Learning (still) to let go

I’m not sure why this popped into my head, but it did. And unfortunately now the thought has become a free radical, taking up too much space in my consciousness while I should be concentrating on another far more important task. In my experience, the best way to banish a pesky thought is to write it down on paper; get it out of my head and put it elsewhere. OK, so electronic writing is not exactly the same, but it might work.

Cristy and I are going to a wedding on Sunday and the groom is a particular friend of mine. He has a large circle of friends, some of whom I know on a first name basis as acquaintances. I would recognize them if I saw them and would feel comfortable smiling and exchanging a sincerely pleasant greeting.

Once, a number of years ago, the groom-to-be and I went to hear a musical performance at a local venue. We took a seat at our table and chatted, waiting for the band. Two other individuals from his circle of friends entered the place and took a seat at the bar. My friend gave a slight wave and nod to both. Shortly afterwards, one of them walked over to our table and exchanged a quick greeting with my companion. I knew him by name, but had never had a personal conversation with him. I smiled as they spoke, looking at him, prepared to extend a warm hello. But to my surprise and utter humiliation, he abruptly turned and walked away without even acknowledging my presence. Not a nod, not a glance. It was the sort of snub that might be discussed for pages in a Jane Austen novel.

I think the blood was rushing through my ears and I could not quite hear if my companion attempted to make up a possible excuse for his friend’s rudeness. But, of course I did my best to brush the incident aside and focus on enjoying my evening.

I will likely never forget that stinging breach of manners and I suspect that this friend of the groom’s will be at his wedding. But of course, why wouldn’t he invite his friends? And the fact that he might be there makes me mildly uncomfortable. As though the same experience might repeat itself again. As though I will attempt to maintain a safe distance from this individual in order to avoid the opportunity to repeat the ugliness and shame.

In some step-oriented programs that focus on being-here-now, I might be accused of obsessing about a possible future event that may or may not happen. And that accusation would be true. By placing my consciousness in the future and permitting my imagination to cast a worst-case-scenario, I set myself up to choose a single outcome, from the millions of possible things that might happen. Furthermore, I choose to shift my focus away from the primary purpose of attending the wedding, sharing my friend’s joy, truly the only reason I want to go at all. But worst, I shift my focus away from the here and now. The tasks I should be attending to, the peace and happiness I could be percolating in my heart right at this moment.

Hmm. That’s better.

ENJF

I have to admit that I don’t know what these initials mean exactly, but I do know it has something to do with a personality profile, in the Myers-Briggs vernacular. It’s a label, and humans love to label things, people and places. I attended a presentation today and the speaker touched on the topic of introverts and extraverts. Many people in the room gave an audible acknowledgement that they were intricately aware of this distinction and strongly identified with one of the two personality types.

I was sitting at the front of the room closest to the speaker and had been paying close attention throughout the presentation. She was making eye contact with many people in the room but had not made eye contact with me until this precise moment. She looked at me directly and said: you are the introvert, right?

Uh, well apparently so.

The extroverts in the room voiced their agreement with this hypothesis.

The speaker resumed her presentation, acknowledging that extroverts are often guilty of interrupting others when they are speaking, but don’t much seem to mind when they themselves are interrupted.

I try not to interrupt others. I try to listen and respond as appropriate. Sometimes I find myself waiting, waiting, waiting for a break in the conversation so that I may broach a new subject, ask a question or introduce an idea. I would consider it rude to interrupt a conversation in progress to serve my own needs. But sometimes conversations have their own momentum and the lulls I seek just don’t present themselves. The extrovert speakers keep talking and other extroverts keep interrupting in a swirling cycle.

I was talking with my brother yesterday. He is an extrovert and I hold him in high esteem. But when we talk on the phone it is a difficult experience for me. Yesterday I had wanted to ask him something in particular. But as I was listening to my brother talk, the story he was telling, as is typical, kept getting longer by the minute. Eventually, he had to interrupt himself in order to cut our conversation short and answer a call from a client.

I never got a chance to interrupt him and ask my question.

