Barbie's younger sister, Skipper, was sporty and sweet to her old sister's sexy and glamorous. I gleefully unwrapped the red bikini-wearing younger sibling on my sixth birthday. Mattel birthed a younger sis for Barbie as a response to requests from the market for Barbie to make some babies. Rather than barefoot and impregnate our sex symbol dolly of the 60s regime, a younger sister to tend to brought out the domestic the market wanted to see Barbie play house with.
After gift opening time it was a picnic under my favorite back yard tree, the gigantic Weeping Willow, with my quirky Montessori pals. After cake and monkey time in the tree it was game time. We lined up Inside for Musical Chairs. Silly adult agenda to abandon the falling leaves and sunshine of a September afternoon to reside indoors for the tail end of a children's party. Anyway, the music started and then it stopped. Panic. Freeze. I have no chair. Everyone pushed and pounced and I missed it. My chance to stay in the game first round. Voted off the Island. On my birthday. I am incensed for a moment. Then I felt embarrassed and lonely and self conscious. If only I had....had what? I still don't know. I wouldn't be an outcast if I'd paid better attention to ousting my friends I guess. The ones that just sang Happy Birthday to me and arrived bearing gifts. Eventually we all get outcast from the chair Island and one remains to Rein in his or her lonely land-the rest of us envious and relieved at the same time.
This is a stupid game. Musical Chairs can be a metaphor for our lives if we care to look at it from this perspective. The There isn't enough for all of us viewpoint. Scarcity. You Take or you don't Get tagline for life. When the music stops your are In, if you succeeded in the push. You are out if you do not push and fancy a seat has your name on it against all odds. The negative scarcity dynamic that is created with having fewer chairs to people, stinks.
Recently, I had a dream that I was standing in a stark cement-floored and walled room. This is what my mind conjures up for prison to look like. Headache grating music blaring through the speakers in the upper corners of the room and a stack of thread bared blue banquet styled chairs. The chairs were placed in two long rows with invisible hands. Yikes, I have to play a game I have such an aversion to. The people -- I can not see their faces or feel their souls at all. We are all like zombies. I am getting hives just remember this base place. I want a chair because that is the option. We are all on auto pilot. In the midst of this gray scene a picture pops into my mind of a great place I must find. This is a sign for me that I have a choice. I lose my chair. I am knocked out of the game again. I decide to leave this hateful walled in place and I head toward the far area of the room and a door appears when I get to the wall. I open the door and step inside. The room is a delightful colorful boudoir with velvet and silk settees and chaise lounges and magic in the air. I can feel it. This place exhales abundance into me. I am resuscitated within moments. I Goldie Locks chair test. Too small, too big, to cushy, and just right. My favorite color of blue, a purplish bruise-colored velvet chaise I chose to perch upon. Slowly the room fills with illuminating characters in my play. These are the same folks-the zombies now turned fabulous new friends from next door at the Musical Chairs Prison. They chose abundance too. There are enough chairs for all of us.
My take away. The feelings that mutate like a horrible cell gone mad in our systems-the angst, the scarcity, the fear can cripple our hopes and dreams when we are in a game that keeps us from seeing a broader perspective. When we are so concerned that their won't be enough and we fear we will be isolated and rejected from the very freedom we have been given to live, we reject our life of abundance. Our dreams risk ceasing to blossom because we can not see past the next empty space-the empty chair. I give up my ugly game playing chair and I am off to the land of plenty where I assume Skipper is now living in Mattel heaven with her camper, moped and fancy hiking gear.
Ever feel like there just aren't enough chairs for all of us? Think again.