I’m just saying, it’s a short distance from anger, resentment, and thoughts of paybacks to becoming the person you despise for the same characteristics you’ve adopted over time, as your anger and hate ate away at your good heart, good values, and sense of self. We can’t correct the injustices we see in the world by becoming less just, ourselves. We can’t force the world to be a kinder more compassionate place through violence. Worth thinking about, isn’t it? I mean, generally speaking, there is value in self-reflection, self-awareness, and becoming the person we most want to be through willful practice of those qualities we value most highly, isn’t there?
… I’m not telling you what to do, just pointing out that you are making choices (we all are)…
I breathe, exhale, and relax. It’s a week of cool nights and warm afternoons. In the morning, I wear my fleece. In the afternoons, I remove layers and enjoy bare arms and the sun on my back. The darkness on the trail before dawn requires my headlamp. The walk after work from the university library to the parking nearby is lit brightly by summer sunshine. It is time for the season to change (here), and I feel it everywhere. Fall is coming.
The trail is dry under my feet, and the night sky is dark. I get about half way, and it’s still quite dark. I turn off my headlamp and sit quietly, gazing into the night sky, scattered with stars, the thin crescent moon rising in the east. I enjoy the quiet.
“A season for change,” I say to myself, softly. Aren’t they all, though? Change is. I sit awhile listening to the zing and buzz of my tinnitus, and the sound of my heartbeat in my ears, like a ticking clock. I remember a time when even the recollection of a ticking clock (and definitely the sound of one) could immediately transform me into a seething quivering wreck, breathless with anxiety, and keep me from sleeping. Not now. Now a ticking clock is only a ticking clock. Oh, surely, a ticking clock is also a useful metaphor, a reminder that time passes, that moments are individual and precious, and time itself finite… but it no longer has the power to keep me awake at night or cause an internal solitary war of nerves. We made it up, that ticking clock, and it need not hold power over us.
… Let the clock tick. It will, regardless. Be here, now, in this present moment. Let change happen. Embrace it, and make each change another milestone on your journey. Better to grab each moment of joy and savor it before it passes, than to fight circumstances we do not control.
I sit with my thoughts awhile. I’ve got time. The day begins quite early, this morning, and this lovely moment, now, is mine to enjoy. “Nothing to see here.” True. I’m just one woman, alone in the darkness, waiting for daybreak, enjoying the quiet, alone. Where will this day take me? To my desk and to work, and later to return home. It’s not fancy or extraordinary or particularly interesting as moments go, but it is a lovely quiet one (aside from my tinnitus, which is very loud this morning). It’s enough to see another sunrise. I sit waiting for the inevitable changes.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. Later, I’ll begin again, and face new, other, changes.
It is a new day. Daybreak comes, revealing the trail I walked to get to this place, and the trail ahead that I will follow next. The map is not the world. The trail is not the journey. The plan is not the experience. The choice is not the outcome. The whole of our lifetime is not any one moment we live. It is a worthy endeavor to live each moment fully present, to find out where our path truly leads… but it isn’t as easy as wanting to. There is effort and will involved. Choices. Action.
Hate is contagious and corrosive. It can become lethal. Hate can influence the thinking of entire groups of people. Hate can make one individual do terrible things. Hate can drive people to murder.
… What does it mean when someone perceived as hateful, or who espouses hateful ideas, is themselves the victim of hate?…
I’m as human as anyone. There are ideas and people I find pretty horrible and hateful, myself. It’s most often not a personal sort of emotional experience, it’s more abstract than that. I’m not sure I’ve ever truly “hated” anyone in a direct and personal way. I have actively disliked people enough to avoid them. I have even loathed an individual to the point that I had nothing good to say about them, if asked. Hate, though? That seems a bigger deal, a deeper emotional investment that implies a commitment to infusing the awareness of the individual with persistent steady negative emotion – enough, perhaps, to be a weapon itself. I’d really have to care about someone, in some sense, in order to hate them, I think. What do I know, though? I avoid engaging in hate as an experience. There is reliably always too much I don’t know that could change my opinion.
Don’t shoot people because you’re angry. Don’t shoot people over ideology either. That kind of hateful shit is terrible for the perpetrator, in it’s own fashion, and it’s likely to have regrettable consequences. It’s terrible for the world. Violence is toxic and terrible and the “solutions” it provides aren’t the sort with real value. (Have you seen the images of Gaza and Ukraine since the most recent conflicts began in those places?) I don’t suppose, if you’re reading this blog, that you need that sort of cautionary reminder; you’re likely on a different path.
