Archives for posts with tag: Wheaton’s Law

Home for the Holidays?

December 23, 2016 //

Sipping my coffee thinking about this lovely holiday season. Thinking about the people who make it possible. The job. My delightful neighbors. My Traveling Partner. Family. Friends. Oh – and all the people who are stuck working while I am enjoying some time at home, them too. I mean… seriously, quite a lot of people do not have the luxury of taking time off for the holidays. Some of those don’t earn much in the way of holiday pay, most likely don’t see any kind of perks or bonuses, and they’re still out there. They’re commuting to and from work on the transit system. They’re serving coffee, waiting tables, cooking food, stocking shelves, standing at cash registers, fulfilling orders in warehouses, moving packages from point A to point B… all the things. You may be one of them. If you are – thank you. Thank you for doing all of the things.

If you aren’t one of these people, if you do get to “go home for the holidays” – even if that’s just a block or two you are not commuting for a few days – please take a moment of consideration for all of the folks who are working. They probably have to. Be kind. Be generous – or at least good-hearted. Be gracious and well-mannered. Be helpful. Be appreciative. Be your best self. Why? Well, why the hell not? It’s a mockery of our potential as human beings when we sink to our worst, is it not? Happy Holidays? Merry Giftmas? Sure – make it happen, and with a few choices in a handful of tense or tired moments, make it happen not at the expense of the people who are actually the ones making it happen with you, or for you.

I’m just saying, we all have opportunities to treat each other well. It doesn’t have to be seasonal. 🙂

Today is a good day to take a few minutes to be there for someone – even if it inconveniences you. Today is a good day to listen, to really listen, and be someone’s lighthouse in their dark and stormy night. Today is a good day to remember that the holidays don’t really feel good to everyone; we are each having our own experience, and “sharing the magic” of the holidays may be a complicated offering for people who are hurting, or grieving, or sad. Today is a good day for connecting, for conversation, for asking “how can I help?” and taking a moment to share the journey.

City lights, and a horizon full of traveler’s tales.

What a lovely moment to begin again.

Tags be the change, begin again, listening deeply, meditation, Merry Giftmas, mindful living, mindfulness, mindfulness matters, Naughty or Nice?, perspective, practicing the practices, relationships, Smiling at strangers, The Art of Being, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, what matters most?, Wheaton's Law, You had help

Categories Free Will, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being, winter

Changing a Mood is So Easy!

November 29, 2016 //

I got off work yesterday in a good mood, tired, enthusiastic about the walk through town and over the bridge at twilight, and looking forward to a quiet evening at home. The commute wasn’t merely uneventful, it was also a miracle of coincidence and great timing. I arrived home, still smiling.

Some enchanted evening…

What follows is a cautionary tale about emotional health.

As I waited for dinner to cook, not wanting to wander off or be distracted, I picked up my phone, and opened my news feed. I noticed there seem to a be lot of articles about hate, hate crimes, and the general mistreatment of human beings toward one another. I dove right in and read one, then another, and another… over minutes, I read several. I was also cooking, and pretty focused on that. As minutes passed, I found myself no longer smiling. Feeling somewhat discontent. Generally a bit aggravated. A few minutes further on, I was feeling annoyed. Irritable actually. I sat down with dinner, finding fault with small things that typically don’t bother me at all. (Damn, are the guys next door going to be so noisy all evening? Seriously? Is that a leaf on the floor from where I came in, earlier??)

I ate my dinner in a mood of aggravation and discontent. It seemed a mysterious change, and it was some minutes before I connected my roiling stew of negative emotions looking for a fight with reading the news some time earlier. Then I did make the connection. I put down my device. I tidied up the dinner dishes feeling a bit thoughtful and pre-occupied. Had I really made a point of willfully turning a lovely mood sour by my own hand? What was I thinking? I sigh, recognizing the temptation of turning my negative emotions on myself, rather than helping myself into a better emotional place with at least the same effort I brought to wrecking the pleasant mood I was in, in the first place; it’s easier to be hard on myself than it is to change.

