Ground Hog Day - Take Two

On February 2, so legend goes, the Ground Hog pokes his up his head after a long winters' nap. If it's sunny, he sees his shadow and it scares him so much he goes back to sleep for 6 weeks.

The movie by that name is a great spiritual teaching tale. A world weary reporter, sent to report on a hick town celebration of Ground Hog Day, discovers that he wakes up again and again on the same day - there is no tomorrow. Nothing he can do can move time forward and he becomes more and more reckless, knowing there will be no consequences as there is no future. Only when he actually gets over himself and becomes a loving human being does the clock start ticking forward again.

Hmm. And what does this have to do with me? I'm a bit shocked after a long snooze about the shadow I cast - and I'm looking for a way to not get stuck in my reactions. Read on...

As Your Money or Your Life hits the bookstores and nearly the top 100 bestseller list on Amazon - and as I become more active in support of it (blogging, website, emails) - I'm visibly reemerging from my 5-year 'sleep' (to heal my body and life). More light is shining on me. Several times in the last month or so I've winced at how my words and work are being picked up by others. More than once something I considered "mine" - words, website, name even - is used by someone without request or attribution. Part of me wants to say, "Hey, wait a minute, that's mine" and another part knows that no words or ideas are mine - they are just my unique re-mix of language and thought honed over thousands of years by my ancestors.

I pondered this. When is it wise to defend what is mine, and when is it wise to just let it go?

My work on freedom and limits helped a lot. Freedom, I saw over years of thought, is only possible in the realm of spirit. Only in spirit (or in love) can we occupy the same space at the same time with another - happily. The rest of the time we're in the everyday material world. Here, everything that exists has a boundary. As Meg Wheatley said in a Simpler Way, everything that exists has a purpose, an identity and a boundary. To define anything - a cell, a relationship, a book - you need to say where it begins and ends. You say what it is by what it isn't. Like a girl's club means "no boys allowed". If boys are allowed into the girl's club, well it loses its identity - and purpose - and value.

If I put my name on a combination of words and ideas, that makes them in some way part of my identity. If someone sees my name on the outside of something, they know there will be a particular kind of value inside. I don't want to be selfish or stingy - but if my name is to mean anything, if my words are to carry value, if my special honing of ideas are to carry weight, there needs to be some patrolling of whether others have taken them as their own. No?

I brought this dilemma with a fellow writer. He said when he was younger and his ideas were lifted without attribution he felt flattered. People more famous than him thought his stuff was smart enough to put it in their own work. After he got older, though, it bothered him that things he'd written were reworked by others who then put their names on it without giving credit.

"And now?" I asked, thinking I'd find a clue to being more spacious about my work being taken without permission or citing source.

"It still bothers me," he said. He went on to talk about an early book (see I forget the name) about the Internet where the author talked about the etiquette of the net is "hyperlinking" - that if you lift something from another site you hyperlink to acknowledge your source and give your reader a chance to see beneath the surface to those who inspired and informed you.

Both these ideas - boundary and hyperlink - are about respect. Understanding where you end and another begins, and having good manners - courtesy - at the meeting ground. In fact, life IS about relationship – and so it’s about politely, firmly, lovingly and incessantly negotiating boundaries. The Ten Commandments are largely about knowing who owns what and respecting that.

When I first heard a Native American introduce himself I was puzzled by his recitation of tribe, clan, parents. My hyper-individualistic US self wondered why they all hadn't liberated themselves from their past. Over time this recitation grew on me though. I saw that they had something I'd lost before I was born - a sense of belonging to a people and a place. About a decade ago I spent a year doing weekly Lakota sweat lodges and sank deeper into a worldview that calls on ancestors and spirits to guide, protect and defend the living. And of course just by getting older I've lost some of the arrogance of thinking of myself as having made/remade/invented myself.

Through honoring their source, the native people's make themselves stronger, not weaker. They can call on the power of their ancestors to see them through. They know they are part of a living web of relations - and walk always with respect. They understand the hoop of life, that all things are connected. Respect for the other is how they walk.

So I now see that honoring source, hyperlinking, respecting boundaries is part of what keeps the wholeness of all life in balance through time and space. Ignoring these linkages, taking as one's own what come from the web of life, unbalances, disturbs and trivializes life. Value is held and preserved and increased by a proper boundary just like wine or cheese, sealed off from the outside, improves over time.

I want to be honored - asked permission and acknowledged - because that wince at my words or name or ideas being taken without attribution is there to defend the integrity of life - not just my sorry ass ego.

So how does this work in the world of the web where ideas and text and words fly around like drops in an ocean, losing source as soon as they are released? I don't know. At this level I just need to "get over it" when I see bits of "me" zip by with someone else's name on it. That's life now. If it matters to me, I need to politely write the person/website and say, "If you got that from me, would you be willing to link to my... website, book, blog. Thanks - and I'm glad you liked what I said enough to copy it." I need to let others know what feels like good manners to me. I need to ask for a hyperlink.

If it cuts deeper - if people take my name or work and use it in a way that is antithetical to my intent - I need to defend that boundary with even more vigor - but no less inner ease.

And as I go through life - googling to supplement my addled brain - I need to also hyperlink, honor source. If I don't then I trivialize my own thought and I make the whole web of life and knowledge more superficial. I act as if I am self-made. I disconnect with the wisdom of my elders and others. I make the world more lonely and flat.

As an originator of many things, I am happy when one of my creations takes off and becomes a source for others. Soon enough the hyperlink is lost - and others put their own stamp on it for so long that it becomes truly theirs. My only hope is that I launch my ideas with such clarity, integrity and love that some perfume of that intention lingers even through many iterations. All signals fade eventually, though scraps of every utterance reverberate through all time and space. I know that now, as I reemerge from my tunnel and see the light again, others will again notice, imitate, admire, align with, rebel against and more whatever I put out into the public domain. If I react, I'm stuck in Ground Hog Day until I remember love, remember to soften and share and get over myself.

At the same time, I'll be a stand for honoring source - in my own work and with people who work with me. We all need to be way more humble about what we've actually really really originated as well as a lot more clear about where our boundaries are and how we want others to treat us.

Footnotes for this set of thoughts -- I thank Tad Hargrave and Marilyn Daniels from inspiring these thoughts, Leif Utne, Victoria Castle and Helen Gabel for listening to me chew on them endlessly, Suzanne Fageol for being a stickler on footnotes in the new edition of YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE and also my old webmaster for presenting me with the challenge of wondering what is mine at all. And of course everyone else... this could get ridiculous, but I feel far stronger naming those who've been my teacher than acting like I did it all by myself.