Sixties Chick

Last week as I sat having a cup of coffee at a small suburban luncheonette trying to figure out which of the fourteen chores on my “to do” list was the most pressing; I suddenly became aware of the song that was wafting from the speaker right above my head. It was the unmistakable, chest-inflating song of Ol’ Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra’s My Way.

Now, let me confess right off the bat that this song has always rubbed me the wrong way. There is something about it that irks the hell out of me. Maybe it’s that tinge of “Hey, look at me, you sucker,” arrogance. Or maybe it’s the claim itself that just rings phony.

“My Way, hmmm,” I think aloud, feeling the start of yet another indeterminable philosophical discussion I will have with myself for the next couple of hours, maybe the next couple of weeks.  My way.  Really? What exactly does that mean? Are we talking choices here, Frank? Were the choices conscious ones? Were they born of the unflinching quest to ‘know the truth of oneself” as the Buddhists would say. Or, was the skinny, spoiled kid from Hoboken still secretly running the show even as you crooned those words?  I wonder.

Conscious vs. unconscious; the theme’s been coming up for me lately as I examine a few old worn out ways of being that no longer serve me.

So I ponder. I was born to a particular set of parents, the second of four daughters, in the late 1940s in an affluent suburb of Philadelphia.  Born into the Jewish tribe, I am a descendant of Russian and German immigrants. In that particular constellation, there are volumes of codified beliefs, passed-on patterns of behavior, and distinct ways of seeing the world. That unique software is programmed into every last cell of my body.

Add to that the specific “slings and arrows” of a lifetime, the events large and small on which I made not a few erroneous decisions about the world and about myself, and you see how I have to wonder about this “My Way” thing.

Clearly, I along with a lot of other people, only think we’ve done it our way. The stories we hold on to, inherited and otherwise, can be daunting; the way we play them out, reactive and limiting. Unexamined, they hold us captive; denied, they can inform our every move. How free are we then as we trek along that byway?

So I ask myself, latte in hand, “Are you interested in charting what’s left of your course, Mayzee girl?  Of  treading if not carefully, then at least consciously? To live it Your Way?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” I nod. “More than anything.”

“So quit foolin’ around,” say I, again to myself.   “You’ve got to keep digging. You’ve got to find the stuff that’s choking off the light. You’ve got to yank it out of there  just like you yanked those damn weeds that took over the side yard.”

“Resist all you want,” I add, obviously not done making  my point, “but you’re only fooling yourself.  Now Frank knows too, there on the other side of that final curtain. There’s just no other way.  Even for a chairman of the board.”

Tags: My Way, self knowledge, Sinatra

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