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Gratitude & Pain

May 9, 2014 //
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(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.

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.

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.

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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

OMG – It’s AWESOME!

April 6, 2014 //
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Did you see that house?? Wow – check out that car! Designer clothes…limited edition printings…specialized or customized decor…exotic rare flavors, places, experiences… What do you aspire to? More? Much more? Go big or go home! Dream big! Shoot for the moon! More…further…better…
A wow moment on an ordinary day.

A wow moment on an ordinary day.

No wonder I feel so pushed sometimes. It’s a very big world, and there are so many opportunities, so many wonders, and challenges, so many things to try or experience – I guess I’m not surprised that so many folks chase some dragon or another, looking to fulfill themselves, or achieve one goal or outdo some standard or expectation, hit a noteworthy benchmark, impress someone, or climb some mountain, ladder, or heap.
Soap bubbles are also 'real'.

Soap bubbles are also ‘real’.

I know a man with a spectacular home. He bought it for his own reasons, perhaps because his last home wasn’t ‘enough’. He shopped a long while before he found what he was looking for. I still don’t really understand his choice. He bought a mammoth home, worthy of being called ‘an estate’, well off the everyday beaten path, and far out of view of any sight of ‘economic distress’ in a place of exquisitely preserved nominally natural loveliness… it’s huge. Quite large. Well and good, of course, for his substantial family… wait… no, he lives alone, generally. He has just one child (living far away), and no likelihood of grandchildren, not even a dog by his side. Many rooms, much square footage, and more than much else, it boldly states ‘here lives a man who is economically successful’. It’s very fancy. His own tastes, as a man, seem quite simple. He has worked hard and as much as his understanding of the world permits, he is an ethical and good man. He seems mild of temperament, professionally competent, and decent. He tends to be modest and self-effacing when confronted directly, or in conversation, by ‘someone better’ than he sees himself; it is clear that the superiority in question is a matter of financial success. He treats a man with more money as likely to be simply smarter, wiser, more right more often, in a word – better.  If success is measured in dollars, square footage, rarity, or exclusivity, then perhaps a very grand house is an excellent value in communicating that success to the world.
This says something about who we are.

This says something about who we are.

What does that house mean? Oh – not to him, because how that house meets his needs, or what value it has for him, isn’t really relevant to me at all. Not my house. Not my family. Not my measure of success. It’s just an anecdote about a guy with a house.
The basics, walls, windows, a roof, a door.

The basics, walls, windows, a roof, a door.

When I was much younger, in my 20s, I loved shoes, and clothes, and traveling to destinations; most of my disposable income went to those opportunities. I aspired to all sorts of ‘greatness’ and hit the mark once in a while, and struggling and suffering when I didn’t. I pushed myself hard and continuously to ‘succeed’. I defined success based on a number of things that were economic in nature, and certainly each of us is free to define success in our own way… only… I wasn’t doing that, at all. I was defining success as I had been told to define it, based on someone else’s measure of success. (I think we all start there.) Many of us find our own way to re-defining success in our own terms. (I did, eventually.) The discovery that ‘clothes don’t matter’ was an important game-changer for me. I came home from war substantially changed of mind and heart, and on the scale of clothes and shoes it was obvious.  It took a while longer and a house to teach me why ‘clothes don’t matter’, and the nature of sufficiency. I’m still learning.
"Kuwait; Oil Fires" 26" x 48" oil on silk.

“Kuwait; Oil Fires” 26″ x 48″ oil on silk.

Funny thing, though… that house… You see, having a home, a place of my own, somewhere I could always come back to, however far I strayed, somewhere to count on… that has been a measure of success for me, for a very long time.  I get excited about fancy big homes with ‘tons of features’, so much so that I recently allowed myself to be entirely de-railed from a thoughtful, reasoned, careful house-hunting process by the dangled temptation of something bigger, better, fancier… more. More than I need, for sure. I noticed when it happened, but the pure addictive delight of the daydream in front of me was intoxicating, and fully distracting from something far far more important to me – ‘enough’. An important lesson in attending closely to my own needs, my own goals.
It's a trap!

It’s a trap!

Sufficiency. Contentment.