I gave the news a rest, and renewed my commitment to not treating myself so badly in the first place. News retailers are in business, and business is focused on profit, and what is profitable is holding consumer attention, and what holds consumer attention is… outrage. Yep. We gobble up news about hate, about fear, about the outrageous and “what is wrong with the world” – and then wonder why we’re angry, outraged, or frightened. We’re some fancy fucking primates – not all that smart about some things, but damn, we’re fancy. We write news, put it in front of other primates, sell what we can – and write more of that. Think about that for a minute – if the point is sales, and profitability, and what sells are the stories about hate, doesn’t it seem quite obvious that more stories about hate will be written? I’m not saying that the world isn’t full up on hate these days, but I am saying that whether or not it were, if stories about hate are what sells the most views, clicks, and subscriptions, then aren’t there going to be just a whole bunch more stories about hate? To read. To be consumed. To set an impression of the world we live in, generally?

I put myself in a gentle time out and spent much of the evening meditating. It was a significant improvement over reading the news. I ended the evening feeling soothed and balanced. Hate in the world is not eased or relieved by fear, or anger, or more hate. Awareness that hate in the world is an issue is something to cultivate, but succumbing to it myself is to be avoided. That seems practical and obvious (to me). I don’t need to read even one more article about some human being treating another badly “because Trump” – I am aware that human beings mistreating each other is a problem. It was a problem before the election, and it will likely continue to be a problem after the next four years is behind us; some people choose some really vile verbs. Hate exists. Fear exists. Anger exists. People having those experiences are probably having them in fashion that seems justified, reasonable, or even appropriate to them in the moment. There are some hateful things going on. There are some scary circumstances (and scarier people) in the world. There are good reasons to be angry, and things worthy of being angry about. It remains a worthy endeavor to treat people well, nonetheless – including the person in the mirror.

This morning I woke to the alarm. A new day. A chance to begin again. I don’t start with the news. I renew my commitment to myself to choose what I read with great care. Sensational headlines get my attention; that’s why they work, that’s why they are written that way. It’s generally enough to read the headline, sass it silently, and move on. Advertising and color commentary masquerading as actual news can be distracting – and emotive. I remind myself to avoid it. Hell, at some point, continuing to read and reread the same tired bullet points spread across media outlets, being used to stoke new outrage and keep reader engagement high, actually takes time away from taking action on causes that matter… in some cases, the very causes that are so engaging to read about. (How many news stories have you read about DAPL? Have you taken a leave from work to get out there and help? Donated money? Written letters to congress? Any verbs at all – or just reading along? How about the lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan? Local homelessness? Foreign wars? Just saying; there’s plenty in the world that could use some well-chosen verbs.)

I’ll point out that all the same choices and practices that soured my mood could be made more selectively, more skillfully, and used to build a great mood from a bad one: intellectual distraction, investment in a specific emotion by choosing experiences that tend to reinforce and enhance it, repetition, and mindfully engaging that emotional experience deeply.

Today is a good day to put down the news, set aside the outrage machinery, and choose some verbs. If the point of life is to live it… why would I be spending my precious limited lifetime reading the news, anyway? 😉

Tags be careful what you read, be the change, begin again, check your facts, choose wisely, don't hate, emotional self sufficiency, meditation, mindfulness, operating the outrage machine, perspective, repetition is learning, step away from the internet!, substance, taking care of me, there are verbs involved, what matters most?, Wheaton's Law, words matter, you believe it because you read it so many times

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, War and News of War, winter, Words

The View from Here

October 28, 2016 //

I had taken notes yesterday for a very different blog post. It’s something I experience rather regularly; my thinking changed, my mood changed, my experience changed, and the my awareness of context and my perspective changed along with them. I woke this morning in “a very different place” though I am in my usual surroundings. My notes no longer “make sense” – oh, I get where I was going with those observations, but… no. Not today.

