Category: Writing A Book-ish

Unwell

My head is foggy. I feel feverish.

The only thing I can think of saying today is that I need to curl up in a ball and rest. I think that is a legitimate message to put out there.

This is the yoga nidra of blog writing. Those who know, know.

And a mark of self-care. So I am. Heading for my favorite place to curl up and drink tea and do nothing.

Isn’t that exactly the advice U gave me the other day?

This is me. Taking that advice.

After taking a rest, I will have more to say.

Consider this a punctuation post.

A pause in a music score.

And for the same reason.

To catch my breath.

What value would there be in a blog about healing if the author didn’t take her own advice occasionally?

Yay Me, Yay You

“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” – Henry David Thoreau

Here is what I am learning these days about a theme I have explored before. I write for myself and only myself. If it hits a chord out there in the world, that’s good. Not essential but good. Welcome aboard.

I believe in the sanctity of the individual and exploring inside ourselves to find out who we really are. What we think, believe, care about, fear, love. Not because we are all that on our own, but because we as individuals are all there really is.

What is in your brain is your life. Full stop. Not a bit more complicated than that. Don’t believe me? Remove your brain from your body. See how that goes.

I hate to go all Henry David Thoreau on you, but I am going to. Collectively, we like to step-to and mind our ps and q’s to fit in and enjoy our perception of being “normal.” Being “seen” as normal in whatever society we are in is an important prerequisite for living a “normal” life. In other words, in larger society, to feel like a person “just like everyone else” and in smaller groups fitting in with people “just like us.”

We gauge our social success by the degree to which we have engendered the regard of our fellows. We spend a great deal of time in our youth preparing ourselves to become our version of what we believe a normal person is and should be.

There was such a brouhaha around Thoreau’s seminal book Walden, Or, Life in the Woods when it was published in 1854. He wrote a lot about being self-sufficient and celebrating himself. He was accused of all kinds of unseemly personal characteristics and hypocrisy and humorlessness. Mostly he was regarded by many as selfish for stepping outside the normal bounds of society. Even for a short two years.

For some reason this scared the living bejeezus out of good folk. Many branded him a narcissist and ne’er do well. But I see Thoreau’s attempt to elevate himself as an individual as a call to all of us to respect and nurture our unique individuality. He urges each of us to respect the dictates of our individuality for indeed, without that, we ain’t got much.

It is funny, in retrospect, that Thoreau contributed so many great one-liners and dorm room poster fodder to our culture. March to the beat of your own drummer, for example. Celebrating myself, another. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.

What I like most in reading about Thoreau is that he didn’t seem to give a fiddler’s fig about what others thought of him or his odd lifestyle choice. He hied himself off to a cabin in the woods where he lived a sparse life for a time devoid of most creature comforts back in the days of mid-1800’s sensibilities. This bothered some people and marked him as distinctly odd.

But I liked that Thoreau subverted the expectations of people around him. He essentially said with his choices and musings: “Let others think what they will. This is what I am doing and how I choose to live my life. Deliberately. There is a price to pay for marching to the beat of a different drummer and I am paying it.” (He didn’t say any of that. I am writing what I think he might have said and thought. How presumptuous is that.)

However, it was Thoreau who said: What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

It is a reminder and an invocation to explore our own inner dreams and pay attention to the directives of our “small, still voice.” It is a tall order. Swishing around in society’s daily routines and taking care of a hundred chores and necessaries every day, that voice is often hard to hear. Dead silent for many people. But it is always there. Small and still though that voice may be.

As fragile human beings who choose to act on the prescriptions inside each of us for each one of us, in the face of overwhelming odds by society to push down and push back our individuality, it is really all we have.

We don’t really need a cabin to figure that out and pay attention. Modern life is full of homilies and advice about getting in touch with that directive through meditation and mindfulness. But it is a wonderful occurrence when you and the voice connect occasionally and for the more attuned, regularly.

For that voice is ours and ours alone. Rare. Unique. Original. Just like we are. I feel it best to constantly listen for that voice and to remind myself that it is always available to us whether we can hear it at the minute or not. I celebrate myself. You celebrate you, too. The voice inside you will get louder.

Words Matter

I am burned out. The following will explain a bit about why. In these deep life trenches that we all face occasionally, we look to who and what might lift us up or, at the very least, keep us from sinking ever deeper in our own morass.