So… Charlie Kirk is dead, I hear. I can’t say his death moves me personally at all. He represented no good qualities or ideas to me. I did not know him personally, and was only aware of him in the most indirect way, as some favored conservative talking head notable enough to be mocked on South Park. (South Park is hilarious, and definitely knows how to tap the zeitgeist, and my opinion hasn’t changed.) I don’t have any personal feeling of loss over Charlie Kirk’s death. The hateful ideas of our conservative administration get people killed and wrecks lives every day…why would this one guy, famed for saying hateful things, getting shot be at all noteworthy?
I think killing people is wrong. It’s vile and wasteful and morally repugnant. Humanity could do better. That doesn’t change because someone I find unlikeable gets killed. It’s still wrong. I just don’t plan to spend more time thinking or talking about this particular death. Aren’t the innocent lives lost to school shootings, domestic violence, and police brutality more worthy of conversation? Isn’t genocide more important to address than the death of one voice espousing hate? And femicide? Infant mortality due to disease? I guess I’m just saying that this one particular shooting death carries no significance for me. It’s unfortunate people are still so primitive and barbaric that they seek to solve problems through violence. That’s the problem worth solving. We could definitely do better.
Don’t spread your hate around (or anyone else’s) – it’s not fucking jam.
I pull myself back to this gray moment, here, now.
I sigh to myself looking at the gray sky. Daybreak came on the trail and I am sitting with my thoughts before the work day begins. I’m tired and I slept badly. The alarm woke me, and I thought it was a mistake, at first. My eyes still feel gritty and dry. My head aches. I’m feeling cross with myself and with the world. I definitely need more rest than I got. I’m grateful the weekend is ahead and that the week has gone well… but… g’damn I’m just so fucking tired. I’ve got shit to do, and all I really want is to go back to sleep.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I yawn and rub my eyes. I don’t feel groggy – that’s something good. Too much to do to have to deal with grogginess or brain fog, too, and I’m grateful. Slowly I pull my focus back to the things that matter most (to me, right now) and let the rest go. I’m grateful that I remember telling my beloved Traveling Partner I’d run to the store before work, and glance at the clock. Already time to begin again…
I am in some pain this morning, but nothing like the worst of the pain I am sometimes in. My coffee is good, better than average, not my best cup of coffee. I sit quietly with my thoughts and my coffee, after my walk, giving my illness-weakened body a little time to recover from the walking, before I get started on the housework. It’s a cycle, this thing we call “life”. Many cycles, actually, on a journey without a map. It’s easy to narrow my focus to just this space, here, and to allow life to become the cycles, and little more: sleep, walk, coffee, write, work, rest, cook, clean-up, sleep again. We are so much more than the practical task-handling endeavors that are necessary to build and maintain the quality of life we enjoy. Getting ahead sometimes means so much more work, and doesn’t always feel “worth it”. Falling behind happens in an instant of thoughtless ease. Finding balance is sometimes difficult, and I sometimes sacrifice self-care on the alter of providing for others (not a healthy approach long-term).
…I am fortunate and grateful for a partnership that encourages self-care and provides mutual respect…
My Traveling Partner inquired about the towels this morning – were there more clean washcloths somewhere? I’d fallen behind on the laundry, and committed to doing that today. When I arrived home, he’d already started a load of laundry. Having help feels good. Going into the kitchen, I see dishes piled in the sink… no one thought to do the dishes while I was down sick. I frowned at the dishes while I made my coffee. I’ll get those done, too. (Definitely feeling better.) Pride of place, a sense of responsibility, and a desired quality of life tend to be enough to keep me at it, but omg, sometimes it is just much. (I will admit that one practical factor in my lifelong decision to remain child-free was my total lack of interest in doing all that work for some other human being, most especially without help!) It’s hard to take the breaks I sometimes need, to maintain my own health. Finding balance is complicated… Why is that so complicated?? I think it comes down to a couple of things: perceptions, perspective, and reality.
One perspective on a morning walk.
How we perceive things around us changes when we’re ill, or under stress, and our priorities may change in the moment. How people around us perceive things may be something we have to consider, too, depending on their needs and expectations. When we’re sick, we may care a lot less about the vacuuming, or clean kitchen counters. When we’re exhausted, we may not care at all about whether the shower is actually clean. All very human, eh? But, once we’re back at our best, those things may suddenly matter quite a lot, and begin to be something causing us stress or a sense of urgency.