Another perspective on the day

My perspective changed. Perspective shifts are a pretty wonderful “natural resource”, when I allow them. Last night’s concert, for example, was actually pretty dreadful – unexpectedly so, although after-the-fact, looking back, I knew when I purchased the tickets that the artist was working the trailing end of a lifelong career, and “tired” probably doesn’t describe the end result in appropriate terms. The artist attracted a bizarre mix of elders, middle-aged rockers, and rather peculiarly – some real creepers, actually frightening “do not talk to me, sir, I don’t know you” sorts of creepers. The smell of booze, body odor, and heavy perfume was thick in the air. Ick.

My traveling partner caught up with me in line, and we went to our seats. It was clear in minutes that the seats behind us were occupied by stereotypically entitled rude douchebags, demonstrated primarily by such loud talking that it was difficult to hear my partner seated immediately next to me, and it was highly distracting. I expected they would stop when the show started, but that wasn’t going to happen – when did everyday people become so incredibly rude and inconsiderate? It irked me most especially that they’d probably go about quite proudly on Veteran’s Day thanking Veterans for their service without even once thinking about the contradiction implied by being so heinously rude in a concert venue that they were potentially ruining the quality of the experience for the Veterans who may be attending. Dicks.

After the show started, I turned around and asked them politely if they could lower their voices. I’m a woman. They ignored me with smirks that told me it wasn’t an oversight that they were blowing me off. My partner turned next and straight up, quite firmly, told them to stop talking. Heads turned. There were approving murmurs to my right, and heads nodding in the seats on the other side of the aisle. The two loud-talking dick bags did stop talking loudly – instead, they kicked the backs of our seats regularly, like vengeful children on an airplane. It would be funny if it weren’t so demonstrative of “the state of things” that seems so common and scary in people’s behavior these days. Certainly, it is inappropriate behavior for an adult.

Intermission came. With it, our shared admission that the jack asses seated behind us weren’t really all that… just people being annoying. For a really stellar show, we agreed we’d both endure that, and shrug it off having made our point politely… only… The show was actually quite dreadful. That’s enough to say about that, I’m not a reviewer or a critic, and there is so much in the world I do not know. We mutually agreed, with some relief, that our perspective was shared and neither of us was feeling hurt over the other’s disappointment in the event. We left during intermission, talking and laughing and enjoying the night out. The drive home was pleasant and unhurried. We hung out late into the evening, sharing each other’s company – really that’s what the evening was all about, anyway. Being authentically who we each are saved our evening from an evening enduring a mediocre concert event in the company of children masquerading as adults.

Damn. I sound all sorts of judgmental this morning… and that’s what I was actually going to write about, from my notes yesterday! We do have and use our judgment. It’s so easy to turn that critical voice on ourselves – and then on each other. On the other hand, I don’t see being non-judgmental as requiring me to accept mistreatment, or tolerate indefinitely an unpleasant experience. It can be a matter of judgment to choose to speak up, or to walk on; I see that differently from “being judgmental”. I realized this morning, I’m not sure I have the words to explain why… so… maybe I am incorrect in an assumption somewhere, and this requires further thought? I’m okay with that. There’s time. This is a journey – and the destination is not the point of it.

I slept quite late this morning after the late night. I woke up in pain. I remind myself again to call the doctor’s office this morning. My traveling partner checks in with me about doing something today. Doing things is good – I have today off. I just hurt today, and don’t really care about doing anything. I haven’t finished my first cup of coffee, and suddenly I feel cross. Oh! I’m hungry. I chuckle at myself; I’m not yet awake enough to really understand that my self-care is thrown off by sleeping in. I’m prone to misunderstanding myself, my surroundings, the context of my experience, and more than usually reactive. Another coffee, then, some yoga, a hot shower… maybe later doing things. lol

Today is a good day to begin again. Today is a good day to enjoy the moment that is… and another cup of coffee. 😉

