Archives for category: Metaphors

What Matters Most?

May 17, 2014 //

It’s a good question, I think. What matters most? It’s right up there with “what will best meet my needs over time?” and “based on what?”, which is another exceptional question for figuring things out. I like ‘figuring things out’, although I doubt I’m particularly skilled at it.

Figuring things out along the way.

These are important questions for other reasons, too. What we don’t know about ourselves, we can’t share. This becomes incredibly important for me, in my everyday life, pretty regularly these days. It’s a matter of change and growth and love; I have changed, and grown, and I love. How will my loves treat me well with any ease if they don’t know me, too? How will they know me as I grow and change if I don’t share? So. Yeah.

When we are explicit about our needs and desires, it is easier to fulfill them.

Let’s talk specifics. I headed home with eagerness some nights ago, and had built expectations of being received with similar eagerness, based on earlier conversations via email. I was excited to be heading home, and looking forward to the evening at home. I punched in the door code, stepped over the threshold and called out a happy greeting to… silence. I stalled a little, emotionally, and felt real disappointment; there was no one there to greet me…but…I was expected that similar eagerness for the evening, and had in my recollection explicit expressions of desire to enjoy my company. I felt a little hurt, and foolish over that on top of it, because it seemed rather a childlike level of heartsick disappointment for so small a thing. A closed door at the back of the house quietly advised that my loves were busy with love elsewhere. No stress there, I was focused on getting settled after work, and content but for the poignant twinge of sadness over not being welcomed home. Over a few minutes, as it lingered, I felt irritated with myself because I was also unavoidably aware I’d never said to any partner, perhaps ever, that the moment of being welcomed home after being away – for a day, a week, for work, or play – really matters to me. It’s meaningful. For me. Having not said so, and given my partners a fair opportunity to choose to meet that need, I left my heart out in the cold. Sad. It got me thinking about how I do or don’t communicate what matters, and why I make the choices I do, and other partners, in other times, whose choices were different from my own, and what the outcomes where of those choices, too.

From lattes and hardbound journals…

Who am I? Do my partners know me, really know me? So much growth and change in less than two years – hell, over the course of a lifetime!

…to black coffee and blogging.

I took a work seminar, based on some Franklin Covey material, many years ago. It was called ‘What Matters Most‘, and was structured around the huge day planners so many of us carried at the time, and using that tool to really live life well. I remember being surprised that it was considered ‘work-related’ – afterward, I really wanted to head right out, quit my job, and live unfettered by professional concerns, sleeping late, painting, making love, sipping espresso and watching the world go by. lol It didn’t enhance my work productivity in the slightest, but it was an early warning that I was on a path heading for change.

I am still contemplating ‘what matters most’ to me, about me, in my own experience, myself. What matters most to me has changed, as I have changed myself. I think it makes sense to communicate more of that than I do. I’d rather not mope around feeling wounded because something of great importance to me is overlooked, and I don’t see that there’s much potential in some of the little things that do matter having their day if I don’t actually say they matter. (Am I stalling? It could appear that way, and I did grow up in circumstances under which the fastest route to losing something loved was to say it had value or importance; it would be immediately used a resource for punishment, point-making, or torment. Then is not now, and there is no reason to fear, now.) So, for practice, some simple things that matter to me a great deal, in my now.

I enjoy being welcomed home when I return from work, or from traveling. It feels warm, loving, and inclusive. It matters to me very much.

I enjoy sharing my rose garden, showing off the latest blooms, talking about plans, or sitting quietly and breathing the scents of the season, and watching small birds at play. This too, really matters to me.

I enjoy hugs, long, close, lingering hugs, body to body, timeless moments, no rush. They feel amazing, and fill most of my day-to-day needs for contact and closeness. Oh yeah, also – matters a lot. I wilt without it.

I enjoy walks. Long walks. Short walks. Walks through floral gardens. Walks through industrial areas and construction sites. I love what my thoughts do while I walk. I enjoy conversations about life and philosophy and love while I walk. Very few bad moods survive a pleasant walk, in my experience. Walking matters to me beyond the mechanics of movement, like sleep, it restores and heals my soul.

