Category: Writing A Book-ish

To Be List

Today’s prompt from the 30-day blog challenge intrigued me.

“People come to your blog or website to learn from you,” Frank Taub exclaims. “So teach them something! Maybe a step-by-step guide …. ” Right.

That got me thinking.

I write about healing from an abuse-riddled childhood with addicted parents. Essentially I write about how I got from there to here where life is now stable, happy, and largely peaceful. Quite the leap if I do say so myself.

Frank Taub is right. There were steps to get here.

1. Be born.

2. Ensure one (or preferably both) parents are addicted to some kind of substance.

3. Make super sure they both come from dysfunctional childhoods that were riddled with abuse and neglect.

4. Try to be born into a professional, middle-class family where it was very important to keep up appearances.

5. Have the parents make their primary values making money and acquiring prestige.

6. Have the parents believe: “Children essentially raise themselves.” Another handy belief would be: “Children’s characters are formed by the age of seven and cannot change in adulthood.”

7. Make the parents generally oblivious to the pain or damage their addictions are causing.

8. Be sure your parents don’t take your fears and concerns seriously and dismiss you when you raise them.

9. Push a parent to a suicide attempt. (Having both try to off themselves would be excessive.)

10. When their marriage fails after the suicide attempt, either have them abandon the children or inappropriately parentify them. Now the kids are cooking the meals, doing the shopping and keeping the house clean. So Mommy or Daddy can rest.

11. Withdraw all financial support and necessaries of life in their mid-teens so the kids will have to figure out life and how to make money for themselves.

12. Expect those kids to have a mountain of issues in adulthood that are left for them to work through and overcome.

13. When they raise complaints about their childhood with their parents as adults, have the parents demonize them and make sure everyone knows what bitter disappointments they are.

14. Make sure the parents lie, refuse to take responsibility for any of your troubles, and are there for you only if and when you succeed. Do not object to this.

15. Finally, after years of pain and confusion, and destruction in both your personal and professional, walk away. Leave those parents to the beds they have made for themselves. Love them but from a distance. Preferably a great distance.

SUMMARY: Have kids. Settle down. Start writing about your childhood. WARNING: This could well take years. Your parents may actually have to die before you are able to do this. This is not unusual and does not mean you a bad person.

Lighten Your Load

I have found yet another “fellow traveler” whose message I want to share. I backpacked a lot in various places around the world.

What Dennis Welton says could not be more true. We often overpack when we head out on a journey. And our reasons are often fear-based. Fear of want. Fear of cold. Fear of thirst. Or a myriad of other undefined dangers that “may” be out there. I well understand the inclination.

The worst is, I do it in day-to-day life, too. Making sure I have enough was/is a survival strategy. It was a strong trauma response and no longer serves me.

So I am trying to let go. Slow and steady, of course, so as not to retraumatize myself. And just in case I really need those dozen boxes of waterproof matches to build a fire in the middle of the desert … ya just never know.

Dennis Welton

“I wrote this in my journal 5 years ago today while hiking across Spain on the old pilgrim trail called the Camino de Santiago. – DW –

Camino Lesson of the Day

The one thing that everyone that hikes the Camino de Santiago does is to start out carrying too much stuff with us in our packs. There is nothing like walking miles and miles with a loaded backpack to help you figure out what is really important enough to carry on your back day after day, mile after mile.

Something I heard along the way has really stuck with me and I was thinking about it today. They say that “We carry our fears in our backpacks”. In other words, if you are afraid that you will run out of food and go hungry then you carry too much food. If you are afraid of freezing then you carry too many clothes. If you fear not being able to find a place to sleep then you load yourself down with a tent and camping equipment. Of course, all this extra stuff is heavy, which makes us tired and sore and often causes injuries. The soreness and pain make us irritable and cranky and often that is what our fellow hikers see. They don’t see the real us! They are seeing the result of the pain caused by carrying our fears and too much junk in our backpacks.

I was thinking today about how a lot of the excess baggage that we carry around with us in life is the result of our fears. Also how all of us have had things that have happened in our past that has impacted us in a negative way. These fears and bad experiences often cause us to behave and react to life and the people in it the way we do.