I know that I am an introvert. I work well in a quiet atmosphere and don’t need to interact with others to keep my creative energy engaged. I prefer to minimize my time in meetings unless they are well structured. I have fun in social situations, but I am never the life of the party. I prefer to take a supporting role.

But this word, introvert, this label, seems to convey other information. As though we introverts seek to limit our interaction with others or hide from the world. Today’s presenter did not use these precise words, but she did paint a picture of introverts in similar broad-brush terms.

And I begin to think that being an introvert, governed by this part of my DNA, inhibits me from living a richer, happier life.

On the other hand, I would not wish to be one of those people who chronically interrupt others when they are speaking or verbally arm-wrestles others for the microphone.

So excuse me while I send my brother an email to ask him my question. It is not the quickest way to get a reply, but at least I can use this strategy to communicate a complete sentence.

Battle with love

When I was a little girl, 6 years old, I thought I was fat. One of my school classmates said it out loud, so I thought it was true. I was ashamed. It never occurred to me that she was wrong. When I look back at school class pictures now, I looked the same as all the other children, but the damage was done. Something changed at that precise moment with the way I felt about myself.

In my teen and young adult years, I wanted badly to have a boyfriend, but I never really did. I did not understand the intricacy of getting to know someone and letting them get to know you. I thought the love dance was merely superficial: labeling the status of a relationship, going out to parties as a couple, acting like you were in love. But I didn’t understand what it felt like to be loved or to extend love. And I strongly suspect this was a result, in part, of the many years of self-loathing that began in the first grade.

This blog is a diary and the thoughts and feelings are my own. It has never been anyone else’s responsibility to make me feel one way or another. There is no blaming or no credit to be assigned out. For most of my life, until recently, there has been a barrier between me and love. I hated love and I grieved over love. It was a battle.

I was able to verbalize it to a therapist a few years ago. Shortly after my marriage ended and I discovered that my life was, in fact going to continue, I realized in order to live it effectively, I’d probably need to solicit some help. Enter the therapist. She asked what I wanted from a love relationship. To my surprise, I was able to answer succinctly: I want to participate in a love relationship where I feel cherished.

That was my first victory in this lifelong battle with love: naming both the obstacle and the desired set of circumstances. My therapist said that was a realistic expectation. Seemed so to me too.

However, in my experience, feeling cherished was not high on that list of feelings with which I identified. More commonly, they would include things like compromised, diminished, marginalized, disappointed. Again, understanding completely that I am solely responsible for my feelings, it is all about my choices and they way I elected to participate in relationships. Relationships with my parents, with myself, with love interests.

Then Cupid flew by my house one night and sprinkled love dust in the air. I awoke the next morning knowing my heart would reopen. And it did. And then it broke again because I fell into an old pattern of behavior. But I saw it and understood. Finally. It was my second victory in my battle with love. That most painful awareness where I stopped applying scotch tape to the gaping wound in my chest. I looked at that wound, ugly as it was, and then tended to it.

Cupid came along again, as he does, and sprinkled more love dust in my direction. I am so fortunate that Cupid led me to my valentine, the love of my life, this place where I feel cherished. It is true, what they say. I had to assign value to myself in order to feel cherished by the person who loves me. And she does. And I can feel it. And it is the sweetest thing I can imagine.

I love you.

Living from scratch

I read a very inspired essay by Anne at life in pencil the other day all about the concept of living from scratch. In other words, starting anew, paving a new path in any part of our lives. And oddly, my father’s voice appears in my head when reflecting on this idea: the words inertia and trajectory. He was a scientist and his work dealt largely with mechanical physics. But these two familiar subjects of physics apply to our lives, perhaps in more ways than we care to admit.

Inertia tells us that an object will continue to move along its current path unless acted upon by an external force. A human-life example of inertia is the person who remains in an unloving relationship without taking proactive steps to make a change for the better. Or a person who has an unfulfilling job but makes no attempt to change the situation. A couple of less obvious examples might be the person who does make an attempt at change, but upon meeting the first obstacle, decides that change is impossible and accepts inertia as inevitable, or the person who selects a change strategy that turns out to be an unsuccessful approach at achieving the desired change, but continues to make the same unsuccessful attempt time after time.