…I really dislike the “catch-up cycle” after I’ve been ill; I feel like I have to get it all done immediately to make up for any allowances and accommodations I made while I was ill (a thoroughly internalized lingering consequence of growing up in a culture of misogyny that treats the unpaid labor of women as a given, and a notable bit of baggage I am still dragging around)…
A very different perspective, focused on the details.
Our perspective on the details, large and small, is a big piece of how we set our priorities. Do the dishes in the sink matter a lot – or just matter a lot to me? Is it a health concern, or just something I don’t like to see? (Some people don’t care that much about having a handful of dishes in the sink that need to be washed and put away, other people have literal break-downs over a dirty glass sitting in an otherwise clean sink. Care to guess which one I am?* Which one are you?) Sometimes, keeping an orderly house feels more like self-care than it feels like manual labor. In circumstances such as that, it’s pretty easy to “stay caught up” and handle those tasks as a sort of meditation. Things do take the time they take, though, and housekeeping workload stands in defiance of creative endeavors. Again with the challenge of finding fucking balance. I sip my coffee and laugh at myself. I do what I can. I get a lot done – often more than I think I’m capable of, because even there – my perspective may not be a close fit to reality.
What we turn our attention to, and how we think about what we perceive, changes how we understand the world around us.
…Reality always gets the last word…
When I had cats years ago, I was quite convinced that my cats didn’t do any damage to my home, and that I kept things sufficiently tidy that there was “no cat smell”. That’s perception. I felt that the benefits to having my (much loved) cats far outweighed any concerns about cleanliness or health – lots of people have, and love, cats. That’s perspective getting involved. We don’t all see the world the same way, nor do we all share the same understanding of it. Still, the world is the world – reality largely ignores our perceptions and perspectives and just does its own thing. My apartment full of cats (and many of my belongings) definitely “smelled like cats” – but I didn’t perceive it (acclimation) and didn’t understand what I didn’t see as a potential concern (lack of adequate perspective). The reality of it was unmistakable when I moved out. (As well as difficult and costly to remedy, due primarily to my lack of awareness over time.)
I’m just saying – I have a shitload of housework to catch up on, after a camping trip, several days in too much pain to do housework, and then being sick. I can chuckle over how human that is, now. It is what it is, right? Now I see the need, because my perspective has shifted with my improving state of wellness. I feel the internal pressure to make it a very high priority – putting myself at risk of poor self-care. Cycles and balance. Fuck. Adulting is hard.
…We do become what we practice…
I sigh to myself and glare into my now-cold coffee. I’ve got a to-do list ready, and it’s a long one (but I’ve got the entire weekend to work on it). It’s already time to begin again – I’ll just be over here doing my best.
…
…
*Both. I’m rather inconveniently both of those types of people with regard to the dishes. Baggage is heavy… I remind myself to put some down.
How long can you sit on hold before you feel angry? Once that point comes, when the person on the other end finally gets to your conversation, how do you feel? How do you behave? What is that experience like for you? Okay… and what is that experience like for them?
…It is a Wednesday afternoon, and a busy work day. I’m on hold as I write this…
…I’m scheduling – or trying to – an important appointment for my Traveling Partner. I’ve been on hold for awhile now (22+ minutes), following our initial exploration of available dates/times. When the Scheduler returns to the call, she’s identified an available care provider in a good timeslot, on a day we can make work. I’m grateful. Is it aggravating to wait on hold for 23 minutes to complete this task? I guess, sure, (especially considering the dreadful hold music). On the other hand, not being a dick about it and just doing the needful in a pleasant (and accepting) way resulted in a better outcome – the appointment is made, and it fits in with other scheduled plans, and isn’t at some ridiculously inconvenient time, and the person on the phone was happily willing to help me (likely in part because I wasn’t penalizing that person for the circumstances). That’s as nearly ideal as scheduling an appointment can get, is it not? Why bother being angry over it? The time it took? The fact that it was necessary at all? That seems both ridiculous and petty. (Things take the time they take.)
…Patience is sometimes easier said than done, I know…
So many healthcare providers are trying to meet too much need with too few resources. Raising patient costs doesn’t close the gap created by too few doctors, nurses, technicians, specialists, or administrative and domestic staff needed to meet the need for care in a community. Anywhere. Lashing out at someone whose job is to be helpful is not the shortest path to the desired outcome, for sure. So, I generally try to do better than that when I have to be on the phone with someone (in spite of my dislike of being on the phone, generally).
