March 8, Week 1, Day 8
Usually, no one can top me for Spring Fever. When the first soft breeze touches my face, I surge with manic energy and optimism right down to my mitochondria, and there’s little that can restrain the rise of my sap, even a late April snow shower. Today, I walked out in a sweater, no down or winter-weight fleece between me and the elements. No persistent swish of an impermeable rain layer as I swung my arms to generate heat. I did what I could to bring that old feeling to the fore. I pressed the palms of my hands into the brave shoots of green grass. I turned my face to the sun and inhaled the aroma of well-saturated soil. I even hugged a tree.
Yet somehow this seasonal transition is bringing me down. I didn’t think I’d still be here to see the first crocuses at the edge of the woods on my parent’s land, or take my brother’s car in for a new inspection sticker. I think back to the optimism that had me contacting potential housemates on Craigslist in mid-December. It was actually kind of a fun (though generally inadvisable) way to meet people, but talks were eventually abandoned when the hoped-for job offers didn’t exactly come screaming down the pike.
I am aware that, in my Eeyore-esque reflections, I resemble the costume designer who won an Academy Award last night, who shall remain nameless because I can’t remember her name, and don’t want to defame her just because Greenpeace isn’t returning my calls. She held the Oscar in her hands, and seemed actually put upon as she gazed down at it. She commented that it was her third such honor, and acted as though the Academy meant to force her to affix the gaudy ornament to the hood of her Mini Cooper.
Now I don’t have a phalanx, or even one, of these distinguished statuettes gracing my mantelpiece. I don’t even have a mantelpiece. But what I do have is an amazingly loving and supportive network of family and friends, the blessing of parents who are willing to shelter and feed me while I scamper about the internet looking for livelihood, radiant good health, and the freedom to create my future according to my deepest aspirations rather than strictly imposed and enforced limitations on who and what I can become. So if the image of my forlorn face as I reach my spindly arms around a storm-tilted oak brings a tear to your eye, don’t cry for me, Argentina, and I’ll try not to either.
If you’re beginning to suspect that I’m avoiding an account of my latest foray into the world of How To Win Friends And Influence People, you may be right. Truthfully, if Mr. Carnegie had been a bit wordier, expanding his thoughts into a volume that might take, say, a month or even three weeks to read, I’d be sorely tempted to wave the white flag on this one, and start blogging about my newest hobby of taking provocative pictures of household waste. However, giving up on anything at this points feels like it would threaten a landslide of despair, so I will forge ahead, though at the accelerated pace of two chapters a day to bulk up the content.
Principle 5 (“Talk in terms of the other person’s interests”) and Principle 6 (“Make the other person feel important- and do it sincerely”) stay consistent with the overall thrust of Carnegie’s philosophy, which could be summarized as “Pay attention, be nice, and mean it.” And though I have gotten a rather mercenary impression from his explanations thus far, Carnegie reportedly became quite indignant when an audience member at one of his talks asked what he hoped to gain from someone by treating them in such a way. “…if our souls are no bigger than sour crab apples, we shall meet the failure we so richly deserve”, going so far as to call such motives “contemptibly selfish”. This seems a bit harsh and inconsistent to me, given his emphasis on the primacy of egocentric needs, labeling the urge to feel important as “responsible for civilization itself”. And here I thought it was to establish consistently reliable food security and shelter. I guess what I’m coming up against here is that I can’t quite decide if Dale Carnegie is driven by humanism or capitalism, and as the arbiter of my current new job/new life search strategy, this distinction feels immeasurably important.
Again, although I did let Carnegie’s latest installment percolate in my subconscious all day in hopes that it would yield a revelation or two, Yogi Tea trumps Carnegie once again. “Have wisdom in your actions and faith in your merits.” It sounds like something he might say, anyway, though with “but not too much, because the other person is probably an egomaniacal sociopath with an inferiority complex” as a likely addendum.
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