I enjoy being touched, but loathe the unexpected touch of strangers. This one, explicit about touch, is implicit about boundaries – and perhaps it is my boundaries that ‘matter most’. I am only lately learning to respect them myself.

My loves matter to me, and that they are easily able to love me in return also matters to me. I love to delight them unexpectedly. I love to devote some measure of time to humble service to hearth and home, to nurture our family as a family, to build a solid foundation for life together – a long life together. Indeed, this one matters so much to me, that small everyday frustrations that threaten my sense of family cohesion and harmony easily leave me feeling damaged and alone.

Now… it matters, too, to share what matters with the ones who matter to me. 😀 There’s a lot of matter in the universe. lol (Thank you, I’ll be here all week…)

Today is a good day to take the time to see what a good day it is.

Today is a good day to love, to love well, to love wholeheartedly, to love fearlessly. Today is a good day to change the world.

Tags healing matters, kindness matters, love matters, matters of the heart, mindfulness matters, ptsd, sharing matters, TBI, today matters, what matters most?

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Roses, The Big 5, women, Words

The Power of Being

May 15, 2014 //

Language is funny stuff. I’m sure I’ve commented on that before. Consider the verb ‘to be’. Is. Isn’t. Am. Are. Were. We toss ‘is’ around like we really know something. I find it pretty limiting, because life isn’t often quite so simple as ‘is/is not’. A shift in perspective, a change in the way we’ve defined some term, and the whole world may look entirely new, with a different variety of possibilities spread wide before me. ‘Is’, generally isn’t as much as I’d like it to be, or however convenient it might make the outcome of a choice, or my understanding of the world around me.

I’m learning to question ‘is’. Is it? Is it also something else? lol It’s not a matter of doubting my sanity, or any uncertainty beyond the necessary basic requirement to be open to possibilities, I’m simply finding – often – that assumptions are not ‘truth’, that perspective is often the key to critical thinking, and that a firm ‘is’ can carry hidden limits, boundaries, and complications that prevent growth.

Being, however, is. Just that. Being. I am.

I rarely find that being, itself, is ‘the problem’. I often find that some use of a form of the verb ‘to be’ features heavily in conflicts both large and small. [I suddenly imagine a missionary, black pants, white button-front shirt, with a book and an earnest look asking “Have you read about E Prime?”]

Expectations, assumptions, and the word ‘is’ are all it takes to get me completely messed up emotionally over nothing at all. I’m learning other ways. Last night, for example, was a lovely homecoming – it didn’t resemble my notions of that particular homecoming even a little bit. Not at all similar to my expectations – which were unavoidably based on my assumptions. It was lovely, though, and warm, and totally worthy all on its own. 🙂 It felt satisfying to enjoy it, without troubleshooting it, accepting the moments and the emotions and just enjoying my life.

Today is a good day to be open to possibilities. Today is a good day to smile and share a funny story. Today is a good day for a coffee with a friend. Today is a good day to love. Today is a good day to change the world.

Today is.

Tags assumptions and expectations, here we all are, I am, I am the walrus, meditation, mindfulness, possibilities, ptsd, TBI, to be or not to be, what it is, what matters most?

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Roses, Words

Headaches and Homecomings

May 14, 2014 //

I woke with a pounding headache this morning, and thinking fretfully of subtly out-of-reach goals. My dreams are gone and forgotten, leaving only hints that they were uneasy. I feel well-rested, but there’s this headache.

Do fish get headaches?

The workday begins. I feel distracted and disconnected, thinking more of the evening to come, and the homecoming of a partner who has been away for many days and returns with a travelers tales of adventure, misadventure, and love. Exciting!

There’s little enough to say until after the stories are told, shared, savored, and stored away for another day. Then next week, I travel, myself. It is a busy spring.

