The Real-Life Magic of Friendship

“But it does not seem that I can trust anyone,’ said Frodo.
Sam looked at him unhappily. ‘It all depends on what you want,’ put in Merry. ‘You can trust us to stick with you through thick and thin–to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours–closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo.”  — JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

On one hand,  it seems my friend Carol and I had the most random meeting ever: in a mall parking lot, in October of the year we were both in fifth grade. On the other hand, the fact that I moved into a house down the street from her a few days later makes our friendship begin to look like destiny rather than random circumstance.

When I moved to another state later that same year, I lost track of Carol. And began a pattern that held true for much of my life: arrive in a new location, make friends; move on, leave friends behind.

But Carol has pretty much refused to be left behind. Eventually, I moved back to our hometown (during our senior year of high school). I saw Carol in homeroom on day one but I was too shy to approach her. She didn’t hear my name called, and it was mid-year before she realized I was there. Boy, did she let me have it for not approaching her or somehow flagging her attention.

Over the years, Carol has been the most loyal of friends – always reaching out, always thoughtful, always remembering. Last week, I received a lovely package of goodies from Malaysia, where Carol has been living this past year with her husband Zul and beautiful daughter Rumela. I wrote a thank you card, then realized I have no idea where to send it, as Carol is currently traveling. She has always had the skills to find me, while my tracking abilities leave much to be desired.

Truth be told, the issue is bigger than tracking skills. Truth be told, friends are something of a mystery to me.

Making a new friend feels like alchemy, a mixture of chemistry and fairy dust I don’t begin to comprehend – even when I make intentional overtures (like the day I met Kate and Victoria and pretty much overwhelmed them-ok, frightened them- with my offer of friendship). I never feel very certain how it actually happens, though I’m so glad when it does.

But if the beginnings of friendship are difficult for me to parse, the part I really don’t get is the part where friends become lifelong, true to the core, loyal and beloved. That feels like full-blown magic to me.

I say magic, because: a) I don’t understand how it happens; b) I certainly don’t deserve it-which makes it truly a gift, and one that seems to materialize before my very eyes at that; c) I know that I am rarely as good a friend to others as my friends are to me.

Magic, because it is more than a collection of moments spent together. I have friends who amaze me and add warmth to my days even if we rarely see each other.

Magic, because it is more than a set of similarities between us. If friendship only exists between people who are alike, I could name a handful of people with whom I would never have become friends (but I won’t, because that would be rude, and I love those people!).

Magic, because sometimes things appear unexpectedly and make me clap my hands in delight: cards from South Dakota, macaroons from Ames, Facebook messages from Hawaii, or texts from across town.

Magic, because my friends understand what I need even if I sometimes don’t. And they give it freely, even without being asked.

Who ARE all of you magical people, and how did you appear in – and become part of – my life?

I may not understand how friendship happens, or how it works exactly. But I do know that it has and continues to enrich my life in many ways I can’t begin to articulate. And while I remember how I first met Carol, the same isn’t true for all of my friends. I don’t remember the many ways our lives have crisscrossed, or all of the times we have offered support or encouragement to one another. I can’t list the tangible – much less the intangible – gifts I’ve received from (and hopefully given to) my friends. But I do recognize real life magic when I experience it. And I am beyond grateful for it – even if I sometimes forget to say thank you – or don’t know where to send the card!

 

“We were together. I forget the rest.”

–Walt Whitman

 

 

 

…And…

The genesis of this blog was a challenge to myself to make and keep in my mind and heart a connection between my own struggles with weight and the growing numbers of people in the US who were living with food insecurity, if not outright hunger. It began with a profound moment of humility – what right did I have to live a gluttonous life while others starved?

