Tag: love

The Vigil

I hate waiting. It is a character flaw.

I should be a model of patience by now.

I am not.

It is uncertainty that bothers me most.

I don’t trust easily. I am a small “c” control freak. If a job needs to be done well, I need to do it. Etc.

I could analyze ad infinitum how I evolved this way but I think it is pretty textbook. Chaotic childhood. Addicted parents. Chronic upheaval and instability.

To not become something of a control freak in such an environment would be a little crazy in its own right.

So even if waiting for what I expect will be a positive outcome, I dither.

I harbor the anxiety that the proverbial rug will be pulled out from under my proverbial feet.

Op. cit. childhood.

The trick is to manage the anxiety of waiting and not the other way around, letting anxiety manage you.

I sometimes think of the frightened bird hiding in the reeds in a vignette from the classic Disney animated film, Fantasia.

Instead of keeping her head down and staying put, the bird panics. She flies out of her hiding space into a hunter’s clear shot. I had similar metaphorical experiences in my life. Many instances when things might have gone much better had I simply kept my head down and my mouth shut.

But no. Anxiety is a powerful driver. And with a nervous system deeply gouged with life threatening memories of a danger-filled childhood, it is not an easy emotion to quell in emotional heat.

Sometimes the emotional game in my head was akin to playing defense in a basketball game. Feinting. Parrying. Watching for one move or another on someone else’s part. Blocking constantly, frantically, and in this analogy, one’s own emotions to boot. I already need a shower.

Waiting drags at the nerves. It forces you to think or, at the very least, spend time alone with your thoughts. While it might benefit you to think about anything else but what you are waiting on, that is easier said than done.

I remember back to memorable waiting periods in my life. For grades to be posted. For a boyfriend to call. For the outcome of a job interview. For my children to be born. For my father to pick me up. Ordinary life events made tolerable or intolerable in direct relation to the extent of my anxiety and distrust of life.

Let go, the self-help books say. Let go and let god, the 12 step programs say. Let go, the religious tracts say and, if you fall, god will pick you up and you will fly. That is a lot of faith to invest in reassuring platitudes. If, and especially when, life has given you plenty of personal evidence to the contrary.

I have slowly learned positive benefits of cultivating patience. It makes waiting easier. It lessens the gap between triumph and disaster. As Kipling counseled in his poem If, I have learned to “treat those two imposters just the same.” Well, similarly at any rate.

A friend from long ago suffered from a rare and capricious form of cancer. She traveled as far as Sweden to the only clinic in the world that specialized in treatment of her condition. She wrote about waiting. For test results. For updates. For word of developments on her condition. Her writing was full of frustration for what she couldn’t control. She sounded like a lot of us managing much less difficult circumstances.

My friend died. And that was the end of her uncertainty about everything. Everything ends eventually. Death is so final, after all.

It seems that is the trick of life and living. We do what we have to do while we have to do it until one day we don’t. Or can’t. And then really, really can’t.

We can be patient and learn to put up with life’s uncertainties or we can act out along the way like overtired toddlers. The end result is the same. How we handle these inevitable frustrations is what informs the quality of the journey. That is going to be a lot more important to you later than you may realize now. Trust me.

I have been that peevish toddler in the past having a temper tantrum and throwing shade at every person I perceived as an impediment to my goals and wishes. I have also hung back and talked with others in the queue misery bitching about our shared calamity. We often got a laugh out of it and a shared – if temporary – sense of connection. It was the spoonful of sugar that made the line move faster.

So today I wait again. For an uncertain outcome. In a dire situation. I am better at discerning what I can control and what I can’t. The person for whom I am holding vigil is on their own journey. I am simply a fellow traveler.

On that note, I am going to go top up my coffee. Completely within my control.

A chore utterly without frustration.

Unless the coffee is lukewarm.

I hate lukewarm coffee.

Letting Go of the Reins

One day I will be taken. I don’t know how or when, of course. All I know is that leaving Earth – the only home I am familiar with – is inevitable.

It is a mildly discomfiting feeling but doesn’t consume my daily thoughts. Except some days, it does.

Does death scare me? I suppose so, yes, on some level. In the same way going on a trip to any unknown destination scares me. More nervousness than fear. Traveling is a hassle. There are bound to be nerves. Any trip causes internal and external upheaval. What do I pack for starters?