Just like a backpacker that is carrying stuff that is not needed or serves no real purpose, we keep lugging around things that we should have dumped long ago. The result is that the people in our lives do not get to see the real us. They don’t get the best of us. Many times they are on the receiving end of the pain caused by the useless junk we are carrying around with us. Often, we have been hauling it around for so long that we have started to believe that it is part of who we are.

Maybe it is time to do what all of us backpackers end up doing along the way on a long walk. Unpack our overloaded personal backpacks and what we are carrying around every day with us. Examine each item honestly, determine if we actually need it or not and if it is really serving a purpose. If not then leave it behind and move on.

Turning loose of something is hard, even if it is of no value because we have been carrying it for so long and we have convinced ourselves that we are not whole without it. Once we have the courage to make the decision to dump whatever is hindering us in our life, walk away from it and start moving forward, we end up wondering why we were carrying it to begin with.

Lighten your load, get rid of the fears and useless junk from the past, and let the real you walk free!”

~ Dennis Welton ~

Whither

The Fourth of July. Big day in the United States. Canada’s birthday was on July 1st. Not nearly as much foofaraw. Canadians are self-effacing even around – maybe especially around – tooting our own horn.

Following a recent blog I posted about why I write, the next prompt I received suggested writing about where I am going with this blog. That caused me pause. The short and easy answer is that I have no particular goal for the blog itself. Outside of that, the blog is supposed to be about writing a book.

More and more, writing this blog is about me getting to know me. It is a privilege. Why does that even matter? It matters because I like feeling grounded. In the midst of several crises in my life, the most frightening part was being knocked off my pins. During those periods, my mind often raced with fear and uncertainty about who I was and where I was headed.

The more confident and lucky out there might say finding your way is simple. Set a path when you come of age and follow it. Like a ship or airplane traveling from Point A to Point B. But is anyone’s life really like that? Don’t most people encounter obstacles and upheavals on the way? Do obstacles enhance their commitment to a path or weaken it?

I remember how gung ho I was about my work life until I had a baby. That pivotal event upended my life as I had known it. None of the previous rules or values seemed to apply anymore. My beliefs about my family. My sense of self. My former priorities flew out the window and regrouped with an exclusive focus on this new life.

I am not the only young mother in the world who was completely overwhelmed by the arrival of their infant. A baby’s needs are incessant and unrelenting. Also, they don’t communicate particularly well. Fitfulness or a crying jag would have my mind racing: “Is he hungry? Is he in pain? Is his diaper wet (or soggy … ew)?”

From the day of my son’s arrival on the planet, my life was no longer exclusively mine. I had responsibilities. I can still remember the feeling of heading home from the hospital with my infant son. I couldn’t believe the nice people at the hospital trusted me enough to send him home in my care. Worse, they forgot to include the manual for how to take care of him. Professional negligence on their part, I thought.

But like all of life’s challenges, you either sink or swim. You may not necessarily do well what has to be done, but you do it as well as you are able. I watched in amazement as this little human evolved day by day gathering strength and skills as he grew. Even more amazing is that he made it to adulthood and he is a fine and fully functioning young man… even without a manual.

So minus the drama and life-or-death issues on the line, writing this daily blog is a little akin to birthing and raising a baby. You may have a sense of where it is going but there are lots of surprises along the way. Feelings about an issue arise that are deeper or more complex than you originally believed. Topics you never gave heed to before seem to need a little more investigation.

There was a time when my mind and heart were besieged by troublesome and intrusive thoughts placed there by a series of unfortunate life incidents. They bedevilled me. Most days I felt like I was in a race to either escape or contain those thoughts or prove to myself that they would not define me.

One day they simply went away. Thoughts that were once my constant companions dried up and went away. I can bring those thoughts back now only with effort and intention. They no longer hold sway over my daily life.

So the goal of this blog and the book I want to write is to wring out the lessons I learned from the life I lived. Those lessons I hope will serve as a guide or beacon to some young woman who was in a similar place of despair as I once was and help her see a way through. There were many books that did that for me.

I often observed that books seemed to arrive on booksellers’ shelves just as I was wrestling with the issue the book addressed. It was unfailing guidance from elsewhere that amazes me to this day. I was lucky enough to have been born on the crest of a new era that was beginning to take trauma seriously.

If a book I produce can one day be a rivulet adding to the river of insight and knowledge about life, I will have achieved all I want to achieve. Meanwhile, writing a daily blog allows me to know me better.