How many of us have fallen under the spell of inertia?

The term trajectory refers to the direction of the new path of an object once a force has been applied to initiate movement. In mechanical physics, we have to compensate for the effect of gravity in order for our object to reach its targeted destination. In life, we have to compensate for other unquantifiable factors, if we hope to succeed in our quest to make progress along a new path. These factors are things like the seductive comforts of our old habits and the voices of fear and shame that play inside our heads.

Creating change in our lives requires some amount of fortitude, perseverance and vision. We need to be able to visualize that the difference we are seeking will prove beneficial and hopefully, increase our level of happiness.

How many of us have stumbled along a new path because we were ill prepared to expend the energy needed to compensate for the unforeseen roadblocks to our visualized success?

I am personally able to check both of these boxes. Time and again I can recall complaining about some circumstance in my life that caused me dissatisfaction, but I made excuses to myself to justify living with the inertia. Or opened the door to a new relationship without acknowledging the need to clean up my behavioral mistakes from the past.

Change is work. It is not as simple as deciding. In physics, there is a formula for computing work, a function of force and distance. In my own life, change has been successful through humility, gratitude, imagination, forgiveness and perseverance over a span of time. The force applied, in this case is not physical at all. A difficult lesson to grasp.

I don’t know if my dad ever thought about physics in these terms, but I am finding comfort in deriving abstract life lessons from the concrete principles he applied in his life’s work.

My personal struggle to cancel out white noise

One of the [many] good things about having a partner in life is that they see you for who you are and sometimes verbally share their observations with you. Much to my surprise and utter dismay, the way that I act is not always the way that I think I act. What a revelation.

Cristy has mentioned to me on more than one occasion that I have an annoying tendency to verbally disagree with certain nice things that she says about me, particularly regarding my appearance. I know that I am not trying to be disagreeable; I am simply repeating aloud the noise that is in my head. But that noise is so loud and those messages are in such sharp contrast to what she says that instead of thinking for myself and selecting the most appropriate response, I allow the chatter to hijack my own voice.

Hmmm, another revelation. Slightly alarming, this one.

The first unfortunate effect is that my disagreement sends a message to Cristy that I do not value what she says to me, and that is untrue. Nonetheless, that is what I am doing.

The second effect is that the noise in my head acts like white noise, canceling out all the other incoming sounds, such as the good loving messages she verbally sends. Those chattering negative thoughts intercept the message before my brain gets a chance to register and deposit the confirming, loving thought in my consciousness.

So here is the question that I pose to myself: how much of my reality do I cancel out without permitting it to even register in my consciousness because of my negative thoughts?

I look to my own family history for an example. An observation.

My mom has said for many, many years that she cannot remember her own father ever telling her that he loved her. This weighs heavily on her very being. Since I was not around during those days, I simply accept what she says as fact; I am unable to dispute it with my own observations. One day, however, she said that my own father did not ever tell her that he loved her. And this one I was able to strongly refute. I lived in that house and remember very well that he told her aloud, every single day that he loved her. I remember the sweet names that he called her and the loving, affectionate things that he said constantly.

I suspect that my mom had so much negative chatter in her head at the time that she could not hear these wonderful things. I imagine that the same might be true regarding her experience with her father.

Everyone talks about living in the present. Appreciating the here and now. I strive to do it but am clearly setting up an internal roadblock to achieving that sought after objective. In this regard, I am my own worst enemy, indeed, my only enemy. I hold the key to serenity but am hiding it away, beneath layers of old dusty noise. The incessant chatter.

I have a colleague who shared with me a technique he employed once to try to clear out the irritating negative self-talk in his head. The noise reverberated while he was running in solitude. He decided that every time a negative thought emerged, he would laugh out loud. His logic being that the act of laughing would both interrupt the thought process and diminish its significance in his consciousness. He said that during his 3 mile run he was laughing aloud almost the whole way, but felt so much better at the end (aside from the fact that the other runners around him kept glancing nervously over their shoulders…).