I have lived long enough and traveled often enough to know that wherever I go, there I am. Exotic destinations and white sandy beaches stretching off into the distance are alluring. I appreciate them in direct correlation to the vantage point of the mood and headspace I am in. Over my lifetime, positive and negative internal states have been many and various. My internal state always mattered in my recollection of the experience more than any external situation I was in. I could appreciate or adapt myself to the degree that I was capable of reacting to or appreciating it.

One stunning travel memory was the beach at Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka. Local boys brought us freshly cut spears of pineapple that dripped with juice and had the mouth feel of biting into heavy whipped cream. I snorkeled in shallow waters off the beaches there. I nearly inhaled water amazed and distracted by the orderly kaleidoscope of colors among fish wending their way through equally colorful coral reefs.

When I think of travel experiences that stayed with me, I think about the synchronicity between my inner self and what was going on outside me. Often nothing. Standing at a rock cairn in the Himalayas, I watched clouds gambol across the peak of Mt. Everest in the distance. No hurry, no drama. Just mountains and clouds being mountains and clouds. Just being.

I often try to reconcile the disparity between growth and stagnation. It is said life on Earth is largely for spiritual education. Damned if I know exactly how that works. Damned if I have ever been able to fully recognize and internalize graduation markers from one “grade” to the next.

I only know by comparison that my values, hopes, and ambitions are radically different than those of a younger me. Younger me was largely consumed by the drive for survival. Older me wonders more often what survival’s end will be like. I often reflect on the enduring shame and distress certain actions or situations created in me as a youth. Those situations would never happen now and the memories cause me pain and pause. Maybe that is the point. That feels like learning.

I have often said, however, that many life lessons I learned I would rather have read in a book. Were the lessons of devastation of loss, humiliation, upheaval and searing emotional pain really necessary for the ultimate good of my eternal soul? That seems doubtful. I spent a lot of time wondering if those crushing lessons were simply a case of me being the a—hole. The uncomfortable answer was often yes.

Life for me has been like some talented, untrained filly full of spirit and energy and bumping into its mother and the paddock rails out of sheer, unbridled enthusiasm. The filly needed to grow up, become trained, focus that energy and spirit in a controlled way to be of any value to the herd or its owner. And protect its mother’s ribs. Otherwise it would simply grow bigger and continue to be an unruly, undisciplined horsehole that outgrew its cute phase and was eventually labeled delinquent and dangerous. At which point, it would become isolated and avoided. I’ve been there.

As a child in Pony Club being trained myself, I would often let go of the reins. It signaled the end of the lesson. It was the moment where riders relaxed and the horse relaxed, too. We often caught flak from instructors if we let the reins go in a field where the first thing the horse did was start grazing. That seemed to bother the instructors terribly but I never really got that. I always thought it was a nice treat and reward for a horse that has just worked hard and put up with your childish incompetence for the preceding hour.

On a horse trek across the Andes, I relaxed the reins at certain points when I couldn’t possibly imagine what my instructions to the horse could constructively add to the situation. The group of fellow riders edged along narrow mountain trails within way too close proximity and clear sight of cliffs plunging thousands of feet down the mountain. If the horse took any misstep whatsoever, we would both free fall to our deaths.

It finally occurred to me that the horse did not want to die either. It had crossed these pathways many more times than I had, after all. It needed to be sure – and was likely very sure – of its own footing. Self-preservation is not confined to the human species. I had utterly no control over this animal in that moment. I loosened the reins and gave over my trust to this steady, wordless equine. It worked out, of course, or you wouldn’t be reading this blog post!

Facing death with an attitude of peace would seem to mean arriving at that portal having come to terms with most of the problems and relationships life threw at you. Combined with surrender for what you could not and cannot control any longer, which is a form of grace. I have lately been learning that lesson in real time.

When facing a situation where you have explored every option, you have given a project or person your all, you have asked all the questions, done all the readings, shaken the curtains for every last remaining bit of insight until, one day, for no discernible reason, you let go of any control over the outcome. Where the illusion of control was deployed as a survival strategy, it becomes obvious you have little to no control whatsoever. Control over getting the dishes done, yes, of course. But not for the ultimate outcome of life’s trajectory.