I have the sense there is more to say, that there was something queued up in my consciousness that needed some time, some consideration, some words… gone now, if it ever really was. Two oddities of my TBI are the way it affects my sense of ‘novelty’ and ‘completion’. I sometimes struggle for hours trying to remember “that important thing/idea I was in the middle of before I got interrupted” – it often turns out that it was simply something momentarily engaging like a commercial, or a slogan, or a phrase of poetry in my head that was stuck on a sort of loop, and when I finally do recall whatever it was, it not only isn’t ‘important’ – it isn’t relevant or even slightly interesting. The novelty thing is different, equally ‘quirky’ and annoying. I sometimes experience things as novel that I’ve known or been doing for a long while, or used to do a lot and gave up, then returning to it find it feeling completely new. I get the reverse, too, where I don’t at all recognize something as entirely new, and never-before-experienced. That has some problematic moments, since it can occasionally result in having the perception that I know someone and just don’t remember their name, when actually we’ve never met at all and they are an un-vetted stranger. Having a brain injury results in some peculiar vulnerabilities.

In the news, I found some amusement – and offense, let’s be honest – in stories about Karl Rove doing old-fashioned bias-based mudslinging, using the potential for having had a brain injury as an insult. I almost missed the open insensitivity and contempt it indicated for the wide variety of talented people who do live as survivors of brain trauma, I was laughing so hard. Seriously? How is brain damage – with no other information – even an issue? Will candidates now have to have scans to prove their brain is fully healthy and intact? What will happen to congress then? (You should be able to hear my eyes rolling from where you’re sitting, if you’re quiet. lol) It’s been clear for a very long time that critical thinking, a good education, and the will to serve the people of this country are not common characteristics of politicians, and as with the rest of the population, the intellectual and cognitive gifts of legislators are not evenly distributed. lol

Brain injuries aren’t actually uncommon, according to my reading. Very serious ones are less common, but how many people get through childhood without banging their head badly enough to get a concussion? Turns out that’s a bigger deal than we knew. Football players – there are a few there – boxers, really any contact sport has the potential – and how many jobs are out there where a blow to the skull is a known potential risk? Soldiers surely come to mind, so many come home with a TBI, that ‘TBI’ is now a pretty commonly known acronym; it wasn’t before the modern wars in the Middle East. So, if a TBI isn’t particularly uncommon, in one form or another, how is it okay to use that as an insult? It isn’t.

“Brain damage” isn’t actually a joke.

A good day for exploring the possibilities, and looking at things from a new perspective.

Today is a good day for compassion. Today is a good day to welcome someone home. Today is a good day to accept differences and commonalities. Today is a good day to understand that we are each having our own experience. Today is a good day to love.

Tags adding insult to injury, brain damage, headache, homecoming, mindfulness, ptsd, TBI, us and them

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Words

An Updated Lesson Plan

May 12, 2014 //

It was an interesting weekend. Hormones, a homecoming, and the fun of a traveler’s tales wove a narrative with some ups and downs, some challenges, and some real delights. Spring in the garden and along the shorter walks I can manage on this knee gave up some wonderful pictures to enjoy, and some perspective on what matters most that helped me stay balanced and grounded as much as I could manage with the choices I made.

The loveliness of spring is, whatever else may also be.

I am an imperfect being, human, alive, and more fragile than I expect to be. I suspect we all are. I don’t make my best choices under stress; more stuff causes me stress than seems rational, necessary, or wise. From a distance it is comical, up close it is as likely to provoke tears of frustration. Hormone hell? Yeah, I still deal with it. I’ve got just 55 days now until I can ‘officially’ say I have ‘gone through menopause’. More hilarity; that doesn’t actually offer any real guarantee I won’t ever ever ever have a period, or that my hormones won’t turn some invisible corner and wreak havoc in my life for hours or days… just that it is less likely by far, and I am easily labelled ‘past my child-bearing years’. lol. Not a great demonstration of medical precision. Still… 55 days left, and I am eager to be done with it.

A single raindrop doesn’t say much about the weather.

I’m excited that my partner returned from his getaway with restored enthusiasm for getting out into the world, into the wild, for hiking, camping, fishing… and I’m jealous, more than I want to share, more than seems fair. I’d like to share those experience with him. Arthritis. Knees. Ankle. I’m struggling with pain and mobility on a level that would likely make any sort of challenging hike not even a little bit fun for either of us to ‘enjoy’ together, at least for now. The irony of it seems more than a little cruel to me. Damn, though, I love seeing him interested in something fun and energetic, and ‘all his own’. Newness and learning open the doors to fantastic conversation and connection; everyone needs to have their own thing, their own experiences, otherwise – what is there to ‘share’?