Over the first couple of years, Jenion became a repository of self-revelation: what I was learning about myself in the process of awakening to and changing my life. As I lost weight, I also shed many self-deceptions, delusions, limiting beliefs. In each post I tried to share as honestly and completely as I could what I was learning, discovering, or feeling. Sometimes, it was painful to share. Sometimes, it was joyful. Always, it was as honest as I could make it – what I was experiencing without glamor: shame, vulnerability, binges, loneliness, gassy bloating. (I also shared good and positive insights and experiences!) A number of people, you perhaps, resonated with those posts. I heard from people who felt I’d put their own experiences or feelings into words. Sometimes, people called me brave for sharing so openly and for uploading photos of myself on a scale each week, in order to hold myself accountable to the truth of my choices.

Eventually, my posts shifted again. I had made many changes in myself and my life – and I wanted to keep those changes going. My posts, at least to my mind, shifted toward positive self-talk and inspirational messages. If I look over the past several years of Jenion, key words like perspective, love, openness – pep talks and rainbows – show up quite a lot. There wasn’t less honesty, but there has been less personal sharing – which is a very fine distinction when one is writing a blog that purports to be about truthful self-discovery. I began shying away from the “warts and all” philosophy I originally brought to Jenion. I became less brave.

Why was this the case? In part, I didn’t want to let everyone down. I began to feel like I wasn’t living up to the promise of those early years of awakening. Shouldn’t I be happier? My life, my self, had changed for the better – wouldn’t it bum everyone out if I didn’t continue to express the inspirational joy those changes wrought? I had taken some risks -wouldn’t my friends and family worry more if I wrote directly about how I was struggling? How could I fully share my feelings of failure or depression or anxiety without offering an uplift in the end? That would depress everyone. It would depress me.

Yesterday, I came home after a day at work where every five minutes brought another crap-bomb detonation. I came home after a painful first visit to a physical therapist for shoulder pain. I came home after a disappointing workout at the gym, where I barely managed an elevated heart-rate (in part because I am taking medication which actively prevents an elevated heart-rate).

Who am I kidding? I’m already damn depressed.

I sat at my computer and typed into Google: menopause and…Even before I typed in the word I intended to use to complete that phrase, up came a list:

anxiety

depression

fatigue

hair loss

headaches

You get the idea, even without reading the entire alpha listing of symptoms. Throw in weight gain, fear of death, existential anger, and an incredibly divisive political climate tearing families and friends apart…and you have the picture of my life right now. The difficulty is in parsing out which of these symptoms is physiological in its genesis, which emotional or psychological. This distinction is probably only academic – the real question being: what can I change and what do I just have to find a way to manage?

I never intended Jenion to become a blog about life as a middle-aged woman coming to terms with what that means. As an “elevator speech”, that sentence sucks. Perhaps that’s why I’ve contorted so many posts to end with some kind of hopeful upturn, even when it felt falsely peppy. What I did intend Jenion to be – an unflinchingly honest account of my own quest to be a better person, life a fuller life, make some kind of difference in my world (and if that helped anyone else in their quest in any way, that would be great) – got a little off track. I love Jenion; I love posting once a week – in some ways, it has taken the place of a journal. But I love it most when I speak from my heart, not from my self-delusions. If that doesn’t feel peppy and uplifting enough for anyone else to read, so be it. For those prone to worry about me: I’m ok, just struggling with this ordinary thing called life. Just like everyone does.

In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

–from “The Layers” by Stanley Kunitz

 

 

Change the Glass…

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jhnsn728/shares/L7G2cX

I’m in New Mexico visiting my parents, and we’ve had a great week. I hadn’t planned to post today, thinking a vacation from my Thursday posts would be a good thing all around. But I decided I would take a moment to share this quote my mom has hanging on their refrigerator:

If you see your glass as half empty, pour it into a smaller glass and stop bitching.

Perspective. In the literal sense, it is something you gain a new appreciation for in the high desert of northern New Mexico, where you can travel toward a peak on the horizon for hours without seeming to grow any closer. Metaphorically speaking, perspective has everything to do with the measure against which you compare your experiences. Change the measure, and you may find that your attitude adjusts for the better.