I get to reflect on interesting or funny things that have happened in my life or to others. The occasional comments or relatability of certain topics strengthens my sense of connection to others.

In the end, our lives are nothing else if not one long, often unpredictable, fascinating journey. It brings me satisfaction to share a part of mine and what I’ve learned with the world. I read what others write for similar reasons: to learn what others’ journeys have been like and to learn what they feel is worth sharing.

Why I Write

Prompts are used by writers to grease the creative skids when they’re having trouble thinking up what to write about. Frank Taub has restarted the 30-day blog writing challenge for July and starts each day with a new prompt for challenge participants. This is Day 3 of the challenge and here is the prompt Taub proposes: Tell your readers what got you started in your writing niche. 

My niche is personal growth and healing based on my life experiences overcoming an unstable and abuse-riddled childhood. Both of my parents were professionals and substance abusers. Dad drank. Mom preferred pills. As I came to learn later, addicts’ lives are primarily centered around their cravings. Externals like children and careers are often collateral damage.

I cannot pretend that there was a turning point in my path toward writing. It has always been more of a calling than a choice. My relationship with words started early. I loved stories and I was good with words. They were thought-provoking and fun, ideal enticements for a learning junkie like me. They took me away from where I was.

My mother recognized my predilection toward words. Before the addictions had taken her over, she spent time with me to teach me to read when I was about three years old. We would play word games, starting with the “at” family. I would create words with that suffix by following the alphabet.

Bat. Cat. Fat. Gat. Hat. And so on. Then she would move on to the “an” family. Same routine. Ban. Can. Dan. Fan. The words I came up with at the start reflected my limited vocabulary. That vocabulary expanded over time but I never forgot those early lessons.

Words gave my life order. When things were happening around me and to me that were confusing and scary, words and stories were a safe place I could escape to. In my little bedroom, there was a clothes closet with storage space above it. I learned to climb up to that place when I was a toddler. To hide and to read. I took my favorite pinky blanket and found an escape from the often odd behaviors of addicted parents.

It seems I liked climbing generally when I was a child. There is an 8 mm film somewhere that shows me at two years old on top of a double-seated, wooden swing. Even now, I can remember the feeling of freedom and joy I had. What I couldn’t fathom, in retrospect, was how I got up there. 

I do remember it being one of the few times I felt free in my childhood. I lived with the daily uncertainty of addicted parents. Dad might be drunk. Mom was likely high on pills. I will say one thing about having that kind of childhood: it bred independence. Maybe a little too much.

I have come to fully appreciate the human need for stories. I believe they may have saved my life. For as difficult and lonely as times in my childhood were, stories showed me there were other places I could be. I could be someone else, too. In my head at any rate and if only for a few moments at a time.

Storybooks were like rocks in a river or islands in a stream. Safe crossings. Dry ground. Oases. As I grew older, I began to see words used most carelessly and manipulatively. I became skeptical and derisive of words and how they are used.

There is a sentimental side of me that longs for a time when we could all trust that a person’s word was their bond. I love the ideals of honor and honesty but also the greater values of common human decency and mutual trust and respect. Sadly lacking everywhere today and they are values generally treated with scorn and cynicism.

Yet these are the very type of stories I want to write. Imagining a world where people treat each other with kindness and respect. I also understand that is not the way the world is and may even go against human nature. People’s need to survive will always trump civility.

Until and unless we get to a place of greater egalitarianism around the world, the best a writer can hope to reflect is how individuals cope in an unjust world. And that they do so and still hang on to their values and common human decency is the secret human factor.

There is no magic solution for curing life’s evils. But there is much to be learned about the power of individuals to affect change. Stories of triumph in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds inspire and motivate us. It is the belief and examples set that working toward a common goal will incrementally create change for the better. 

Anthropologist Margaret Mead reminded us: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” https://www.azquotes.com/quote/196005?ref=one-person-can-make-a-difference

David and Goliath stories give us hope without which humans would be utterly lost. Thank god there are enough of them to give all of us hope and keep us moving forward.

The Road Less Travelled

Right this minute, there is an eighty-something-year-old couple making love in their shared bed. Or maybe on their kitchen floor. They are both worried about how they are going to get up. But at this very minute, neither one of them cares.