Gratefully, there is available to us all the great universal arithmetic that a problem or situation divided by two becomes half as difficult to manage. Or bear.

These words below are from a lifelong friend who is as dear – dearer, in fact – to me than both of my own siblings. By a lot.

Draw near if you are struggling and stumbling or know someone else who is. This advice is universal and I don’t know who else needs to hear it today. I sure did.

I can only hope that you are equally blessed with such a “partner in crime” in your life who is willing to lift up the other side of the yoke and walk with you awhile. Even when your friendship is separated by time and geography and circumstance.

My friend refers to my dismay over the razed forest that came down behind us and was completely unanticipated when we moved into our new home just over a month ago.

A towering and beautiful canopy of old oak trees were summarily taken down in two days to make way for yet another ticky-tacky little Florida house. There are millions of them already. My friend calls it the Oak Tree Massacre (OTM, for short).

The right words at the right time can mean the difference between sadness or happiness, success or failure, life or death. Les mots juste. Does that sound over the top? Try making it through life without someone like my wise and wonderful friend.

She disparagingly calls it twaddle. (U is also good at self-deprecation.) I call it emotional manna from heaven. And an example of what we factor in on a daily basis to calculate the meaning of life.

Thank you, U. for making my load a little lighter and my heart, too. Plus you essentially wrote this post for me today. There is no greater sacrifice than to write a post for one’s friend. I am sure that is a reliable old truism time-tested by the ages. And if it isn’t, it should be.

U Words

You are exhausted, bone marrow exhausted— the deepest kind.

 I’m putting on my therapist hat on top of my friendship head. I’m going to give you something to consider. If it is helpful— great. If not— ignore.

Life in 3 abbreviated (and incomplete) sections, predating the Oak Tree Massacre (OTM)

1. The exhaustion and stress of moving. The looking, the disappointments, the excitement, the lawyers, the paper work, the electrical hookup, internet hook up, physically demanding and emotionally fraught scenarios of where’s my coffee maker, shit ! Did I lose my favorite pair of socks in the move, etc. etc. etc. – all multiplied by 2 people. Tough going, very tough and requires a lot of patience 

2. The exhaustion of caregiving for someone you love who is older. In different circumstances I looked after my parents. The phone calls in the middle of the night, or at work, that one of them had fallen, gotten sick, couldn’t find whatever… buying groceries, finding cleaners, cleaning for hours on end myself. And yet, I had the opportunity to escape to my home, to breathe, to see some good friends. You are isolated and you are worn down.

3. The 2 lists above are external contributors to what’s happening to you now, post OTM. The third is not and is probably the hardest. The propaganda we all buy as women about what it means to be a good spouse, wife, partner and the silent pressure to have and keep a perfect home.

In essence, the dream. The bargain on some visceral level inculcated from birth and whipped up further in our 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s that we can be everything at all times to all people. And if we believe that if we succeed in being all these things  life will be a dream incarnate. It’s not. It’s shit. But in amongst all that shit, we continue to find hope, faith and love. 

We hope that things and people will be good and kind to us, and we try to be and do that ourselves. We do this without guarantees. We should also hope we can be kind to ourselves. 

We have faith in our partner’s love even in the midst of a Donnybrook. We have faith that we have the knowledge to do as you’ve said “less said, soonest mended. ” We need faith that there is a solution of some sort— not a dream but a solution, if we but give it time.

And the love… we love when there is a fantastic sunset, flowers, and a cuddle. But we also love, as you well know, when there is shit quite literally in front of you. But please love yourself. You are lovable, and everyone of us is flawed. It is ok to be flawed. You are a good person. God only knows you try so hard.

The hardest thing to do is to do nothing. Please do nothing. Do nothing several times a day, and several times a week. Go to a Buddhist retreat. Sit on a rock. Drink a cup of herbal tea. Or caffeine if that suits you better. 

And so ends the sermon by U. I can be a pompous twat so ignore all of this if you wish— In short do nothing😉❤️

Choices, Choices, Choices

Lack of choice has been a constraint from time to time throughout history. Sometimes people know they have limited choices. Other times, people are blessedly oblivious. They accept what is, is, and for what it is.

