I Hate Goals
Goals. We live in a goal-oriented society where the majority of people regularly determine where they want to go, what they need to do to get there, measure their progress from time to time, and make adjustments to stay on course. I am not one of those people. I like to be surprised by life. I like to feel my way through things and make grand leaps of faith trusting that the net will appear or the chasm is no more than 1 foot deep.
When I hear the word “Goal”, I immediately want to eat something. Sacred Hunger lurks nearby when the urge to eat strikes as suddenly as a rain shower in the Tropics. Why does this word immediately send me emotionally on a quest for food, preferably brownies or ice cream?
I started setting goals when I learned about diets. I was 10 years old. I was called pleasingly plump by my mother and Chubs by my brother. I learned about diet soda and yogurt. I was in TOPS by the time I was 12. If I lost 5 pounds, I got a rose. My goal was to get roses, lots of them. I wanted to be successful and admired. I wanted the applause and the attention that came with each rose. After several weeks of diligent dieting, I did eventually get one red rose, to the rousing applause of the middle age ladies who also craved the roses. And then I promptly gained the weight back. Yogurt and diet soda are poor substitutes when you're Hungry for attention.
I was put on a diet by a doctor by the time I was 13. I was to weigh and measure my food. ½ sandwich on wheat bread, carrot sticks, and an orange were my fare. Mustard no mayo on the bread. I was miserable and deprived. I felt a soul connection to Oliver with his plaintive wail of “Please sir, can I have some more?”. I lost 12 pounds and the siren song for hot fudge brownie sundaes on Saturday afternoons after bowling league was just too much to resist. I started to regain the weight. My best friends Nancy, Kim, and Annette said they didn’t want to be my friend anymore because I couldn’t stay on my diet. They also disinvited me to their sleep-over on Friday. I went to school in a haze of shame and dread.
The Friday night after being disowned from the In Crowd, I was sitting at the dining room table with my mother when the phone rang. It was Kim. The gal pals had changed their minds, and I was invited to their party after all. My pride having been thoroughly stung, I would give them no satisfaction. Icicles dripping from my voice, I responded “No. I don’t think so.” Without so much as a pause, Kim snorted (as she always did when she thought something was funny) as I heard her say “Good. We didn’t mean it anyway.” Laughing uproariously, they hung up the phone.
I stood in front of my mother, stunned silent and unable to cry. I don’t remember what my mother said to me at that moment. It didn’t really matter because words could not ease the pain or heal the wound. My life as I saw it was crumbling around my ankles, and I didn’t have a clue as to how to fix it other than by loading up on ice cream and hiding the bowls under my bed so no one knew how much I was eating. Soft, smooth, creamy ice cream. My Sacred Hunger was for my mother to have found that soft, smooth, creamy place inside of me, pull it out, and wrap me up in a quilt of love. How do you tell your child that life isn’t fair or fun or even nice sometimes? Or that what they did had nothing to do with me at all? It wouldn’t have mattered what she said, when my sense of belief in myself was already shattered because I believed in my depths that there was something wrong with me because my friends rejected me, and I could not stay on a diet.
I didn’t know how to soothe myself. I picked up the only tool I knew – the goal of a diet and the illusion that if I was thin, I would never again have to experience the pain I felt on a Friday evening hearing my friends laughing as they hung up the phone. Each goal became more elaborate than the next. There was the obligatory graph with date on the x axis and weight loss on the y axis. Written down the side was the expected size of clothing I would be able to wear by specific dates. And then I would be okay.
My family moved to another town the next year, far away from Nancy, Kim and Annette. They couldn't touch me anymore. But there were other rejections and other hurts. I carried them all with me as through the years, I tried to chase happiness up and down the scale. Each time believing this would be it. This would be the time that I would stay on the diet. I saw each failed diet as a reflection of my worth. I was a failure – at goal-setting, at being a good person, at keeping my promises to myself, at life. I told myself I was not trustworthy. Nancy, and Kim, and Annette had known all along.
I didn’t know that my problem wasn’t in being unable to establish and achieve a goal. My problem was the goal, itself. I never failed a diet. Diets always failed me. When a broken heart is the problem, ice cream is not the answer. I treated myself like a cowboy treats a wild mustang. The Hunger in me needed to be dominated, controlled, and vanquished. I thought I just wanted to be thin. The Hunger for belonging and acceptance as a 13 year old lived on, struggling to be heard. The Hunger of the heart whispers softly or screams like a banshee until it is acknowledged and answered. And with every attempt to diet, I moved further and further away from feeling my pain and crying the tears that would allow me to face tomorrow with a sure knowledge that the sun would rise again.
I have no goals today. I have choices. And so do you. Choose to perpetuate the lie that you can not be trusted. Or listen to and honor your Sacred Hunger, whatever it may be.
As I began to walk the path of learning to honor the wisdom of the body, I ate a bowl of ice cream every night for six weeks. And then one day, I just stopped. I carried a brownie around with me in my purse for a month. I didn’t want to eat the brownie, I wanted to know that I could trust myself and that I would honor my Sacred Hunger to heal from the wounds inflicted each time I tried to mend what wasn’t broken. My body wasn’t broken. My belief in myself was. While no amount of food will fill that hole, every time I honored my hunger and fed myself what my body really asked for and stopped when I was full, another brick was taken from it’s place on the wall around my heart.
