Clown Class: How to Get Together with Other Treasures

Dear Tina,

I struggle with calling friends and family because I have trouble not comparing myself. I’m disabled, unemployed and haven’t had children so I’m certain everyone else has a better life than me. I want to know what’s going on with people but then I start to hate them because they get out and do stuff and have kids or craft booths. I like to give compliments but I feel I’ve been practicing thinking everyone is better than me for so long it is hurting me. I wish I could invite play with people but they tend to react as if they’re afraid I’m not ok, either because of the disability or because we don’t talk very often.  

What do you talk about that doesn’t point to a ranking or power dynamic? 

I need a reframe for my approach to people. Maybe a blueprint for growing friendships would help. Or a mental script to avoid anxiety about comparisons and just invite people to play and not be too serious.  

Signed, No News is No Life

Dear No News is No Life,

If you don’t mind, I’m going to take us somewhere together to be with this honorable and important question. I’m conscious that you’ve given me quite a jewel to consider and I want us to be somewhere good while we unwrap it. 

I don’t want us to be me at my desk and you…at your…wherever you are right now.

Too isolated. 

We’re going to an outdoor campfire among some grassy foothills together. It’s close to twilight but we control the lighting around here so it’s not going to get dark on us. We’ll be hanging out in this twilight by the fire the whole time. 

There are people around at this campsite. I don’t know exactly who they are but they’re with us, they know us, they care about us. They’re not bothering us, though. They know we’re talking. These might be the people reading along. Well, they are the people reading along. The people reading along are with us for sure. Hi, everyone. But in addition to them, I actually think a lot of these mysterious campsite folks are Your People. Ones you already know and ones you don’t yet. 

You and I get great seats right near the fire. We’ve got thermoses, blankets, the works.

I have this wish for you. It’s for all of us, really. I’m going to make that wish to my satisfaction and then we’ll get to strategizing. 

*WISH*

I want you, and all of us, to be in real community. Like, with physical proximity. I want us all to have that love and safety on deck, in good faces we can see that are no more than twenty or thirty feet away. With privacy when we need it, of course, but presence, presence, presence.  

I want this community populated with people who are good at love. Everybody can be good at it in a different way. People can love by cooking, chopping wood, making things nice, talking and listening, making themselves look stupid to get a laugh—all the sorts of things people do to get their love out to the other people most comfortably and naturally. I want all kinds in this community. A good mix.  

I want this community to be full of people who are about it, you know? People for whom love is the top priority here on Earth and not money or prestige or winning. 

Of the utmost importance is that you, No New is No Life, are loved exactly as you are in this community. Not your best face, not your most pleasing face—whatever that is—not your capacities, not your accomplishments, not your possessions or relations, but you. The essence of you, birth to death, loved because you exist as you and, in existing as you, belong. 

This imaginal campfire community place is here for you anytime you want. (For all of us!) Come here for fuel and to think. If you feel like it, I want you to head to this campfire when you’re feeling particularly isolated, to sit here—or walk around, or float—and want what you want, and imagine getting it. 

Everyone is here that you want to be here, people even better than you thought existed, and they’re ready to hang out in the greatest way.

Who from the community is walking over to you? Or who are you going to walk over to? What are you going to do together? 

(I like starting with the imagination when we’re looking at a real-world problem. Imagination moves faster than 3D life. I mean, it’s instantaneous. If we can get some vitamins going right away with the power of our imagination, we can start recognizing and getting comfortable with, and used to, a satisfied feeling.)

I want you to know what it would look like and feel like for you to be in the community of your dreams.  

*WISH LAUNCHED* 

Now we can turn to consider 2023 regular Earth, where you do your days. 

Let’s look at the bundle. These are the things you’re carrying that feel like they drain your value: You’re disabled. You don’t have a job. You’re not a parent. 

I’m not going to hammer home the obvious about these things. You already know, intellectually, that these facts do not correlate with value in any true sense. I know that you have people in your acquaintance that fall into those categories who are brimming over with wonderfulness and obvious value, and that you can do the math about yourself when you see it in them. 

You can know all that. But tell it to your stomach when you’re holding the phone in your hand and thinking about using it for telephonic purposes. 

I get this. 

You signed your letter “No News is No Life”. 

I feel it. I’ve felt it. I’ve fretted about it on a constant low roar for probably decades. I’m always worried that I’m not valuable. I want my life to count. Everything I know about the meaninglessness of the concept of variable value among humans disappears when my stomach does that thing. 

I know this is true for everyone I know. 

Oh, god, I’m going to get mad now.

What a pile of crap we’ve all built together. 

Our culture of WINNING, WIN, SUCCEED, GET THE MOST, BE LOVED THE MOST, HAVE THE MOST TO SHOW. What a nightmare. And with our capitalism-gone-mad system, our very safety and existence on the planet depend on either winning or getting protected by the people who’ve been winning enough to have the loudest say. 

Social capital, also. Very real. Very tradable. And deeply messed-up, conceptually. 

That’s part of why I embarked on that extended bit of community dreaming. I want to see and feel something else. We have to see and feel something else. We have to make something else, too, with our bare hands.

Listen, I’m not against news. I want to know people’s news, when people have news. We’re also trained to collect news. It’s polite to collect news. It’s familiar, conversationally, to collect and trade news. We collect and trade news as one easy way to show we care without putting deeper forms of connection on the table. 