In the vernacular and wisdom of the 12 step groups, one ultimately decides to “Let go and let god.” I assume and hope that will be my conclusion on my deathbed, or death sidewalk, or death seashore or airplane wherever I happen to be at the time I cross “the great divide.”

While it causes anxiety to let go of control, it also comes with a certain sense of relief. There are burdens worth setting down along the journey of life. To surrender to forces greater than you are. Surrender undoubtedly comes at no more important or impactful time than at the end of that journey.

Sounds like relief to me. At the end of the ride, let the damn horse eat all the fresh grass he wants, say I. He’s earned it.

The Aviator Next Door: A Cross Border Love Story

I am a Canadian woman married to an American man. I landed in central Florida nearly eleven years ago at the behest of an irresistible adventure and romantic whim that became very real, very fast. We met online and married three weeks later. This is – for everyone who has asked the question – what I was thinking.

That he wasn’t an axe murderer was an auspicious beginning. I did a level of due diligence. I found him quoted in the New York Times as a Pan Am pilot talking about a plane shot down in Russian airspace. What he essentially said is that is what happens when a plane drifts into forbidden airspace. No sentimental or political analysis. Just the facts.

I would come to experience this as a seasoned pilot’s worldview. A+B = C. Little room for gray. Best attitude for a pilot navigating the core physics and philosophy of flight. Planes go up and planes come down. To do so safely, there are inflexible rules and checklists to follow. I would come to learn most pilots are similarly oriented.

In a clerk’s office in Kissimmee, Florida, our adventure took flight as we said our “I do’s.”It is fair to say our marriage was a stick of TNT in the iceberg of my life. I was single, solvent and settled in my Canadian life. All of a sudden, this guy meets and mirrors every adventurous notion I had ever had. He was fun, he was handsome and having been a pilot, I was pretty sure he had an innate sense of discipline and responsibility. No one had died on his watch.

As the months and years evolved with my American husband, the depths of the man I married slowly surfaced. He loves poetry. Rudyard Kipling. Robert S Service. Yeats. Robert Frost. He enrolled in art school in Italy where he lived for twenty-five years. There he discovered a talent for painting he had set aside during his working life. He became an expert interpreter of Renoir, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Picasso, Gerome and others. It was entirely engrossing to watch him at an easel, as he moved through the stages of creating a cartoon, transferring it to canvas and sketching out the form of the image before oils touched the surface.

Among many things we had in common, he loved to travel. Mind you, I always disembarked at the gate while he was the one who parked at the gate. Still, it turned out we had travelled to many of the same worldwide destinations. New York. Paris. Rome. New Delhi. Buenos Aires. Hong Kong.

You might think a love of travel would be obvious being a pilot and all. But not necessarily. Many pilots, he told me, were happy to start their work day in the morning as long as they got home for supper that night.

We share a favorite story about those hours long “getting to know you” phone calls back in the beginning. When he learned how many international destinations I had travelled to, he said with an eye roll: “This conversation might go a lot quicker if you just tell me where you HAVEN’T been.”

He once described landing in Hong Kong, one of the more challenging in the world at the time. He recalled the approach step-by-step as if living it while speaking. Every considered bank, every turn of the wheel, interplayed with the nuanced movements of the throttle and ailerons to line up the massive jet perfectly with the lights of the landing strip. In his recall, he was describing a kind of magic which, thinking about it, flying still sort of is.

We both love to eat. He waxed on about asado meals he had in Rio and Buenos Aires. Slabs of steak to order were brandished on swords carried by uniformed waiters. At a restaurant in New Delhi, they made chapatis in a deep round oven in view of the diners. He talked about meals prepared by guides on an African safari. I compared different meals on a horseback trek across the Andes prepared by Argentinian and Chilean gauchos.

We took a road trip to Newfoundland where I had gone to high school and still had many friends. It was outside our norm to eat fried cod we had just jigged that afternoon. There was something indescribable about bringing the man I loved back to my old childhood haunts. Something of a full circle moment contrasting the instability of my young life with the steadiness I found in the old pilot I loved.

I am grateful for the time and grace granted to me and my husband. Our marriage has not been without struggles and drama interlaced with many sweet spots. The years have done what years inevitably do. Today our focus is making the most of the time left to us. It has been an incomparable life we would never have experienced if we hadn’t met. It is boundaried but that was the deal we signed up for. Looking back, I wouldn’t have changed a thing except I might have grown up a little faster.