Tags be here now, be love, be the change, begin again, don't bother thanking Veterans is you spend your time being dicks to them, emotional self sufficiency, good self-care, having my own experience, meditation, mindfulness matters, pain and pain management, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, The Big 5, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, what matters most?, Wheaton's Law

Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5

A Great Place to Start

September 14, 2016 //

Don’t be a dick. It’s a good beginning. It’s also “Wheaton’s Law“, and a solid rule for living comfortably among others. 🙂

This morning I woke up comfortably 10 minutes before 5 am, well-rested, and having slept through the night. I considered going back to sleep long enough to roll over and find real comfort (no real reason to insist I get up early), but my mind was awake and ready for the new day. I got up. Yoga. Meditation. A few minutes gazing contentedly out into the night sky, still filled with stars. I sat down to write with a smile…

Seriously. Just don’t. 🙂

Yeah. Wow. Thanks, Facebook, for one more opportunity to practice openness, compassion, and acceptance that we are each having our own experience. The lessons in life’s curriculum are sometimes unpleasant. I’m quite taken by surprise by the hateful, fearful, narrow-minded, judgmental things people can say about one another… although, rarely about those dear to them, generally they save the hate for generalizations they’ve made about groups of ‘others’ they assume don’t share their values – or, apparently, their humanity. It’s appalling enough from strangers. I’m (figuratively) stricken speechless when it comes from someone on my own friends list. :-\ Don’t be a dick.

…But… It really is an opportunity to practice acceptance, and to practice a kinder approach to others. Because we are each having our own experience, asking questions instead of making assumptions becomes a way of finding out more, when I approach a friend fearlessly and ask why they’ve said what they’ve said, and inquire, too, how it is to be taken. (I often find that what I’ve read is intended sarcastically, or ironically, and I find those qualities difficult to detect in text, without additional context, myself.) Sometimes people legitimately don’t seem aware that they may sound hateful. Sometimes I straight up ask that question, “Are you aware how hateful you sound, here?” Sometimes I don’t really know what to do, as when a family member or loved one of someone dear to me says something clearly hurtful, cruel, diminishing, or abusive to my dear one; sometimes involving myself is clearly a mistake, or potentially unwelcome. Lately, there’s been a lot of hateful rhetoric on Facebook. I worry that people don’t realize that it does matter, and is hurtful. Don’t be a dick.

No, everyone isn’t being soft or weak when they don’t care to be abused, or refuse to tolerate abusive dialogue. No, it isn’t ludicrous when vulnerable, wounded people want a ‘safe space’ to be heard. No, it isn’t unreasonable when traumatized people still dealing with PTSD want trigger warnings to more easily choose to avoid triggering topics, language, or people. These are people seeking to take better care of themselves – and that’s entirely okay, and rational, and when they must also stand up to ridicule or resistance just to request that support, it’s beyond okay – it becomes heroic. Don’t be a dick.

Attacking people because they hold a political view you don’t like? Don’t be a dick. It’s possible to make your point without personal attacks. Using abusive attacking language toward someone you say you love because you’re angry with them (or the world)? Don’t be a dick. Why would you treat people you love that way in the first place? Really? How is that love? Feeling resentful that someone struggling reaches out for help and gets it, because you struggle too and “no one helps you“? Don’t be a dick. Isn’t it okay to ask for help? Isn’t it okay for someone to choose provide it? Isn’t it okay to receive it? Just seriously don’t be a dick. How hard is that?

“Don’t be a dick.” It’s a great practice. It does require some self-awareness, and a willingness to be honest with yourself in your worst moments, able to acknowledge that you are, indeed, being a dick in the first place. Then, the next step, fucking stop doing that! It would be a nice value add to also make it right if you’ve already gone ahead and followed your worst instincts, and treated someone badly because you were committed to being a dick, instead of being the person you most want to be. Choose your words with care. Think how you would take it yourself if you heard those words, delivered just that way, by someone you think cares about you, in a similar moment. Not liking the sound of it? Do you find yourself reaching for a rationalization? (Because, if you do, it’s probably a dick moment that you could let go, just saying; kind words need no justification.) Don’t be a dick.

