I had been accomplishing nothing for almost a month. By the fourth week of my absence from TIE O’ THE DAY, an old monster friend of mine showed up to camp. Well, I probably shouldn’t say the monster is mine alone. Most of y’all likely have had visits from the same malignant friend at various points in your life. I call it the internal NAY-SAYER. It’s usually quick to show up and chat when you have suffered a tremendous loss or defeat. It comes around when you lose a job or go bankrupt. It comes around when you are exhausted or ill. Heck, the sly Nay-sayer can sometimes find you even when your life is blissful. The insidious Nay-sayer is always lurking somewhere inside your head, waiting for its chance to speak. In the fourth week of my absence from posts, plenty of folks began emailing, messaging, texting, and calling to check on me because they figured something must be wrong if I hadn’t produced a TIE O’ THE DAY post in oh-so long. Even with the concern I was freely shown, I felt enough unlike myself that the Nay-sayer saw a way in to taunt me.
The Nay-Sayer whispered in my Spock ear: “You haven’t written a TIE O’ THE DAY post in almost a month, and nobody cares. Nobody needs you. You make no difference. You have not transformed the world and made it even a little bit better, as you once dreamed you would do.”
And then my own brain’s voice starts to wander down this not-well path. Most of what the Nay-sayer says is technically true—regarding me, regarding you, regarding each one of us. Think about it: our families, our friends, our pets, our churches, our political alignments, our jobs, our very homes and cars, our favorite pair of jeans, our bow tie collection—these things will find a way to continue their existence on the planet without each and every one of us, whether or not we are around to see it all. The world will continue to spin, with or without us. That raw truth cuts deep.
And it’s right at that point when the unkind Nay-sayer whispers in my Spock ear again: “You can see it now, can’t you? You are nothing special. You are nobody. You are connected to nobody. You are worth nothing. There is no point.” The Nay-sayer wants you and me to believe we are of no consequence. At times, we easily believe that to be the case. And so, the fight with my Nay-sayer began. I seriously wondered: how could I possibly get myself out of this battle alive, sane, and restored? I’ll spill all the so-called magic beans in the next post.
BTW I don’t think I own any battle/fight-themed neckwear to wear in a selfie, so I channeled the pugilistic master, Muhammad Ali (still named Cassius Clay at the time). I thought of his poetic ditty in which he said he would “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee” as he fought Sonny Liston. So here I am wearing my Madame Butterfly Bow Tie o’ the Day and my bee-covered Shirt o’ the Day.