What Am I Receiving?

 What Am I Receiving?

 

We live in a pervasive culture of entitlement.  It is fashionable to imagine: “I’m a self-made person.  I got to where I am by my own considerable efforts.  I pay my own way and don’t owe anything to anyone.” While it may feel good to entertain this lofty position, it could hardly be further from the truth. It is a convenient lie.  For all of us.

 

No one grows to adulthood “on his own.”  Each of us is alive because someone gave us our life, fed us, clothed us, sheltered us and offered us protection for many years.  Human children cannot survive in the wild “on their own.”  Face it, we are all here thanks to the efforts and support of others. Modern psychologists give much emphasis to emotional wellbeing. This can blind us to the reality of the physical and financial support each of us must have had to reach adult life. We simply take all this for granted as if it is our “right.” It is altogether common to focus on the quality of parenting and miss the fact of it.  “My father was distant and rarely ‘there for me,” we hear someone whine. What are they missing?  Did he provide a home for you?  Did he pay the bills for your food and education?  Perhaps not, but you lived somewhere and someone was supporting you.

 

The elephant in the living room, is the indisputable fact that each of us is alive and thriving (or even existing) thanks to the efforts of countless others. All of us without exception consume food, energy, and knowledge given to us by others. When have you stopped to take stock of these ongoing gifts? Perhaps you say, they are too many to count. This is a convenient excuse to avoid facing reality. There is value in actually counting this countless list.  To investigate the truth of this claim I invite students to respond to the question:  “Thanks to whom are you here?”  Here can mean, in this room now, or alive today or whatever makes sense to you.

Try this now.  Stop for 15 minutes and begin a list of all of those who have contributed to your life right now. Be specific.  Generalizations don’t offer the insight gained from a specific example. Some may be people you know personally, some may be people you know by name, others whose names you don’t know, but recognize their contribution, e.g. “the person who engineered the software for this computer made it possible for me to be typing now.”  

 

Continue to add to the list . . . do this for a half hour if you can.  

 

I gave this assignment to a class of Stanford University students in an Improvisation class.  Their lists were long and impressive. They all agreed that this line of thinking was a new direction, and a useful one.  Seeing what sustains us as “a gift” rather than an entitlement creates a new world, one in which our stock has gone up.  We begin to view ourselves on the receiving end.  The formal way to ask this question is:  “What have I received from others?”

 

The word receive is a powerhouse.  I don’t think Westerners mine this word for all it can mean.  The Japanese have a polite phrase “itadakimasu” that is heard dozens of times a day in ordinary situations.  Literally it means “I am receiving” or “I notice that I am receiving.”  It is said instead of a grace before a meal.  “I notice that I am about to receive nourishment.”  It is used when someone proffers a gift.  “I notice that I am receiving a present from you.”  It is a cultural heads-up, an announcement to the world that I am aware of being on the receiving end of some transaction.  

 

It is the opposite of entitlement.  

 

The self-made man in the West pays his own way.  When he receives the sirloin steak in a restaurant there is no sense of it being any kind of gift since he is paying for it.  Paying for something cancels any notion of indebtedness.  The illusion of money robs us of having to become aware of the experience of receiving. “I’ve bought this or I own this” is a natural way to avoid discovering a vital truth about how life works.  We are all here thanks to the ongoing effort of uncountable others.  What can help us break through this arrogance is to actually start counting. Perhaps start by counting the number of meals your mother made for you up until age 10, for example. 

 

I think the Japanese have got it right.  When a plate of food arrives in front of us we are receiving something.  And, if we examine it, that food has a chain of suppliers who have made it possible.  There is the farmer who grew the food, the middlemen who brings it to market, those who prepare it and serve it, to name a few.  This logical chain is a real one and it results in a consumable that allows me to live. The remarkable book, Thanks a Thousand,ˆby A. J. Jacobs traces one man’s investigation into the 1000 names of people all of whom contributed to his cup of coffee on a given day.

It’s a tragedy to miss this understanding.  The best we usually hope for is to like the taste of the steak and consider it was perfectly cooked.  Then we say “It was delicious!”  But we still have not understood that we have received it.  It strikes me as especially egregious when, for example, we complain about the food taking a long time to come, or about the personality of the waitperson.  It is not uncommon to leave the restaurant dismissing it all as “poor service.” And all the time a dozen people have been working to feed me and nourish me.   How easy it is to miss all that we receive.

