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Tear Down Your Idols

January 20, 2013 //
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A Sunday evening before a Monday workday and I am contemplating what has been a very productive and pleasant weekend spent in the company of people I love, and thinking about the immense damage we do to ourselves over time, and how it becomes damage we do to others. Of course, a lot of the damage we do to ourselves has its origins in the damage done to us in life, and there’s that whole ‘choice piece’ to contend with, because once the damage is done, the choices are still our own, and then there’s the ‘accountability piece’ too, because whether we willfully choose an action or not, the ownership of the things we choose to do falls to us regardless of our choice, in all but what is forced upon us. It’s complicated to think about, sometimes, and recently I think about the logic of choice a lot. Choice works best when you know as many of the available options as possible, and for years I just didn’t understand how wide open the vista of choice really is. That has limited me more than I understood.

I’ve been searching all my life for ‘happily ever after’ – a fairy tale ending, more or less, I guess. Not reality; reality hasn’t always been good to me. Something hit me this week, sometime in the midst of tears, pain, emotion, and turmoil, both internal and external… maybe ‘happily ever after’ misses the point as goals go? Would I be more productive, more satisfied, and even happier if I turned my attention away from the goal of ‘happy’ and focused more on ‘meaning’? A mindful, meaningful, life… it’s a different idea for me. I’ve tended a bit more toward easy gratification of obvious desires, or needs that don’t infringe on other priorities (or do so in a way I can overlook).  I don’t have a lot more to say about that from the vantage point I have this evening, as I watch the sun sink low, and listen to the contented sounds of life at home; I just have hope.  Hope feels pretty good, and for the moment, good choices don’t seem out of reach.

I’ll admit that one thing that has been big for me lately has been ‘tearing down my idols’ – finding the bits and pieces of nasty leftovers in my basic learning of things that simply are not true, don’t actually reflect my values, or are remnants of assumptions, premises, and teachings that have been long over-turned but not corrected in my thinking and decision-making. It’s a slow process and sometimes quite sad; the discovery that some long held notion is a ghost in my machine, or worse still some malicious booby trap left over from some earlier time, place, and relationship…well, saying ‘it hurts sometimes’ doesn’t even begin to describe the quantity of tears or magnitude of disappointment.  It is worth it to make the slow steps to being who I most want to be.

Categories Logic & Reason, Perspective, Relationships

A Day Ahead

January 18, 2013 //
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It’s very early to be writing. Ordinarily, I’d at least also be sipping coffee while I wake up and prepare for the day. Today feels like a test of my strength, my resolve, my balance, and my desire for change. No coffee, no breakfast – instead I am due for some blood work for an upcoming physical, and it is the last (I hope) big day of moving. My bad planning put them on the same morning. It is, however, morning and mornings are new beginnings. It may test me, but it’ll be an open book test…

I didn’t sleep well last night. I barely slept at all. I wasn’t especially anxious during the night, but I didn’t fall asleep easily, and I woke around 1:30 am, and struggled to return to sleep, then woke groggily to an alarm that just couldn’t have felt any less appropriate. I managed to rouse myself enough to be awake.  At least I carried last evening’s feeling of hope forward with me into the new day – that feels good.  I am eager, though, to be done with the work of the day before it has begun; I’d simply rather be at home with my family.

A few minutes in quiet contemplation of the day ahead, and I’ll be out in the world living the day and doing my best, and hopefully remaining mindful that we are each having our own experience.

Categories Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Words

An Odd Quiet Moment

January 17, 2013 //
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It’s been a tough few days. Actually, for me it has been a challenging few weeks, of soul searching, questions, doubt, insecurity, fear, anxiety, perspective altering information, gains, losses, love, Love, anger, disappointment – did I mention the fear, insecurity, and anxiety? It has been emotionally busy…difficult…painful…meaningful…and worthwhile and necessary.

This week I saw two loving beings be better than circumstances require, more compassionate, more rational, and more supportive under stress than people are expected to be. I saw some of the best that ‘civilized’ humanity has to offer one another. I am awed. Almost speechless with wonder – and appreciation that two such people are part of my life. I hope to live up to that example, myself. I’d like to turn 50 being the very best person I’ve ever been, able to make use of a lifetime of wisdom, and surrounded by people who love me.

