How’s your “Own Little World?”
How great would your own little world be if you were suddenly Star-Trek-rematerialized as a child beggar along a filthy bridge where no prospects came along beyond a few street drunks, a tourist or two from small Pacific Islands where newspapers are scarce….and one dopey blond who ignores the truth about Mexico today because her mother, who died suddenly at forty-two, had, along with Dad, every summer, loaded up the peach-colored van, the blond, her sister, and brother…to spend summers in Colonial cities and Indian villiages, while Mom wrote her travel column on Mexico adventures with children?
How great would your little world be if you were on that bridge?
Dateline: Tijuana, Mexico. Crossing the riverbed bridge.
Incident: The day is hot and windy. Sand swirls on the bridge stinging those very few of us who still dared to cross the Big Brown Line. The landscape is grim. The future looks worse. The police wear masks to keep the drug lords’ slaves from taking their pictures then going to their homes and murdering their families.
My Own Little World’s a mess. My feet are killing me. What’s wrong with me that I just had to come across? What was I thinking? I mean, the armed forces have banned their personnel from crossing into Mexico… Why do I get myself in these ridiculous situations? I hear a siren, and whirl heading back to the USA at a trot. My head down, charging for the border, I hear a wild squeaking sound and tiny high-pitched shreiking voice.
What? I spot her. A little girl, in full Tarahumara modest garb–full-length dress, hightop leather shoes, leggings, and a straw hat. Maybe five, probably four. She sits with her back braced on the inner wall of the bridge, her legs stuck out in front of her. Her blue-black Indian hair squirts off her scalp in pert ponytails. On her lap she holds a squeezebox. Her eyes are closed but still she’s grinning big-time. She’s singing a tune only she knows as loud as she can and clutching her squeezebox in and out with her happy screeching. She’s having a good time in the middle of all this. She’s singing her song as if the whole world and all the angels are listening.
How can she do that? Who knows? Exactly, I mean. If there was a formula, if it were as easy as positive thinking, there’d be no exaggerated braking and hand-signalling on the freeway, no relentless dieting and gaining and useless machine buying, no avoiding high school reunions, no picking at the spouse when we know that action never turns out well, no criticizing at all since criticism is only anxiety shot outward and stuck on someone else.
Behind me, in the bar of my San Diego Hilton national world branch office I hear an ESPN story asking if a quarterback with too many interceptions had considered suicide . . . And I see that little girl’s estatic face. Sure, she had a dirty paper cup between her ankles, hoping. Sure, her shawled four foot mother was only a block away holding the cheap bead earrings she’d strung last night into the path of every hopeful.
Why this blog? I want what that little girl with nothing had. I want you to have it, too.
But ours will not be a journey for the weak or the crowd looking for easy answers. Take that back. For I’m certainly among the weak. However I am determined. There’s no easy formula for managing what goes on inside our chest cavity….no list of tricks to change our hearts and our energies… Speaking for myself, of course. Could be for you…being told to “get over it,” “think positive,” and “Dr. L. on the radio telling you to grow up and do what she–as a descended goddess of all that is ‘right’…maybe that works for you. Naaah….
You’ve read this far, so you’re trying along with me. You’re trying to better understand and learn to manage anxiety.
“Which is more important? The world of facts, the world you can touch? Or the world you are making up to fit your fears? The world you are responding to?”
Come along….Next we take a look at how we’ve put our own little worlds together….
The goal? To sing like the world and all the angels are listening. Nothing less. I will settle for nothing less. Yes…I’m going crazy. Care to join me? The music’s terrific.
Note: For those of you still wondering, I haven’t forgotten I still owe a Mexico confession of utter Emotional Guidance System idiocy.