Vacation has been a wonderful opportunity to work on my perspective. I hope you have time and opportunity for the same – soon!

 

Double Nickels

 Today is my birthday.

I’m 55. Double nickels.

Birthdays naturally call us to reflection, to assessment, to accounting. “What, I wonder, should I celebrate on this birthday – a life well spent or a future where more needs to be done?”(Doug Thompson’s 2002 article, “Dealing with the Double-Nickel“)

I could focus on the past, where there have been adventures and loves and moments of “glad grace.” I could spy, scattered among the litter of years left behind, all of my greatest experiences and best impulses. It seems only yesterday…there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I could shine (see poem, below).

Or, for a different take on the past, I could remember the first time I gambled, at a casino in Colorado. I played the nickel slots all night, plugging my winnings back in, over and over. The coins turned my fingers gray, then black. When I left hours later, they poured all those shiny silver nickels into a counting machine – and handed back to me the same ten dollar bill I started the evening with. Sometimes my life, on reflection, feels like that night – plugging my nickels in over and over only to end in the same place I started. Breaking even; a lot of change with the only visible difference being the grime left on my fingers.

Or I can forget about both sorrow and cynicism, and instead of parsing the past look to the future as if there is much yet to be lived and gained and created; as if my life has been neither gloriously squandered nor tediously labored at with little to show – but instead spent (nickel after nickel) preparing for this day. And the next, if I am lucky.

Ah, birthday angst. What are you good for, huh? Perhaps a little perspective?

Last night, discussing the annual birthday funk, a friend shared the Billy Collins poem, below. The ten year old narrator in the poem laments the loss of his single-digit years, remembering their magic while recognizing that the sad realities of adult consciousness are upon him. The poem points to both the pathos we feel at the passage of time AND the absurdity of lamenting it at each mile-marker.

Last night also brought lessons in how to approach looking forward on the eve of another birthday. President Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention was moving and inspiring – reminding me that hope is never wasted. We – every single day – get to choose our stance. In the minutes immediately after the speech I thought of Viktor Frankl, whose words have so often pointed me in a positive direction: Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. And into that moment of profound reflection, my dear friend Molly tweeted this: “Emotional re-set. Let’s all wake up tomorrow and be better. Do better. Lead better. Speak better. #goals”

So, that’s where I’ve landed this morning, smack dab on my double-nickels birthday: with perspective on the past and goals for the future. That feels about right. Here’s to believing that 55 is my lucky year – because that’s how I plan on using my personal power to choose.

On Turning Ten by Billy Collins

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light–
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

 

 

 

 

outward thrust of joy

You know who you are – those of you waiting for something to change in your life in order for you to feel happier, better understood, more passionate. Those of you who feel stuck in a place you never really intended to be. Those of you who feel called to…something else, even if you don’t quite know what that is. For each of you, I want the more you’re longing for. The future you don’t quite know how to reach. And I promise you two things. First, I promise that I will continue to hold your heart’s desire  in my thoughts and in my prayers. Second, I promise that whenever the opportunity arises to offer something tangible – and within my power or ability to give – by way of support or encouragement to another late-bloomer (like me, like you) I will.

–from Jenion, August 2, 2012

A few weeks ago, I led a cycling retreat with a colleague. In preparation for the retreat, I reread several of my blog entries related to cycling, bikes and RAGBRAI. I came across the post I published after a grueling ride from Mt. Vernon to Anamosa, Iowa. That morning, I saw more riders quit than on any other day of RAGBRAI I’ve ridden, a vicious head-wind making forward momentum – and even breathing – extremely difficult. Riders flagged down the sag wagons in record numbers, some in tears. Those of us who persevered were required to dig deep for any intrinsic motivation we could find that would keep us cranking the pedals. Finally, words of encouragement began to filter back from those ahead of us. “Take heart! In half a mile the road turns 90 degrees and you won’t be facing directly into the wind!” We held on, moving forward slowly and with grim determination.