We serve love best when we are more than a reflection of each other.

I approach life more fearlessly these days… which apparently has a down-side I had not anticipated. For so many years I’ve kept my anger in check with fear… so… now what? It’s a scary question with some amount of urgency behind it because… I’m angry a lot. I’d like to think not abusively so, but… anger is nasty shit. How is anger ever not at all abusive? I don’t know many people who don’t find someone else’s anger at least uncomfortable, and often ‘too much’ or ‘inappropriate’ to the circumstances or magnitude of the event. So… it’s now time to work on anger, and not just that, time to work on Anger, too. The big A. The anger that doesn’t die. The Anger that has festered over years. The Anger as a meta-emotion. Rage. Fury. The thing that takes over and escapes my control; now is the time to unchain the beast and teach it some manners.

Stormy weather…

It’s a little scary to know that it’s time to face the Anger, best it, and move on to other things. Like a fearless hero in a legend, I am facing a foe and uncertain of the outcome – this is the big one. This is the demon I must conquer to take a next step to healing the worst damage, because that ‘worst damage’ to which I refer is the source and well-spring of that vast untamed sea of Anger. To set foot on that damaged shore, I must find a way to safely navigate that sea.

Vast, but sometimes not everything it appears to be.

I wanted a more relaxed, gentle, calm weekend than the one I had, however as a student of life, and perpetually a beginner with practicing mindfulness, I value the lesson. I benefited from the opportunity to examine old problems from new angles. I appreciate the real experience of being supported by my partner, and also seeing what that demands of my partner and that there may be more I can do for myself to alleviate the burden. A weekend with less easy delight and charm that I allowed myself to look forward to (and expectations are the motherfucker of all good times, without question), and a lot of intimacy, vulnerability and depth of connection, and opportunities to share, get close emotionally, and talk through hard stuff. I’m inclined to call it a ‘great weekend’ in spite of the opportunities for tears. Anyone taking the quantity of my tears personally, who wasn’t around in the 60s, 70s, and 80s is probably missing the point of my tears.

In general, life is quite lovely.

I miss my other partner, and it’ll be nice to have her home and hear her tales of adventure in the big city. I allow myself to look forward to it with real delight, in spite of that wee demon whispering in my ear about things and other things. We choose so much of our reality. Today is a good day to choose joy. Today is a good day to choose compassion. Today is a good day to remember – every time – that we are each having our own experience, and the irritability of that person over there (whoever, wherever) isn’t about us.

Perspective. Mindfulness. Sufficiency. Savoring the small delights more than I rail about the disappointments makes an important difference.

I feel pretty close to understanding something…

Tags be the student, in the garden, love and lovers, mindfulness matters, p.s. I love you, ptsd, simple flowers, sing me a love song, spring mornings, tales of adventure, TBI, tears, The Big 5 takes a beating, who's irritable now?

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, grief, Logic & Reason, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Roses, Sleepless Nights, Spring, women, Words

Gratitude & Pain

May 9, 2014 //

(I began this post last night, on the train as I rode home…)

Today I hurt. I want to write meaningfully, thoughtfully, and there’s plenty going on in everyday life that is noteworthy, thought-provoking, or warrants further consideration, perspective, and critical thought…but I may not have what it takes, tonight.

I’m grateful for this broken brain. Well, less so for the damaged bits, but in general very grateful; it serves most brain sorts of purposes nicely, and although it lets me down on some basics most people take for granted, it wows me in some ways that few are fortunate to share. So… yeah. Grateful. This amazing brain keeps right on going, thinking, wondering, analyzing, imagining… long past the point of fatigue. The creative thing is awesome. Words are fun. Numbers, too. Emotions are also slowly becoming more of a playground than a trap, or betrayal.

