Salon.com > meditation

Why are L.A. people so mean?

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 01:00:00 +0000

Dear Cary,

First, you are awesome! I'm so happy your health has improved!

Now, I live in Los Angeles. I moved here from New Mexico 10 years ago. Can you tell me what is wrong with everyone here? Where are the nice people? When I try to be nice they look at me like a hopeless simpleton. When they try to "act" nice it never feels sincere. Like part of a show.

Like dinner parties where everyone has to leave at 8 because the host is going out later with "other people." Or people invite you out with them to a play and then they spend the whole time on their cellphone texting someone and making plans to meet them "as soon as the play is over." And then asking you to drop them off at this other person's house. Is this normal behavior?

I'm 42. Female. Normal, boring job. Married. No kids. Don't want kids. Kinda nerdy. I try to make friends here at work. Give gifts. Make muffins. Make amusing remarks. Invite people to do a wide variety of activities with me. Sailing? Symphony? Hiking? Auto racing? Air show? No dice.

How do I just be?

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Cary,

I wrote once before, many years ago, before a child and a move and the age 40 descended. It was a letter about cheese. About how to get my husband to quit eating my fancy cheese when he had perfectly fine cheese he bought for himself. He would sneak it, hide eating it, but always leave a telltale sign, like a partially zipped Zip-Loc. It was a letter about cheese, but way more than that too. What it wasn't was an admission that I had an eating disorder, even though I knew I did. It wasn't a question about the power struggles we have with ourselves and our spouses, about finding a way to be something true. It looked like a wacky letter from an uptight girl about fancy cheese. This is a different letter. But the same in some ways ... a question about how to be with what's true.

Four days of silence

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

“A retreat is a good idea,” my meditation teacher, trained in the U.K. by a Tibetan monk, said when I consulted him about my persistent urge to get away. “And I recommend a silent one.”

My husband had left me for another woman. I was juggling two kids, in and out of divorce court, and felt my lid about to blow. As luck would have it, I’d just turned 50, too. Even I knew I needed time for introspection, but why the extra burden of keeping silent, I wanted to ask, but didn’t. And why couldn’t I blow off a little steam, listen to music and converse over dinner with other people at the retreat? Life was hard enough. And my teacher knew I wasn’t the silent type.

I spend the bulk of my workday in front of a computer, but at heart I’m a social animal. Though shy as a young girl, once I reached adulthood I became a confirmed extrovert, joining a long line of female talkers on my mother’s side of the family who could easily hold the thread of one story at bay while carrying on the next.