From that unconventional beginning, I sit here today on our farm thousands of miles from my home and native land on Canada Day. There is much I miss about Canada. I love our values. We are nice people by and large. Civility and mutual respect is a shared ideal. There is a social contract and tacit agreement to take care of the least among of to preserve the security and dignity of the whole. Moving to America and marrying an American has given me a front row seat on this culture and country that couldn’t possibly be acquired any other way.

Yet amongst all of the upheaval and overwhelm, a single human story of love and resilience survives. I will never fully understand the forces – internal or external – that threw my husband and I into each other’s path. We both recognize there has been something universal and timeless in it.

Maybe that is the conclusion and lesson to draw. With all that goes on outside in the world, what ultimately matters is what happens inside each of us. Pursuing our inner dictates and journey is what ultimately matters. I love my old pilot dearly and that doesn’t change – no matter what country we are in. And that is what I choose to celebrate on this national holiday. And will on the upcoming birthday in his country.

Who Shapes You?

Lately, I’ve been reminded how outdated some of my thinking is. Some days, it feels like all of my thinking may be outdated. That is excessively harsh, I expect.

I was raised with the understanding that growing up meant we experimented with life through its various stages to test ourselves and discover who we are.

As children, we try different things (our parents usually make sure we do!) to see if they take hold in our lives and psyches or whether they get tossed. Do you really want to go back for another season of ballet lessons this year? Or maybe you’d rather try karate on for size? Or raising goats?

Today the message and mantra floating around in the Great out there seems simply to be: “Be whoever you need you to be.” To be accepted. To be hired. To be liked. To be loved.

And if whatever that is doesn’t fully synch up with who you are or what you believe, there’s a reason for that:  “Hey. We all need to pay the bills.”

Be yourself? Don’t be ridiculous! Nobody wants any part of that. Listen instead for these insightful messages! “Try this eyeliner with that mascara” intones some teenager, who chirps: “Your eyes are really going to “pop.” (For a time, that saying conjured up quite an image that alarmed me. Until I learned that it meant the eyes would “stand out” and not “pop out.”)

I’ve had a lot of opportunities in my life. I’ve been able to marinate in numerous environments and activities long enough to give me invaluable feedback about who I am and who I am not. These experiences and preferences and I dare say, passions largely influenced and still influence my day-to-day choices and preoccupation.

I grieve the abject superficiality out there in the Great Beyond and yes, the silly sameness of the expectations placed on the current generation. “You are only as good as your last Tik Tok post.” Apparently. And what is the soul-nourishing learning about self that comes from these noisy, public, repetitive posts? “I applied my eyeliner in that video WAY better than she did.” Un-hunh.

That is supposed to build character and inner resilience??

Intrinsic qualities like patience and discernment and willpower aren’t easy to determine in someone at first glance. But they often might be assumed as qualities in someone possessed of quiet grace. Something who doesn’t have anything to show off about or prove.

Maybe that’s when maturity kicks in. Unless you choose to grow old without growing up … that’s common.

I was thinking about things in life that take time to mature to a point where we can enjoy themin their finest incarnation. Their peak of perfection.

Cheese. Fine wines. The vapors and rhythms that swirl in old buildings where the outpourings of legions have been comforted. A love or marriage you have nurtured from Day One (and a few days no doubt before that) with unwavering devotion.

Those values seem to have gone the way of the Dodo bird. But I’m not convinced all that many people are totally buying into the superficiality and sameness. Little wonder the therapy industry is booming and antidepressant sales are off the charts.

When the environment you are in (i.e. the world) does not feed your dreams and passions; if that environment does not allow you the time and space you need to explore yourself in pursuit of your chosen interests; failure to thrive is not a surprising consequence.

The danger is waking up one day to find you “beside yourself” instead of “inside yourself.” May not seem all that far but, trust me; it is a hell of a lot of ground to cover to get back to you when you’ve lost yourself. Or worse, never found yourself in the first place ….

Plus One Year’s Eve

Well, folks. I made it. This is my 366th post in a row having officially started writing this blog one year ago tomorrow. Happy anniversary to me.

Funny how anniversaries and life just seem to creep up on you. No fanfare or fireworks. Just progression.