In the past, people didn’t really expect anything as much out of life, or love or telephones. Heck. They didn’t even realize there was anything else to be had because there likely wasn’t. Limited choices made life less confusing. A little boring, perhaps, but infinitely less confusing. And clearer about the rules and priorities of life and living.

Fast forward say a hundred and fifty years to today from the invention of the telephone to its widespread implementation in North America and across the globe. We have evolved into a high maintenance consumer society that is offered and expects “everything, everywhere, all at once.”

Oh, you “need” a new cellphone? What color would you like? What size? What brand? Do you want a case with that? Glass screen protection cover? Warranty protection? What features? Voicemail? Call back options? (I admit the last two are standard on most cellphones but I am trying to make a point here.)

It amuses me to think that it wasn’t that long ago when telephones were hailed as a wonder of modern communication. Pick up this handle? Dial (or punch in) a telephone number? Talk with Aunt Beatrice five houses down the road? Wow.

I can remember when a telephone number was only five digits. Even less in rural areas. In country settings, there were telephone operators who manually patched and connected one call to another. They were usually party lines, too. In some areas you could not get a “private line.” You had to share with several nearby neighbors.

And oh, the scandals and subterfuge the party line ushered in. The telltale click when someone else on the party line picked up their phone to listen into your phone call. Or maybe the operator, a fearsome gatekeeper of local communications, never quite hung up after she’d made the connection.

I am sure some people would have paid good money for the information tidbits the operator carried about in her head about the neighbors. Talk about power! And there was only one style of phone on offer. It was black. It usually hung on a wall.

To connect to the operator who would connect you to Aunt Beatrice, you would have to turn a little crank on the side of the telephone. The number of cranks indicated which number (person) you were trying to reach. The world was that small and manageable.

Well, those days are clearly gone forever. I was in Home Depot today commiserating with a gentleman about the ridiculous amount of available choices for something as simple as window shades. Gone are the days of hanging a repurposed sheet or tablecloth to block out the light. Although sheets clearly did a very questionable job.

Today (hallelujah!) we have blackout curtains. In every imaginable color and style and fabric and size. Hundreds (and maybe thousands) of them. And after poring over Amazon and Wayfair and BlindsRus offerings for days and maybe longer, we make our choice.

They arrive at our front door and darn – they are two shades off the ideal shade we were looking for. “They looked entirely different on the website.” or so we write into the Amazon Reason for Return box.

Have we ever drunk the Kool-Aid! First, that we think that kind of nonsense is important or even matters in the grand scheme of things. It may matter some. Even I appreciate the nuance and subtlety of a fitting color match between this paint color and that shower curtain’s pattern.

But is any of that really important? Will we look back fondly on our shower curtain pattern as we lie on our deathbed? Obviously not. I wonder how many children are neglected today because Mom is focused on fitting in through fashion. I wonder how many Moms still wear their collection of 4 inch stilettos after their first child is born. Props if they even can.

Our focus of daily living and priorities are seriously out of whack. We will never go back to the days of a single style of phone or a few good gingham dresses to pick from in the Sears catalog.I am a Luddite, not a regressionist.

But of this I am sure, when little Sally made her first call to Aunt Beatrice, it was thrilling. There was respect and a little wonder for whatever magic it was in that clunky black machine that had brought that ability into being in the first place.

Today when people encounter a random instance of joy and wonder, they are eager to capture the moment on their cellphones. Then that the moment of magic quickly and emphatically passes and disappears.

I don’t believe we were ever meant to hold on to joy and wonder indefinitely. What we need to know is that those moments are out there and available to us, if we but stop, watch and listen. They often appear unbidden and when we need them the most.

How quaint is that? Who even does that anymore? But from my wheelhouse, it’s a collective loos of wonder and very sad that we don’t watch for wonder. Not often enough at any rate.

Quick Fix, Not

Here is a basic dichotomy these days.

We are inventing fools. Interpret that however you like.

Forget the industrial revolution and the upheaval it brought.

The technological revolution is on a whole other level.

There are so many new and improved appliances, processes, gadgets, vehicles out there for us. They are supposed to make our lives “easier.” And “better.” And “happier.” And more “personally satisfied.”

You feeling all that, yet? I know I’m not.

I laugh now at the early promises of “new technology.” We were all sold on how these new abilities were going to make our lives easier. The four-day work week. Paperless offices. More time for “leisure” and “creativity.” I snort in my coffee.