For those reading these words, thinking “fuck kindness” (and I know you’re out there), I can only say “please reconsider”. I know you’re having your own experience, but damn, the stain left on our own hearts by our own ugliness saturate our souls far more deeply than the hurtful words of others ever can. Hate changes us. Don’t be a dick.

It could be that you live in the context of hate and fear every day. It may not be that easy to tell that you’re being a dick, if everyone else around you is also being a dick. Brief hurt looks preceded by uncomfortable laughter are a good sign to look for; just because hurtful words are laughed off by our friends, doesn’t mean we’re being encouraged to continue with being such dicks all the damned time. Just stop. It’s not as funny as we may have grown to think it is, and it’s a form of humor specifically based on hurting people based on vulnerability or disadvantage. We can do better as human beings. We don’t have to be dicks. It’s a choice.

As with any choice, there are verbs involved.

I’m aware that these words likely won’t really be heard by any of the humans who need to hear them most; some people are righteous about being dicks, convinced of their position with moral certainty, comfortable telling the world to ‘toughen up’ and swallow more of their shit. I’m still saying it – because I won’t be that friend who let you keep being a dick without telling you I find it unpleasant. 😉

Practice the practices that take you closer to being the human being you most want to be.

Today will be a lovely day to be the best of who you know yourself to be, to be kinder than you must, to be more open to hearing about someone else’s experience, to provide a moment of help because you can, to reach across one of the many fairly random pointless divides we have created among ourselves as human beings and say “that’s not relevant to your humanity”, and treat each other truly well.

Tags be love, be the change, begin again, being and becoming, choose wisely, choose your words with care, don't be a dick, kindness is a free service, listening deeply, my home my rules my way, OPD, perspective, practicing the practices, relationships, taking care of me, The Art of Being, The Big 5, there are verbs involved, what matters most?, Wheaton's Law, Wheaton's Law enforced here, words matter

Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War, Words

However Long the Night

August 16, 2016 //

Morning comes. I’ve not experience one morning yet that hasn’t arrived precisely on time. Each new day is exactly that, new. We can begin again – every morning, if we need to.

One new day, approximately infinite possibilities.

The smallest of my choices still matter, if not to the outcome of my circumstances, then at least telling of who I am. I think that over for a moment; even if the choice I make, action I take, or words I express don’t actually appear to change what’s going on around me, they are a reflection of who I am. I take time to consider who I want most to be, what my values truly are, and how I can best express them.

What matters most?

Last night as I opened the patio door to cool evening air, and closed the screen door, I noticed a young praying mantis hanging from the inside of the screen, about to be trapped inside. I gently coaxed her onto my hand and slowly carried her outside. I did my best to be quite gentle and move slowly to avoid stressing her out more than necessary. Initially, she sought escape, then held very still, watching me from my hand. I placed her with great care in the taller roses in the patio garden – plenty to eat, and seeming relatively safe, I took her picture while she continued to watch me. I looked for her this morning, but she had gone, or had hidden herself too well for my pre-coffee eyes.

It doesn’t matter much at all what I say about how I feel about life. (You either) Words are words. It is our actions that reflect our values. Our rhetoric is meaningless next to our vote. Our keywords are not relevant to our choices. The books we read are not the human beings we are. We become what we practice. There are verbs involved.

Every day, I can begin again. 🙂

Tags actions speak louder, be here now, be kind, be love, be the change, choose love, choose wisely, just saying, love and lovers, meditation, mindfulness, practicing the practices, taking care of the person in the mirror, The Art of Being, The Big 5, use your verbs, we become what we practice, what matters most?, Wheaton's Law, you do you

Categories Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Home for the Holidays?

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Changing a Mood is So Easy!

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The View from Here

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A Great Place to Start

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However Long the Night

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