“You’ve Been Served”
A Process Server, A Smoke Detector, A Lesson In Love
I. A Process Server
Do you remember the first time you were served with a lawsuit?
Yes, in fact I do.
Although a week feels like an eternity in our ever-shortening collective attention spans, I remember it like it was last Friday.
I’ll spare you the legal-ese (read: I can’t translate legal-ese). Suffice it to say, my savoir vivre combined with my insatiable appetite for instant gratification enabled me to spend about $20,000 I didn’t actually have at the most alarming of rates.
What feels like no less than 10 years ago —in August of 2019— fiscal responsibility was not my forte. Much like Fousheé, I was trying not to go off the proverbial deep end.
Christ alive, I tell ya, I drowned in that deep end.
I intended on paying it all back — but as we know, the road to financial hell is paved with a divorce; discharge from the military & no prospects for gainful employment; traveling around the world to “find myself;” a global pandemic; and, of course, those good intentions.
*BANG! BANG! BANG!*
It wasn’t a knock at the door as much as it was an angry demand that I answer.
*BANG! BANG! BANG!*
Whomever was so hellbent on cratering my morning meditation session (laying in bed scrolling through reddit) had my curiosity the first time. Now they had my attention.
She certainly didn’t look like my idea of a process server — more disheveled and…bedraggled, kind of? Looking back it was probably by design; no one opens the door for someone who looks like a professional day-ruiner.
“Are you Christian… …Castro?”
Without waiting for my corroboration, or pulling her eyes up from her explosive ream of papers, she stiff-armed me in the chest with a personalized stack, just for me.
“You’ve been served.”
II. A Smoke Detector
If you haven’t read John Gorman’s treatise on self-awareness yet, what are you waiting for?
Seriously, you should read it.
Out of respect (and a healthy amount of fear), I’m not going to bastardize the deftness and eloquence of a millennial William S. Burroughs. I can’t bring myself to pass off his words as my own.
But I will share two lessons I took from his little ditty.
Takeaway #1: If You Had A Dollar For Every Soupçon of Self-Awareness…
…You still couldn’t pay off your $20,000 of credit card debt.
We all have blind spots; we all lack perspective on certain areas of our lives. So it goes. Cultivating self-awareness helps us identify those maladaptive hot-spots smoldering away at the bread & butter of our daily lives. Yes, it is crucial in the never-ending journey of self-improvement. Yes, being self-aware requires much introspection and understanding. Yes, you need to live with compassion and curiosity for yourself to let that awareness blossom. And these are all very good things.
But once developed, your self-awareness alone isn’t worth much. It’s like knowing your affliction without having remediation. Mr. Gorman used an apt metaphor (that I have since used with reckless abandon in my personal life):
“A self-aware person is like a smoke detector — just because you know why the buildings on fire, doesn’t stop it from burning to the ground.”
As far as pithy aphorisms go, it can’t get much better. As far as application in my life, I knew my spending was a problem but knowing I was an idiot with my credit doesn’t help me not be an idiot with my credit. The shrill just keeps screaming in my ear. A cacophonous symphony of self-awareness and tinnitus.
Takeaway #2: Those Calendars Really Embellish The Sexiness of Firefighting…
…Because it’s painstaking work, and it ain’t as pretty as those heroes make it look. The other part of John Gorman’s quote says,
“A self-accountable person is a firefighter. Put out the damn flames.”
Self-accountability, like firefighting, is all ‘bout that action. The employment of tactics in service of fighting the fire (both literal & figurative) is where the real progress is made. And the progress in development of yourself is as hard-won as it is slow-going. You need both awareness of self and accountability of self to make any substantive change in the current iteration of the life you’re living.
So what does that mean?
Means I wanted to throw the lawsuit in the incinerator, set it, & forget it. The little voice in my head — my personal street preacher, championing the Gospel of Shame — is so self-aware and oh so ill-equipped. The dialogue sounded something like:
“Your credit score is already -1,000. Forget about trying to pay it back. #YOLO. Move on.”
“Congrats, you’ve reached your early-mid-thirties with no assets. You have crippling debt, a divorce, and 2 cats. Maybe we think about switching lanes, my guy.”
“Run, you piece of shit.”
Shame is like an accelerant in a fire, helping the flames burn bigger and hotter. Makes us recoil to protect ourselves. How do you fight a fire throwing heat that hot?
III. A Lesson In Love
In a perfect world, part III would wrap like a tidy bow of cogent parallelism. Something distilled into a hashtag-able nugget of social media gold, like:
“Every universe, ours included, begins in conversation.”
Alas, I am not Michael Chabon (quoted)…and this is not that kind of conclusion.
I am in love, however. Started a micro-verse as messy as it’s ever been or probably will be.
A few days after my service of process, I picked Sophia from the airport after a long day of flights back from Turks & Caicos. One of the things I love most about Sophia is her ability to listen. Bit of a paradox, really, because it’s also one of the things that frustrates me the most — because she listens for what I’m not saying as much as what I am.
And she can smell fear.
There’s no way to be sure, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only mental gymnast around here spinnin’ up reasons to show how my choices aren’t motivated by fear. My street preacher never loss for a sermon. This time, about how my “legal peccadillos” are none of my girlfriend’s business.
A closer look reveals that I was afraid to tell her the truth:
- My embarrassment — born out of the fear of rejection if she were to discover my irresponsibility.
- My frustration blooming from the fear that attempts to pay off so much when I have so little is a practice in futility.
- My anxiety, a direct descendant of fear. My insecurity that I project onto her about who is and isn’t a suitable long-term partner for her. Why wouldn’t she choose to leave? You can’t build a life or a house on foundations of debt.
It’s not really love if it’s actually just the fear of losing what you have. The fear of being alone. But we practice our disguises so long we believe them, and I convinced myself credit scores didn’t matter and debt wasn’t real.
Someone much smarter than I asked in a book I can’t remember,
“If you can’t admit [your fear] are you free?”
How could you be? And if you’re so afraid of her leaving it precludes you from an honest conversation… do you even love her, bro?
“Run, you piece of shit.”
All sums up to rampant self-awareness with zero self-accountability…
…until, there was.
I didn’t run. Sophia and I had a conversation — took a stroll down Shame Street — and left no paver unturned. I’m pleased to report the sun rose in the east and still set in the west; there was no break up, and the Earth’s core didn’t implode. The only injury suffered was by my ego.
It’s still going to be hard work, but over time the work attenuates the flames. Then there’s just ash. Lucky for me, she’s kinda into firefighters.
