Happiness is Acknowledgment

Okay, I know you’re going to say, well, it’s a trap to attach our happiness to acknowledgement, and I agree. But we also live and work in community. Unless we’re off living in a cave, we have relationships. We’re on social media, exchanging snippets about our lives, what we value, how we have fun, what we’re about.

This week something rather spectacular happened. I didn’t seek it out. It just happened. What I call spontaneous abundance. My first two books in The Dare Valley series, NORA ROBERTS LAND and FRENCH ROAST, were included in an ad that Amazon put out with books by Nora Roberts, Susan Anderson, JoAnn Ross, and lastly Carly Phillips. Remember that last name. I’ll come back to her later.

Let me talk a little about one of the best lessons my mom ever imparted to us six kids about acknowledgement. She said over and over again that you acknowledge the person who’s cleaning the bathroom at school with the same grace and respect as the president of the United States (or someone else big; pick your person). Each of us is special in our own right. And for me and my house, this is a motto to embody. 

Consider the flip side for a moment. When I came to Washington DC out of graduate school, I experienced the opposite of being acknowledged as a person. DC, for all its positives, is an ambitious town, and lots of people only want to be around people who can “get them someplace.” This has never resonated with me, and thankfully I was able to be successful here because I went counter-culture, and people really liked that. It was like a light house in a foggy night.

On one such night in DC early on, I had a rather humorous experience, and if I wasn’t more grounded, it might have hurt my feelings. I came to DC after winning a fellowship to work on international elections. Sometimes you don’t realize how big a deal something is until you arrive. Well, I arrived and am told they were going to honor me in a banquet. I was like, wow! Really? Okay. The banquet was set in a posh club even the TV show Scandal would use as a setting. I was 23 years old, mind you, and this was the biggest event I’d gone to.

I bought the best dress I could afford because I could make more money working at McDonalds than at this fellowship (as my accountant cousin pointed out). When I stepped into the swank club, my senses were awash. Honeyed wood. Tiffany glass. Thousand dollar suits. Silk ties in patriotic colors. And the smell of money and power thick in the air. People glanced at me as I mingled and then past me, dismissing me. I didn’t know a soul, but I’m pretty outgoing. I tried to engage people, but no one was biting.

Then the comedy began. The “important” people started handing me their coats since I was standing on the outside watching it all now, assuming I worked at the club or was an intern or something. In sum, they treated me poorly. When the president of the organization announced it was time for the sit-down dinner, I made my way in and was ushered to the head table by him. The man I sat next to had been the last prime minister of Canada, and he was just one luminary at the table. It was all of these “established” people and me. I was younger by thirty years easily and one of the only woman not a wife. I watched in total fascination as the people who’d handed me their coats winced and shifted in their seats, seeing me there. As the people who’d brushed me off when I’d tried to engage them in conversation had their mouths drop open slightly.

Well you know where this is going, right? After dinner, there was a stampede by those same people to meet me and joke about thinking I had been an intern.  I felt like few were genuinely sorry they had treated me poorly, and from that moment on in DC, I was always aware of this real negative in various circles.

I’m now in a new career, and even I can see how there’s a distinction between the published authors and not-yet-published authors; from the New York Times bestsellers and the published authors; and the traditionally published and the independently published authors. I’ve seen some of this “looking past people” at conferences, at publishing parties, even at local workshops. 

So this makes it even more special when I share my absolute joy over this Amazon ad (to me a divine blessing) on my Facebook page this week, and because someone on my page, links in Carly Phillips, she actually shows up and comments. Says “congrats.” That act is what my mom was talking about. That’s grace and class and human respect. And I’m grateful for it. It’s the way I live my life, and it’s always so wonderful to see it in other people. So thank you, Carly Phillips, for acknowledging me. For showing me there are people in this new career of mine–and in life–who feel and act the same as I do. For acknowledging me in this new career, and not just handing me your coat or ignoring me. 

You made me happy. Because I was seen. 

And isn’t that deep down what we all want in life?

 

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