In my quest to shed personal defects and replace them with behaviors that will permit me to live in the real present, not an artificial version that I create, I will need to adopt a method to minimize these pesky voices, verbally acknowledge the good incoming messages and respond in kind. Perhaps in time, acting in a new way will quiet the noise and allow me to see, feel and live in the true present.

Overdue

True confession time. I’m a fugitive. Well, not quite yet. Truth is I have not yet been discovered for the scoundrel that I am. And if any Texas law enforcement officers should come knocking on my door after reading this tell-all confession, I will surely try to hide behind my dog, Jackie. Who is 14. And can barely stand up.

The back story: between the time that I was closing the real estate transaction on my old house and moving into this new house, I was living in a state of suspension. My belongings were packed up, but I did not have access to them. Day to day life proceeded, but I was just not grounded. Time was swishing by, almost on fast forward. By the time that we moved at the end of October, I had lived in this manner for about three months. The habits of managing some of the things in my own life had ceased, slipping unnoticed through the cracks. Things like updating the address on my automobile registration.

I was expecting a letter in the mail to renew my license plate. But of course it didn’t come. The sticker on my window says 11-09. That would be overdue. In December, I thought I might have a little spare time to drop by the appropriate government office to figure out what I needed to do about my tiny oversight. But, turned out that spare time was just a figment of my overactive imagination.

Yesterday I was studying that little sticker in my window as I drove to work. I’m hyper nervous that some eagle-eye big-brother radar instrument will spot me and I’ll be facing a fine the size of the state of Rhode Island. Which I can nary afford.

Then it dawned on me. That sticker is for my car inspection, not the license. Easy to remedy. Immediately. Tomorrow. Lunch hour, if not sooner.

Guilty as charged, of plain ordinary stupidity.

Borrowing

I just had an interesting conversation with a casual friend about borrowing. It seems that someone he knew only incidentally borrowed an item from him. This was an item whose use is inconsequential to his daily existence, but nonetheless, it is an item of no small value. That was two weeks ago and the borrower has not yet returned the item or contacted the borrowee in any way, even to say thanks.

Borrowing is a funny business. It can lead to suspicions and resentments. I'm certain in my life I have been guilty of discourteous borrowing practices. And I have been on the other side too — generously extending myself and my belongings only to find that the borrowers did not care for my belongings in the way that I would have.

Books are a particularly sticky subject. I love my books, but in all honesty, books are hardly the same thing as a crown jewel. They can be replaced easily. But it bothers me when others ask to borrow my books and then do not return them. Or do return them, but in shabby condition. Doesn’t bother me all that much, but it’s a slight irritation. The converse is also true. It bothers me when other people lend (or give, I’m not sure which) their books to me, without a stated or implied interest on my part to actually read the book. They are books that someone else just thought I should read.

Some I have tried to read and others I have not. My admission here is that I have not returned these books to their owners, partly because the manner in which I received them was not clearly defined, in my mind at least, as a borrow. I may be very guilty of the same types of offenses that offend me. Sticky subject indeed. Perhaps in 2010 I should resolve to steer clear of all manner of borrowing activity, since it appears that I am unable to manage it well.

Provocative

Someone recently reminded me of the definition of insanity: continuing to repeat the same behavior, but expecting different results. I might add to this: and continuing to feel frustration with the same results.

I read an interesting blog post over at The Unbearable Banishment about advertising that features blatantly provocative imagery. While the author did not personally find the imagery appealing, his concern was that the image was front and center on large-scale public display in one of the busiest intersections in Manhattan during the peak of Christmas season. Children might see it.

For how many generations have parents been trying to shield their children from human sexuality, promiscuity, tobacco, drugs, violence, alcohol, deception, cheating, vulgar language, inappropriate behavior…. feel free to add to the list. Is the answer FOREVER?

And what results have we witnessed? Children enter puberty right on schedule, become curious and confused about their interesting new feelings, are exposed to new social challenges, and have all sorts of opportunities to make complex decisions about mature subject matter with their still not-fully-formed brains. The human brain does not fully mature at the age of 18 or 21, actually it takes a bit longer. Surprise.

