Month: February 2011

When the Pendulum Swings

When I was younger, in high school and college, I was very deeply involved in religious activities. Several times a year, I went on weekend retreats, which were invariably peak experiences. People who hardly knew one another would open the contents of their hearts, bond quickly and intensely, and share a high well beyond any experienced in normal, daily life. Returning to normalcy post-retreat was always difficult. People returned to their daily selves, and the shared experience grew less powerful as a touchpoint with one another. As the retreat ended, you told yourself things had changed, that you had changed. But the truth was, your old self and habits nearly always reasserted themselves.

I remember Pastor Ross addressing this: faith isn’t a feeling, he said. When the feeling of the retreat passes, you discover that faith is a verb. Something you actively do, not something you passively feel.

It has now been many years since I’ve been on that kind of retreat, or experienced exactly that kind of high. However, for just over a year now, I have been on a journey which has led to similar feelings: happiness, joy, a sense of purpose, renewed (or just new) relationships. My life has had a quality of incipience, every day on the cusp of a new experience or revelation. It has been amazing. I have gushed about it. I have sworn that everything is different now, things have changed, I have changed.

And all of that is true. However, no peak experience, no emotional high lasts forever. And when that feeling goes away, when the pendulum begins to swing on the downward arc, what does one do? More to the point, what should I do?

Option #1: Chase the High

A friend recently invited me to join her at a movie premiere in New York. The movie, directed by Robert Redford, stars several actors I enjoy. I loved that she asked, but for a variety of reasons needed to decline the offer. Several people told me I was crazy; in fact, one person said she wished she had my life because she would live it better than me. Well, that’s possible, I suppose. However, I am still me. I will still make decisions, for good or ill, based on my own values and gut feelings. I will never be the type of person who drops everything else in my life to jump at unusual experiences just to be able to say, “See what I did?!” So, chasing the high isn’t really an option suited to my temperament.

Option #2: Wallow.

As the pendulum drops from its apex, its easy to allow your emotional self to plummet into sadness and depression. Truthfully, there have been many times when this proved to be my modus operandi. In the current case, the things that have changed the most in my life are internal. The outward trappings have remained essentially the same. And now I am faced with the same life choices and decisions that have always awaited my attention: What should I be doing with my life? I have learned to be honest with myself, which felt really good at first, but which can be a bit depressing. For example, I pretended for decades that I didn’t have feelings like other people. Now, I’ve admitted to myself that I do and some of them are angry or disappointed or sad. Part of me wants to roll around in those denied emotions for a while, just feeling them. Luckily, my emotional health is more robust than it once was, and I can’t see the point in wallowing. So, Option #2 is a no go.

Option #3: Remember that to BE has always been a verb.

I’ve (briefly) studied two foreign languages in my life, and while I don’t remember much of either, I do remember that to be was the first verb we learned to conjugate in both of them.  So this option suggests that, regardless of what I am feeling, I can keep breathing, keep moving forward. I can keep living in the present, living as this new self I’ve worked so hard to become. And I can have faith – an active choice, not just a momentary feeling – in my ability to continue creating a meaningful life.

In summary: Option 1: too hard; Option 2: too soft.  Option 3…just right! Now that I’ve chosen an attitude, I just have to figure out the right action plan to go with it. And that will be both the hard and the rewarding part. I don’t know what will come next. But I do know that the pendulum will eventually hit its nadir and begin another upward climb!

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Thursday, February 10, 2011, originally uploaded by jhnsn728.

I promised last week that I would let you know what I am doing differently to “get this ship sailing” again.  Well, so far, the most important piece has been recommitting to it. This means no more mindless choices in the dining room, for one. I got out my copy of YOU: On A Diet and reread the chapters on metabolism and fat-burning. One thing I love about that book is that they remind you that beating yourself up is not helpful! At the gym, I’ve been increasing my cardio times, and ramping up the intensity of weight training and core work. I’ll be working with a personal trainer again for a while, rather than taking the group classes. I’m feeling more confident and less hopeless – affirmative self-talk is key to getting and staying in the right emotional space.

 

Winter Night

“…That’s how little I understand winter, how it can bewitch its inhabitants (for it is more like a country than a season, a thing to which one belongs), so they cannot say and don’t know whether they love the winter or hate it.”

— Patricia Hampl, from “A Romantic Education”

Do not ask me tonight whether I love it or hate it. Tonight, Winter may be a country or a hostile season — whichever, it has me fully in its frigid grasp and I cannot get warm. So I have been browsing through Winter: A Spiritual Biography of the Season to see what a wide variety of writers have to say about winter, spirit, imagination. I definitely recommend this collection!

As I skimmed through the book, thinking about winter and writers, the idea of cold never far from the surface of my thoughts, I was reminded of a poem by William Stafford, which I think is worth sharing (thought it is NOT included in the book).

Ask Me

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

.

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

Book Club

Sunday afternoon, the book club I belong to met at my house to discuss Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. All but one of our members had read it before, some of us a long time ago. It was an interesting discussion, considering it is the quintessential book about teen male angst being dissected by a group of women ranging in age from 27 to 49. Let’s just say, here, that the actual discussion of the book lasted a very short time, in spite of the fact we were all in agreement that we were glad to have had it as a selection.

