Kriya Me a River

I was curious so I looked into the idea of the “kriya” a little more deeply. There is apparently a specific type of exercise (“kriya yoga”) that is dedicated to the idea of the kriya. While the root word “kri” does mean “an action”, the full word in its common usage would indicate “an involuntary action”. This style of yoga, as well as related meditation and prayer, is said to cause those involved to shake, shiver, or quake. However, the symptoms of involuntary shaking and quaking could also be linked to illness or imbalance of the body or mind. When looked at from this angle, the usage of the kriya to indicate a spiritual break could make sense.

 I experienced my own “kriya” while overseas for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I was the stage manager for the show that LSU brought over there this past year. I was also the only tech/design student who went, everyone else was a performer. What this meant is that I was relied on pretty heavily to not only run the show, keep the paperwork up to date, and corral the performers, but I was also asked to design the logo, T-shirts, website, poster, and generally do anything that the professor either didn’t have time for or didn’t know how to do. To say the least, it was overwhelming. I worked very hard to keep the show together while being in a new country and not really knowing my way around. And trying to help everyone else feel comfortable and learn their way around. This is where I picked up the loving “Mama Kaley” moniker that has started to spread around the department. By the time we got to the end of the trip, I was exhausted. The final week, the courses were over and the show had wrapped and we were free to do whatever we wanted. I chose to get sick. Really sick. So sick that I almost passed out on the streets of Edinburgh and they had to put me in a cab and send me back to the flat. I spent the rest of the trip in my room watching romantic comedies on Netflix. It wasn’t my ideal end to the trip, but you know what, my body needed the rest and it was going to take it. I think that what this "kriya" was trying to tell me is that I needed to learn the lost art of saying "no". As a result, I am slowly adding that word back into my vocabulary.

I think that when I’m 80, I’ll be a lot more relaxed about things. I won’t be so scared anymore. Right now, death terrifies me. Life is actually pretty scary too. I stress out about things that don't matter and I waste so much time trying to reach perfection. I think that my 80 year old self will tell me to slow down. I think she’d tell me that life is what’s happening right now, and that she wishes she’d taken more time to have fun in her younger years. She’d say that I have plenty of time to be a serious adult, but that I should remember to stay a kid at heart. And go spend time with mom and dad! They won’t be here forever and you need to take advantage of their wisdom and their love for as long as you have it. Cherish them as well as the rest of your family and friends. It’s the love and friendships in life that are truly important.

If I could go back and talk to myself at 8 years old, I’d tell her not to be afraid to speak up for herself. I’d tell her that she’s smart, and she’s beautiful, and life is going to get better. I’d tell her that what her classmates think, and what her friends think doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. It only matters what she thinks of herself. She needs to love herself before anyone else can. At 8 years old, I’d also tell her not to lose touch with the small joys in her life. Playing with her brothers, reading books, playing games. I’d tell her that later in her life she might want to let these things go as childish or a waste of time but she shouldn’t. She needs them more than she can know right now.

Guilt or Shame?

Around the time I hit Junior High and High School, my metabolism started to slow down. I also wasn't doing dance classes, gymnastics, or any of the other active stuff I did as a kid. What that meant is that I slowly started to put on a little weight. I wouldn't say I was overweight, in fact, my doctor told me (because I asked) that I was perfectly within the normal range for someone my height. And then I started college, and of course the pounds in the form of the "Freshman 15" piled on a bit more. I'd say I was maybe about 20 pounds heavier than I am today. I'm not saying any of this to talk about having a rough time with the kids at school. l was never bullied in school or anything like that. And no one overtly discriminated against me or anything crazy. And for all intents and purposes, I was perfectly normal. Average, you might say. However, my self esteem plummeted around that time because of a variety of external cues. Besides the fact that there were movies and magazines that showed a ridiculous ideal, I was also surrounded with the twig like girls in my schools (including my twin best friends in size 0 jeans. What the hell does size 0 mean anyway!?). I always felt like the funny, fat friend. And it didn't help either that my well-meaning mother would say things like, "Maybe you shouldn't wear form fitting clothing." Or when she asked me if I wanted anything from the store and I'd say "A Dr. Pepper" and she'd say "…Diet?" Oh memories. This was a time that I felt great shame about myself and my appearance. My mom was constantly making "suggestions" about what I should do to improve myself. I love my mom, and I know she means well, but that was extremely hurtful to me. I felt like she didn't love me because I wasn't perfect. The idea that someone "shames" you only because what you do embarrasses them adds another layer onto this memory. She was may have been worried about my health but as I said, I wasn't really overweight and was nowhere near obese, so was she just worried about what others would think? Did she just not want the embarrassment of a daughter who wasn't perfectly trim? Who knows. All I know is that at a certain point I decided to change my diet on my own. I had no interest in losing weight, I just wasn't feeling well. So I cut out all fast food and soft drinks and dropped 15 pounds almost instantly. I started getting positive feedback from those around me and I got really confused. They were all complimenting me on losing weight, and not for being healthy. That's when I decided that people are crazy. And that whatever my weight is, it doesn't matter. Because as long as I feel healthy, that's what is important.