On the one hand, Unbearable Banishment may have a point. Seriously, how necessary is advertising of this genre? I don’t happen to know the answer, but I’m wondering about the actual financial reward from a big, steamy advertising blitz like this one. Obviously the point is to craft a brand image, steering public opinion about the company in the minds of potential future customers. I suppose there is a measurable reward. Some potential future customers will convert to actual customers when faced with their next product buying opportunity. But really, to what extent is any buying decision driven solely by brand image, and not influenced, perhaps rather heavily by more practical factors like cost, fit, comfort, color, design, convenience, etc.

Well, unless this company hires me or Unbearable Banishment to head up their marketing campaigns, they are unlikely to change their branding strategy anytime soon.

So then that leads us back to the earlier quandary. If provocative imagery in advertising is here to stay in our daily lives (which it is), then how do we coexist peacefully? How do we not fall into the same patterns as former generations of parents, hiding, denying, shaming, condemning? How do parents find the fortitude to address mature subject matter with an immature audience in a way that sets a healthy example? And, beyond finding the fortitude, how, actually does any parent successfully discuss an advanced topic without getting preachy, hyper-emotional, or cynical?

My parents didn’t have the answer. I don’t happen to know any parents who do. I guess that is why we can all relate to this tongue-in-cheek definition of insanity. It hits close to home.

Mean people suck

I don’t like bullies. And by bully, I don’t mean a big kid who is threatening to beat me up if I don’t hand over my math homework. I’m talking about adults with aggressively strong personalities who communicate in a confrontational tone and manner. These people frighten me and they might as well be threatening to beat me up because that’s exactly how I feel when the conversation is over: like I just got knocked down.

I don’t do well in conflict situations to begin with, and I completely lose my ability to function if I am having a conflict with a bully. It happened today. I had this unfortunate encounter with a woman about 10 to 15 years older than I who owns the lighting store where we recently purchased two chandeliers. Cristy and I hired a man who does electrical contracting work on the side to install all of our light fixtures. It is convenient because he works on the weekend and she and I don’t have to take more time off work to meet him at the house.

The new chandeliers are for the foyer and kitchen. Cristy and our installer went to the store to pick up the boxes this morning and he started installing them. Unfortunately, when he took the foyer lantern out of the box, he walked over to tell me that he had some bad news – the chandelier was broken. He showed me where the problem was and we packed it back up so I could return it.

Later, I took the fixture back and immediately felt a chill spread through the room when I suggested that I’d like to exchange it. I waited for a while with my boxed up lantern and then a while longer when they took it to the “back” for their “guy” to inspect it. The bully, I mean, owner, approached me with a stern look on her face and I felt like I was about to get in trouble. She went on the attack immediately: who was my installer, what was his name, what was the name of his company, was he a licensed electrician? I stammered and tried to explain that he was a qualified electrician, but had another full time job. That was all the fuel she needed. He was incompetent! He twisted up all the wires when he tried to install it! It was going to take their “guy” a couple of days to repair the mess!

This didn’t make sense to me. I told her that my installer merely removed it from the box and did not even attempt to install it because he noticed the flaw. Didn’t matter what I said.

I was instructed to return on Monday or Tuesday to pick it up.

Then she walked away.

I walked out to my car feeling scared and ashamed.

The store called Cristy later in the afternoon to say that the repairs were complete and we could pick it up. I don’t feel good about going. I know, I’m such a wimp. I’ll get it another time. When I’m feeling less diminished. Mean people suck.

Blue

You know some days are just not as great as other days. For the most part I keep a positive outlook, count my blessings and try to complain less. I’m not always successful and am the first to admit that I have plenty of shortcomings. But today is just not a really good day. Yesterday wasn’t either, come to think of it.

Could be the full moon, biorhythms, fatigue, who knows. To make matters worse, I start punishing myself inside my head by replaying unpleasant circumstances from long ago, feeling the shame and humiliation all over again. Let it go, already! What’s up with that?

