DRAMA...

The word and concept is DRAMA…do we have to have drama in our lives to feel as if we are alive? This underlying idea has impacted my life is several ways in the last few months:

I recently suggested at a book club meeting, as it pertained to the book we had just read, that we can meet a stranger and tell our whole life story, including intimate details to them. I used the example of going on a cruise or vacation and suddenly you are eating meals with strangers, making conversation and if you spend enough time with them soon you are telling them more than casual details. I have done this myself and whether it is the thrill of talking to people you might never see again or just having so much free time with new acquaintances, I am not sure, but it has happened and I think it can be exciting. After I expressed this thought another woman in the group got very nervous, even angry and suggested that she thought it was totaled wrong to tell personal things to strangers and she never would. That was when I made the insinuation that this is the very reason that we read books in the first place…to find out other people’s secrets. She did not reply. She would not even look at me and she left the group early. Obviously I had struck a nerve!

Now let me suggest that we not only will talk to strangers, but that we read romance novels, magazines and watch soap operas, go to movies, and even read the evening paper or listen to the nightly news because we need drama in our lives.

And we are very interested in other people’s secrets!

In the last several years, I have had more time to listen to friends. I find that I have attracted a lot of people who like to talk. Most of the time that is OK with me as I work for myself and can have lunch or an extended phone conversation if a friend needs my ear…I try to be there for my friends. I have also run into a couple of “drama queens.” One in particular that I listened to endlessly until I decided I would tell her the absolute, unadulterated truth as I saw it and if she could stand to hear that our friendship might work. After a year of my unvarnished opinions, nothing much had changed and I concluded that she was addicted to the drama she created in her own life and got off by retelling it over and over. She never solved her problems she just found new groups to join and new people to tell her dramas to. I stopped calling her back!

Interestingly enough, a new drama has just entered my life and I am beginning to wonder if I have a sign written on my back that I don’t know about, but everyone else can read. Do I need other people’s drama, because I don’t have enough of my own? Or perhaps, after further thought the philosophical answer might be this: I went through a very traumatic and dramatic time in my life and people came to my aid with information and help, even strangers and students of mine that I did not solicit, came to aid and advise me, so perhaps now that I am more settled and hopefully wiser, it is time for me to return the favor and that is why these people are coming into my life. Most of these people are passing through and I think that is how life is, so it my turn to “be there” and be a sounding board, advice giver or mentor in their dramas.

I do not think I can live without a certain amount of drama in my life…perhaps no one can. What do you think?

Pretty

I have been reading some of my poetry to my new friend Amanda, and this is her current favorite, so I am printing dedicating it to her and putting it where all of you as well can read it.

PRETTY

I inherited pretty…in the same way it was passed down to my mother.

It came softly in unspoken messages;

Subtle as summer breeze, so we hardly noticed

When it surrounded us and became a way of life.

We cultivated pretty…weeding out what was not,

Ruthless as any gardener,

Selectively nurturing the rose that might grow into a prize.

In our manner and dress, always agreeable, we became noticed.

Never really asking for permission, yet gaining entrance,

Pretty brought us what no amount of education or boldness ever could.

We collected “pretties” amassing things,

Gilding the cages that kept us from freedom;

The freedom of knowing who we really were

Or what we might become.

Pretty is an illusion, both theirs and ours.

Pretty seduced us in the same way we learned

To seduce the men we thought would liberate us,

And we both were deceived.

Pretty kept us prisoners,

Pretty always has a price.

Pretty is learning new definitions.

I notice women now, in this new century, and they are not so pretty.

They seem to be more honest,

And to know more about themselves and the world.

Pretty is as pretty feels!

Pretty is what we develop on the inside of each of us

Where it feels good and that is where it should be.

Look for it there.