Some people are exclusively news traders/collectors. That’s how they relate. And, with some people, for real, it gives them a charge to win. I don’t want to fake that people like this don’t exist, people who’ve soaked forever in that big story and can’t see anything else. I don’t even feel like judging them. What a stressful way to live. Punishment enough. 

Sharing news is also quick. Spending real time together with the people we like and love—enough time that other sorts of conversations can surface and meander or plunge into interesting places—that’s a different story. We can only really see each other if we spend longer together than a conversational snapshot allows. If we don’t do that, we run the risk of stapling a snapshot to an idea and thinking we have the whole picture. 

You want to connect. The real thing. You want to connect and be connected from a place of genuine fascination and caring and you don’t want to do some empty dance of trade. That empty dance attaches to the sick feeling we get when we’ve swallowed the big story of winners and getters and havers. I don’t blame you at all.

That’s a good thing to want, real connection. You’re going to get it, okay? You’ll have to do certain things but this is your life on Earth and it will be worth it to do them.  

First. 

In regards to the feelings of hate that come up when people get to go places and have kids and craft booths:

You’re definitely not going to repress them. 

You’ve come by that anger and hate honestly by living in this warped society that’s constantly getting us to measure our immeasurable worth. 

You’re going to have to welcome your anger and hate, and you can do that in a safe, proscribed way. I mean, are they going anywhere? No. So welcome them. Turn them into demon friends. Picture them. Draw them! Read Tsultrim Allione’s book, Feeding Your Demons and do the exercises in the book.

I think you have to hang out with these demons on purpose on a weekly basis. Set aside a chunk of time for this. Do it on Tuesday, say. Do it every Tuesday for a while. I’m not kidding. Make it a practice. Expect that this will be transformative. If you go hard with this, it will be. 

Second. 

Living with disability in this world makes a deeply disempowering story about yourself available through a giant straw that hangs right next to your mouth all day for constant sipping. This is not your fault. 

What’s also true:

You are a maker of this world. You are a designer of this world. The world is not done. You have a sphere that you currently operate in. You bring a certain level of force to operating within that sphere. Whatever level of force you currently bring to operating within your sphere, you’re going to have to turn it up. You’re going to have to make the world as it expresses in your sphere look and feel more like you want it to look and feel. You’ll have to actively drive. This is your job. No job is ever realer than this one. 

You said you want to invite people to play but you see them react to you in ways that bring up a bad feeling. I get it, I sympathize. Here’s the thing: you’re going to have to be willing to wade through some bad feeling because you must play and you must do that with other people. So you’ll have to be willing to wade through it. Possibly a lot. Be willing. Bad feelings are just sensations. Stomach burning or knotting up, tears forming or rolling all the way down. They’re sensations. They’ll do their thing and move on. DON’T DROP OUT OF CLOWN CLASS. Feel terrible things and keep showing up. 

You have to do this for real so pick a day where you invite people to play. Wednesdays, for example. A quick text or call to someone every Wednesday inviting them to the kind of play you want to do. Or make a play group. Invent one. Start one around something. This is your life on Earth, damn it. Some people will say yes, some will say no. Keep asking new people if you need to. This is your part of your job.  

Third. 

Compliments are beautiful. They’re gifts. It’s really cool that you like to give them out. I’m about to give you a Friday assignment because you cannot give out compliments when your own tank is empty. Of course it’s hurting you. 

Procure a blank notebook that’s good for both writing and drawing. On Fridays please spend an hour writing down true compliments about yourself—small scale, large scale, mix it up—and then draw beautiful pictures of yourself. These aren’t for some kind of art contest. You know how kids will draw anything they love and it’s not about making it perfect but expressing something? When I say draw beautiful pictures, I mean draw yourself as a being of beauty and power and charm. You are a being of beauty and power and charm, for corn’s sake. 

When you do this, know that you’re making the world. The page fills up your whole eyes, right? It’s what you can see. It’s the world for that span of time. You are a gigantic being pouring expressions of worth into yourself. You’re undoing years of lack, so, again, go hard. This isn’t one Friday’s half-assed thing. Please do this every Friday until your sphere is looking and feeling different, by which I mean you’re feeling worthy and you’re seeing people seeing your worth. Give it time. Give yourself time.

Fourthly.

What to talk about that doesn’t point to a ranking or power dynamic? 

Love. The things you love. The things the people you’re interested in love. Your daydreams for yourself, the daydreams of the people you’re interested in. Movies. Books. Shows. Memories. Food. Recommendations. The funny things that fascinate or obsess you, the funny things that fascinate and obsess your friends, your family, your acquaintances. 

Ask questions, questions, questions. Listen for new questions in their answers.

If a power dynamic or ranking feeling enters the conversation, grow it to a ludicrous size in your mind, in a humorous way. Don’t push the power dynamic you’re feeling away. Exaggerate it. Think to yourself, “I, a microscopic worm, am talking to the Grand Vizier of Existence. How amazing! How awful!”

Keep talking until you’re past the rank/power bit of the conversation and make yourself smile by thinking ridiculous things while you pass through the part you hate. Have a question ready to steer the conversation somewhere else. 

Finally.

Remember this, above all. 

Most people don’t want to be trapped in the story of Power and Rank any more than you do. It’s not a place that feels great. You can make yourself a safe place for other people where they get to let all of that noise go by not caring about their various sorts of status. Care about them. Care and be curious about their inner worlds. Love them well, how you want to be loved, while you have them. 

We’re all these weird, passing treasures. Nobody is better. We’re all evaporating. 

Go for it, quickly. 

-Tina