Sure, I suppose a million-dollar home in an exclusive gated community of like-minded individuals surrounded by landscaped scenery, safe behind efficient alarm systems, and deeply invested in society by way of a hefty mortgage would be one way to shout “I am a success!” to the world. Having a big house with plenty of room, and rooms, and features, and space, and customized to suit my taste for color and design would be very aesthetically pleasing, and potentially very comfortable and satisfying. It might satisfy some wants, fulfill some desires, even meet some needs. It would answer a very different question than “What is enough?”

For me, a grand house could not be described as ‘necessary’. It would not be about ‘meeting my needs’, and however often words about needs might be spoken by someone with the money to buy such a grand house, a house like that is not likely to be about needs. A house like that is about wants, and wanting, about craving, acquisition, and fighting discontent with possessions, and communicating status to the world. What need does one human being have for a house of many rooms, many bathrooms, many many square feet, broad expanses of lawn, yard, or acreage, neatly landscaped, arranged, and managed in accordance with the community covenants and homeowner’s association guidelines? I firmly assert again, it is not about needs, or meeting needs, at all.

I know what I need. I need enough. Sufficiency. Safe, secure, sheltered from inclement weather, adequate protection from the unknown intentions of those who might wish me ill, a place where I feel nurtured, at ease, content, and ‘at home’. I need a home, far more than I need a house. I’ve lived in reasonable comfort for months in a tent, in good company, well-provisioned, and feeling both safe and secure. I’m pretty sure ‘my real-estate’ in that circumstance measured something like 20 sq ft. The more-than-dozen of us sharing that tent had about 500 sq ft together. It seemed, at the time, rather generous. Most of the time it felt like ‘enough’. Clearly ‘enough’ isn’t about square footage, stone walls, expanses of lawn, HOA by-laws, elegant roof-lines, granite counters, upgrade appliances, or gated communities. What is ‘enough’? What is ‘home’?

One of the flavors of 'home'.

One of the flavors of ‘home’.

Home. Yeah. Home is high on my list of priorities. Getting there is just starting to peek over the horizon on my vast to-do list of personal growth, and desirable achievements…and I don’t even know yet everything I ‘need’ to measure my success there… other than ‘enough’.  Excess is a burden. Delighting in excess is a fast track to being a shitty human being. lol.
What's your pleasure?

What’s your pleasure?

I probably wouldn’t be a really first-rate minimalist. I’ll be honest about that. I like some luxuries, and my aesthetic preferences result in the possession of the occasional object or two without purpose beyond beauty, but there, too; I call the shots on my idea of success, and only I truly know what meets my needs, and what those needs are, and why. I recognize the possibility that some solitary person with vast wealth might truly ‘need’ a huge grand house of many rooms filled to the rafters with carefully placed exquisite objects that reflect their taste and experiences, reminders of other things and moments, and perhaps such vast wealth truly results in a life so well-lived that the accumulated possessions truly fill such a grand house in a predictable and commonplace way. It’s possible. I have books, paintings, paperweights… having space to display them might seem a necessity from some perspectives, and certainly practical objects like books lose value when they are boxed up, labeled, and put into storage. I would be less satisfied to be without books, and the wee library space I have put together in my current house satisfied my heart when I finished that project. If I had more books, I’d ‘need’ more space. It’s not quite the sort of ‘need’ I’m really on about, though… and the small library I have is just bookshelves along a wall in a mostly unused corner. It meets my needs. It is enough.

I’m spending some time reconsidering my discontent in all manner of things, and the questions I am asking myself are ‘What do I really need?’ and ‘What is enough?’ I have never found contentment – or happiness – in ‘more’, ‘bigger’, ‘better’, or ‘further’. I have found it in sufficiency, in appreciation, in gratitude. I may want ‘more’, I only need ‘enough’.

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

Limits, Boundaries, Choices, Change

February 22, 2014 //
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Life never let’s up with its curriculum; there is always more to learn, more to understand, more understandings to topple under the weight of new knowledge, and there is always change.

Every choice we make brings some moment of change. This morning I am ‘on call’ at work…does it change my experience of Saturday? Maybe. How much of any perceived change is truly due to ‘being on call’? How much may be due to the limits I, myself, set in some arbitrary way, based on my own assumptions? What is choice? I’ve been studying this, lately, in a deep and I hope meaningful way.  (Books are powerful, I am currently reading Emotional Intimacy, which delightfully enough is not at all ‘self-help-y’ and is very ‘science-y’.)