There is an artist out there – maybe many. S/he is looking intently at the canvas in front of him/her deciding which direction to go in next. This shade of blue-green for those trees in the background. Or a shade or two lighter. A cup of coffee s/he made hours ago is sitting on the table in the art studio. Ice cold.

A writer is looking through a thesaurus yet again for the mot juste to capture and describe that scene of agony, bliss, confusion, or wonder. The writer is looking at that blank page in front of him/her straining to put down on paper what their heart sees and most deeply wants to express. It is a marathon, not a sprint.

These are the lucky ones. There are likely countless thousands more just like them and we have and never will have any idea of who they are. Because frankly, they don’t care much about us. Nothing personal, of course, and if we met them in person, they might be lovely, relatable folk. The point is they are so engrossed in their own version of creation that the entreaties of the world don’t much matter to them.

There are literally millions of people out there in the world vying for your attention. Their motives vary. Some are trying to build their empire by luring you into their vision of what is and should be. Some are just trying to make a living. Others are “trying on” a sales job to see if it is what moves them. Some will stay the course. Others will make a switch while they still can. Maybe they are doing what Mom or Dad did. This job – whatever it is – is the only career possibility they ever thought about.

My father was a lawyer. My mother was a journalist and writer. Their jobs defined my life and my career. But my heart was in neither profession. I was drawn to an entirely different kind of career which – in the end – I did not pursue. Something along the lines of international diplomacy. At the point where I needed to make decisions to move forward on that path, I refused the jump.

My parents neither knew nor showed much interest in my career path. My father derided my university pursuits. He told a boyfriend: “What is Margot doing in university? She is only going to get married and have children.” I was on the Dean’s List and pursuing a double honors major at the time.

I now wish, of course, that I had been strong enough to assign my father’s opinion to the dustbin where it belonged. It is only the strong and emotionally secure who can stand up to the dictates of their caregivers. No matter how weak and emotionally insecure those caregivers were.

The consequence of raising strong, independent human beings is that they may begin to defy you and your expectations as their own lives take shape. Not necessarily in a belligerent, oppositional way but in their own way. As it should be.

Change is scary. Abandoning well-worn paths and habits to tread “the road less traveled” isn’t easy and can be fraught with pitfalls. There are pitfalls you may not necessarily be able to see simply because of your unfamiliarity with the newness of the path you are walking.

I think of this when I think of my own journey to address intergenerational trauma. In my parents’ eyes, life was as it was and there was little that could be changed or affected by our own actions. Neither of my parents was raised in a rose garden.

I watched them dutifully do what parents of their age and stage were supposed to do. They both really messed up – both their own lives and that of their children. “Couldn’t be helped.” “That’s life.” “It is what it is.”

So I choose to celebrate and focus on the elderly couple making mad passionate love when everyone thinks they are past it. I celebrate the failed accountant and struggling visual artist whose parents believed there was “no future” in pursuing a creative passion.

Obviously, I am biased in my tendency to celebrate writers. Those who try to plumb the depths of life’s mysteries and humanity and their own role and take on all of it. By so doing, they add to a perpetual and necessary conversation. That writing has been so denigrated and diminished as an art form is a symptom of the world’s current spiritual sickness.

I recommend we hold on to and encourage writers. When and if the actual day of judgment comes, they may be the only ones who can make sense of how and why we got there. For starters, it is unlikely they unquestioningly accept the dire predictions of religious leaders that eternal doom awaits all but good Christians.

Writers may be the only ones who can show humanity a better option and offer a way out of the grim finality for “non-Christian believers” when the rapture occurs.

What writers know is that our lives are built on and built out of stories. Choose or create one that works for you. Be skeptical that others have your best interests at heart when they are trying to change their beliefs into yours. Screw your brains out on the kitchen floor if it brings you joy. At the end, no one else’s opinion matters but yours.

What’s Your Happy Place?

I recently had cause to think back on some of the places in the world – my world – where I was most happy. Certainly, they were nearly all beautiful and peaceful. But not always. Some were surprisingly comfortable and comforting in unusual ways. I remember happy places where I felt most safe and most seen.

A box of lifejackets, for instance. Traveling as a teenager between Newfoundland and the mainland, I had barely been able to pay the fare for the trip let alone pay extra for sleeping accommodations.

