I picked this book up a few weeks ago from my local bookstore and finished it last night, The Beatles Guide to Love and Sex by Scott Robinson. (George is the only Beatle who doesn’t look vaguely like himself.) Anyway, it’s self-published and strewn with some typos and formatting snafus and is a little bit gossipy. But the book does do some valuable analysis of Beatle lyrics and song structures (which were over my head) and it does a fair job penetrating the 1960s male mind from the backward-looking sensibility of its genderly-fair-minded and yet sensual author.

But I have to say, my big takeaway from the book was a re-evaluation of Cher’s current favorite adage that what belongs to you comes to you. Which is an odd takeaway for me, I guess, but one that solidified slowly as I was reading the book. Because these aren’t normal 1960s guys depicted here. They are privileged men of the music business.

Cher says this phrase about projects and acting roles mostly, what belongs to you comes to you, but you could also imagine her saying it about awards, boyfriends and husbands or gelato profits.

I’ve always loved the phrase myself from a spiritual perspective. It helps tamp-down on envy and regret. And all sorts of theft, from petty to grand. Saying it helps you feel better when others pass you by on the professional ladder. Saying it also helps keep you focused on your karmic goals: that is not mine or that is not mine for this lifetime.

It helps you move on.

But there’s a difference when someone in show business (successfully) says this because their lives are structured to have others fetch what comes to them, from groceries to women (in the Beatles case), or have others facilitate what comes to them (as in the case of female stars who may not necessarily fetch men in the same way but who fetch plenty of other things).

Cher admittedly doesn’t know how to order a pizza. She admits, a bit glibly, that she doesn’t know her own house address or phone number. You would need a staff to do your fetching then, people who do know those things and can convey to others where those things (that may or may not belong to you) should arrive.

She tells one story a lot recently (in memoir interviews and it’s in the musical) about having trouble with math and her mother telling her, “Don’t worry, sweetheart. Someday you will have someone to do math for you.” Everyone is amazed at the foresight in this comment but I have never liked that story and reading this book made me understand why.

Good for Cher. She has help with math because she’s got “people to do that.”  There are an estimated 780 million other people with dyslexia who don’t have someone to do math for them. Add to that all the people who are like me and just dumb at math.

It’s interesting to consider how things come to you (and indeed whether they belong to you) when you have a staff to make them happen for you. A lot of math problems come to me and I’m not so sure they belong to me as much as I can’t afford to make them someone else’s problem. (Well, i can afford it in a small way; For a few years I haven’t done my own taxes but I have a feeling that problem may be coming back to me soon and it’s not because that problem belongs to me.)

This is not to say Cher doesn’t personally hustle. Or that her staff can make anything she wants happen. Obviously, this isn’t true. But I’m sure it limits what Cher personally is willing to go out and get. Like a pizza.

Some things that come to you may not even belong to you. And some things that belong to you require going out to get them. How do you know the difference when you’re surrounded by architectures of gofering?

And if the problem stands for a pizza, maybe it stands for relationships and spiritual karma as well.