Having said all of that, there is a definite difference between guilt and shame. Shame is much more powerful, damaging, and longterm than guilt. Guilt is temporary while shame is a lifestyle. When experiencing your own guilt you are able to look at yourself as human, fallible, and vulnerable. But shame tells you that you're not a good person and you'll never be worthwhile. And it's never okay to guilt OR shame anyone. I suppose guilt is the lesser of the two evils, but it's still inappropriate. Guilt and shame when used as weapons are at best manipulative and at worst psychologically harmful.

My Life with Crazymakers

One type of crazymaker in my professional life is the type of person who is convinced that the world is against them. They are the ones who, whenever something doesn’t go their way, they dwell on it and complain about it to everyone they encounter. There is no hope for these people because they don’t want hope. They’d rather be upset and get the attention and pity of those around them. This can be very detrimental on a film set (or any other workplace for that matter) because a negative attitude is infectious. They drag everyone down with them and before you know it, everyone is wallowing in their own self-pity. These are the types of people who would rather tell you about everything going wrong instead of offering a solution. As a result of working with these sorts of people I’ve adopted my own mantra about sharing with my co-workers and/or superiors any issues I encounter: Bring solutions, not problems. Meaning, if you do encounter a problem, find a solution before you bring it up to anyone. “Hey I noticed _____, but we can fix it with ____!”

            Now, I don’t always follow this mantra but I do try my best. For example, this Saturday was Valentine’s Day. In the restaurant industry that means straight up chaos. I was the closing bartender Valentine’s night and I knew that tensions would be running high with the entire staff. When I walked in, I could already tell my other three bartenders were not in a happy place. I believe that this was in large part to our main crazymaker, my friend K**(name removed). He and I are both trainers, while the other two bartenders are relatively new. What this means is that they look at us to see how to act in a given situation. Well when I arrived, K** was fuming about the bartender from the morning shift and how he didn’t do this, that, and the other thing. Every time I would ask him if we were out of a certain product he would spout off again, blaming the other bartender. Somewhat loudly I might add. This wasn’t helpful. I thought, I don’t care whose fault it is, that’s not important right now. This attitude was also rubbing off on our other two novice bartenders who were beginning to get snippy with the servers coming to get their drinks. They felt like if K** who has been doing this for years is struggling then obviously they were going to have to struggle too. So I wanted to put a stop to it. I told K** that we can take care of restocking and we can talk to the morning bartender later, but that dwelling on things not done was not going to help us get through the night. And I let my other two bartenders know that they could relax. We weren’t that busy, and if they needed anything I was there to help them. I also tried to keep a positive and jovial demeanor to keep them relaxed. After the communication opened up between all of us we all started to get on the same page. We were helping each other out and getting things done. Because of the improvement in communication and teamwork, the shift went relatively smoothly and free of incident. I even heard K** tell someone “It’s not a big deal, we’ll get it done” when we ran out of a really important item for the bar. I was so proud!

            In my personal life, I usually play the role of the peacemaker. At least with my friends. I’m usually seen as the one who is the most grounded, who will be the “sane” one in any argument. For example, my best friends L & R are twins. And I guess because they are so close and so alike, that means they have to fight more than any two human beings rationally should. They’ll fight about anything, anywhere, anytime. And they always look to me as the mediator. But what’s funny is that I usually don’t get involved when they fight. For the most part it has nothing to do with me so I just let them go. I get involved only when either A) they start to “draw blood”, not literally but rather when they get to a point of just saying hateful things to each other and aren’t even trying to have a valid argument, or B) when they start to effect those around them. They have taken turns over the years between being victim and persecutor, but I pretty much always get to be the peacemaker. I’ve never really thought of myself as being that effective at peacemaking however. They may stop fighting after I tell them “That’s enough!” but they’re still fixed in their opinion that they’re right and they still remain angry with the other one. I wish that I could find a way to help them really see the other one’s perspective. Sometimes I feel like my friends are just too irrational to see the truth. But who knows, maybe I’m the irrational one.