Re-reading what I wrote about that ride took me back into the moment. I easily recalled the incendiary joy I experienced when we made that right angle turn and (shortly thereafter) arrived at the mid-day stop in Springville. It all came rushing back to me: the sights, the sounds, the crowd of jubilant dancers in the street. Rumi says that when you do things from your soul, you “feel a river moving in you, a joy”. That July afternoon, thousands of us suddenly found ourselves floating in that river of joy together.

Remembering, I wondered – why is the experience of joy always such a surprise?

By joy, I don’t mean happiness – and I don’t mean to put happiness down, either; just to make a distinction. What I mean when I talk about joy is that more rare emotional experience that begins in your very core. It pushes upward, through your gut and your heart; up from your chest into your head – radiating through your skin, shooting out of your fingertips.

Joy has an outward impulse. It can be overwhelming, fierce, freeing – it makes you want to open your arms wide to encompass everyone – embrace everyone – in that energy flow. Perhaps that is partly why we are so often taken by surprise when we experience joy: we are surprised to find ourselves suddenly free of our “me-centeredness”. Whatever anxieties and fears have weighed us down disappear and are replaced with a higher-frequency vibration that lifts us. It’s natural expression is a desire to share, to lift others with us. (Such was the force behind the passage I wrote and quoted, above.)

If joy not only feels that amazing to us, but also finds its best expression in reaching out to others, how might our lives and our world change if we intentionally created the conditions that might lead to it? Every day can’t be a peak experience, like that day on RAGBRAI. But there are elements of it that can be incorporated into my days more frequently: challenging myself to attempt something that stretches my skills and abilities; engaging with others in reaching toward or building something that matters in our communities; being out in nature and experiencing my own self as creature, and as such, part of this great creation we call Earth.

Couldn’t we all use a little more joy? Wouldn’t our world flourish if we each radiated a bit more high-frequency energy? Here’s what Parker Palmer has to say about it, as he reflects upon a Mary Oliver poem:

For me, late one night, it was seeing a full moon through the latticework of winter-stripped trees. I don’t know what it will be today. But I do know that keeping my eyes and ears open for something that will “kill me with delight” is — to quote Mary Oliver again — “to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation.” There’s always something, and it’s a good way to live.

It requires no special talent or effort to look at our world and point out the things that numb us, or dumb us down, or depress us. In fact, it’s a no-brainer! But becoming keenly and consistently aware of what’s good, true, beautiful, and life-giving around us and within us demands a discipline: we must open our eyes, minds, and hearts. And we must keep them open.   — Parker Palmer, “To Instruct Myself Over and Over in Joy”

Perhaps if we manage, as Parker Palmer and Mary Oliver suggest, to instruct ourselves in joy, we will no longer find joy so surprising. Instead, perhaps we will begin to experience it as a welcome and frequent visitor – one that opens us up and makes us so much more available to others and the earth around us.

Love Is

“Love and say it with your life.” 

–Augustine of Hippo

Saturday afternoon found me driving through some of the most rural parts of Iowa. You’ll know you’ve arrived where I was going when you’re almost to South Dakota and not quite in Minnesota.

Early in the drive, I talked on the phone (using the bluetooth feature in my car, in case you were worried about my safety). But there’s virtually no cell service west of Waterloo, so my preferred recourse for entertainment was Iowa Public Radio. A podcast called Snap Judgment began airing, and I found myself transported to Joplin, Missouri, May 22, 2011 – the day an EF-5 multiple vortex tornado tore the town apart.

Like me, you may recall news stories about a group of people who survived the storm huddled together in a gas station beer cooler. All told, 24 people survived in that small space, while everything around them was destroyed. People sheltered in beer coolers in other gas stations and didn’t survive. But for some reason, these folks did.

The podcast revisited that day, talking to several individuals who had been present. I listened to a mix of their reminiscences and audio taken at the time of the tornado. One young man spoke of getting to the gas station with his best friend, moments before the tornado hit, and pounding on the locked doors to be let in. He told about lying in the dark cooler as the storm raged outside, fearing for his life. Into that chaos, his buddy whispered “Hey man, I love you.”