I started this blog as a place to gather my thoughts while I committed to writing a book. There has been a book sitting in me for years, or so I’ve been told. I finally wanted to let it out.

So did that book get written? That depends on how you look at it. I wrote enough copy to fill a book certainly. But the technical aspects of book writing were never brought to bear on this project.

A beginning, middle and end to start. No. I chose to share my thoughts and insights into a range of eclectic topics as they arose or came to my attention. In that sense, I honored my own unfolding process and not a publisher’s checklist.

It has been an opportunity to share wisdom I’ve gleaned over the years through the writings of others.

It has been an opportunity to explore and share where I came from and how I healed from it.

It has given me a chance to publicly grieve the loss and raise up some people I admired.

I have a better sense of what matters to me and what I will no longer tolerate. Peace is top item on the list of goals these days. I have turned my back on drama.

This has not been a journal. I’ve done that before. In journals, I shared my deepest fears and insecurities. I bitched and wailed and generally pursued a story line of “woe is me.” This blog was deliberately something other than that.

I distilled the key learnings and strategies that kept me going on my “woe is me” days. I shared what I did to endure and prevail over “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” I worked at learning to forgive myself.

The gap between intellect and emotion can be vast. Such is the process of learning and growth. All of us seem to be slaves to unconscious programming we work our whole lives to understand and overcome.

I have carved out a little niche. An intellectual mini-garden that I can nurture and visit frequently. I don’t yet know what my next steps are. I will write a final post tomorrow just for the symmetry of ending on the same date I started last year.

I will once again this year attend the Getting Away to Write workshop in New Smyrna Beach, Florida next week. A geographic coda to this writing exercise as I started this blog there last year.

I must thank all of you who subscribed and read what I wrote. The comments were usually spot on. Insightful and helpful. The likes were encouraging and kept me motivated. I’ll pop up again from time to time in your inbox like other bloggers.

It’s time now for coffee and morning meditation. Time to ground myself and prepare for the day. It will be deliberately low-key as most of my days are lately. Such a welcome gift.

I love living this way. Forgiving myself as well as forgiving those who trespassed against me. Marinating in the memories of a lifetime and looking back with gratitude. Enjoying the living environment I’ve created whilst living with someone I love who loves me back.

Above all else, I’m certain that my journey – like a billion other journeys taking place in the world out there at this moment – is but a single cell in the vast corpus of life on our planet. Both unique and utterly ordinary.

Whatever is ahead, I plan to enjoy the remainder of the ride to the best of my ability.

Thank you for sharing part of the journey with me.

Fun, You Say? Maybe

If I have a kindred spirit I look to most often among dead writers. I cleave toward Dorothy Parker. She was raw and incisive in her observations and commentary.

Parker was famously known for her wit and sharp repartee. She also talked – and wrote – about sex more than her contemporaries, especially women.

That set her apart. To approach the subject of sex and relationships with a certain derring-do endeared her to me.

I haven’t yet found the courage to talk about sex as I experienced it in my lifetime. Too heavy and loaded in certain memories and affect.

I admit to a certain enviousness in Parker’s ability to write teasingly and often sardonically about men and sex and love.

When asked to use “horticulture” in a sentence, Parker snapped: “You can lead a whore to culture, but you cant make her think.”

Of high-brow college girls, she quipped: “If all the girls at Vassar were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

A high-brow form of Mae West was Parker. She taunted and teased and treated the subject matter with both a sense of familiarity and emotional distance.

It is not surprising to me that her own romantic and love life was less sizzling than her prose on the subject matter. Sayin’ – as I’ve often said before – ain’t doin’.

Such life experiences often scan better in the written word than they do in reality. I can relate.

Herewith, her poem reflecting on trysts and other manifestations of love and sex at the dawn of its disappearance.

No doubt, like Parker says, some men I knew were a lot of fun.

Good for a good time if not for a long time. Others, not so much

The Little Old Lady in Lavender Silk

I was seventy-seven, come August,
  I shall shortly be losing my bloom;
I’ve experienced zephyr and raw gust
  And (symbolical) flood and simoom.

When you come to this time of abatement,
  To this passing from Summer to Fall,
It is manners to issue a statement
  As to what you got out of it all.