For me, personally, Holden Caulfield is a decent enough character. However, the place he holds in my imagination is small compared to the spots reserved for members of the Glass family (characters in Salinger’s short stories and novellas, including Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters, Seymour: An Introduction and Franny and Zooey). The voices of Seymour and Buddy Glass echo in my head frequently, as they have since I first read those books in my junior year of college, 1982.

But I digress. What I set out to share is the story of our book club. We began last spring, invited by my friend Molly. Our first book, Little Bee by Chris Cleave, set the tone of our club. The only thing our selections have had in common is that most of us would never have read them on our own. From the political to the personal to science fiction and fantasy, these books have pushed us to reach a little further. Other selections have included:

The Help – Kathryn Stockett

The Sparrow – Mary Doria Russell

The Road from Coorain – Jill Ker Conway

The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins

The House at Riverton – Kate Morton

The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood

Most selections have proven to appeal to some members of the group, although The Blind Assassin (which I was not able to read, unfortunately) was hands down the least well-received. I thought The House at Riverton a waste of my time, while The Sparrow, which I had read before, is probably one of my favorite books of all time. Other members of the group expressed the exact opposite views. The Hunger Games, and both subsequent books in the trilogy, were devoured by all.

As we read and discuss, we are learning a lot about one another – and not just our tastes in literature. We learn about each other’s political leanings, spiritual beliefs, homes and family lives as they connect with the subjects and characters in each book. I’m not sure we’ve managed to have a single meeting with all club members present, which adds to the variance of each gathering.

Unlike many clubs, our mode of selecting the next book has been haphazard. At first, at the end of each meeting we would each mention suggestions and then vote for one of the titles thrown out. People seemed reluctant to advocate for their suggested titles, and we sometimes took a very long time to decide. The meeting where Catcher in the Rye was picked, we began a new process for selection: everyone wrote suggestions on slips of paper which were placed in a receptacle. The slip drawn was the next book. We kept the slips, and members were invited to add to the collection before we drew again. Sunday, the slip yielded  Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (watch the bizarre book trailer, here). I have, literally, no idea what to expect. However, I hope to share my take on that and future books as well, perhaps, as the book club’s discussion, in future blog entries.

You are, of course, invited to read along with us!

…make hot chocolate

Browsing through a book called, Lean Forward Into Your Life by Mary Anne Radmacher, I came across a story she tells of a minister who was giving a children’s sermon. The minister used the line, “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” However, one little boy who didn’t care for lemonade insisted, during the sermon, that the line be changed to “When life hands you lemons, make hot chocolate.”

Radmacher follows the story with this:

“So from the most difficult of circumstances, we can build something of our own choice. Just because a thing is handed to me does not mean it must be grasped by my hand.“

This, friends, is a revelation. And it bears thinking about as we run through our overwhelming lives at breakneck speed. We don’t have to accept everything that comes our way, just because it came. And if we do grasp ahold, we still get to shape our response or what we choose to do with it.

Which brings me to my friend, Layne, who has yet another take on the ‘when life hands you lemons’ line. She gave a presentation at a national conference this fall entitled, “When Life Hands You Lemons: Make Souffles, Tarts, and Meringues”. Another great concept: we are allowed to use our creativity. Just because the old saw says to make lemonade doesn’t mean we are required to make only lemonade. Habit, custom, group think be damned!

Choice and creativity. So often I forget that these are in my tool kit when something onerous, unwanted, seemingly unavoidable comes my way in life. I didn’t make a New Year’s Resolution this year. I think I may have just found one! (After all, who says you can only make one in January?!)

Apple-Parsnip Soup

Imagine, if you will, the day after a major blizzard. You have spent just over four hours with your trusty shovel, clearing 13 inches of snow including drifts reaching almost three feet high. The sun sets in a blaze of color, as the temperature is plummeting to an overnight low of -12 degrees.

You go inside, unpeel sweaty layers of clothing, and grasp a cup of hot tea to warm your frozen fingers. Suddenly, you remember it is parsnip week at your house! Warm apple-parsnip soup, made in the midst of the blizzard, is only minutes away from filling your empty stomach with velvety goodness. Bliss!

This soup is so good, I braved the worst of the blizzard on Tuesday night to deliver a container to my friend Layne (she lives about 300 yards away). We agree that a little more heat might improve the soup, but it is wonderful made faithfully to the recipe, too (which can be found on the recipes tab, above). I have one serving left, which I plan to savor after a little snow shoeing later today!

Flash Back Friday

Since I wrote about my grandfathers in my Wednesday post (The Odd and Unusual: My Grandfathers) I thought it would be fun to post a photo of my Grandpa Postel today.  The children, from left to right are: me, Gwen, Chris and Jeff. The photo is dated May, 1967. Chris is dressed in the uniform we both wore during our years at St. Raphael’s Cathedral Grade School. If you look at my attire, you will see that my early fashion sense left plenty of room for growth!