Sara MacLachlan got it right in her song called Ice Cream. “Your love is better than ice cream. Better than anything I’ve ever seen.” Sing it, Sara. Sing it loud.
Blessed Be,
Sandi
When I hear the word “Goal”, I immediately want to eat something. Sacred Hunger lurks nearby when the urge to eat strikes as suddenly as a rain shower in the Tropics. Why does this word immediately send me emotionally on a quest for food, preferably brownies or ice cream?
I started setting goals when I learned about diets. I was 10 years old. I was called pleasingly plump by my mother and Chubs by my brother. I learned about diet soda and yogurt. I was in TOPS by the time I was 12. If I lost 5 pounds, I got a rose. My goal was to get roses, lots of them. I wanted to be successful and admired. I wanted the applause and the attention that came with each rose. After several weeks of diligent dieting, I did eventually get one red rose, to the rousing applause of the middle age ladies who also craved the roses. And then I promptly gained the weight back. Yogurt and diet soda are poor substitutes when you're Hungry for attention.
I was put on a diet by a doctor by the time I was 13. I was to weigh and measure my food. ½ sandwich on wheat bread, carrot sticks, and an orange were my fare. Mustard no mayo on the bread. I was miserable and deprived. I felt a soul connection to Oliver with his plaintive wail of “Please sir, can I have some more?”. I lost 12 pounds and the siren song for hot fudge brownie sundaes on Saturday afternoons after bowling league was just too much to resist. I started to regain the weight. My best friends Nancy, Kim, and Annette said they didn’t want to be my friend anymore because I couldn’t stay on my diet. They also disinvited me to their sleep-over on Friday. I went to school in a haze of shame and dread.
The Friday night after being disowned from the In Crowd, I was sitting at the dining room table with my mother when the phone rang. It was Kim. The gal pals had changed their minds, and I was invited to their party after all. My pride having been thoroughly stung, I would give them no satisfaction. Icicles dripping from my voice, I responded “No. I don’t think so.” Without so much as a pause, Kim snorted (as she always did when she thought something was funny) as I heard her say “Good. We didn’t mean it anyway.” Laughing uproariously, they hung up the phone.
I stood in front of my mother, stunned silent and unable to cry. I don’t remember what my mother said to me at that moment. It didn’t really matter because words could not ease the pain or heal the wound. My life as I saw it was crumbling around my ankles, and I didn’t have a clue as to how to fix it other than by loading up on ice cream and hiding the bowls under my bed so no one knew how much I was eating. Soft, smooth, creamy ice cream. My Sacred Hunger was for my mother to have found that soft, smooth, creamy place inside of me, pull it out, and wrap me up in a quilt of love. How do you tell your child that life isn’t fair or fun or even nice sometimes? Or that what they did had nothing to do with me at all? It wouldn’t have mattered what she said, when my sense of belief in myself was already shattered because I believed in my depths that there was something wrong with me because my friends rejected me, and I could not stay on a diet.
I didn’t know how to soothe myself. I picked up the only tool I knew – the goal of a diet and the illusion that if I was thin, I would never again have to experience the pain I felt on a Friday evening hearing my friends laughing as they hung up the phone. Each goal became more elaborate than the next. There was the obligatory graph with date on the x axis and weight loss on the y axis. Written down the side was the expected size of clothing I would be able to wear by specific dates. And then I would be okay.
My family moved to another town the next year, far away from Nancy, Kim and Annette. They couldn't touch me anymore. But there were other rejections and other hurts. I carried them all with me as through the years, I tried to chase happiness up and down the scale. Each time believing this would be it. This would be the time that I would stay on the diet. I saw each failed diet as a reflection of my worth. I was a failure – at goal-setting, at being a good person, at keeping my promises to myself, at life. I told myself I was not trustworthy. Nancy, and Kim, and Annette had known all along.
I didn’t know that my problem wasn’t in being unable to establish and achieve a goal. My problem was the goal, itself. I never failed a diet. Diets always failed me. When a broken heart is the problem, ice cream is not the answer. I treated myself like a cowboy treats a wild mustang. The Hunger in me needed to be dominated, controlled, and vanquished. I thought I just wanted to be thin. The Hunger for belonging and acceptance as a 13 year old lived on, struggling to be heard. The Hunger of the heart whispers softly or screams like a banshee until it is acknowledged and answered. And with every attempt to diet, I moved further and further away from feeling my pain and crying the tears that would allow me to face tomorrow with a sure knowledge that the sun would rise again.
I have no goals today. I have choices. And so do you. Choose to perpetuate the lie that you can not be trusted. Or listen to and honor your Sacred Hunger, whatever it may be.
As I began to walk the path of learning to honor the wisdom of the body, I ate a bowl of ice cream every night for six weeks. And then one day, I just stopped. I carried a brownie around with me in my purse for a month. I didn’t want to eat the brownie, I wanted to know that I could trust myself and that I would honor my Sacred Hunger to heal from the wounds inflicted each time I tried to mend what wasn’t broken. My body wasn’t broken. My belief in myself was. While no amount of food will fill that hole, every time I honored my hunger and fed myself what my body really asked for and stopped when I was full, another brick was taken from it’s place on the wall around my heart.
Sara MacLachlan got it right in her song called Ice Cream. “Your love is better than ice cream. Better than anything I’ve ever seen.” Sing it, Sara. Sing it loud.
Blessed Be,
Sandi
posted by No Longer Blogging | 6:06 PM
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