The Toilet, the Bed, Steve Jobs, and Ann Curry

Boycotting grapes and lettuce was never something that interested me much in the sixties. I was utterly in favor of the Farm Workers Union. A really fatalistic attitude towards influencing management caused me to think boycotts were futile.

It all had to do with Grand. He worked hard for his money. With an 8th grade education he became a multi-millionaire creating the tool and die industry in America. Unfortunately money had an unhealthy power over him. Orphaned at an early age, money and achievement became love to him. He loved his family. He measured that love in things and perfection.

Everyone who’s poor thinks rich is better. Rich people can tell you making lots of money is empty unless you’re loved and have people who love you and not your money.

Hold that thought….

Continuing the story of how snaking a toilet was, for me, the turning point in financial empowerment; me, a virtual nun with children….

The really helpful guy at True Value pointed to the book he had pulled off the shelf with good pictures, told me how to gently pull the auger back and forth = "don’t turn it or you’ll unscrew it in the toilet and IT will end up stuck" = looked directly into my eyes and said, "I think you can do this".

Standing in front of the toilet bowl I physically felt within my body the enormity of the unknown. If I screwed this up it was going to cost me a fortune I couldn’t afford. I had confidence in my ability to handle the unknown. That was my only impetus to move forward.

Five minutes later I was flushing the toilet and carrying the thing out to the carport. I am woman hear me roar.

I lay in bed that night with an enormous sense of victory, watching portions of the Today show on my phone, as was my habit. I thought back to a fluff piece KLD and Hoda had done on research that showed if you slept on the left side of the bed you were more given to happiness and if you slept on the right side of the bed, you were more given to making money. I was sleeping on the left. Hmmmm. Maybe I should move to the right.

Many things happened to me in June that went together to lead me to believe maybe Grandad was aright about money. I’d bee ‘follow God’s calling, the money will follow" kinda gal. For a week, after the toilet incident when I suddenly became a handywoman, I tried on the idea of being ruthless making money. Someone once said to me a new phrase, "I don’t give a rat’s a**’ about something. It was such a primal statement. I always care about everything. I wanted to try on what it would feel like to not care about how something affected someone else and accommodate him or her, just to care about money and me.

I didn’t actually do anything but mentally I tried the idea on. Just to feel what ‘ruthless’ felt like. Then two informative events occurred. I read Steve Jobs biography and Ann Curry got fired = uh reassigned= ruthlessly by the money guys who think Matt Lauer having a sexual spark with a woman is what sells the Today show.

Steve Jobs, back to the biography, was not, it turns out, about the money but about producing an excellently executed, beautiful product that was the best for what people could afford, produced in a collaborative environment. The guy had the social skills of a four year old in a low blood sugar slump, yet people wanted to work for him because of where he was centered with regards to making innovation over and above making money.

Ann Curry demonstrated heartfelt, smart women don’t fit the corporate picture. That’s a win for the world. The corporate model does not lead to a better world.

Me? I rolled all the experiences of the month of June 2012 into one impulse, sat down and in ten days finished a book proposal for a four book series on Relational Theology answering a call I’ve had on my life since 1992. I’ve never felt so free, and richly blessed.

And the bed? I started sleeping diagonally, just in case research was right this time. Money can’t buy happiness. Happiness doesn’t pay the bills.

Oh and I’m boycotting NBC forever. It’s time for smart women who have a soft edge to take the lead in the corporate world. I figure if a boycott worked with lettuce and grapes, I’m money ahead….

Love,
Deborah