How to Love People: A Misanthropes Guide to Relationships

First off, I used the word misanthrope because it is a great word.  I don’t really qualify as one, but it also serves the purpose of letting you know right off the bat that I’m no relationship expert!  I once read an article in which a woman said, “I love mankind. Individual people annoy the hell out of me.” That’s fairly representational of my feelings, or at least of my natural, introverted inclinations. However, inclinations change. At least mine have, and I’d like to share some things I’ve learned about loving others which (now that I know them) have changed my life. Really. They’ve changed my life.

I am not required to tell others what I really think about them, their choices, their actions. Once, I was with a friend who was telling me that he and his wife were thinking about having a child.  His wife was really pushing for it, but he wasn’t sure. He shared his reasons for being unsure, and I told him they were, essentially, stupid.  He responded, “You know, some friends would just listen and empathize.”  This particular friend, at that particular moment, needed someone to hear what he was feeling, not someone to argue against him.  The trick, and the art of being a good friend, is learning the difference between these times, and those moments when what your friend is looking for is someone to help them face a hard truth.  Parker Palmer suggests (in Let Your Life Speak) that we must “avoid the unconscious violence we do when we try to save each other”, that we must learn to “hold another life without dishonoring its mystery”. In other words, sometimes just being quietly yet fully present to another is enough.

I am not required to tell others everything I  feel. I used to avoid telling anyone what I felt, and that included myself. In order to open my life to more and healthier relationships, I’ve had to learn to acknowledge my emotions and, yes, to express them. Finding that sweet spot, you know the one where you allow others to know your heart without knocking their feet out from under them like a riptide, is terribly difficult. Frankly, I still suck at it. Sometimes, I don’t share my feelings when or how it is most appropriate (usually because I am arguing with myself about whether I should), then I blurt them out at moments when others are completely unprepared. Sharing honestly without hurting or knocking others down – practicing this skill is key to mastering it!

Being RIGHT is overrated. Let’s face it, we all love being right. We love being in the right. Sometimes, this is important. But not as often as we think, especially in relationships. I’m a middle child, and early in life was known for over-using the phrase, “That’s not fair!” I would go to great lengths to prove I was right. And when I did, it was almost always a hollow victory. It turned out I was either the only one who cared OR my need to be right had taken the spontaneous fun out of the moment. Now, when my entire family gets together, I enjoy staying out of the fray. Let others fight for control, for the decision-making power, or for the sheer delight of fighting to be right. The gift of this approach is that I get to stay in peaceful connectedness with all my loved ones. I just wish I had known this at 18. I would so have avoided that unfortunate kick-fight with my 19-year-old sister one morning before going to college classes together!

I am capable of loving people whom I know to be flawed. One day, I was hanging with a friend whom I just love. I mean, this friend is really special, wonderful, funny, loving, kind, beautiful inside and out. And then, something was said by this person that completely shocked me. It revealed a weakness in my friend’s character. The kind of weakness that, in the past, I might have considered a “fatal flaw”, in that it could have killed our friendship. And that’s when it hit me that I could choose to extend my love and friendship anyway. That I could see someone’s weaknesses and flaws clearly and still love them. That blindness to these traits is not a requirement of love.  In some cases, I am actually learning to love the flaws. No, really! Being in relationships intimate enough that I actually know these things and see them as an endearing part of the whole package is a gift beyond measure. It is a gift I hope to learn to extend to myself, as well.

When in doubt, choose the most loving course of action. This suggestion, while akin to “being right is overrated”, takes the concept a step further. There are often times in relationships when we don’t know the right thing to do. Should I go over there? Or give her space? Say something? Or hold my tongue? Take a stand/give an ultimatum? In my experience, the right path can proceed forward from whichever step I take, as long as that step is taken with a loving heart. Importantly, my action needs to express love for the other, and for myself. And that tends to be the hard part. It is easier to step into the role of martyr (“See how I sacrifice for you?”) or that of the self-righteous (“I don’t deserve/need this!”) than it is to carefully navigate a loving response.  Yes, there may be times that the most loving response is to walk away. But, by and large, the great beauties of relationship develop when we work through these tough issues and come out stronger on the other side.

I don’t think there’s anything new or earth-shaking in this guide. I am an imperfect practitioner of each point. But I’m learning how important each one is to deepening relationship. I also don’t think its any coincidence that each one refers to maintaining a balance between self and other in relationships. I no longer think it is possible to have loving relationships with others if I don’t have one with myself.

One last thought: being a misanthrope (allowing minor things about others to annoy me) was a defense mechanism that kept people at arm’s length. If I could be blunt or dismissive or right, I didn’t have to risk letting people close enough that I could be hurt. Recently, I was talking to my friend Tricia, who is a mental-health counselor. I said, “I cry a lot more often than I used to.” And her response was, “Thinking about the person you used to be, and how your life has changed, would you really want to go back? Isn’t crying, even if it is a little every day, a small price to pay?” And, of course, she’s right.

Thursday, February 3, 2011



Thursday, February 3, 2011, originally uploaded by jhnsn728.

You know how they say the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results?” Or maybe its the definition of “futile”. In either case, I am definitely hoping for different results, so am looking around for ways to shake things up a bit. Stay tuned, I will let you know next week what changes I’m making to get this ship sailing again!