Traveling “suiteless” meant you could end up sleeping on hard plastic theater seats on one end of the boat or the other. There was always the floor if my kit included a sleeping bag and a backpack I could fashion into a pillow. Sometimes I carried a pack but sometimes I didn’t.

To this day, I don’t remember how I discovered the box of life preservers. Natural curiosity I suppose. But I do remember looking into the sturdy grey-painted plywood box full of equally grey PFD’s (personal flotation devices) and having an Aha! moment. There were at least two feet of space between the cover and the lifejackets. I could fit in there. No sweat!

But I was civic-minded and afraid enough of the law to not open up and settle amongst the life preservers without “permission.” I took my idea to a kindly-looking purse nearby. I interpreted his first reaction to my request as not to fetch the law but maybe the whitecoats. Registering how young I was, he quickly softened and granted me “permission” to sleep in the life preserver box overnight.

He added – unnecessarily, I thought: “You’ll have to get out of the box right quick if da passengers need ’em.” The brogue was strong and to me, that meant he had that Newfoundlander born-in-the-bone sensibility about helping your fellow human beings. I slept the sleep of the just on the ferry crossing that night.

Other happy places were further afield in the world. In India, somewhere near New Delhi, I believe it was, a nice young Indian Sikh in a red turban took me to a temple at dusk. The setting sun was that magnificent red and orange and purple that defies description even in pictures. You can only fully appreciate it if you see it for yourself.

At a point, the Sikh raised his hands and clapped. A cacophony of budgerigars came flying out and swooping down from the rafters. They were every imaginable color that “budgies” could be. And there were thousands of them. Living outside. Free and magnificent.

They flew several thousands of meters away from the temple. They were like a light show or living rainbow that cackled in unison as budgies in captivity sometimes do. But these beautiful birds were not on a perch in a sad, little pet shop. Their beauty took me aback as did the young man’s ability to cause them to fly on command. Or so it seemed.

There was a particular stop on a Himalayan trek that has stayed deep within me. On a gorgeous morning with a postcard-clear blue sky, I stopped on my trek to put down my pack at a stone cairn to rest. When I turned around, the full majesty of Mt. Everest rose before me. Its apex was covered in snow being blown by high mountain winds. The peak was framed on either side by clusters of multi-colored flowers from the rhododendron forests it sat behind in the distance.

“Rhododendrons?” I wondered aloud. My mind clung to an image of small tidy bushes planted by the front steps that many Canadian gardeners cultivated. But these were in no way that. These were tall, towering trees heavy with blooms in red, white, and pink. My trek through the canopy of Rhodos was more special when I realized I would not likely see such magnificent trees as these anywhere else on the planet.

Other happy places I’ve been to have been smaller and more private. Snuggling beneath a down comforter or featherbed, preferably with a hot cup of tea and milk. Sitting down in the middle of a forest propped up against a stately old moss-covered tree, absorbing the cool and the woodland fragrance. Sitting in snow, carefully shielded from the cold, and breathing in the ir that froze the hairs in my nose.

Occasionally I have also found a deep level of peace and happiness in someone’s arms. This unique comfort generic to lovers is but one of a million reasons why coupling up is attractive. Just knowing there is another living, human being breathing beside you, ready to face the day with all of its potential joy and challenges is amazing.

So today I feel myself drifting off to another happy place. The ocean off Sri Lanka where schools of brightly colored aquatic fish and marine life swam before me in an endless pageant of color and shapes. Again, that vista offered the dual comforts of peace and beauty.

I never forget that I am beyond fortunate to have these happy places to revisit. I was very fortunate to have visited them in the first place.

And I am also very happy for the chance to go back into my memories whenever I want to relive them again when I want to. Like now, for example…

Second Chances

In the past and a little bit recently, I have sometimes wanted to flush my life down the wormhole and start over. That is not such an unusual thought. We all long for second chances.

When I think back on errors of judgment on my part, I try to imagine what my headspace was at the time. Me and my best bud Anxiety have been to a lot of dark places together. And I mean, a lot. There wasn’t a picture-perfect situation I couldn’t screw up with my negative self-talk. A lovely wedding? “Oh, I’ll never find a husband that will put up with me.”

It was madness, of course, and the lamentations of a girl with pitifully low self-esteem. But I also realized it was a type of control mechanism. If I controlled the narrative of negative self-talk, then I wouldn’t be blindsided or taken advantage of. How I connected the two I have yet to articulate but it went like that.