Relationship drama, every day life, and my commitment to ‘being a student of life’ put my focus on limits and boundaries this morning. For the sake of easy discussion, let’s go with a shared understanding that a ‘boundary’ is something we set, willfully, based on our understanding of our needs and values? Let’s also agree, then, that a ‘limit’ is something we have the understanding is imposed upon us by our physical world, our resources, or our perception of the boundaries placed by another? So, simply put, we set boundaries, and we face limits. Easy enough for our purposes, yes?  I watch the aquarium waking up for the day, and contemplate limits and boundaries. I set boundaries for their fishy lives by placing them in a glass container from which they can not escape, surrounded as they are by impenetrable walls, because I do not care to have water everywhere and fish flopping about unpredictably and dying in the open air. For them, those glass walls are the limits of their world, beyond which they can see, but can’t venture forth. So, limits and boundaries have a relationship in some instances. I find this worth contemplating.

How we define ourselves, and what we accept as our limitations, changes what we can choose.

How we define ourselves, and what we accept as our limitations, changes what we can choose.

I don’t see much to argue with if I apply these observations to relationships in my life. I have my boundaries, and all my friends, family, loves, lovers, and associates of all sorts, have theirs as well. How firmly any one of us insists on them varies. I find that I have limits and limitations in life, and I don’t know anyone personally who doesn’t. Something about the finite nature of things, and entropy, perhaps. When I set boundaries, they become someone else’s limits – but we are also limited by circumstances, resources – and choices. Strangely, I’ve begun to learn, it is my choices that are often the biggest hurdle I face when I look at my life through the filter of ‘my limits’. More of those limits are self-imposed than I understood, and often in a peculiarly arbitrary way. I choose to understand that ‘I can’t’ do or have something, or go someplace, or enjoy some experience – and later, on closer examination, I can see where I chose to place those limits on myself, and often based on erroneous assumptions, or worse still, as a bold act of self-sabotage. Choice embodies change – and freedom, and wide open vistas of opportunity.

As a fun exercise, take something you regularly deny yourself on the basis of “I can’t…” and just for the sake of some intellectual fun, rephrase it as “I can ___, if I ____.”  What would it really take? “I can’t be president” becomes “I can be president, if I run for office and am elected.” Wow. Just that simple. By now you’ve notice that I omitted the ‘because’ statement that is the heart and soul of self-imposed limits. “I can’t become president because I’m a woman and we’re just not ready for that as a nation.” is pretty damned disheartening, and at a glance can’t be easily overcome.  I could stop right there, and so often in life I have.  Frankly, this is an uphill battle I fight daily, these days.  Those self-imposed limits have no actual substance. They aren’t ‘real’ in the sense that the laws of physics seem real. They are not provably ‘true’ – they are only as ‘true’ as I accept them to be.  Defying those limits through force of will works for some people; great moral, political, and emotional battles have been fought and won through force of will alone. It’s a hard fight, and even emotional wars have casualties. Perhaps there is some gentler opportunity in simply changing our operating assumptions about life, about ourselves, about our choices? I’m just saying it is worth thinking about.

Why are so many people ready to place extraordinary limits on themselves through unsupported assumptions? Is it simply emotionally easier to say that “I can’t, because…” than it is to say “I won’t”?  “I can’t” means I don’t have to be accountable for my values, my boundaries, or my choices – it isn’t my fault! ‘Will’ doesn’t work that way, and I am learning what a crippling effect it has on my will to undercut myself again and again with “I can’t” when “I won’t” is more honest and true to my values, and boundaries. Allowing myself those “I won’t” moments also pushes me to examine why. That has to be pretty important if I’m going about throwing my will around!

Every day life these days pushes my limits, questions my choices, challenges my understanding of my boundaries, and insists that I understand, redefine, and use my will in a deliberate and adult way; accountable for my actions, and choices, and prepared to speak to my choices rationally.  I have some difficult choices ahead of me. Somehow, a quiet Saturday morning, a good latte, and watching the fish swim makes it all seem so much clearer; it really is about limits, boundaries, and choices. I am ready to understand the difference between ‘willful’ and ‘disagreeable’, and I am ready to change my world.

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

A Suggestion, An Observation, A Paradox

January 23, 2014 //
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Be kind to yourself. Just that. Simple as suggestions go.

The paradoxical search for enlightenment...

The paradoxical search for enlightenment…

“When you change your brain, you change your life.” from Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom (Hanson, Rick).