…Or in slow checkout lines…
…Or queued for some event…
…Or trying to find parking in a busy area…
…Or when I’m frustrated by something but having to also deal with another human being about something else altogether unrelated…
…Or when I’m feeling anxious and other unrelated shit seems to be going wrong “for no reason”…
I guess I’m saying that when we make room to feel our feelings, then also make a committed (mindful)(self-aware)(disciplined) effort to also behave in accordance with our understanding of our “best self”, and treat others with kindness and patience, and take steps to manage the potential volatility of our emotional experience of the moment, everything that flows from that skillfully managed moment turns out better than it would have if we’d lashed out angrily, gone to pieces, or punished the people around us for the experience we are having. Long sentence, but it is what I was hoping to communicate as a single idea. It takes practice. I know my own results vary – so I am assuming yours likely will as well. Still, we do become what we practice.
…When I practice patience, I become more patient, in a broader variety of interactions…
I took those notes while I waited on hold. I made the appointment, and moved on with my day with very little aggravation. Turned out to be a pleasant afternoon. I woke up this morning, a little early, head kind of stuffy, but generally merry and feeling okay. It’s a new day. A new opportunity to practice the practices that create a good life and healthy interactions with the people in my life. A new cup of coffee.
Ah, but how to “practice” such things could be a question, eh? I’ve got good and bad news – and it’s the same news – the “how to” is “easy”, inasmuch as it is not complicated, but it is also quite “hard”, because there is a measure of trial and error, repetition, studious self-reflection, and failures that precede new attempts, involved in practicing such things. The tl;dr is that I’ve simply got to do the thing I wish to practice in the fashion I’d like to see myself handle such things – and if I fall short, I’ve got to recognize that, acknowledge it, accept it (and any consequences), understand that failure, and keep working on it – through all the unsuccessful well-meaning attempts, and the likely lack of consistant positive reinforcement from others (because, of course, they are having their own experience). Doing better than my current best is reliably always a “work in progress”, and it’s a process of incremental change over time, which can be somewhat unsatisfying. If you change what you practice though, change itself is inevitable.
We have so many opportunities to do better. We also have a bunch of opportunities to do worse – to escalate interactions that start going wrong, to inflame emotions beyond what is appropriate, to create conflict where none existed, to hurt each other when we could be lifting each other up. We have choices. Making an effort to choose wisely in each interaction, each day, is itself a choice. What are you really going for? Where does your path lead? How do you want to be remembered?
Sometimes it’s hard to wait in line (or, to wait at all) – but the payoff is the thing we’re waiting for, the wait time itself is largely irrelevant. Sometimes it’s hard to be patient in the face of silly questions or constant interruptions when we’re trying to get something done – but the quality of those interactions are often far more important in our lives that the thing we’re focused on doing. Sometimes it’s hard to listen considerately while someone is talking – even though we asked the question being answered, and wanted the information. These are all moments that could use our best self (and more practice). I sip my coffee and think about the many times I’ve made shit so much worse than it had to be. Being entirely human, I’m likely to do that again in the future at some point – but that isn’t going to stop me from doing my best each day to be the best version of the woman in the mirror I can imagine, with what I know now. I’ll simply keep practicing. We become what we practice.
Stick with the basics – it’s a great place to start.
Make it as difficult as you want, I guess. Complicate things as much as you think you must. Telling yourself it “wasn’t your fault” or that you “couldn’t help it” when things go awry doesn’t change the fact that you had (and made) choices. I personally think it is generally a poor choice to willfully make shit worse than it has to be. It’s worthwhile to practice doing better than that. I think back to the abrupt and very final end of my second long-term relationship (and one that felt, at that time, truly committed and “forever”) – it was over circumstances that spiraled around “making things worse”, until the last thread of my affection was stretched to a breaking point, and suddenly snapped. In mere hours I went from needing to “take a minute” to calm myself, to wanting to have “a couple days alone” to think things over, to “we’re done, I’m out of here”. It probably didn’t have to go like that, but it definitely did – and it was a choice. I sit reflecting on that for some minutes, and comparing that to the way my Traveling Partner and I typically work things out together (it’s very different, and I am grateful for the effort we both put into talking and listening).
“Emotion and Reason” 18″ x 24″ acrylic w/ceramic and glow details, 2012
Choosing not to make things worse is both a choice and also a practice (if you make it one). I look out into the cloudy sky and think about emotional storms, and emotional choices, and how significant emotion is in this human experience. We are creatures of both emotion and reason, and we tend to lead with emotion, and respond to emotion before reason ever joins the conversation. That’s not a character flaw, it’s what we are. Our emotional intelligence is probably pretty critical to our success (and survival), overall (depending on how you define success, sure; my definition includes a reliable feeling of well-being and contentment).