That’s when they cut back to the audio recorded that day in the beer cooler. You hear a youthful male voice say, “I love you. I love all you all.” He’s answered by other voices, calling out to the strangers sheltering beside them in the dark, in the storm: “I love you.”

Listening, alone in my car and hurtling down the highway with nothing in my sights but blue sky and green, green cornfields, I felt goosebumps break out on my arms. Tears came easily to my eyes, rolling down my cheeks unchecked. Love. It is the natural state and impulse of the human soul, I thought. We get busy, we get distracted, and we lose sight of this truth amongst all the static modern life throws our way. But love comes back to us in moments of extremity: its the impulse that made so many on a plane over Pennsylvania or in the twin towers on 9/11 call their loved ones; the urge that made people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando text love to their mothers and partners; it is in the reflex that makes brave souls run toward a burning building or a car crash to help – or causes a Dallas police officer to shield a mother and her sons from a sniper’s bullets.

Love is our highest calling and our most natural state.

Love is the only house, as the song says, big enough for all the pain in this world.

Love makes us human. And yet, being human, we constantly lose sight of it.

Thinking this, isolated and alone in the bubble of my car, I wept. I allowed everything within me to mourn a week in which all of America seemed to have forgotten about love; to have forgotten that we are made to love one another. I cried for Philando Castile; for Alton Sterling, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, and Laquan McDonald. My tears fell for Lorne Ahrens, and Michael Krol; for Michael Smith, Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa. I cried for their families, friends, communities and for all of us gripped by the overwhelming grief of their deaths. I cried for my own inability to know how to help or change things, and I cried because I am complicit in all these deaths through my own privilege and inaction. I cried because the impulse to love is not enough if it doesn’t lead to some expression: I love you. I love all of you.

In the aftermath of my crying jag (seriously, it was an ugly cry with snot and everything), I remembered a conversation I had once with my Dad. I had been recalling my grandfather telling me about the gun he kept in his glovebox “because of the niggers”. I told my father, who had just been named the local NAACP Chapter’s Man of the Year, that I was proud of him for overcoming the racist attitudes he was raised with. He said, “That’s your mom’s doing. I fell in love with her and she taught me to be a better person.”

There it was again: love. That powerful force that calms fear in chaos and can teach us to be better versions of ourselves. Love, it shelters and it nudges. And it is what will get us through these dark days if we allow our truest selves, our deepest humanity, to be our first and best impulse. After last week, after the recent months of anger and discontent and violence, it must be clear that choosing love is not the easy route; nor am I advocating some fluffy Pollyanna-ish wish-upon-a-star. Love in action is often hard. It calls upon us to stand up and speak up and lead up. It calls us to be our best selves and to look for the best selves not just in others but in “The Others” – whomever that is in our lives. When it gets particularly difficult to do, take this sage advice from C. S. Lewis, ““Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did.” Acting from a place of love will always take us somewhere better than acting from fear, disillusionment, anger, blame or finger-pointing ever will.

Whatever darkness we are in: a beer cooler in a tornado, or caught up in a wicked storm of discontent, violence, divisive politics – love is the light that will illuminate it. Move toward that light; choose love.

I love you.

I love all of you,

Jenion

 

Unburied

So, this master brings together three of his servants and gives each of them a bag of gold. The first two invest the gold and earn tidy returns on it. The third buries the money to keep it safe. After a while, the master calls the servants back and asks what they’ve done with his gold. The first two explain that they invested the money, and are happy to return it – double its original worth. The third guy says, “Listen, I was afraid of you and what you would do if I lost the money. So I buried it – and here it is, every penny just as it was when you gave it to me.” The master is very pleased with his first two servants, but kicks the third one to the curb, crying, “Get out of here, you lazy imbecile.”

Actually, that is a heavily paraphrased version of the story. If you think you’ve heard it before, you probably have – it is a famous parable from the gospel of Matthew.