So I’ll say, though reflection unnerves me
  And pronouncements I dodge as I can,
That I think (if my memory serves me)
  There was nothing more fun than a man!

In my youth, when the crescent was too wan
  To embarrass with beams from above,
By the aid of some local Don Juan
  I fell into the habit of love.

And I learned how to kiss and be merry- an
  Education left better unsung.
My neglect of the waters Pierian
  Was a scandal, when Grandma was young.

Though the shabby unbalanced the splendid,
  And the bitter outmeasured the sweet,
I should certainly do as I then did,
  Were I given the chance to repeat.

For contrition is hollow and wraithful,
  And regret is no part of my plan,
And I think (if my memory’s faithful)
  There was nothing more fun than a man!

Dorothy Parker

This Way or That

I watched an encaenia address online by actor/comedian Jim Carrey in which he told the graduating class they would consistently have two choices moving forward in their lives: love or fear. It made me deeply uncomfortable.

Fear is my old buddy. My go-to companion when I face something new and scary. In the old days, it was before a date maybe. Or before starting a new job. Or traveling somewhere I’d never been before to do something I’d never tried.

I know fear intimately and had spent years building that relationship. It is comfortable like wearing a broken in pair of slippers is comfortable or slipping into a well-worn bathrobe.

Fear has not served me particularly well, however. It often scuppered new opportunities before they had a chance to develop. Bear in mind that younger me was pretty much an emotional basket case, somewhat beyond a normal young person’s insecurities.

I had a tiny, little suitcase full of tricks I pulled out regularly to get me through daily life. An innate intelligence. A strong survival instinct. A pleasing and mostly acquiescent personality.

What I tried to hide – unsuccessfully – was the trunk of insecurities that suitcase sat on top of. I could suss out negative perspectives and opinions people were going to have of me before I even met them. I was my own self-contained judge, jury and executioner in social and work situations before I even showed up.

For the most part, my little bag of tricks worked sufficiently to allow me to “get by” in life. My father explicitly expressed that as a reasonable expectation for me. For my Dad, “getting by” was sufficient. Happiness and success were unrealistic, and mostly unattainable, life goals.

I was one of those kids who was held in sway by parental neuroses and limitations for far longer than I am comfortable admitting. In retrospect, it is clear from their own failures that they had no authority to advise anyone on the ingredients for making a happy life.

At a point, I honestly believed taking advice from anyone other than them would have, in some weird way, meant disrespecting them. After all, they knew me best, I believed. Didn’t they? Over time, I came to realize that wasn’t true. How could they? I didn’t even know myself.

So choosing love as a starting point is something of a weird choice for me. My old buddy fear largely dictates the script. “They’ll hate me.” “They are out to get me.” “I won’t measure up.” And because I leaned into that mantra in the past, fear turned out to be most often correct.

What shook me out of it? Seeing my parents as they were and not as I conceived them to be was the starting point. Learning that love is an action and not just words was another. They loved me and said it often – in their own way and within their own limited view of what love was.

That turning point also came – a little later than I care to admit – when I realized my children did not need to hear me natter on or share my wisdom about avoiding life mistakes. All they needed from me was love and support.

Instead of absorbing my well-meaning but misplaced advice, they were and are completely capable of figuring out the rest for themselves. I’ve got two smart kids.

So the internal struggle between choosing love over fear is still at play within me. I have recently been choosing fear and revenge fantasies over acceptance and opening my heart to the consequences of a crushing disappointment.

All my spiritual readings tell me there is learning to be had here. To face disappointment as if you had actually chosen it. That the Universe is folding as it should.

Fear takes all together too much pleasure in the petty and picayune scenarios it is able to devise that are – I realize – completely and utterly within my own head. I am at a learning crossroads. And I hate it.

I appreciate the comfort and utility of my old bathrobe and slippers. Even though they embarrass me, I am loathe to cast them aside to see what better offerings might be out there for me.

I may be talking in circles because I am in the middle of one. Unsure of what to do next or what the best course of action is. The only comfort I take from this rumination is that at least I am still thinking about.

I have not acted on my petty revenge fantasies or anything similarly boneheaded. I believe I am being encouraged to let go, shed my fear, work through my disappointment and see what might be on the other side of this emotional mountain.

I will either sit at this dreary way station and fester in a misery I am electing to hang on to. Or I can put on my hiking boots and start walking. The choice is – I realize -entirely up to me.