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, Uncategorized, women, Words

One Year, One Journey, Many Moments

January 8, 2014 //
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Well…here we all are. Here I am, anyway. There are opportunities to wonder about the rest of it. It’s been a year, to the day, since I started this blog. I was somewhere very different as a person one year ago. My understanding of myself was – and remains – incomplete, but certainly I am in as different a place with that as a journey of 365 days could possibly make, for me. Very different, indeed. Change, as comical as it looks on the page, is a constant.

People do change, therefore they can change.  It is not a given that they will change. That last is rather dependent on their own desire to change, for their own reasons, succeeding based on their will and actions.  These seem obvious enough observations, but I did not have that understanding a year ago.

We are each having our own experience. That, too, seems damned obvious to me in 2014, but I have an understanding of myself that recognizes and acknowledges that this was not ‘always’ my understanding of things.  It’s difficult to be certain quite when I became really sold on that understanding – that we are each all having our own experience. It feels like I ‘always’ understood this – but I can prove in my own journals and past writing that I did not, and also that the lack of this understanding in prior years was something that really had an effect on my ability to learn compassion, to build intimacy, to provide emotional support – even impeded my ability to listen well to others and respect or value their perspective.

Every step I take illuminates another step to be taken – like walking with a flashlight in the dark. I can recall, at some past points, saying something casual or flippant about ‘being a work in progress’, generally to minimize some mishap, or the consequence of some poor decision. This past year I’ve spent a lot of time learning what a very active thing progress actually tends to be – there is so much more to it than being aware it needs to happen, or reading up on some process for getting it done.  ‘Work in progress’ is an incredibly active thing, with a lot of verbs involved, and a hearty helping of will and action, and practice doesn’t lead to mastery, it leads to good habits and improvements over time.  I do not always feel up to the task, and I am surprised and even satisfied with myself for how far I’ve come in a year.

I feel powerfully committed to myself (that’s very new), and to building a good life, good relationships, a good heart, a compassionate nature, and to leave when my time is up able to say the world is, in some small way, the better for having endured my humble efforts. This is the most concise statement I know how to make about ‘who I am’ at the end of this one year.  I doubt I’d have made such a statement in any earlier time in my life.

Words like ‘mindfulness’ and ‘compassion’ have become everyday parts of my vocabulary over the past year.  I am learning new things; listening, caring, understanding, empathizing, sharing – no strings, less baggage.  It still seems strange to me that so much of what I’ve needed all along has come from within… and that ‘taking care of me’ isn’t about being ‘selfish’, defensive, territorial, or confrontational, but is very much about living a contented life, and enjoying a sense of well-being, by ensuring I see to my own basic needs with as much commitment and skill as I do the needs of others.

I am spending time today contemplating this one year journey because, as journey’s go, it’s been it’s been one of the most meaningful I’ve ever taken, and one that I understand more clearly now to be both ongoing, and worthy of more active participation. It’s my life, after all.  Sure, had I understood some things more clearly earlier in life, I’d have made some different choices perhaps, or had some very different conversations, but there is still so much ahead – many more moments, opportunities to choose, to talk, to act – to change. My will is truly my own – when I use it.

So are my words. This year I’ve used this blog to explore my world of words in a more honest way, with greater vulnerability, learning to share my experience without using emotional weaponry, and with consideration of possible outcomes beyond words on a page. Using my words to understand my experience more clearly, myself, without endless rumination or becoming mired in some momentary drama, and without over-burdening the emotional resources of my loved ones has been eye-opening regarding the limitations of words and language, and how it can direct my experience – and how I can learn to use those words to direct my experience,  myself, from within.  (Thanks for helping with all that, by the way, I appreciate you, and the time you’ve taken to share this journey with me in some small way.)

Soft jazz in the background, a latte gone cold on the side table, a soft gray morning sky on the other side of the window, the household sleeping… just one year? The distance between where I was a year ago, and where I am this morning can’t really be measured in time or distance.  The journey isn’t even completed – there is so much more to learn, to do, to experience, to share, to understand, to contemplate, to enjoy… This is just one moment of many. 

There is a lot to enjoy. This has definitely been a year to explore how very true that is.  There is a lot to enjoy.  Enjoying life is also a choice.

Here's to free will and good choices!

Here’s to free will and good choices!

Today I…

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Menopause, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Uncategorized, Words
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