Before today, I’d heard this parable literally dozens of times. I never really thought it was great shakes as parables go. Plus, being what is called “risk averse” when it comes to cash, I’ve always identified with the servant who buries the money – and I couldn’t really understand the master’s overreaction. I mean, what would happen if that poor fearful servant had actually lost his masters’ money? That would have been so much worse than returning exactly what he was given, wouldn’t it?

Today, I heard it differently.

Today, the person telling the story said quietly, right at the end, “Imagine. He was given a treasure and he buried it.”

Just like that, I finally GOT it.

We have, indeed, each been given a treasure – made up of our talents, skills, gifts, love, heart, etc. That treasure is intended to be used, grown, shared, expanded. Not hoarded. Not kept from proliferating and adding to the world’s good.

Not buried.

 

 

 

Tiptoeing through life

“We tiptoe through life hoping to safely make it to death.”  — Unknown

I was sitting on an examination table in my doctor’s office, wearing a gigantic shapeless “gown”, a paper blanket across my lap, when I read the line above. I think it would have struck me in another setting, but given where I was it seemed imbued with special significance.

When my doctor entered the room, she asked what I was reading. I showed her the book’s cover and read the line to her. She said, “So, what’s on your bucket list that you haven’t done yet?”

I drew a blank.

She waited for an answer, but when one wasn’t forthcoming, she said, “Well, it’s probably a good idea to get clear on the things you still want to do so you can get busy doing them.”

Its not that there aren’t things on my bucket list (though I don’t have or want a formal one). But most of them are really big things I don’t ever say out loud. Most of them are things I don’t even know how to articulate, much less begin. Many of them are things I can’t do and tiptoe safely at the same time.

In her book, Traveling with Pomegranates, Sue Monk Kidd talks about entering her fifties and, suddenly, fearing death in a way that was new. At the same time, she was overcome with a desire to write fiction – which she had never done. These fears and desires warred within her – and as I reread the book this year, her story resonated deeply within me. The fact that she went on to publish a stunning first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, should fill me with hope.

Instead, I keep getting stuck at the notion that death hovers on a horizon that feels exponentially closer than it did a few years ago. I vacillate between acting as if I can hide from it and wanting to explode into next week shouting, “Let’s see what you’ve got!” Usually, I very quickly fall back into the life-long pattern of tiptoeing.

“We tiptoe through life hoping to safely make it to death.”  What an absurd thought, an absurd way of being in this life. No matter how we live, life ends at the same point for each of us – death. Why do we allow this one future event keep us from living as fully as we can before it arrives?

As I’ve sat with this line, looking at my own tiptoeing ways, I’ve realized a couple of things. First, I’m going to stop warning my loved ones to “Be safe” every time they take off on a trip or an adventure. I’m going to tell them to “Have fun!” “Enjoy” “Go big!” instead. They don’t need my encouragement to play it safe – most of us take that to the extreme. But we could all stand a little encouragement to go for it (whatever it is). For the children and young people in my life, I want to model that playing it safe is not the paramount value in life. They’ll hear plenty of messages about avoiding risks, mine doesn’t need to be one of them.

Second, I’m going try to hold and nurture possibilities for myself as if they are newborn children – feeding them, encouraging them, forgoing sleep if need be. I’ll keep reading books that exhort me to dream big and take steps to make those dreams happen. And the next time someone asks me what’s on my bucket list I’m going to give them an answer. Because I know what I want – and it’s about time I stopped tiptoeing around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love Yourself?

Last summer, while visiting my brother in Chicago, I insisted he stop the car so I could take a photo of a yoga studio. Not because it looked particularly different from any of the other store-fronts or even yoga studios we had already passed. I wanted to take a photo of its name: Self-Centered Yoga. I wondered what the focus of this particular yoga studio was: Centering the self? Centered on the self? Selfishly self-referenced? It struck me as funny, and I wondered if the owners were knowingly playing on the irony of the name – that to many people who don’t practice yoga, those who do are entirely too self-centered.