Today I hurt. There are things to understand, and although they’ll wait if they must, it isn’t ideal. There are decisions, choices, opportunities, challenges… brain at the ready… but I hurt and I lose focus again and again with the pain. I worry about my knees… even to extremes, wondering if the end of walking is on the horizon. I take some deep breaths, I keep right on walking – slowly, with a cane – because if I wake up tomorrow unable to walk, I would surely regret not walking today.

Pain is such a personal thing. I don’t take many steps to ensure that people around me get it, really understand that I am hurting. I expect to be able to simple call it out once and have that be ‘enough’. That only works for strangers, though. People closer tend to forget in minutes or hours, because we’re having a good time, or because I’m in a good mood. I can’t see letting the pain make the rules all the time. I’ve learned something over the years, too; everyone hurts, and everyone’s pain is simply the worst they can imagine. Pain is not a friend of cognition, and while I may be able to salvage a good mood out of a day of hurting, between the pain itself and the medication for it, my senses and my intellect are blunted. I generally work on as little medication as possible… and because it is work, and I am a professional, I don’t say much about it. It seems weak to bitch (that’s my own baggage). I hurt, but I think better than if I were heavily medicated and didn’t hurt. lol. What a choice.

Choices. I know more about what I need over time, what I want – what I want, without regard to the desires of others, and in the context of my own values, my own needs, my own particular singular dream of a good life, based on sufficiency, contentment, and quiet joy. Getting there isn’t difficult because of the costliness of what I want and need, myself. Getting there is difficult because we human primates are as different one from another as we are similar, and I’m only just learning to set clear rational boundaries, and to observe and respect the boundaries of others. It’s a new-ish thing for me to both have an awareness of what I really want/need in life – and also have a clear awareness of what is in my way. (Which is predictably useful information to have, on both counts.) Newer still to be able to recognize, acknowledge, and even embrace what others want and need, and understand what I may be doing that could come across as ‘being in their way’.

I’m tired. I hurt. I want to write, and I urgently need to finish thinking some things through and make a clear choice and follow through on it. Have you ever observed how much more difficult that can be when the choice that seems most obvious carries with it some short-term negative experience? Choosing pain – even to experience profound positive changes – is difficult. I know pain hurts. Pain is quite a deterrent.

If I were offered many millions of dollars – and in return I would have my back and arm broken, a skull fracture, my ankle shattered, and oh… migraines, perhaps – would I take the deal? I’m betting if I had experienced those pains it would be much harder to go for those millions, while if I had never experienced those sorts of pain, I likely would opt in for the cash pretty quickly. I have not applied the scientific method to these musings, I’m just saying; it seems likely based on what I know of myself, and my human experience.

An uncompleted post. A night of uncomfortable sleep. The dawn of a new day.

I finished the evening with yoga, meditation, and crafting a birthday gift for my mother, after dinner out with my partner, who is headed to NYC later this morning for a few days reconnecting with friends and family. The meal was excellent and the service exceptional. What made the meal was definitely the company and the conversation. The remaining hours were spent gently; my knee just didn’t allow for more energetic recreation, and my evenings are usually chill time for study, writing, and quiet conversation, anyway. The pain didn’t change those things.

I woke this morning, after a strange night of dreamless, but brief sleep. I didn’t really ‘get sleepy’ until far into the wee hours, and woke ahead of the alarm by 44 minutes. I don’t feel especially fatigued by the short night, and I’m hopeful that I’ll be alert and still feeling sufficiently rested to enjoy my other partner’s homecoming from the his wilderness adventure. I’m eager to hear about it. Eager to share my own experience.

Right at the moment, life feels very good – and it feels very genuine. It’s a feeling and a context in which I thrive.

Simple things matter so much.

Today is a good day to smile back, and a good day to be kind. Today is a good day to step boldly into the world, open to adventure. Today is a good day for love, compassion, and joy. Today is a good day to change the world.

Tags bring back presents!, finding sufficiency, healing hearts, love and lovers, meet me half way, mindfulness matters, one and only just like all the rest, OPD, pain, ptsd, sleep on it, TBI, The Big 5 out to dinner, Wish you were here

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Spring, Uncategorized, women, Words

What Matters Most?

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The Power of Being

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Headaches and Homecomings

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An Updated Lesson Plan

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Gratitude & Pain

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