Evening light…and a quiet moment. I am not alone tonight, I am surrounded by love and a significant measure of patience, and support. I won’t be writing long tonight, there isn’t that much left to say right now. There aren’t enough words to write enough thank you’s to express how I feel tonight. I think I could spell it ‘hopeful’.

Categories Anxiety, Perspective, Relationships, Turning 50, Words

Making a Choice

January 16, 2013 //
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Choice is a tricky thing, and carries with it the characteristic of ‘accountability’, for each choice I make.  Education and coaching tell me things like ‘don’t blame the victim’ and give me reminders that events forced on me against my will are ‘not my fault’. That sounds easy enough, but it’s a complicated thing, because my own choices at any point after an event that ‘isn’t my fault’ are still entirely mine, and the accountability for them is also mine. Isn’t it? Does a brain injury, or child abuse, or domestic violence get me off the hook for being accountable for my own actions, my own choices? It doesn’t seem that it would…but are my choices themselves, or my ability to make them well, altered by my brain injury? My PTSD? My hormones? What does that mean for me, or for my relationships?

I’m staring at a lifetime of bad decision making, poor choices, failures to be accountable, and I am frustrated and tired and disappointed that at 49 I am not a better human being than I am. I spent the night in quiet contemplation, no real hope of sleep. I am tired, too tired for clear thinking, terrified to let my mind rest and risk losing a moment of understanding or any sort of step forward. My anxiety is completely out of control and I feel lost and very aware that my decision-making may be impaired… except… wasn’t it already?

Life lays out the choices. I have to see them, and make a choice. I’m choosing to do a better job of being a good human being, moment to moment. I expect that choice will have it’s own unique challenges, and may be more difficult than it sounds. (I hope that if I have to let go of what means most to me right now because of failures to be a better human being sooner, I will find being committed to treating myself and others well, and being honest and thoughtful with my choices in the future, will be enough to earn something that means as much as what I have cost myself through my bad choices in the past.)

We’re all having our own experience. The significance of what we do isn’t solely our own – someone else will experience it along with us, in their own context, understood from their unique perspective. Please help me make the world just a bit better than I have made it on my own, so far; treat someone who is hurting with compassion and understand that they are having their own experience, and that is both their truth and their world. Treat people well, especially the ones you love. Make good choices that meet your needs over time. I am pretty sure that if I successfully did those things every day, life would be wonderful.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Perspective, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50

Perspective

January 9, 2013 //
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Perspective is a funny thing. I’ve got some extra words laying about on that topic…how about an example to work with?

A. My partner wants to have sex constantly! I’m having to endure having sex every day.
B. I’m so lucky I get to have sex with my partner every day.
C. I hardly ever get to have sex with my partner. We only manage it about once a day.

The same ‘factual’ information – people who have sex daily – can be heard or understood very differently depending on the perspective of the person delivering the remark, and the person hearing it. The ensuing misunderstandings can create conflict, or rouse an emotional reaction that may not be relevant to the desired discussion. You may have already have reacted to a specific descriptive term, assumption, or implication of the sentences above. The meaning of each is relative to your experience, values, and knowledge.  ‘Right’, ‘wrong’, and ‘true’ get harder to define, for me, when I think about perspective.

Consider example A:
A. My partner wants to have sex constantly! I’m having to endure having sex every day.
a. My wife wants to have sex constantly! I’m having to endure having sex with her every day.
a. My husband wants to have sex constantly! I’m having to endure having sex with him every day.
a. My landlord wants to have sex constantly! I’m having to endure having sex to cover my rent every day.

More information can really change how that sentence feels, and what it means, but it also brings our biases into the mix.  I’m not sure that’s avoidable, because we each have our own ‘point of view’ that has a lot to say about how we see ‘reality’.

Maybe the sex imagery clouds thinking too easily? How about tailgating? This morning I saw a great illustration in commuter traffic.  A bus was pulling into traffic, and has the right of way to do so, locally. A car quickly pulled into the following distance between the bus and the car ahead of the bus in the lane the bus was entering, leaving no following distance, and ‘cutting off’ the bus.  Chances are good, the driver of the car chose to pull into that lane because the choice seemed safe, and necessary.  The bus driver, I can report first hand, did not see things that way at all based on the horn blowing, sudden breaking, and cursing. Traffic continued forward at the same relative average speed as prior to this event, and there was no accident. Is there a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ party? (note: I did not ask ‘Was one driver correct or incorrect according to the traffic laws?) I would be surprised if the motorist or bus driver have recollections that are even remotely similar, if they were asked to relate the morning commute, based on my own experiences with ‘eye witness’ event narratives, and they probably both think they are ‘right’.

