men: my 2011 minimalist manifesto

This week I met Everett Bogue, who I adored from afar. I tweeted him; a flagging follow up to a cheeky, but true-to-the-core email, suggesting perhaps a coffee or drink in his upcoming travels, and before I knew it, we had next day plans to cart around a sleeping bag in Chicago, which, incidentally, never ended up getting there.

Everett does not live outside the box. In his world, there is no box. He’s not off the grid; he’s above it. It was the snarky, youthful rebellion of his super smart pro-minimalist blog that attracted me to him, but it was fate, two open intuitions and matching gut instincts that had us traversing around Chicago on a late 2010, surprisingly sunny afternoon.

We talked about insane things. I mean, real things that are happening, but that are so far out of the mainstream that they’d be hard to believe. He opened my eyes to a fascinating digital lattice of rogue minimalists broncoing this world on their terms. Just shy of a decade younger, I also saw how differently, how much more quickly his mind could operate. How things that might seem abnormal to our generation, and crazypants to my mother, are enthusiastically welcomed with an open heart and mind. This is freedom. The capacity for this higher consciousness is going to be a no brainer for the youngin’s. It’s built in. Structures are falling, because they are not buying.

This year my new year’s resolution is to fully, once and for all, move over and let life take me. My mantra will be

“Ok, 2011. Whatever you say.”

I mean, I’ve pretty much been doing this for the last six or so years since that moment when everything fell apart. Just letting go, and letting it all brisk me along. Flight cancellation? No problem. A two-week trip turning into six months abroad? Did it. Didn’t get that fantastic job I thought was, for sure, mine? Ok, that’s the way it was supposed to be. But Mags’ particular mental kryptonite, even if I was my happiest, most flowing, easy self, across the world and deepening, or making money or riding high, (ok, and here I am... I'm going to cop to it) has been men.

By now, I was “supposed” to be married, with two kids in my West Village brownstone and meeting Bernadette Peters for routine lunch/shopping sprees at Bergdorf’s. Instead, I spent the month perched in legwarmers and sucking down green juice in my hometown, occasionally suffering through a Lifetime TV movie of the week to appease my mother. Which was, by far, my greatest familial sacrifice to date, and no small act of love on my part. (The Lifetime TV movies of the week, not the month with my mother.)

In the last six years, I have spent the very vast majority of my time alone. I see couples traveling together, comfortable in their familiarity—I don’t remember what that feels like. I don’t know what it’s like to have someone roll over and give you a kiss to wake you up on your birthday. This doesn’t bother me; it’s just foreign territory.

In the kitchen, precisely as I was typing this, my mother beseeched me:

“Just promise me one thing Margaret. You work so hard on your writing, yoga, your ‘oneness’ (picture her fleeting, disapproving nose-crunch,) promise me this year you will devote the same amount of time and attention to finding a man.”

Well mom, I’m sorry to disappoint, but this is, in fact, the opposite of what I am planning to do.

What I promise to do is honor every moment in front of me. Seize every experience as if my life depended on it, because quite obviously, it does. Breathe in the grit and the grime that is today and continue to plow through it in a state of unconditional, blinded love, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. Unconditional, blinded love for myself and everyone around me. I’m gonna get retro RENT all up in that piece and “No day but today” will be my theme song… and to do that, I am going to stop looking for a man.

Let me assure you that this does not come from some embittered space of being angry at men, or life, for not having given me a guy. Far from it. I love men. Bring ‘em on. What I am letting go of is the attachment to wanting men, from wanting to be married, from the desire to be one half a couple. I am not throwing men out from my life, I am taking a cue from Everett: I’m going minimalist. I’m opting for freedom, and for taking life as it comes.

So, what does that mean?

Well, it means no asking friends to set me up. No online dating. That handful of guys that I keep in my back pocket as a “maybe” “one day” “friends with benefits" “just for fun”? ? Done. Please exit the space of my mind. If you want reentrance, you better know how to show up for real. I’ve seen you do it before. You show up for business meetings and you show up for the superbowl. You’re capable.

Romances that have no shot of extending? Ok, that’s an adventure, those could work. (I mean, I’m not pledging to be a nun for God’s sake.) But keeping my radar up at a party? Looking down to check if the hot guy at the coffee shop has a wedding ring? Being a little extra flirty until the stranger references his girlfriend in the third sentence of conversation? Over.

If you actually saw inside my mind, you might think I’m being a little rash. I am hardly obsessive with any of these romantic thoughts. The guy who turned out to not like me so much last year (after seven months of me hoping he did,) well, he exited my thought sphere relatively quickly, but nowhere near as quickly as I would have liked. It was annoying as hell to know it wasn’t going to happen, and yet there he was, parked in my mind, lookin' all sexy, taking up space—I had no control over it.

I want freedom. Not from men. From my mind. Going minimalist does not mean giving men up entirely, it means living with only that which is necessary. And if we don’t have an equal energetic exchange… You are no longer necessary to my life. Consider yourself feng shui’d out. I'm streamlining my heart.

One of my favorite girlfriends (who also happens to be one of my smartest, most open, most generous, positive and grounded, drop-dead-gorgeous girlfriends) said to me while sitting on my couch a couple of months ago:

“You know, looking around at all the people I know, and how hard I’ve worked, all that I’ve accomplished and what I want in my life, I’m starting to wish and wonder ‘why can’t I just be married with a baby by now?’ “

Here’s my answer. Because you’re not done yet. We’re not done yet. Although I have friends who have thriving families with children in tow and still manage to be Manhattanite socialite butterflies and successful businesswomen, there is (of course, there should be) a different perspective in life when there's a family to consider.

And had I started my family years ago, everything in my life that to this date holds any real kind of value, a generosity for others, any actual ability for me to possibly be a stellar mother in the future, would not be present. There were marvelous places I needed to go. There were things I still needed to learn. Apparently… there still are.

This holds true for anything in our lives. The precarious existence that is this world sometimes does not afford us the thing we want at the moment we want it. Until we let go of the desires that bind us, we cannot ever know real freedom.

This is the freedom that Everett has. And ok, fair enough, who knows if he will want it ten years from now, but I will tell you quite earnestly that he is living in a new paradigm, partially of his own making, and inspiring thousands, if not more, to do the same.

I don’t need to tell the world what I want. It knows. There is a definite value to focus and intent, but really and truly? The more I let go, the more things come to me. I sit back and when the opportunity presents itself, then I leap.

It doesn’t mean I don’t take chances or action—writing to a complete stranger to get together whom I had found online? Never did that before. But it came from such a place of intuition and of selflessness, there was no need to pave a route, it was there. I didn’t need anything from Everett; I didn’t want anything from him. I liked his style. He seemed cool. If he thought I was a wackjob and didn’t want to respond, no biggie.

So, we’re coming to the precipice. We can hold tight to a rigid view of what we want it to look like, or we can let go of attachments and enjoy the ride for what it is.

If you had told me ten years ago my life would look like this I would have said: “no way.” For how many of us that does that truth hold water? If you had asked me last year what I want most in life, I would have easily spouted, “my partner in life and a family.” But that's not here. And the world knows better than I do. So perhaps that’s not my path. Maybe I am meant for different, more bizarre, perhaps greater things. I only want to: be. here. now. At my fullest. Whatever that looks like. So I’m letting go of my deepest desire because it’s been binding me. I opt instead for freedom. Scary, unknowable, uncomfortable, unprotected, sometimes lonely freedom.

“Ok, 2011. Whatever you say.”