Fear or love. What’s it going to be?

Sayin’ Ain’t Doin’

I heard “I love you” a lot when I was growing up. I wasn’t one of those who could complain their parents never told them they loved them. Quite the opposite. I heard those three words repeatedly.

As a consequence, I had a hard time knowing or showing love when I grew up. I guess I believed it was enough to say those three magic words to cement and support a relationship.

In spite of this conviction, my relationships kept falling apart. Friendships foundered. Romantic relationships sizzled for about three months and then fizzled out. I was a great sprinter but a poor marathoner. My education was just beginning.

I had no idea how to back up professions of love with action. It never occurred to me that three square meals on the table every day was love. Or that clean clothes washed, dried, folded and put away in my chest of drawers meant love.

That someone would stand up for you or step in for you when you were flailing and out of your depth was a show of caring. And protection. Which is a form of love.

I am not sure when the disconnect between “sayin’” and “doin’” started to become obvious. My family lauded my early accomplishments and were happy to associate and claim me as their own. Every scholarship I earned, every public show of support was backed up by my family 100%.

It all seemed to fall apart when I foundered. There wasn’t an iota of support from my family when I was hurt or vulnerable or – God forfend – if I failed.

In generous moments, I like to think that my family was “training” me to be successful. A sort of weird Pavlovian positive reinforcement thing. I came to realize it wasn’t that at all.

When friends would tell me my family was jealous of me, I couldn’t wrap my head around that. “Jealous of what?” I would wonder. I could never really put my finger on the source of the disconnect between how they said they felt and how they made me feel.

If I didn’t “feel” the love they clearly had for me, I was deficient. Not them. Then, one day, everything became clear. The learnings came hard and fast once I had a baby. Whatever else a woman may be and however strong and confident she is in life, a baby will make her vulnerable. Physically and emotionally.

I assume most families get that and support women through the process of pregnancy, birth and early infancy. Mine didn’t. It wasn’t built into our family mantra of external success and worldly accomplishments.

Having a baby was, after all, a common accomplishment almost any woman could achieve. (Fully knowing as I write that how heretical a statement that may be to women who have struggled to conceive.)

I don’t know if anyone is adequately prepared for the unrelenting and challenging needs of an infant. It is one of those “fine in theory” moments in life that becomes a stark, 24/7, non-stop arena of incessant demands that you ignore at your (and your infant’s) peril.

I remember the mantra I devised when my son was crying. “Is he hungry? Is he tired? Is he wet?” If I was pretty sure all those boxes had been checked, I too rarely made the obvious conclusion that the infant just needed to be cuddled, hugged, rocked and reassured that he was safe and not alone on the planet. That there would always be someone there for him to rely on.

I did not learn that at home. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the controversial baby doctor from the 50s, was no help either. Let them cry themselves to sleep,” he exhorted. “It builds self-sufficiency.”
I don’t agree.

It was another lightbulb moment when I realized my children needed little else from me BUT love. My presence and listening to them and my implicit support was pretty much the whole package. Plus the occasional twenty bucks now and then.

Sure, they needed constant material support when they were little. But I honestly believe, as I have read about some families, that if there was enough joy and love in their upbringing, their material situation didn’t matter all that much.

So I am wary now when I hear the words, “I love you” and more cautious when and to who I say them. The ones I say those words to frequently have earned them. The friends who hear those words have been there with and for me. There are friends who literally lived through thick and thin with me. There are some about whom I truly believe I would not still be here without them.

“Sayin’ ain’t doin’.” This rule has served me well in later life. Where I used to easily trust, I am now inclined to wait until people prove what I mean to them before I grant them access to my inner world. It was pretty junky in there for a while when I was awash in confusion, regrets and unmet promises – given or received.

Because life is a marathon and not a sprint. Once I recognized that, I was more inclined to rely on others who consistently showed up in the race with me than those who sat far away on the sidelines – cheering me on.

Listen Up

I like the piece below because it is sensible and realistic. Platitudes abound in society and they can be useful. For a minute or two.

But there are a few widely shared platitudes in life that are a little TOO optimistic. They prevent us from internalizing and accepting how life really is for us at any given age and stage.

