Aesthetic Realism seminar:
What's the
Biggest Thing Women Need
to Know about Power?
By Lynette Abel
In the summer when I
was 15 and began to work as a lifeguard at an
Army Officer's club in Ft. Belvoir, Virginia,
I was aware of being looked at by boys in a
new way, and I felt a rush of power. In
my mind I was the center of things, the most
alluring being, surrounded by an audience of
approving males. In years that followed,
I thought that my greatest power was my
ability to affect men through my body.
And it was during these years that, without
understanding why, I increasingly disliked
myself. "There [are] two kinds of
power," Eli
Siegel explained in an issue of The Right
of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known,
the first
that makes us more important and the meaning
of reality less; and the second that makes
the world or reality seem greater and
ourselves greater because we see the world
as greater. [TRO 261]
This is the big thing
women need to know about power!
I'll tell tonight what I learned from Aesthetic
Realism about the fight in me between
these two kinds of power, and how it is
described in an important novel by the 19th
century author Jane Austen.
Early
Decisions about Good and Bad Power
Growing up, music
was a big thing in our home. My
parents cared for singing, and they
encouraged this in me and my five brothers
and sisters. I loved, for instance, on
a Friday evening, singing songs with my
sister Terry, while my other sister, Sherry,
played the piano. Sometimes we would
sing through the entire Rodgers and Hart
Songbook, such songs as "Where or
When," "With a Song in My Heart," and one
particular favorite, "I Didn't Know What
Time It Was." As the three of us
worked to have our voices and the notes of
the piano blend well, we had a sense of
pleasure and power that had us feel very
good! But we weren't always singing
together, and I often went after another
kind of power, battling with them tooth and
nail, insisting, for instance, on seeing my
television show, and throwing a tantrum
until I got my way.
I spent a lot of time with my best friend,
Heather Chandler, whose parents owned
a large Criss Craft Cabin Cruiser, and often
was invited to go on boating trips with
them. Heather and I would water ski
behind their boat for miles up the Potomac
River on our way to Piney Point, a resort on
the coast. Though I felt excited being
introduced to new vistas of wide water and
lush landscapes, I also liked looking down
on Heather's family, thinking my family was
more cultured and refined. The
Chandlers were in the construction business,
and I saw them as coarse and
unsophisticated. I was becoming a
snob. "They probably never listened to
a piece of classical music," I
thought--something we did all the
time. Going after power through making
"the meaning of [people and] reality less,"
I was to learn years later, was the reason I
felt so unsure of myself, and often had an
empty, aching feeling inside. "The
most important thing," Mr. Siegel said to me
in an early class I attended, "is whether we
feel it is wise to be fair to [other
people]." And he explained:
"The
danger of having contempt is
5-alarm....Don't get any importance from
having contempt. Once you do, [you
should be worried], because contempt that
makes for one's importance is the one poison
that is attractive as anything."
When I got older, I felt, as many women do,
that I would finally be sure of myself through
having a big effect on a man. And this
began with how I saw my father. In my
first Aesthetic
Realism
consultation, I was asked: "[Through]
your impression of your parents, do you think
you came to any decisions as to how to
be?" "Well, I pretty well had it figured
out how to be," I replied. "I knew if my
mother criticized me, my father would side
with me....It gave me power..."
Consultants.
Did you feel your father was weak about
you?
LA. Yes! Yes!
Consultants.
Did you feel all men would be?
I did. And I began to
see, how I had come to associate power for
myself, with other people being weak.
Once at a party, I flirted with Lance Loftman,
who was very handsome, and also my best
friend's date. When he briefly stole a
kiss, and whispered he'd call me, I had a
sense of power--he preferred me to
her; I was walking on air! But later at
home, I felt awful. I couldn't
understand why I was on top of the world at
one moment, and in the bottom of a pit at
another. When Lance called the next day
to ask me out, I was embarrassed and stumbled
out some excuse. I never went out with
him. In Self
and World, Mr. Siegel explained:
"We want
to be praised, to have power, but we also
want to deserve this. There is such a
thing as the ethical unconscious.
Well, if we praise ourselves and we know we
have been unfair to outside reality in doing
so, there is a troubling conflict in us...."
(p. 267)
As time went on, I was becoming increasingly
bitter about my life, and worried that I
didn't have the ability to really love
someone. "Does a certain kind of power,"
Mr. Siegel once asked a student in a class,
interfere with a power you want more?"
Yes!
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