That ship sailed a long, long time ago.

So here we are awash in the daily frustrations and idiocy as a product of countless “technological solutions.” I’ve talked about this before.

What I’m experiencing later in life is the huge social deficit caused by diminishing face-to-face interactions. Like connection. Like getting to know each other. Like shared experience. Isn’t that quaint?

It has left us vulnerable to all manner of snake-oil salesmen. Because if we don’t know anyone well, and don’t have access to information about their track record and have never met their parents or siblings, anyone will do in a pinch. Right? We need to believe.

Ideas about belonging to a community of like-minded individuals who know and support each other seem quaint and pedantic now. We imagine, crave and seek out a community of similar seekers who might be out there for us to connect with. At this particular time, it is harder to do than it was in the past.

So what do we do instead? We join online groups. We have countless ZOOM calls. We sign up for Facebook groups with people who have causes or interests that we also believe in or care about. We “lol” and “ffs” and “FOMO” ourselves into low-grade stupefication.

No wonder FOMO is so prevalent. People are so disconnected from the ebb and flow of life and each other that the manic chase to “keep up” is reaching epidemic proportions. Young people no longer have a shared social history that taught them how to be part of a group or community.

I believe many believe the internet is the way, the truth and the life. What will happen to them if it ever fails them?

The anonymity of the internet nourishes all kinds of negatives: bullying, sexting, false information, false scenarios and facts. Oops sorry. I didn’t mean to post that. Oops sorry. I have no way to retrieve that post and obliterate it from the internet.

No problem. Instead of overcoming their shame or finding ways to deal with their pain, young people injure or kill themselves. Is that surprising?

What stupefies me is the tolerance we all exhibit in light of widespread social and psychological deterioration. Rigid, conservative, prejudicial attitudes and actions have always been with us. That needed shaking up. But the parameters of human civility and interaction were tighter then.

People once seemed to understand that humans had a limit to their capacity for enduring pain. They had enough sense of belonging that they understood their actions were a vital part of the collective whole.

How does that tee up with how you are experiencing life these days? Safe and happy with a community of people you know you can count on and who know you and support you and love you anyway? No wonder the internet and Facebook and who knows what else are awash in corrective “positive affirmations” and meaty memes that promise to guide us to the “meaning of life.”

Our heads are in such a constant twist scrambling after the next “big thing” in guidance and insight, we have collective whiplash.

My heart aches for young people today. Young people desperate for individuality and attention and belonging dye their hair fuschia, wear three inch fingernails and one inch eyelashes. They tattoo meaningful Chinese characters on their arsm.

For those for whom this is not enough, they simply pick up an AK-47 with their allowance money at the shop around the corner and go out and murder a bunch of people. That we have collectively managed to breed such troubled, alienated souls reflects our failure to inculcate the fundamental “rules” of becoming a human being in our children: with all the warts those rules contained.

I believe a majority are scrambling to make sense of life today and need to understand where we fit in it. I watch my adult children struggling to internalize the reality of out of control housing prices. Once a surefire road to financial security, more and more that is reserved for fewer and fewer. It has affected their future and family planning and stability.

Who wants to start a revolution?

Excuse My Dust

If I have a literary heroine, it is without doubt journalist/author/poet Dorothy Parker.

Some called her style sardonic, and labelled her a “wisecracker” (a term she apparently hated). Raised in a unhappy home, Parker went on to become one of the greatest writers of her generation.

Her legacy is – I hate to say and apologize to you, Dorothy – a body of the best wisecracks and witticisms in our modern era.

Her genius was her ability to manipulate words and offer up her wry, dry wit and perspective to turn heads and eke out a chuckle on just about every topic.

Damn she was funny. And smart. What follows below is a sampling of her poems.

She never fails to delight or provoke me. I hope her wiseacre persona impacts you likewise.

**************

Parker died on June 7, 1967, of a heart attack at the age of 73. In her will, she bequeathed her estate to Martin Luther King Jr. Following King’s death, her estate was passed on to the NAACP. Her ashes remained unclaimed in various places, including her attorney Paul O’Dwyer’s filing cabinet, for approximately 17 years.

