ICEBERG with an "I"

There's a reason that our chilly friend starts with the letter "I". It's the same "I" as in "Independent", or "pIoneer", or "I Did it My Way", or "Never mind, I'll do it my(I)-self!"

Are any bells ringing for you yet? It shouldn't take long to realize that our entire American culture is founded on the letter "I". Ever since we got our independence from the crown, the American dream has been founded on the premise that "I" can re-create myself...by myself...without any help...without any family...without any legacy to hold me up. Heck, I won't even ask my friends...I'll just jump on my horse and ride out into the sunset, blaze my own trail, be the captain of my ship, seek my own destiny apart from any other culture, group, or clan. Goddamn it, that's why we all came here, wasn't it? To sever ourselves from our old-fashioned, stinking dependence on the way things are...our dependence on others.

We have created a mega-empire of self-help, all the while oblivious to the fact that the word "help" means something that is given by one man to another. Yet we are so bent on believing we can craft our own salvation that we read hundreds of books a year on how to improve ourselves, by ourselves...how to be independent, self-sufficient, self-directed, self-supporting, self-possessing, self-sustaining, even selfish as we twist its meaning to signify taking care of "myself". Self-actualization, self-activation, self-realization. The "me" generation to the nth degree. We're even told that we have to "be" the person we want to have a relationship with, that we should be able to exist in a blissful world of "I'm living my life" and still fool ourselves into the fact that we don't need to bond with anyone other than ourselves. Please, please tell me how we can be both the relator and the relationshipee?

"Others" has become a dirty word. Actually, a very successful television series created an entire group of "others" whose sole function is to intimidate, terrorize and torture another group of chronically, pathologically independent folk like us. God forbid we even suggest that we might need other people. God forbid we admit that they might need us...that would make them dependent...or co-dependent...or some ugly word that means we'd actually have to take care of them, or they'd have to take care of us and the whole thing would devolve into an ugly, uncivilized mess. No thank you. We Yanks would rather die defending the laconic loner or the maverick criminal that band together to pursue our common good.

So what are we so afraid of? What horrors lie within another person that everything in our culture points us away from that. Yet we Americans are a hypocritical lot. We tout "family values", yet indoctrinate our children that the worst thing they can do is get together with someone from the opposite sex and produce someone else. Oh no, we say, wait, wait until you're older, much older, and you've made money, finished seeing the world, sowed your wild oats, done everything you've ever dreamed of doing and pretended to be a teenager for at least two or three decades and then....and THEN...we say gingerly....you just might be allowed to hook up with another functional adult (read "really old adult" because by the time anyone can even start to funtion in this culture they ARE really old) and produce 1.5 children...sanely...in a suburb...with a 401 K...and a steady job...and then you must....must be a superparent, superior wage earner, sensitive, sexy and supportive spouse, not to mention a selfless caregiver for the really aged parents who spawned you.

Should you manage to make it this far into the game, it's unlikely you have a really great community of friends since you've been playing/working/doing it all by yourself for so long, that the human connections just kind of ....were forgotten along the way. Somewhere beside the really good times, when once or twice you had some passion for something outside of your own acheivement, and rode the wave of dreaming long enough to experience a couple of seconds of real ecstasy on this planet.

So what do you do when you find yourself in this position, with a spouse you're actually afraid to reach out to, to rely on, since you ought to be able to do it all on your own, right? You're afraid to ask your parents, because both you and they made a career out of forging your independence. Of course, they forgot to realize that they would be dependent on you someday, and that all their indoctrination would backfire when it came to asking their uber-self-focused offspring to do things for them. Conversely, more often than not these days, said offspring are unable to take care of their elders, as they themselves are standing on shaky economic and emotional ground. All that "do it yourself" mentality failed to give them the lateral connections necessary for urban survival. Face it, how else do you think people rise through the ranks? It's not just their hard work, but the people they touch along the way, and the people who want to share their success with the next generation.

