Drama

First, don't get your hopes up. This is not a piece about the immortal Johnny "Drama" Chase from Entourage.

Second, I am also not writing about thankfulness, gratefulness, appreciation, etc., even though 'tis the season. To be fair, I've created a veritable cornucopia of posts about those topics previously, and will probably do so again in short order.

For anybody hanging around after the disappointment of that bad news, I will turn to the term and its current use.

Drama in the Vernacular

As I may have mentioned here before, for more years than I want to count I spent time on one or more dating applications. I learned some things during that phase, and one of my primary observations was:

Assertion=Projection

For example, profiles often included some version of:

No drama, please.

What that meant was

Please bring no drama into this relationship, because I am going to remove all the oxygen from the room (house, neighborhood, universe) with my own.

Mary J Blige described this phenomenon aptly back in 2001, recognizing that drama gets in the way of trying to love one another.

Leave your situations at the door

Problem is, most of us don't realize we've got situations (see projection above), and blithely spread hateration and holleration (LinkedIn needs to update its spellcheck).

Cedric the Entertainer knows this.

But I digress. Again. However, I want to second Cedric's observations lamenting the loss of the opportunity to talk straight.

Can You Please Get to the Point?

Right. Last week I was driving back from Gary Hill Road in Edgefield.

While driving I listened to the below episode featuring Greg Epstein .

Epstein uses a phrase- "The Drama of the Gifted Technologists" - in observing that our "richest" and most successful tech titans aren't very happy about themselves. And he's not the first to observe that Silicon Valley beliefs about the power of technology tools are in a full sprint away from becoming more human.

Epstein coined the phrase by drawing on "The Drama of the Gifted Child" by Alice Miller. Broadly, this book describes how defining self-worth by doing, including desperately trying to please our parents, can cause a child to lose sight of her own feelings and needs and the importance of being.

The Real Gift

I had forgotten that the Gifted Child is exactly what sparked my journey toward finding my own voice and telling my own story. Not only was I extraordinarily sensitive and gifted (emphasis on the sensitive), I am an adopted child.

I extol the importance of intrinsic worth and value because that's what is helping to make me whole. That and the adulation of the three of you who endure these posts. I've felt the emptiness (and allure- another crazy paradox) of extrinsic affirmation, and that's a hole that I simply cannot fill.

Aside: I realize that characterizing myself as a Gifted Child is not even a humble brag. And my parents were beyond wonderful, the first to make sure I knew I was loved exactly as I am. I am aware that happening into my family and circumstances is as privileged an existence there is. And I am not using any childhood circumstances as a crutch or an excuse, but as a way to learn and grow. One day I will be brave enough to stop caveating everything.

So This Was About Gratefulness After All

While writing the previous paragraph (not the qualifying one, the meaningful one) hand to God I felt like a little boy. I feel truly grateful to be who I've become, and confused, bewildered and amazed to realize that the struggle to address my situation is exactly what got me here. The struggle and my looks. The struggle, my looks, and my sense of humor.

My Thanksgiving wish for all of us is to extend a little grace and kindness to others and ourselves, tap into what we share in common, and just enjoy and turn the Dre track way up high.

And to be clear, I still desperately need all the extrinsic rewards I can amass.