Her ashes were ultimately buried in Woodlawn Cemetery on August 22, 2020. Attached to her urn was a brass plaque that read:

Dorothy R. Parker

1893-1967

“Excuse My Dust”’

Here are some quotes and poems by Dorothy Parker for your consideration:

____________________________

“Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.”

― Dorothy Parker

_________________________

“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”

― Dorothy Parker

________________________

“If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.”

― Dorothy Parker

________________________

“Ducking for apples — change one letter and it’s the story of my life.”

–Dorothy Parker

____________________________

Résumé

Razors pain you,

Rivers are damp,

Acids stain you,

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful,

Nooses give,

Gas smells awful.

You might as well live.

― Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope

__________________________

Men

They hail you as their morning star

Because you are the way you are.

If you return the sentiment,

They’ll try to make you different;

And once they have you, safe and sound,

They want to change you all around.

Your moods and ways they put a curse on;

They’d make of you another person.

They cannot let you go your gait;

They influence and educate.

They’d alter all that they admired.

They make me sick, they make me tired.

― Dorothy Parker

_______________________

A Dream Lies Dead

A dream lies dead here.

May you softly go

Before this place, and turn away your eyes,

Nor seek to know the look of that which dies

Importuning Life for life. Walk not in woe,

But, for a little, let your step be slow.

And, of your mercy, be not sweetly wise

With words of hope and Spring and tenderer skies.

A dream lies dead; and this all mourners know:

Whenever one drifted petal leaves the tree-

Though white of bloom as it had been before

And proudly waitfull of fecundity-

One little loveliness can be no more;

And so must Beauty bow her imperfect head

Because a dream has joined the wistful dead!

–Dorothy Parker

_________________________

Symptom Recital

I do not like my state of mind;

I’m bitter, querulous, unkind.

I hate my legs, I hate my hands,

I do not yearn for lovelier lands.

I dread the dawn’s recurrent light;

I hate to go to bed at night.

I snoot at simple, earnest folk.

I cannot take the gentlest joke.

I find no peace in paint or type.

My world is but a lot of tripe.

I’m disillusioned, empty-breasted.

For what I think, I’d be arrested.

I am not sick, I am not well.

My quondam dreams are shot to hell.

My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;

I do not like me any more.

I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.

I ponder on the narrow house.

I shudder at the thought of men….

I’m due to fall in love again.

― Dorothy Parker

______________________

Unfortunate Coincidence

By the time you swear you’re his,

Shivering and sighing,

And he vows his passion is

Infinite, undying –

Lady, make a note of this:

One of you is lying.

–Dorothy Parker

____________________

“That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.”

― Dorothy Parker

Amusing Ourselves to Death

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” – George Orwell, 1984

Neil Postman first floated into my consciousness in the 70s. His 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, was a seminal critique of television and similar distractions and their alarming place of their increasing influence in society.

Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley‘s Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, rather than by Orwell’s work, 1984, where they were oppressed by state violence.

Postman’s theory was that the frivolity and ubiquitousness of “entertainment,” as so easily available and consumed on television, would ultimately diminish society in countless ways. Television, Postman argued, denuded thinking, originality, innovation and creativity in individuals.

Below Postman comments on two iconic works of the twentieth century. Both 1984 and Brave New World focus on the gradual dehumanization of society, if by two very different modalities.

As articulated in Brave New World, distractions (or amusements) would create, ultimately, a lessening ability of the masses to focus and apply problem-solving skills to solving social problems.

1984 takes another tack and is a study in a society subjugated by powerful politicians who keep the electorate in check through fear and violence.

Postman predicted back in his 1985 book what the future could eventually look like if frivolous entertainments took precedence over intellectual development and character-building.

Welcome to our overarching modern day dilemma.

“Postman references George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World that was published in 1932.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

“In 1984“, Huxley added, “people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.”

In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us.

Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. ~ Neil Postman

(Book: Amusing Ourselves to Death https://amzn.to/3OTfAfr)

Still, Small Voice

In university, I studied a concept called symbolic interactionism (SI). It was an evolutionary and revolutionary reframing of the fundamental worldview in the “science” of sociology.

The discipline of sociology started its’ explorations in the early 20th century based on a normative world view. That means, sociology aimed to understand humans and society through the impact of culture, social structure, and socialization on individuals and society.

