No more peeking

Oh, I’m so conflicted.

On one hand, I hope South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford — a self-righteous, self-appointed keeper of the rules that govern all but him — feels the heat of what he’s done for a good long time. I hope his wife and family turn their backs on him. I hope his party throws him out. I hope his constituents force him to resign.

On the other, I think the rest of us have crossed a boundary that makes us little better than he.

I don’t much care that he cheated. In my opinion, that’s between him and his wife and should involve exactly none of the rest of us. Given that I certainly don’t measure up, I don’t expect my elected officials to be saints. I don’t consider a personal, human failing to be an indicator of anything but that.

The offense I take is at the hypocrisy of a career built on pushing a definition of family values he doesn’t live by himself. That and the fact that he lied to his colleagues, friends and everyone else.

Yeah, so, blah, blah, blah. I’m hardly the first person to say that.

Today, though, after reading the emails he exchanged with the Argentine woman he is so clearly in love with, I started to feel slimy and hypocritical myself.

This man owes us his honesty. He owes us his hard work and good judgment. He owes us his service.

He does not owe us a window into his personal conversations, no matter what rules he’s broken. Even criminals maintain their right to privacy when they're charged with a crime.

Scum bag though he may be, he has not forfeited his right to pour his heart out in private. Who are we to peek at his heartfelt, lovesick words to the woman he loves? We have no more right to delve into this part of the story than he has to tell us how to run our families, our bodies and our lives.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m always glad to see a finger-pointer discover the four fingers pointing back at him. And sure, this takes one more far right-wing candidate off the list for Presidential Election 2012. But once you get past the dereliction of duty and dishonesty to God and everybody, that’s where our part of the “gotcha” ends. The salacious details that come next belong to him and his family.

For those who’d lob the “but he was using state email resources to conduct his affair” argument, I ask that look at your own use of company resources and tell me you’d apply that same rule to yourself. Despite the fact that your company does actually have a legal right to snoop in your work email program, you surely wouldn’t take it lying down. Of course you wouldn’t. In this case, as in so many, the legal argument is usurped by the American expectation that our private lives will remain just that.

I believe that applies as much to a public servant as it does to you and me.

The reservoir runs dry

This is lovingly — and completely — lifted from The Happiness Project blog, which I love, love, love.

The words are particularly potent to me today.

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“In his outstanding biography, Samuel Johnson, W. Jackson Bate describes how upset the temperamental Samuel Johnson became when his joyous, enthusiastic supporter, Hester Thrale, turned her attention away from him.

It is a common mistake on the part of cooler, self-contained natures to assume that those who have a giving and ebullient character are what they are only because they cannot help it—that they are fed from a spring that will never stop rather than a reservoir that can be exhausted. Hence the feeling of stark disbelief or unpleasant shock on the part of others when the reservoir of effort and energy—for it turns out to be a reservoir—is almost gone….the principal reward for those who give lavishly rather than meagerly is the expectation that they remain true to form and continue to give.

We depend on the joyous ones, and we need to remember that their joy isn’t inexhaustible or unconquerable.

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Today I feel exhausted and conquered and stopped dead in my tracks.

Tomorrow will be better. But today just isn’t.

I hope your world is filled with peace.

Words to live by

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Do one thing every day that scares you.”

Today, dear reader, I met that goal.

I did something that scares me, energizes me and taps into a part of me that has been languishing for too long. The moment I did it, I felt two distinct things: relief and exhilaration. I was expecting to feel nausea. It never came. That’s usually a clue that whatever scary thing I’ve finally done is long overdue.

My apologies for the cryptology over the past few weeks. Believe me, I want nothing more than to spill the beans. I can’t. Not just yet. But soon.

In the meantime, white light and prayers are welcome. As always.

Now, what about you, dear reader? Have you thought about what I said?

Are you ready to follow your heart?

Last notice

Dear People Magazine,

I don’t really know how to say this so I’m just gonna come out with it.

It’s over. Between you and me, I mean.

Oh, it’s nothing you’ve done. You’re still the best. It’s not you. It’s me. I’ve changed. And you don’t fit anymore.

No, there’s no one else. Well, Esquire has come knocking again. But that has nothing to do with us. This thing has just run its course.

When we first met, there in the checkout line, you were just what I needed — a window into a life I'd never know except vicariously. You were a distraction from the pain. You gave me an hour’s worth of respite each week. You were a delicious helping of mind candy, sweet and tasty and full of empty calories. A sugary treat in an unsavory world.

But times have changed. I don’t need to live vicariously any longer. As a courageous woman named Muriel once said: "Since I've met you ... I haven't listened to one Abba song. That’s because my life is as good as an Abba song. It’s as good as ‘Dancing Queen.’”

OK, so that doesn’t exactly work. I mean, I don't listen to Abba all that often. But you get what I'm saying. Right?