I feel unbalanced and out of touch with myself, with all other humans on the planet. I’m not about to publish a manifesto describing a new conspiracy theory just yet; no immediate need to call the mental health patrol Just slightly out of step, that’s all. As if my existence is somehow diminished, maybe even inconsequential.

Seems I’ve felt this way before, yes, it does sound familiar now that I’m reading it back to myself. But I’m taking the regular dose of prescribed meds…could be pms…could just be Wednesday.

Moral dilemma

I met Leslie yesterday afternoon at the recycling center. I saw him as I drove in and immediately became nervous. He appeared to be homeless; he was weather-worn and his clothing seemed dusty and faded. I did not want him to approach me to ask for money.

The social issue of homelessness makes me uncomfortable. We see the evidence, vis-à-vis panhandling, that homelessness exists. But still, it is troubling on so many levels. I avoid making eye contact with men or women panhandling at intersections, and I almost hold my breath until the traffic light turns green so I can drive away. Relieved.

I think that more and more citizens are gaining awareness of the complex problems that lead to homelessness: mental illness, poverty, substance addiction, alcohol addiction, a history of family instability. No one chooses to be homeless, just as no one chooses to have a mental illness. The presence of a mental illness compromises the ability to perceive reality and consequently, make rational decisions. Earlier this year, Diverse Works featured Ben Tecumseh DeSoto’s multimedia compilation entitled Understanding Poverty, with an in-depth look at the systemic circumstances contributing to homelessness.

I left the exhibit with as many questions unanswered as when I entered.

• Are any current social programs effective in their attempts to remedy these complex problems?
• Does society have a moral obligation to house and protect the mentally ill and how would this solution not look like the horrifying mental-institutions of years past?
• If more funding were directed to treatment for the mentally ill, would we be able to perceive positive results?

Leslie smiled and approached me in his wheelchair, offering to help unload my recycling. The trunk was full of cardboard. I first said no thanks, but he persisted, saying that he likes to help and it makes him feel useful. Plus, he said he thought it was an honest-enough way to try to make a couple of dollars. I reconsidered and agreed. While we unloaded cardboard together, he shared that he had been really depressed about his spinal cord injury and was just trying day-by-day to stay positive and look for ways to be involved. That makes sense to me. We shook hands when we were through with our chore, I gave him $5 for his assistance and thanked him. He thanked me too. If Leslie is, in fact, homeless, I hope he is finding his own path to recovery.

Happiness and shame

I follow Gretchen Rubin’s blog, The Happiness Project, and last week I read something about another blog, Work Happy Now. Both authors suggest thought processes and behaviors to promote a positive frame of mind and reduce the time we spend indulging in complaining and negative inner-chatter as a means of increasing our state of overall happiness. The methodologies seem to have plenty of merit and I have no doubt that if I spent a fraction of the amount of time thoughtfully addressing the way that I process my thoughts as I do watching television, I could certainly increase my baseline level of happiness.

Cristy and I were discussing happiness last week. We know a number of individuals that are going through a difficult period and others that always seem to be going through a difficult period. There are few to whom we would freely acknowledge the complete extent of our happiness. With others, the admission of personal happiness is modestly tempered with gratitude, and if mentioned at all to anyone else, we would tend to indicate our happiness only in passing then quickly change the subject to something benign.

The truth is that for some, there is shame attached to owning happiness. It seems to be such a rare commodity, as though there is not enough available to alleviate the stress, dissatisfaction and frustration prevalent in the lives of so many. We feel shame because we know what it is like to live with a diminished sense of happiness, so now, by contrast, living in a reality steeped in happiness seems indulgent. Our shame whispers to us in the darkened recessed corners of our consciousness that we don’t really deserve it at all; it will undoubtedly dissipate.

And unfortunately, the powers of negative thinking are as strong as the powers of positive thinking. If I permit the idea that my happiness will dissipate to develop into a belief, then I will begin to act as though it were true. My state of mind will have transformed my reality.

Thankfully, my level of happiness is far stronger than my shame at being happy.