I share this story to illustrate my own ambivalence about the topic of loving oneself. Maybe being self-centered has gotten a bad rap? How and how much are we meant to love ourselves?

Even the bible presupposes self-love: the second of the greatest commandments (Mark 12:31) tells us to “love your neighbor as yourself”. We get ample instruction in loving our neighbors throughout our childhoods – share, be nice, “stupid” is a bad word…but very little information is forthcoming about exactly how we are to love ourselves.

A couple of months ago, a friend shared with me that she was responsible for chauffering a speaker for the day, and that he had been very inspiring. She sent a link to his Ted Talk, and I watched it. In telling his own inspiring story as a survivor of trauma, he shared that one of the most powerful things he’d done to bring about change in his own life was to love himself; to believe he is both loved and worthy of love. Looking himself in the eyes in a mirror, he tells himself he is loved.  (Here is the link to Sasha Joseph Neulinger’s powerful Ted talk: https://youtu.be/K_WL5iqvPlY)

A few weeks ago, someone I admire told a story about how using an affirmation of self-love has improved her energy, her relationship with her husband, and her ability to focus on her life goals. I admit, while I kept my skepticism to myself, I was doubtful. This story wasn’t about a healing response to trauma – it was about a young woman trying to live her best life. Hmmm.

I am currently reading a book which suggests ways we can make changes in our lives to live more in line with who and what we want to be. Every chapter ends with a list of “practical” steps or tools to take to accomplish this. Every list ends with “Love Yourself”. It took me several chapters to pick up on this, but then I went back and checked. Yep, every chapter ends with the exhortation. Love yourself.

And then last week I saw the video I shared at the top of this post. I was very moved, seeing this girl’s emotion upon realizing that the doll looks like her. She hugs it to her tightly and says, “I love you.” This simple phrase speaks volumes: you look like me and I love you; I need to believe AND express that I am loveable.

When the same message is repeated over and over again, and directed toward me (as opposed to being a repetitive cultural refrain or social media meme), I think it is important to pay attention. So, what am I supposed to be taking away from this particular thread in my life, popping up repeatedly and insistently over the last eight weeks?

Success coach and author, Jen Sincero (I’d like to take her name as my alter-ego!), says:

“We’re born knowing how to trust our instincts, how to breathe deeply, how to eat only when we’re hungry, how to not care about what anyone thinks of our singing voices, dance moves, or hair-dos, we know how to play, create, and love without holding back. Then, as we grow and learn from the people around us, we replace many of these primal understandings with negative false beliefs, fear, shame and self-doubt…And while there are countless ways that we rip ourselves off, there’s one way in particular that is, without a doubt, the most rampant and the most devastating of all: we invest everything we’ve got in believing that we’re not good enough. We arrive here as perfect little bundles of joy and then set about the task of learning to un-love ourselves!”   (from You Are A Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life)

Fear. Shame. Self-doubt. If I am honest with myself, I’ve invested significantly more of my personal capital in these three than in self love. It is undoubtedly true that this has been to my own detriment, as it keeps me from taking risks, from moving forward with confidence, etc. More important, what I am beginning to understand is that it has also been detrimental to the world I live in and am helping to co-create. Fear, shame and self-doubt cause me to respond to the world by closing in on myself, shielding myself from the prying eyes of criticism or ridicule for being the loser-failure I think I might be. And that closing in (those months of binge-watching “Castle” reruns, the 750+ games of “Monkey Wrench” word search, the daily hours of retweets about politics) keeps me focused on anything BUT impacting the world by sharing my unique gifts and best self. And if I am truthful, harshly judging myself leads me to be much more judgmental about other folks. I want to start labeling them: idiot, moron, baby, coward.