The thing is, I don’t need stories about Justin or Britney or Brad and Angelina anymore. These days, my life is full enough without their drama. In fact, their drama just makes me roll my eyes. Which actually hurts. (I tell ya, it’s hell getting old.)

And all those other people all over your pages — the ones from “Gossip Girl” and “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Dancing with the Stars” and “The Hills?” I don’t know who they are. Can’t tell them apart. Wouldn’t know them if I tripped over them.

As for Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and Jon & Kate? Please. These people just aren’t worth my time anymore. I have more important things to do.

Thank God.

So, this is it. After a decade of reupping in three-year increments, I’ve received my “Last Notice” and thrown it in the trash.

I know this is hard. But believe me, it’s for the best. In time, you’ll find someone new who needs people named Chace and Blake and Penn in her life.

In the meantime, please don’t call or write. I’ve moved on. And so should you.

All the best,

bzh

reCREATING myself

My friend D. may have changed my life forever at dinner the other night, just as she is changing the world.

She and I have been friends for a long time. We lost touch there in the middle, when life got in the way. But we’ve never lost each other completely. And I’m so grateful.

I hope she won’t be offended to learn that I think we are very similar, she and I. We’re both courageous, ambitious women who started down one path, only to find that our lives were destined to take another. We both married men who didn’t fit the description we’d drawn for ourselves, and we both thank the gods every day we were smart enough to listen to our hearts. We’re both good to other women despite the fact that other women aren’t always good to us. We both walk fast, butt in, take charge and do it ourselves because we don’t have the patience to wait for the world to change.

D. is a little farther down her path than I am down mine because she didn’t take as many detours as I did and she naturally comes by the one ingredient I struggle to keep in my tank: self-esteem.

A few years ago, after she moved back to her native city and took on a big, big job, she surprised me and a lot of other people by announcing she was pregnant. A few years later, she did it again. It all came as such a shock — this fairly typical behavior — because D. had all but sworn that even though she’d broken her vow never to marry, her vow never to procreate was indestructible.

Lucky for Planet Earth, she was wrong.

After a whole bunch of interim steps I won’t include here, D. decided it was time to search her soul for the professional purpose that fit this path she was on. Today, instead of working a big job, she’s making a big difference for her kids, her community and our planet. Go here and you’ll see: She's literally changing the world every day. And she's just getting started.

Now before you silently congratulate her altruism, know this: D. is not penniless and happy. She's doing-alright and happy. She won't ever be the envy of her former colleagues when it comes to raw numbers. But she hasn't given up shopping at Whole Foods, either.

I tell you D.’s story because, at the end of the day, it’s all about me. I traveled to her part of the world last week, where she drove two-and-a-half hours to meet me for dinner. We hadn’t seen each other in years, but it was just like no time had gone by. We talked about family and old times, and I finally got to hear the story of how she arrived where she is.

The short version is this: She searched her soul, asked her friends and confidants, and made up her mind to follow her heart away from where she was to where she belongs. Sometimes, she discovered, the path you're on, though familiar and comfortable and safe, is also wrong.

By the time we parted, her story had inspired a realization that I, too, have been standing at a crossroads. My path needs a clearer professional purpose if I am to continue on it.

And for the first time without a single bit of fear, I wondered aloud whether it’s time for me leave my familiar, comfortable, safe path and follow my heart.

Zzzzzzzz, please

You’ll probably laugh out loud to read this, but I’ve always secretly wondered whether I’m actually a celebrity cleverly disguised as a regular schmoe. I mean, despite my looks, my bank account and the fact that I have no salable talent, can you blame me for wondering?

Anyway. Over the past two weeks, I think I’ve found my answer.

I am exhausted. And not just your garden-variety exhausted. More like your celebrity-variety exhaustion. The kind I usually roll my eyes at, figuring that the drug-addled, Cristal-saturated, bleary-eyed, absent-from-the-set starlet who has checked herself into the hospital just needs to dry out. Sort of a fancy way to detox.

After the past two weeks, though, I get it. Exhaustion, my friends, is a real affliction. And I have it. I am, at once, anxious, overwrought, weary and worn-out. I’m so tired that I can’t sleep. My mind is racing so fast that I can’t think. I stare off into space when I’m supposed to be driving. I’m grouchy and snippy and generally a pain in the ass. It’s astounding that my wonderful husband hasn’t run screaming from the house and taken the Urchin with him.

Unlike the celebrities at whom I’ve rolled my eyes, my next step will not be to check into rehab, I would, however, give anything to be able to check into a fancy hospital and nod off for the next month or so. In fact, the other night — after overmedicating myself to induce something resembling sleep — I dreamt that very thing. It was glorious.

No worries, dear reader. I’ve been to the doctor, who prescribed something for the pain. I should be back to no good any day now.

In the meantime, we’d all be wise to remember what my friends Mandy and Luce always say: There's no eye-rolling in T-E-A-M.

Sweet dreams.