worrying about why the other person is doing what they are doing, or wondering if they love you back, and look at how you are acting when you are around them and in your life. If you make yourself too accessible, compensate or constantly initiate, cut it out! You have better things to do than sit by the phone, plan your day around resolving an argument or waiting for a phone call, and your partner knows it. If you do those things, you’re selling yourself short and you are lowering their opinion of you if it becomes apparent through habit. Even if you feel on the verge of a breakdown, crazy from analysis or so wildly angry that your actions and wishes become unmediated, the best advice you can give yourself is to think long and hard about what the best thing for you is. Even if you can’t convince yourself that you WANT to put down the phone and stop calling or to sit down and get your work done instead, you should be able to fake it because your instincts are telling you that YOU are the one selling yourself short. Raise your self worth and you raise your quality of living.

the roses

There was a time when love, work and life was slow and much simpler. Not because we didn’t experience the same emotions, but because the way we experienced them was different. Perhaps this is why each generation inevitably has a bit of  gap; the reality of today’s world is always seen through the lens of your social upbringing and time period. What would have been a cataclysmic event in the lives of our grandparents might seem trivial or foreign to us now… just as some of the simple pleasures or big decisions would have been made completely differently. Some of our parents married after knowing each other for a few months or less, never held hands until they married, never left their home town or had the same job for fifty years and never missed a day or complained. If those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it, how can a comparison between generations assist us in our love lives?

Today we live in the moment. Casual sex, text message breakups and internet dating are the fast paced reality we live in, but the old sayings of “stop and smell the roses” can still apply if we remind ourselves that life really hasn’t changed, it has just enabled us to indulge every little feeling and urge. Fifty years ago if you had a fight with your significant other, you wouldn’t be able to just pick up the phone and send a million messages or change your Facebook status to “it’s complicated”… most likely a day at work would have gone by, you would have cooled down, and half the things you might have said in anger would  have dwindled down to a few well thought out comments and a much calmer dialog. Yes the world of instantaneous communication can be a beautiful thing, but something is missing. Sometimes technology brings out our bad side, trapping it in words rather than letting it vent and be forgotten.

Why is it that one of these moments can change everything? Is it split second technology that makes us so eager to judge or speak out, as if every moment could be our last? Or are we simply trying to make the most of life by letting our impulses run the show? Drawing the line between instant and delayed gratification sometimes means we need to stop and smell the roses, and maybe lock up our cell phones and laptops when love goes astray.

Whoever had it right, some wisdom transcends time and place. Loyalty has more benefits than sorrows, it’s better to have love and lost than to never love at all, and things said in anger tend to be regretted.