I took a certain perverse pride in the boards and committees I sat on when I was younger. I would take issue with an issue we were wrestling with. I would bring all of the negatives to the attention of my colleagues. I got off on their perplexed and concerned faces giving serious attention to my opinion.

(That was lame of me – very, very young – but I also think it is not an uncommon element of modern boards and committees. There’s always one whiny “that guy.”)

So as I face another anxiety-producing situation in the present, I weigh my options as I have trained myself to do. I am checking my self-talk. I am checking my emotions. They run from anger to sadness to anxiety (Hey, hi there, old buddy!) to shame. I am ashamed to have let someone pull something over on me.

It triggers all of those feelings of powerlessness that I had in childhood. I had no agency to make bad things stop happening or to make good things happen. It also didn’t stop me from trying.

I remember I made a lot of penuche fudge. That is a brown sugar fudge for the non-fudge inamorato out there. It is a diabetes delivery method in a one-inch square.

But when the caregivers were absent and dinner was hours or days away, I could make penuche. I pulled the ingredients out of the pantry. I pulled the pot out of the cupboard and put it on the stove. At nine years old, I was a fudge-making diva.

The negative self-talk became a total buzzkill as I got older. I came to read about or recognize the classic overthinking of an adult child. Having not been brought up in a stable home environment, overthinking was a form of self-protection. Somewhat akin to planning a number of escape routes in a house in the event of a fire. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.

Just now, we are about to learn whether someone made an honest mistake that they will make good on or we were deliberately misled and duped. For an adult child and trauma survivor, that is pretty much a worst-case scenario. It was the trust and vulnerability I had as a child that led to physical and emotional pain in the first place.

So today I am in self-observation mode. How I am going to handle it this time? Will my hurt and betrayal be addressed? Or will this be another loss I have to accept and grieve? I have done that before.

I do know that if I let enough time go by and fill the picture in with pleasantries and feel sorry for the transgressor, my mood will bounce back to normal.

So one of my responses to anxiety has been routinization to some degree. We all need some of that, too. Especially in times of change and upheaval – a state I am currently in.

So I will smush together all the accumulated wisdom for managing stress and negativity that I have learned in my life. Meditation, exercise, pranic breathing, and patience as I await the results of how the flagged issue will be handled.

As it turns out, there is not another blessed thing – beyond self-care – that I can do in aid of controlling the outcome. The ball, as they say, is in somebody else’s court.

The secret of navigating this difficult issue is to stop reacting to an outcome that has not yet been decided and is out of my hands anyway. That will have to do for now.

Desiderata

Latin for “things desired.” A friend gave me a copy of this poem when I was a teenager. It still hangs on my wall.

Written by attorney and poet Max Ehrmann in 1927, he copyrighted it and then dissolved his copyright claim by distributing copies of it for free. Which likely contributed to its wide use and celebrity.

The forty-six-line poem is a commentary on how to approach day-to-day life. This includes how to keep what’s important front of mind and balance one’s career, inner peace, and aspirations. While also striving to be a good person in a world that doesn’t always treat you fairly. 

“It reminds us to treat others kindly, to accept who they are, and to be gentle with ourselves. Ehrmann also motivates us to have faith in ourselves and to develop trust in the way things unfold. Doing so will help us to find peace in our souls and to discover meaning in our existence. http://www.planetofsuccess.com/blog/desiderata-poem/

What I love in particular about such thoughtful utterings is the universality of their message. They seem to come around in our lives again and again when we most need them. Like scripture maybe. Or writing on the subway walls.

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.

And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, 1927

Love Takes Time

A spiritual author and writer I follow reminded me today that things take time. I sometimes forget that. A counselor once said to me: “It took 25 years for you to get messed up. You can’t expect to undo that mess overnight.” Understatement of the century.

First, we have to recognize what is wrong. With us. With our environment. With how we were raised. That takes time to parse out. What is wrong with us usually manifests in unwelcome or uncomfortable feelings. Too anxious. Too scared. Too jumpy. Too intense. Some form of “too” that somehow doesn’t seem “normal.”

Dozens of jokes are made about “normalcy.” It is laughed at and derided. Unachievable say others. It is a definition that seeks to make us humans seem or be “all the same.” As if that were even possible. We all live life in our own way. We all learn how to love in our own unique way, too.

