The Big 5 | Evening Light

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.

No lack of harmony in the garden.

I’m thinking about relationships today, and love, and harmony. It may not be my best choice of subject matter with this killer headache, but I needed a break from learning Baldur’s Gate , which is what gave me the headache! Video games in any format tend to be really tough for me to learn, and I don’t get pleasure out of pushing my frustration level higher, so until pretty recently I did not bother with video games; too hard for me to learn, no fun.

The TBI changes my perspective on a number of things, and learning games, or building any skills that are impaired to the point of pushing me to the point of real frustration when I try to do things I’m not good at, seems really important now… Changes in perspective, choices, and mindfulness (even in games), make a huge difference for my enjoyment of difficult things. Relationships, though, are not games… still plenty of skill building potential, but even when delightful and harmonious, game-playing is not to be encouraged. lol. The tutorial got me thinking, though, about the basic building blocks to learn a game, the prerequisite skills and concepts that are a necessity before I could even attempt game play… I know people who game ‘straight out of the box’, never bothering with the tutorials, never risking plot spoilers by reading the back stories, or doing any research. Some of them are amazing gamers. I also know gamers who carefully read the reviews before buying a game, read the ‘rules’ and back stories, watch some video walk-throughs of tougher sections of game play, maybe even watch someone else play before they take it on (and many of them play the game on ‘easy’ the first time). (Damn, wouldn’t it be nice if there was an ‘easy setting’ we could use for’ our first relationships?) Some of those gamers are also quite amazing. Is there a right way?

Well, hoping to avoid taking a metaphor too far, but with relationships, I don’t think there are short cuts that are worth taking…but I’m only talking about my own experience, realistically. I do need to hone my basic skills, and knowing that, it seems important to figure out just what I think those basics are… not the fancy stuff; I mean the absolute ground level must-have approach, skill, or method for me, as an individual – the one I actually am – to succeed in my relationships. It meshes nicely, as thinking goes, with approaching my relationships mindfully, as well as the general requirement to ‘take care of me’. (Ah, adulthood…complex, exciting, frustrating, rewarding, and… ongoing. Still, ‘ongoing’ certainly tends to imply there’s time to work on this stuff…although I’ve already muddled through 49 years without a clear ‘success story’.) Most of my relationships are… challenging. For me, for sure… for people daring to love me…I can barely imagine the sort of committment that requires, or how difficult that must be.

Building blocks… basics… it isn’t likely to be the same for other people, but I know what my own ‘big 5’ are… qualities, characteristics, or skills that I think are an absolute must for a healthy long-term relationship:

That’s it. I think mastering these makes it a pretty good bet that a relationship based on those fundamentals will do well. Sure there are other things that are important – communication, an essential, is the first thing that comes to mind – but I am finding, lately, that mutual respect, reciprocity, consideration, compassion and openness generally result in good communication (or require learning good communication skills to achieve in the first place). I could also note that having basically compatible values is pretty critical, but I think the ‘big 5’ I listed would likely prevent me investing heavily in a relationship with someone with seriously incompatible values, and the process of finding that out would be less painful than some other tried and true methods I’ve explored (like wishing, guessing, assuming, or playing make-believe about someone else’s values).

My current partners, and our exciting, wonderful, rich, affectionate, complicated, sometimes challenging, nurturing, mysterious, entangled, sweet, inviting, and evolving relationship(s) are certainly one of my most important sources of ‘life curriculum’! I could perhaps call it ‘my home room class in the school of life and love’ – no hyperbole required. 😀

No matter who the teacher is, we have to do our own homework.

…in spite of my headache, and occasional subtly unharmonious moments that quickly become part of the past, it’s a lovely spring day. I’m not making a big deal about either the headache, or the sometime momentary lack of harmony. I’m studiously maintaining my personal balance by practicing mindfulness, enjoying the sunny garden, and taking care of me by honing my skills on my ‘big 5’. No matter what life throws my way, those are 5 qualities I value, personally, and cultivating them is worth my time and focus.

Headaches and Harmony

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