I apologize if that is too academic. I realize it certainly is dry. Simply put, sociologists believed most humans act the way they do due to external forces that had influenced and molded them: where they were raised, how they were raised, what they learned and internalized from the world around them. In short, people usually acted in accordance with how people around them behaved. “To be normal.” “To fit in.”

My studies focused on this crossover evolution in sociology from a “normative” paradigm to a emerging and more individually centered theory of “symbolic interactionism.”

Symbolic interactionism posits that individuals form their ideas and act in concert with their personal interpretation of the world around them. Those interpretations influence their behavior and life choices more than what is expected from them as they grow up.

Think how you might answer a set of questions like this: What is a home? What is the definition of a good person? Create a list of animals that are good to eat.

Depending on your personal experience, the answer to those questions will differ widely. And how you feel and think about them will influence how you behave in the world.

To understand society and how it operates, the SI argument goes that you must understand how individuals personally interpret what is going on around them. They make life choices and decisions according to those beliefs.

If your home experience was full of joy, fun and excitement, you will seek that out in your life and recreate it when you are able. But if home wasn’t a “happy place,” it may be hard to know how to start making a “happy home” yourself. For one thing, you likely don’t have a clue how.

I am thinking of this these days in the wake of the rape of the old oak forest behind us. The builder isn’t doing anything “wrong” per se and certainly not illegal. But morally? Ethically? The answers to those questions are harder to answer. According to who?

I realize that I see what he is doing in vastly different terms than he does. He did not see the value of the old trees. He does not care about destroying the peace and tranquillity his neighbors formerly enjoyed. He sees a fun-filled, happy future for himself and his family.

Like many life experiences, how we see something is influenced by how we have personally experienced it. There are many universal experiences we can relate to with others, but the actual experience is different for each person.

We can all empathize with someone who is “going through something.” Especially if we have gone through it ourselves. Marriage. Childbirth. Divorce. Death of someone close. Failure. And success. But we cannot experience exactly what someone else is experiencing. We are all inherently alone.

I feel stronger than ever about the affirmative need for humans to follow their individual dictates and passion. Everyone – and I mean everyone – around you at various times in your life will have an opinion about what is best for you, what should and could work, whether a step you are taking is wise or not. Especially when you are young.

As we get older and stronger and more comfortable with our own views and perception of the world, those internal dictates should by then be better understood and adhered to. The succinct advice to “pursue your bliss” evens the odds of fulfillment and happiness in your pwn life. In the end and at the end of our lives, it will be all that mattered.

The biggest errors of judgment I made in my life were because I ignored the dictates of the “small, still voice” deep inside. Sometimes, in fact, it was neither small nor still. It shrieked at me like a banshee. I still didn’t listen. And I paid a very high price because I didn’t.

In light of the current environmental inconvenience and distress we are going through in our home environment, I am trying to rely on the messages coming from my own internal dictates and direction. I have already made some choices. I will make more. My future direction and plans are changing in light of this development.

This was to be our “forever” home. Turns out it is just another pit stop. Change of plan. It happens. The private, deep-seated grief I am experiencing is mine and mine alone.

As it always is.

Scorched Earth

“Happiness obtained by taking away the happiness of others is built on rocky ground. It will neither last nor grow.“

As someone who has lived much of her life waiting for the other shoe to drop, I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am by the depth of pain caused when “it” did.

You have to shake your head at the stealth, speed and secrecy with which the lot beside us was razed this week. I later realized it is part of the construction game.

Move fast. Destroy everything (scorched earth policy). Give your enemies (who in this case are their neighbors) no time or opportunity to consult or react.

In a capitalistic society, community doesn’t matter. In fact, people working together in community dulls the edge of capitalism. Capitalists don’t push the agenda that people can actually get more out of life by working and sharing together when they do.

We humbly approached the owners, in a state of great distress, about buying their lot. Their response was swift and decisive. They didn’t say no, but set an asking price so high, they might just as well have. I am all about profit but it was clear this was way above reason and fair market value. It was designed to deflect us. (I told you they were good at this.)

We are heartbroken and over this past week have watched a dream we saved and planned for our entire lives disappear. When I met him walking his dog, our younger next door neighbor was similarly shaken and did a sharp intake of breath when he talked about the owls in the forest.