Scenario: a Saturday night in the Venice Canals. Some of the priciest real estate in L.A., where state of the art designer homes sit on placid canals, lapping up luxury, taste and the perks of urban living. So why then when you stroll through this quaint suburb, do you see so many people sitting alone in their perfectly decked out waterside roosts? Alone, facing the glow of their laptop, on some of the most beautiful balmy evenings of the year, nursing a beer, staring into a screen hoping they can meet their three dimensional soulmate via a two dimensional computer. Lame, isn't it? Why don't they all just turn off their computers and step out into the world and actually interract with people? Because that would be admitting that they couldn't get a date on a Saturday night, that they couldn't meet someone "on their own".

So they remain, huddled in their post-modern darkness, trolling the ranks of the real losers, the internet daters, the people who were too afraid to go out in the first place. God knows why they'd rather email a stranger for days than actually meet someone at a party, or at a friend's house, when you can tell in an instant whether or not you're even attracted to this person. Wait, sorry, I forgot. How the hell are they supposed to meet people at a party if they don't have any friends who are giving the party? Friends? Who needs them? You can count the faces on your facebook instead. Look, I've got lots of friends, and I'm even friends with their friends, but remember, I made those friends....by myself...without any help from anyone. You got that? No one. I don't need anyone to help me make friends. I don't need anyone to help me get a date. I'm not needy. In fact, I really don't need anything. I'm fine, just the way I am, on my own.

So you're asking, what does this have to do with Icebergs? What's with the "I" in "Iceberg" anyway? Well, the reason these little frigid creatures creep up on us is that in each of those "freezing" situations, we fail to realize that what got us into them in the first place is this cockamamie suggestion that we have to do it all on our own. Gary Cooper, it's all your fault. If only somewhere along the trail we might've learned that by sharing our worries with others, by letting them know who we were, what we wanted, what we were afraid of, what was in our way, that we might not have created those Icebergs.

Our fear of telling the truth of our need is directly proportional to the amount of Bergs floating on your horizon. Try it. Label all of your Bergs, and then look back to see how they arose by NOT reaching out to someone. The beauty is that it works under all circumstances. If we told a friend that we had a dream, and the obstacles that were in the way, that friend might well have some answers, and at the very least, could act as a mentor, keeping us honest, so to speak, and minimizing a lot of those panicked and awkward situations.

Even reaching out to someone once the Berg has calved is better than waiting for the Berg to crush you. Nipping it in the bud is a better plan, but it's so often impossible to do when just once person is facing it. Your own fears and concerns can and will paralyze you, but they are powerless over someone else. By allowing that other person to "conquer" your Berg, they show you that it can be overcome, and they can gradually help you recover your power too. By sharing and bartering our problems, we do each other a great service. We lighten all of our burdens, and free up a lot more mental and emotional energy for really important tasks, like saving lives, pursuing our passion, and just taking time to look around and appreciate the world for what it is. We learn so much and so well from others. Is it not an act of stinginess, of lack, of hostility, to deny ourselves and others those valuable lessons, and that joy?

Somewhere in our great scriptures it says, "Lay your burden down." I would like to add to that today. "Let your Bergs down", be open and place your needs out where solutions will find them. Pride is a dangerous thing, and when it comes to problems, we so often let pride get in the way of growth and wellbeing. Who knows, by sharing your needs with others, those needs just might be filled.

You think your monologue is different from the one at the top? You might be saying to yourself, "Oh, I'm not that desperate, I'm not that crazy. I pay my bills on time, I'm not worried about my future. That's not me." Oh, sure, the content might be different, but the structure is exactly the same. The panic, the racing thoughts, the growing fear that others will figure out that you are just another loser. It doesn't matter what the scale is, that type of thinking extends through every economic bracket.

Guaranteed there's something you're running from as well, be it affection, joy, pleasure, service to others. Given the amount of conflict on the planet, I can tell you we're not doing something right, and my guess is that we are all a little lacking in the human outreach department.

Try it, next time you sense a Berg on the horizon, call a friend. If you don't have one, make one. A passing stranger will do. Let someone help you see that you've been making a mountain out of a molehill. It's OK. None of us have all the answers. Enough of the Emperor's new clothes. It costs so much energy, and we need it for so many other great things.

Next time you're out at that coffee bar, talk to a stranger. You might be surprised what you can do for them. Even if you can't bring yourself to share your burdens yet, ask to share one of theirs. Don't let someone else live in the deep freeze!

Verily, I say unto you, "Lay your Icebergs down."