Frankly, I am not afraid of becoming a self-aggrandizing megalomaniac, trumpeting statements like “I have a great mind, one of the best minds”. I don’t have that in me. But “imagine,” says Jen Sincero, “how different your reality would be (and the reality of everyone surrounding you) if you woke up every morning certain of your own lovability and your critically important role on this planet.” That might be a reality very worth investing in.

 

Dear Facebook Friends: This NOT Another Open Letter

“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words.”  –Roland Barthes

Dear Facebook Friends:

This week I’ve read a lot of emotion-packed pleas on Facebook (and Twitter). From both sides of the political aisle, I’ve read about: why we need gun control and why gun control would be the end of American freedom; about the threat of radical Islam and the danger of painting one religion with too broad a brush stroke; I’ve read that we should pray for those murdered and injured in Orlando and that offering our prayers is hollow and meaningless; I’ve read people blaming, shaming, and pointing metaphorical fingers and I’ve read people offering love, support and forgiveness. I’m sure you’ve seen them all, as well.

A number of the things I’ve read have been titled, “An Open Letter To…” This is not one of those. First, because one thing that has struck me this week – the long week of anger over the Stanford rape case, the gunning down of a young performer, the Orlando mass shooting, and the small child grabbed by an alligator at a Disney resort – is that we spend way too much time casting our fellow beings as “The Other”. Most of the postings labeled “open letters” are thinly veiled lectures directed at rather than to an imagined and stereotyped other. Second, I’m addressing this letter to my Facebook friends: those people with whom, in one way or another, I am connected off-line as well as on (though I’m sharing it with you, too!)

Here’s why I’m writing. A few nights ago, my dear friend (whom I love and know to be a truly good person) said in a four-way messenger conversation, “I hope you all don’t equate me with a mass murderer because we don’t see eye to eye, politically.” While I had never considered blaming my friend, it occurred to me that I have many friends and loved ones whose views differ from my own – and who might share my friend’s concern. Just as I have many friends and loved ones who have suffered at the hands of prejudice, discrimination and harmful policies. (Some people will identify with both groups.) The many cultural and political issues we face are complex and deeply painful – and our society is far from having it all figured out.

So I want to make some promises to you as we move forward into the next months of what, I fear, will be an increasingly divided and divisive climate in America. Not only are we in the midst of a heated political election season, we are also engulfed in waves of global civil upheaval and unrest, and we are facing – with our brothers and sisters the world over – the very real consequences of climate change. In the midst of all of this, I want to make the following promises to you:

  1. I will own and manage my emotions. I understand that I am not free from emotional response, and that sometimes my emotion overwhelms my desire to be thoughtful and kind; therefore, I will consider very carefully before I hit the button that publishes or reposts something about world or national events. And if my emotion has held sway and I’ve posted something unkind, I will own that and apologize. However, I will call out politicians and celebrities – people intentionally in the public eye – whose words or actions are insupportable to me, along with those whom I believe to be right. Fair warning: this includes Donald Drumpf, whom I consider to be in the insupportable category.
  2. I will not rant arrogantly at you as if you are not intelligent, educated, thinking persons. I just read a post last night which spoke down to all readers, ending with the comment, “if you don’t agree with everything I’ve outlined, you are an idiot.” There is a difference between posts which state a different opinion than mine and those that rant arrogantly at anyone who disagrees with their view. I will strive to discern this difference.
  3. I may type deliberately inflammatory responses to your posts but I will delete them before I hit send.
  4. If I fail in any of these areas, and you point it out to me, I will not respond with knee-jerk defensiveness.  First and foremost, I will appreciate that you brought it to my attention, especially if you did so with generosity of spirit. Then, I will try to see it from your perspective, allowing that I am often wrong, and my communication regularly imperfect.
  5. I will engage in debate as long as it remains respectful, even if it is emotionally charged I won’t always specifically invite debate – I have some brave friends who do so, and I am in awe of their willingness to follow these invitations with open and thoughtful responses. When there is debate, I reserve the right to delete anything on my own timeline if I feel it is inappropriate – including (and probably most often) my own comments.