He said they had calmed him before bed each night. Since their habitat has been destroyed, they have not returned. They disappeared after the trees were taken down. Our young neighbor is confused and upset over why this had to happen to him in his very back yard so soon after the purchase of his first house. Like us, he closed in May, too.

The owners of the building lot are happy though. Full of dreams and plans. They tell us they are looking forward to making memories with their kids. It is clear it hasn’t occurred to them (or they simply don’t care which is my husband’s take) that they have diminished and destroyed the happiness and dreams of several other people around them to get there. Neighbors, in fact.

I am not so sure there will be many potlucks when the new house goes in. The entire neighborhood is quietly reeling and seething even though they are not directly affected. There was a shared pride and quiet pleasure in preserving that beautiful old forest. The 97-year-old gentleman across the way will surely miss its comfort and beauty out on his morning walks.

I hate learning about unpleasantness in another person’s character. I also don’t want to ever have anything to do with that type of person. I doubt very few in the neighborhood will either. Our neighbors’ comfort, happiness and peace of mind have been disturbed, too.

And the line of trees at the edge of the property the builder assured would be kept intact to help protect our view? Ya. They’re gone. High marks for consistency.

I sure hope the owners enjoy their new place. They are young yet and it is unlikely their hearts and minds have been too deeply etched with the lessons of loss and humility. Those lessons will come later as they do to us all.

My focus has now turned from personalizing our new house toward calculating the minimum operational requirements to get through the upcoming assault from the build. I am reminded of a story. Of course, I am not drawing any analogies with myself so we are clear.

On the cross at Calvary, Jesus said of his tormentors: “Forgive them. They know not what they do.” I believe this about our soon-to-be neighbors.

They have claimed their own happiness through utter disregard and disrespect not only for their new neighbors but for the ancient and beautiful natural forest that surrounded them. Those trees stood for hundreds of years before any of us came along.

The builder cheerily assured us as part of his “calm the concerned clients” pitch when we first met him: “I’ll be putting in trees 109% when the house is finished.” Next February. Maybe.

I am reminded of a small child who comes into the kitchen to “help Mom” but doesn’t actually know enough to be of much use. The eggs break on the floor. The milk is spilled. Flour everywhere. It’s okay. The little kid is just learning and doesn’t know too much.

Now that analogy is apt.

What I Said

I was your age, maybe younger, when I started hitting brick walls. Those brick walls were largely my own creation. It took me time to see and admit that.

My parents were no help. In retrospect, and even during my greatest struggles, I wondered how they might have helped me. If they had been so inclined. I know for sure that completely ignoring I had any legitimate or addressable emotional problems was not helpful at all.

This is what I thought they might have done. I thought it would help if they acknowledged they could see I was confused and suffering. I acknowledge that you are confused and suffering.

I also would have found it helpful if they acknowledged they could see through my “grown up” act to the struggling little child I still was within. I see that you are still a hurting and struggling child. Acting all grown up. 

It would have been helpful for me to have one of them say that they would be there for me and would stand by me as I resolved to solve my internal turmoil.

It was poet Alden Nowlan who said: “The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.”

You are still some distance from adulthood and I grieve that. I also grieve that you carry and disperse so much anger and vitriol to people who love you. 

My mom once said of me that she “loved” me but she didn’t like me much. Truth was, I didn’t much like myself.

I extend my hand if you want to seek help for whatever it is that is going on in you. I learned that the longer we ignore the source of our distress, the bigger it becomes and harder it is to resolve. 

I know you have great ambition but I also know they are unachievable or will quickly fall apart when you are tested (as you will inevitably be) with your level of  emotional turmoil and anger. The world won’t tolerate it. They didn’t tolerate it from me. I know that from hard experience.

I’m here for support if you want to make an honest effort at healing your wounds and repairing your relationships. It is easy to look a gift horse in the mouth until it is too late or ends in disaster. I hope that is not what awaits you. 

What I know now for sure is that I am not the sole source of your grievances and troubled soul. I am just another scapegoat whom you choose to blame. What I had to eventually learn – the hard way – was that I was the common denominator in my fractured life and relationships.

You may find yourself scared or uncertain by times now. Just wait until your emotional bank account is empty and all of your support has fallen or been pushed away and you are left to manage everything all on your own.

That will be a very hard day indeed. Whether I am still on the planet or not.

As always, your choice.