…As an odd aside, it has been my experience that some people get agitated, even angry, at the suggestion that ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ could changed by perspective, or individual values and ethics. (It makes some conversations very challenging for me, since I’ve been unable to firmly ascertain a clear, fixed, unchanging system of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to rely on, myself.)  If you find yourself becoming angry with the suggestion that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ may not be concepts of a determinate and infallible nature, please take a minute to chill out and come back when you’ve calmed down; this blog post is not worth being angry about.

Back to the sex… the example sentence really sounds different to me when I take out descriptive or limiting terms.
a. My partner and I have sex daily.
From my perspective that seems the most clear statement inasmuch as it is least complicated, but there is a lot unsaid that would clearly change the meaning for someone hearing it. Definitions of terms become enormously important when descriptive words are removed – the definitions of ‘partner’, and ‘sex’ now become critical to understanding the sentence. Does the speaker mean business partner, romantic partner, or some other sort of partnership, for example? (‘Daily’ is probably pretty clear, but has some room for improvement; does it mean once every 24 hours, or once each calendar day?)

I’ve got perspective on my mind today, because acknowledging the impact of individual perspective and point of view is important to a lot of communication processes, and a lot of people who matter to me are struggling with challenging issues of our times, each sharing their thoughts, ideas, values. There is a lot of emotion involved. Hell, ‘point of view’ is such a big deal it has it’s own porn genre! I’d like to find my way through the turmoil to a better understanding of my life and my world, and my own position on the issues. Issues that confuse me due to failures to define terms and acknowledge perspective right now include:

  • gun control – or is that the issue of ‘our failed mental health system’, the issue of mass murders, or the issue of ‘personal freedoms’? (the perspective of a person who owns a firearm and fears the loss of it is quite different than the perspective of the parent of someone who is mentally ill and potentially violent, or the perspective of a victim of gun violence)
  • ‘the war on women’ – or is that the issue of pay inequity, or women’s health care, domestic violence, the culture of rape, work:life balance, or domestic spending? (the perspective of a woman making a lower hourly wage than her male colleagues is quite different than the perspective of a man who is the CEO of a thriving business, and the perspective of a woman being stalked by an ex is likely very different than the perspective of a lawmaker hoping to reduce domestic spending)
  • the use of drone strikes in military conflicts – or is that the issue of military spending, the issue of defining a ‘combatant’, the issue of expansionism, the issue of cultural freedom, or the issue of the depersonalization of killing? (the perspective of a parent grieving a noncombatant child killed in a drone strike, is different than the perspective of a general hoping to reduce troop casualties)
  • birth control – or is that the issue of sexual freedom, health care, family planning, personal freedom, religious freedom, or reproductive freedom? (the perspective of a person committed to an idealogy that opposes pre-marital sex is different than the perspective of someone who chooses to be sexually active and non-monogamous)

So…who gets to be ‘right’? How do you define ‘right’, ‘wrong’, ‘correct’, ‘inappropriate’ or ‘true’?

My thought regarding perspective is that we suffer as people, and as a culture, as soon as we commit ourselves to being – or needing to be – ‘right’. Arguing, seeking to persuade, or pressuring others to accept or acknowledge that we are ‘right’ about something that is not clearly defined nor utterly factual is a fast way to prevent personal growth or new understanding of the world around us. Sharing perspective, as well as ‘facts’ is something I’d like to see more of people doing – and accepting (admittedly the harder piece is really hearing what someone else says about their perspective, when it differs from our own). It sounds pretty simple until  I get hung up on something I think I’m ‘right’ about… and find out, again, how very human I am.

Why does it matter enough to me to write a blog post about it? Because understanding each other is very much about perspective, and I want to understand the things that are important to me, and behave in a way that respects the values and perspective of others, at least enough not to hurt people I care about through careless insensitivity.

Categories Logic & Reason, Perspective, Relationships, Words
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