"You're rude."

When I first started my job at P.F. Chang’s, we had a general manager who had no interest in following corporate rules, he constantly went out drinking with his employees, and did questionable things with company money. Everyone loved him. Well, mostly. He was a good time. I didn’t care for him one way or the other to be honest, but I didn’t mind him I guess. Well, as you can imagine this behavior eventually caught up to him and he was fired. His replacement was a by-the-book corporate drone who started to strictly enforce all the rules and regulations that had been ignored for years. Years! That means everyone who worked there had gotten very comfortable with their level of indifference to protocol. So once this guy came in and started telling us what to do, everyone got extremely upset. The environment was volatile for a while. People started quitting and getting fired in droves. And the people left over were getting more and more angry every day. Even though I wasn’t a particularly big fan of my former boss, I was effected by the bad attitudes all around me. I was angry with this new guy because I thought that he was acting unfairly toward my friends. I was having a really hard time so I tried to just come in to do my job and ignore everything else. I thought I had been flying under the radar. I was wrong. A few months after his arrival he called me into the office. He wanted to talk to me about my attitude. He said that as a leader in the restaurant I needed to be a better example for my fellow employees. He also wanted me to know that my attitude toward him was made clear by the fact that I would rarely greet him when passing him in the kitchen. He said, “When I say hello to you, you just pass me by. You don’t smile or anything. You're rude.” I was surprised. I didn’t think that I was coming off that way. After he confronted me, I immediately felt defensive. Who is this guy? He doesn't know anything about me, I thought. I left the office and knew that I needed to just get away from that situation for a while. Thankfully, that conversation coincided very closely with my departure to Australia. I had plenty of time away to think about what was said and to reset. I realized that I wasn’t really upset with him. I was actually just being far too empathetic to everyone else’s feelings. The changes he made were for the better, this became apparent 6 months to a year into the process when sales started improving and the entire staff was generally happier. I realized that he was right when he said I had a bad attitude. I had let myself get completely wrapped up in what everyone else was feeling and I wasn’t even giving him a chance. After I got back I was in a better headspace and ready to get back to work. Because of my newfound enthusiasm and positivity I quickly became the head server, head bartender, and head trainer. Years later, I asked my manager if there was anything that I should improve upon as an employee. He told me that he wouldn’t change a thing and that he was proud to now have me on his side.

Even though it took me a while, I really appreciated what my boss said to me. He didn't talk down to me, didn't yell at me, he wasn't being emotional. He merely shared the facts with me. I was coming across as rude, and I should fix it. I often think back to that day when I feel my attitude start to shift. What's causing this? Who am I really angry with? How do I fix it?

And now for something a little different…

The advice that I would give to any underclassman looking to give feedback is this: It is neither your job nor your responsibility to always give your opinion on the choices of others. (Unless it literally is your job or responsibility) Although it may be tempting to share your point of view after you see a performance or while listening to a conversation in the hall, you should wait to be asked. This is something that I still have a little bit of trouble with. I happen to think I’m a pretty level-headed person so I often get tempted to “help” others when I hear they’re having trouble. However, giving your opinion when it is unsolicited can come across as obnoxious and pushy. When I start to respond to someone else’s troubles I often remind myself of the above piece of advice. If you don’t know someone that well, and aren’t privy to what they’re going through, you shouldn’t decide that you know what’s best for them or how they should improve. But if they do happen to ask you for your opinion, be kind in your advice or criticism. Life is rough for everyone.

Fear

I realize now that back when I started college in 2003, I was filled with fear. Up to that point I had rarely made below a B in school and I was very concerned about letting my parents down. My dad had this reward system set up where if I got all A’s he would bring me out to dinner to celebrate and praise me. But if I got just one B, I would get, “That’s okay, you’ll do better next time.” It instilled in me this ridiculous need for perfection. I felt like if I couldn’t be perfect, I wasn’t worth anything. Mind you, it wasn’t my father’s fault that I felt that way. It’s not like he told me I was a failure or threatened me in any way for not being perfect, but I would only get praise and attention for perfection. And once I got to college I was overwhelmed with how much more work and self-discipline was required to reach that perfection. I was ill-equipped. I decided it was too hard and that if I couldn’t get all A’s then I wasn’t even going to try. After a few semesters and a plummeting GPA, I left school before I failed out. I started working full time and forgot about trying to reach any specific goal. I lived in this funk of self-doubt for a while, afraid to take a single step forward.