 

Victor Frankl’s moving book, Man’s Search for Meaning, reminds us that regardless of circumstances each of us chooses his own attitude toward life.  Life itself is a gift any way you look at it.  Fear may prohibit this discovery.  No one wants to feel indebted.  We all like to imagine that we are “paying our way, pulling our weight, doing our share.”  If I truly understand my indebtedness it can wake up an impulse to give something back.  And, as we count the physical labor and effort involved in each step of the process we can cultivate a healthy understanding of our place in the world.

 

I invite the reader to spend an hour and answer this question.  “What have I received from others that makes my life what it is today?”  I predict you will discover that you are receiving much.  This truth can change your life.  It did for me.

 

 

 

Patricia Ryan Madson

El Granada, California, USA

Emerita, Stanford University

www.improvwisdom.com

 

 

February 19, 2024

 

First draft: November 3, 2015

 

 

 

The Yelp of Yesterday: People

 “Soon enough, nobody will remember life before the Internet.  What does this unavoidable fact mean?”

 

Michael Harris, The End of Absence (2014),

 

The Yelp of Yesterday

Harris’ profound book is a wake-up call to those of us “of a certain age.”  He points out that at 77 I fall into a demographic that has lived as an adult through both a life with and without the Internet. “If we’re the last people in history to know life before the Internet, we are also the only ones who will ever speak, as it were, both languages. We are the only fluent translators of Before and After.”

 

 The story of my midlife trip around the world, without a phone, seems more important in the light of his observation.  No one born today or hereafter can ever take a trip around the world without a phone . . . even if they don’t carry one themselves.  So it falls to me to tell the story of what that was like. 

 

I arrived on a night bus from the Phuket airport to the coast side town.  I spent my fortieth birthday alone on Kata Beach in Thailand.  There were no birthday greetings since I was 3000 miles from home and there was no telephone  service of any kind or post office in the beachfront town where I had rented a thatched cottage by the beach. Facebook wasn’t even a twinkle in someone’s eye and there was no such thing as Wi-fi anywhere. Anywhere.  On that December 3 day, I watched a sunset break over the ocean so pink and peach and lavender spectacular that I can still remember it. My diary noted that the only person I had spoken to all day was a waiter who brought me grilled fish. I did a small watercolor painting in my journal to commemorate that sunset. 

 

The year was 1982 and I was six months into a trip around the world. I was alone, carrying one small brown suitcase and I was without a phone. It was as close to paradise as I can imagine. The place was actually called Shangri-la, if you can believe it. I was surrounded by solitude, nature and what Michael Harris calls “absence.”  

 

I’m not here as a crusader about the “good old days” to compare the magic of traveling without Yelp or a GPS.  Recounting the trip does point out that attention was a more natural exercise without the constant distraction of our devices.

 

When I wanted to know something, I would ask someone or if the question was factual I would go to a library and stand in front of long rows of wooden drawers filled with cream colored index cards: the card catalogue. These cards, which were carefully indexed by subject, name or author, were just the first step in acquiring what was needed to answer a question.  Once a likely book was identified there was the issue of getting the book.  Perhaps it was in the stacks above or it may have been housed in another library.  I might need to fill out a request for an interlibrary loan, wait two weeks and then return to have a look at the book.  When I was able to get my hands on the book then I needed to read it, cull the information, formulate an answer to my query and jot down the findings on some 3 X 5 note cards that I kept in a little green tin box.  Research.

 

No future generation will ever go through this procedure.  It would have seemed like science fiction to imagine typing a question onto a computer screen or speaking the question out loud and having the answer appear instantly. Research.  Really?  

 

Actual humans were the Yelp of yesterday.  As I traveled the world and wanted to know a good place to crash or a reliable bus route or the best local fish I would ask someone I met on the road.  Strangers became the links to places, goods and services.  I kept a tiny notebook in which I would record recommendations gathered along the way. In Nepal it was the Kathmandu Guest House or K. C.’S Restaurant and on Bali it was Murni’s Restaurant where I’d go to get the scoop on travel tips.  I learned to trust the network of travelers I met. On the road to Pokhara I met someone who had just come from there and had a suggestion for a good place to sleep.  

 

The key life skill that was needed was the ability to pay attention to reality, to stay alert to all that was happening and to the people I met and the advice I gathered. Attention became my best friend and the biggest challenge as I traveled.    

 

From my diary of December 5, 1982  

 

“I realized that traveling well takes real alertness, attention, mindfulness and a high degree of tolerance and flexibility. I'm gaining these skills. Spacing out is not allowed. In transit I must stay clear. That's probably why traveling is such real work. There is no time to go slack.”