…When I practice calm, I become a calmer person across a broader variety of experiences…
Developing one’s emotional intelligence is not as easy as saying it is an important detail. I get it. We don’t typically include such things in K-12 education (when it is most needed) in a structured informative way. Few of us grow up in families with even one emotionally intelligent adult in the household, based on my limited experience and casual observation. We don’t put much time (and probably no funding) into developing tools that can be shared with people who are seeking to do this work themselves. Like a lot of things, it’s complicated by various hidden agendas and resource limitations. When I began down this path, myself, the help I needed was sometimes not easy to find. I was fortunate to find a good therapist whose expertise was a good fit for my needs (and fortunate to be able to afford it at the time I needed it most). My reading list has some items specific to emotional intelligence (although we don’t all learn through reading). It is unfortunate that some of the best work on the topic is sometimes a bit of a slog to get through, requiring what feels like “real work”. (If I were pressed to make specific recommendations, I’d probably point to Buddha’s Brain, and Emotional Intimacy for the studious, and The Four Agreements for those looking for a quick introduction with illuminating allegories.)
…You’ll have to walk your own path, and do your own work, this is not a negotiable detail…
It’s a journey with a lot of stairs to climb…
I sit with my coffee and my thoughts awhile longer. How did I even get to this place, this morning? Oh, right, reflecting on the importance of being patient (and pleasant) while on hold trying to make an appointment for my beloved. I chuckle to myself, aware how valuable those skills are in so many day-to-day interactions. My results vary. I keep practicing. I glance at the time – it’s already time to begin again.
I’m sipping this excellent cup of coffee and enjoying one more morning off of work before resuming the day-to-day routine of work-errands-chores-cooking-sleeping, and hoping to keep up on everything before something unexpected goes awry. Real life. It’s nice to get an occasional break from the routine.
A new day, a familiar view.
I woke to a rainy morning. No surprise; it was the rain in the forecast that brought me home a day early. “Good fold”. My walk was slow and careful this morning – the hiking miles of the previous days have left me sore and aching, and my arthritis has flared up painfully (predictably enough). I still got out on the trail; it just doesn’t do to let good habits slide (for me) even for a couple days. Actions have consequences, and I try to choose wisely and work around my limitations.
…My results vary, of course…
Practices are about repetition – sometimes even things that I feel I’ve “mastered” need reinforcement, and frankly, when I think about those tasks I feel I’ve acquired some mastery over, I often find there’s more to learn. Practices are also about effort and will and consistency, and overcoming my own reluctance to change or inner resistance to coming face-to-face with things that really just don’t work, however much I may favor them. Humans being human, we tend to cling to what we think is right or true or useful, without examing our results too closely. It’s an unfortunate characteristic of human cognition; we like to take shortcuts. Sometimes I fail myself or fall short of my expectations. Human. When I do, I begin again.
“We become what we practice” is so very true it almost goes without saying, except that by not acknowledging that truth, I create the risk of stepping into some trap that is built on practices that are less than ideal. Doesn’t matter what I’m practicing; the more I practice that thing, the more it becomes characteristic of who I am. True for you, too. Unavoidably true. What are you practicing? Does it lead you to becoming the person you most want to be? If it doesn’t, then why are you practicing that?
Sometimes it helps to look beyond the obvious.
I sip my coffee and reflect on self-reflection, and the value of incremental change over time, for some little while. There is no one walking this earth who is utterly perfect without potential for change or growth. The journey is the destination, and if it were “easy” a lot of people would still manage to fail, somehow. Practicing the practices that make any one of us the person we most want to be still requires work, real work, with effort. This is more effective when we practice in a willful, self-aware way. This further requires self-reflection – an examination of our successes and failures, independent of the opinions of other people, reliant on our understanding of ourself and our goals. Each experience thus examined and understood, and explored for potential to learn and grow becomes another step on a path. The map is not the world. The plan is not the experience. We each have to walk our own mile – wherever that takes us. It’s easier to make a journey – any journey – with eyes open, and some light on the path.
Like it or not, you’ve got to walk your own path – and get somewhere.
When you stumble – begin again. Examine your failure, learn from that, do a little better than you did yesterday. Over time, you will have made a journey, and gotten yourself somewhere. Where does your path lead? This is your experience. Your life. Choose wisely. Keep practicing.
Evening Light 