         It wasn’t until a few years later that I had reached a point in my life where I just couldn’t live without being challenged anymore. As a result of living on my own and travelling abroad for a while I had gained a great deal of self confidence and initiative. That’s when I set my sights on coming back to school and being an active participant in my future. I decided I would make a real effort to get into the art department on films. I love to be a part of the creative process and ultimately wanted to be either an Art Director or even Production Designer. And that’s when those familiar fears started to creep back in. I realize now that I still have an amazing amount of fear about not living up to expectations and failing in everyone else’s eyes. I have fear that I have no talent, no creativity, and that soon everyone else will know too. I’m a fraud and I have no business being here. It doesn’t help either that I’ve made a name for myself as someone very analytical and logical. Someone who is good at non-creative tasks like scheduling and organizing. I get approached much more often to be a stage manager or producer than I do to be a set or production designer. Even this is no one else’s fault but my own because I gravitate towards these jobs due to my fear. I have every confidence in the world that I can schedule and organize any show/film that you hand to me because there is a logical progression of steps. And how I do my job can objectively be judged as good or bad. But when asked to design for a production I shrink back into my self-doubt. Will I be able to come up with any ideas? Will they even like anything I do come up with? What if no one understands my concept?

For example, I’m the assistant set designer for “Carrie” and I feel like I won’t do the show justice. My skill level is too low, I have no idea what I’m doing, and I’m just way out of my league. The difference at this point in my life is that I push past my fears. If I’m scared to do something, that’s exactly why I want to do it. I’m just taking each task one little step, one little bit at a time until I get through it. And I’m way too stubborn to quit. I interpret each new challenge as life throwing down the gauntlet and daring me to compete. Well, game on.

A Girl and her Anger

In my experience, it’s never a good idea to simply swallow things back and not get mad. When that happens, all you do is compound the anger and end up exploding at some later point over something relatively small. I’ve experienced it a lot with friends. The most frustrating of these situations is when there is a simple misunderstanding. Sometimes I’m even conscious of the fact that they may have misunderstood something I’ve done or said but now they are being cold to me and won’t talk about it. I’ll ask “What’s wrong?” and they invariably answer with the ever frustrating “Nothing.” They think they are making things easy for themselves, or even for me, because they don’t want confrontation. But all they’re doing is creating resentment in our friendship that’s eventually going to bubble to the surface and ruin our relationship.

Personally, I deal with anger in a different way. First of all, I’m not generally someone who is quick to anger. I understand that people have multiple ways of communicating and going about doing things that have nothing to do with me, so it doesn’t usually upset me. However, when I do get angry I give myself enough time to calm down about the situation before I can rationally discuss it. I use that time to look at situations from multiple perspectives so that I can put myself in the other person’s shoes. I think that most of the time, it is simply a misunderstanding because in my experience typically people don’t do things to intentionally insult or hurt someone.

The most important moment in shaping my relationship with anger was an experience with my best friend from high school. Notice the use of “was”. We are no longer friends. We were very good friends throughout all of junior high and high school. Unfortunately, our senior year she had to move back to Texas with her family because of her dad’s job. She was never an overly social person and it took her a very long time to meet people and make friends. For this reason, she began to resent me because when we would talk on the phone I would mention things I was doing or people I was hanging out with while she had nothing going on in her own life. I wouldn’t learn this until much later. She was angry with me for seemingly moving on so easily from our friendship and having so much going on in my life. This wasn’t true. I still very much wanted to stay friends, but I wasn’t going to lock myself away in a room just because she wasn’t there. So naturally it took me completely by surprise when one day she went off on me, spewing so much bile about how much she despised me and wished she’d never met me. What!? “What the hell did I do to you all the way in Texas?” I wondered. Years later she apologized, finally admitting that it was her own insecurities that created this rift. But it was too late to repair our relationship. I would never again be able to trust that she would be totally honest with me about her feelings. I fully believe that if we did try to fix things, she would have continued to quietly harbor resentments toward me because that was her personality. And then she’d just explode much later on to continue the cycle. This experience was a defining moment in my life. It was at that point that I decided that I would never again be able to be close with anyone who bottles up toxic anger instead of expressing it. Gradually I started “cleaning house” to rid myself of these sorts of toxic relationships and it has made a very positive impact on my life.