The Direction of Intention

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I’ve been driving a shiny black Cadillac this week because our little old Saturn is in the shop. Since Saturn went down the drain in the GM debacle, the closest Saturn service shop is a Cadillac dealership. This shiny black loaner car aspires to become the bat-mobile!

You’d be amazed at how my status rocketed the minute I pulled off the lot in my loaner. For the first time in my eight-year membership, the good folks at the gym called me, “sir.” Do you crave attention at the art gallery? Just pull up in a black Cadillac. My neighbors are all a’twitter thinking I hit the lotto or perhaps sold a big painting – a really, really big painting. I am feigning indifference, as if nothing has happened (because it hasn’t); oddly enough my aloofness has lifted my status even more.

Keith Johnstone writes that all people have a preferred status – high or low – and they will always try to maneuver themselves into their preferred position; status is a role you play. He writes that both high and low status are essentially defensive postures. A person playing high status is effectively saying, “Don’t come near me, I bite.” A person playing low status is saying, “Don’t bite me, I’m not worth the trouble.” Both status positions can be very powerful and everyone becomes expert at their preferred position. In the Keith Johnstone construct I am a low status player so driving a shiny black Cadillac thrusts me into the other camp; I’m not used to people treating me as if I might bite them. It amuses me to be seen as someone who could pull a wad of cash out of my pocket and buy a Picasso on a whim – so I play along.

And that’s the point: the status I’m being granted has nothing to do with me. It is how people are choosing to see me based on…what? I drove up in a status symbol. That is true with or without a shiny black Caddy. My car, the one in the shop, is also a status symbol, a different kind of status that exists entirely in the eye of the beholder. The cars hold no meaning that we don’t give them – that is how we create the world we see. It is an investment in an illusion, a story we spin that equates privilege with power (power over), the road to fulfillment is through having shiny stuff.

It is within this illusion that I ask, “What is it to be truly powerful?” Is the car giving you the feeling of status? Can it really give you that? Is the way others perceive you at the center of your self-esteem? As Patti asks, “How’s that working for you?”

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