Make friends

Make friends with your problems

On Saturday morning, March 1, 2014, I listened to NPR’s “Weekend Edition;” specifically to an interview by  An NPR staff person with actress Elaine Stritch, age 89; still vital and starring in a new production. It was a riveting interview throughout the 10:25 minute piece, but one thing stood out for me. 

Near the end, when asked if she liked the line, "I like the courage of age," from her recent film she responded. 

“Yes, I do. I have to say I like it, because I think you have to make friends with it or leave it, or give up on it. You know what I mean? Because unless you can fight it and unless you can stand up to it, you might as well get it out of your house, because it's too tough to take. But it wasn't too tough to take to look at myself. It was the easiest way I had of dealing with big problems.”

As I listened, I heard her speaking directly to my own experience in dealing with something I will never be free of. Stritch will never be free from her advanced age until she passes on. I will never be free from being an Adult A.D.D. until I am in my grave. 

In the same spirit of that line that Stritch loved, it came as a great blessing one day some 35 years ago when I awoke one morning and could finally look at my face in the mirror, knowing for the first time ever that I was looking a friend in the eye. I loved myself with all my “smooth skin” and warts. I loved myself with all my successes and failures. I loved myself with all my anxiety and with my all my confidence.

Simply, I liked the courage of being ME, and I had found a great friend; my one and only very best friend.

I cannot fight being who I am. I am simply me. Even as an Adult A.D.D., I cannot fight who I am. I have learned that the only way to live successfully is to make friends with myself so that I can focus on managing my ways. To do less is to lock myself into an endless and upward spiraling cycle of frustration, anger and tears. 

In the end, there is only one thing to be accomplished by not loving that courage; by not being friends with myself. That is being locked into what I do not want; complete with all sorts of constant frustration, bitterness and tears. 

To the point, the more I focus hatred on something, the more I will become like what I hate. I will never be able to change or even manage what I do not love. If, then, there is no future in ongoing hate, the only other alternatives are the ultimate self-hatred of terminating my own life or turning to being my own BEST FRIEND. I have never hated myself or my actions enough to want to die; although I have often wished I could crawl into a hole out of sight to weather the “storm” so I wouldn’t have to live my errors down. 

Thus it was that I took the only sensible alternative; liking myself and being brutally honest in facing my problems, admitting my mistakes before someone else clubs me with them.

Then and only then can I move on.

Jack L. Mace

You can listen to the Elaine Stitch interview at http://www.npr.org/2014/03/01/280715944/elaine-stritch-volatile-and-vulnerable-in-shoot-me.