There are platitudes that prevent us from taking full responsibility for our lives whatever situation we find ourselves in. Not doing do can open us up to crushing disappointment and regret. It is all up to us.

This is a helpful guide (I found) for adding perspective to those helpful comments people make that aren’t quite as easy to attain as they sound. Accept the reality of these prescriptions and you have a better than average chance of making it to the end of your life with your eyes wide open.

That is, having lived a real life based on the real opportunities and people you have had come into it and those you built your life around.

Only then do you really have a better than average chance of dying in peace and acceptance with minimal regrets. When you have only yourself to blame or thank for its outcome.

The older you get the more you realize that a lot of things you were taught in your youth are just plain wrong.

  1. You can be anything you want to be. No, no you can’t. There are tests you won’t score high enough on that will prevent you from being accepted into whatever program you desire. All this despite having the intelligence and skill needed to excel at whatever the profession may be. Even if you have the right credentials and experience, if they are not hiring for what you want to do…well…you may be out of luck. There are miles of reasons why you can’t be whatever you want to be.
    • But guess what? You can be the best at the opportunities life does present to you.
  2. Hard work is rewarded. No, not always. Sometimes the power of the universe conspires against hard working individuals and unfairly rewards our lazy, short cut seeking, less intelligent friends, co-workers, and acquaintances.
    • But if you knuckle down, and don’t let the unfairness of the world ruin your attitude, show up everyday, and do your best, then because of your hard work, you definitely increase the odds of having a fulfilling life.
  3. Money and wealth are your greatest asset. No, no they are not. They are important and provide security and freedom.
    • Your health is your greatest asset. If you have terminal cancer or some other horrible condition, all the money in the world does not matter. In fact, if you get type 2 diabetes or heart disease, what you can do is radically impacted. So invest in your health daily.
  4. That others care about your house, your clothes, your toys, and you in general. No, no they do not. We all think others are concerned with what we have or don’t have. They’re not. In fact the people we think are thinking about us, usually are not thinking about us at all. The world doesn’t really care about you.
    • But, if you are lucky, you have a few people who do truly care about you. It’s usually a very small number of people. They are the people that truly matter in your life and they probably could care less about all your toys.
  5. That we will all live forever. No, no you won’t. Sure, no one ever comes out and blatantly tells you that you will live forever. But every message we get on TV, social media, or culture in general seems to want us to believe we are immortal. Worse yet, our own minds seem to lead us around as if we are going to see the next two centuries.
    • But, you are going to die. Everyone you know is going to die. That should not scare us. It should free us. Free us to be present in every moment because this moment is all we really have. The past is gone. The future is not guaranteed. We have today. Embrace it and allow it to grow the love you have inside you. Then share that love.

Twelve to Thrive

I fell in love with American-Italian educator Leo Buscaglia in the 80s. And not specifically because he was known as the “Dr. Love” professor.

Felice Leonardo Buscaglia (March 31, 1924 – June 12, 1998) was a professor of special education at the University of Southern California. When one of his students committed suicide, he was moved to investigate the meaning of life and the causes of human disconnection.

For Buscaglia, love and learning were the keys to a meaningful life. He was a gifted public speaker and often appeared on PBS giving his lectures on our vital need for interconnection with fellow human beings. He also deeply believed in education and exploring the many wonders of human life here on this planet.

I remember one of the funnier anecdotes from his lectures about growing up with a “demanding” father. With warmth and humor, Buscaglia recalled how every night at the dinner table, he, and then his siblings, were asked in turn, “What did you learn today?” Woe betide the sibling who had nothing to share. The shame must have been withering!

Buscaglia eventually taught a course at the University of Southern California called Love 1A. They were always filled to capacity and often oversubscribed. He was the first to state and promote the concept of humanity’s need for hugs: 5 to survive, 8 to maintain, and 12 to thrive.[4]

He wrote a bunch of books. Fittingly, his greatest bestseller was simply called Love. At one point, three of Buscaglia’s books were on the New York Times’ best sellers list at the same time.

Buscaglia explored and promoted the importance of love and loving relationships to human beings. His lectures may be deemed a little over the top in a culture where the almighty dollar is touted to be the primary source of all happiness and pleasure.

I miss him and his voice. I miss his message.

In our troubled era of mass murders, and suicide and online bullying, I miss the presence of Leo Buscaglia more than ever.