But when we feel too much inappropriately, it can hold us back from fully feeling the very emotions we want to express. Joy and love and peace. I remember a horrible feeling I had as a little girl. I would pick up a puppy and want to “love it” so much I was afraid I would crush it in my arms.

So I would look at it stupidly trying to mentally convey to it how much joy it brought me. I was paralyzed. That was weird but later I learned not so unusual when feeling big emotions. Remember the wild rush and uncontrollability of emotions around a “certain someone” when you first fell in love.

You stammered a little in trying to talk to them. If, in fact, you could even summon the courage to talk to them. You would blush like fury when they caught your gaze. Your stomach would turn over with butterflies so manic it would take you to the point of discomfort. If this was “love,” it felt like it was more trouble than it was worth.

And if that wasn’t enough distraction, in would wander unhelpful self-talk. “S/he is a dreamboat. I could never speak to her/him. S/he would never give me the time of day. S/he is much too good for me.” Talk about romance buzzkill.

Rockstar Tal Bachman – son of rock band BTO’s Randy Bachman – summed it up pretty well in his 1999 hit: She’s So High. Bachman’s lyrics play out entirely in his head as she idlizes the object of his affections with hyperbolic comparisons to Joan of Arc and Cleopatra and even, the Greek goddess of beauty, Aphrodite. When she wanders over to talk to him, he silently screams: “I freeze immediately.”

Roy Orbison’s Pretty Woman – arguably one of the best all-time country and western love songs ever written or performed – has a similar theme. He is convinced the gorgeous woman he sees walking by will have nothing to do with him. It turns out he is wrong.

Most of these love and acceptance and belonging neuroses are afflictions of the young. But not always. I remember a colleague of a certain age uttering breathlessly how much more he loved his wife and childhood sweetheart now than he did when they first met. That buckled me.

So I am reflecting on time as my awareness grows of how long it took me to learn to love in a mature and healthy way. I was given an inadequate deck of cards with which to play the game of love. It took hard lessons to finally make my way to a place where it feeds my soul daily.

Not in a noisy, “take out an ad,” “plaster his name on a billboard” kind of way. It is quieter and deeper. I long to be where he is. I touch him at night just to feel his heat and energy. I am awash in tenderness whenever I look in and see the kindness and wisdom in those deep, blue eyes.

Then behold. I sense he is feeling the same for me. Changing from what was and who you were into something you want to be is not easy. It takes time. They say it is the journey that is most important, not necessarily the destination.

I would alter that only in this regard. When you arrive at the destination of your beloved, you can set off on another journey but together. That is the loveliest place of all to land.

None So Blind

The lightning bolt hit me full force when I saw the tall, handsome stranger in the doorway. A sharp intake of breath that was just as quickly taken away. I noted no details at first but his presence. He was beautiful and unlike anyone I had ever seen before.

It was winter. January 25, 1973. To be exact. The handsome boy who was still a stranger to me was dressed for the weather. A blue and burgundy toque was perched lopsided on his head. He wore aviator glasses. Tortoiseshell rims with three cool holes just above the bridge of his nose. Fashion forward, I thought. For a guy.

He wore a burgundy turtleneck that hugged his torso. Slung over that was what looked to be a too-large and ill-fitting sheepskin jacket that was tilted and slightly askew on his frame. He looked like he was just hurrying in from somewhere or rushing to go somewhere else.

German class likely. The mother of all bird courses for a native German speaker albeit with a distinct Austrian accent. That distinction I only learned later when my own German improved sufficiently to detect the regional difference.

Standard 70s issue blue jeans and mid-calf, lace-up beige shearling winter boots with only the bottom half laced up. Those boots completed a mental picture taken and frozen in my head in a nanosecond.

I had little idea then that that image would persevere for a lifetime long after the lightning bolt dissipated and the boy disappeared from my life.

The Bible teaches: “There are none so blind as those who will not see.” I would too soon learn the import and irreversibility of that lesson.

The boy in the doorway was mine for but a nanosecond longer than when I first saw him. Eyes that grossly underestimated the gift in front of them, soon turned their primary purpose to grief, instead of joy and pleasure from just looking at him.

When god wishes to teach us a lesson, he spares no emotional expense. The lesson cut so deep, it has lasted unaltered to this day.