choosing

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!

…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?!)

Let’s Call It “Experience”

“Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”

— Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

When I was a kid, I wanted an Easy Bake Oven.  Think about it: a toy in which a lightbulb provides the heat source to bake all kinds of delectable confections and a kid obsessed with delicious goodies.  Why wouldn’t the two be destined for one another?  But, I never got one.  Turns out, I wasn’t alone in my disappointment.  The other day I was talking with friends, and someone said, in the stilted tones of a disgruntled 10-year-old,  “I never got one either. My mom thought they were stupid.”  My own mother’s sentiments exactly.

The Christmas orgy of gift-giving affords many opportunities to think about what to do, or what it means, when you don’t get what you want.  Disappointment in the gifts received is only the tip of that iceberg.  We hang so many hopes and expectations on the holiday — we want someone to stick a bow on us and say, “You’re my present this year” like in the coffee commercial.  We want that moment when we are completely aware that our life is rich and full of meaning (resulting in our buddy Clarence getting his wings).  We want to sing in four-part harmony about the white Christmas of our dreams while wearing gorgeous red-velvet dresses…ok, maybe that one is just me!  You get the picture, though.

I, personally, have been lucky in two ways.  First, growing up in a family with six children and a limited income, I had many opportunities to learn that I might not get everything I wanted.  I learned many coping mechanisms for this, from swallowing my disappointment with a 2000 calorie chaser of fudge to learning to be happy with what I did have.  Admittedly, some mechanisms were more helpful than others.

The second way in which I have been lucky is that, in the past year or so, I’ve gotten more than I ever expected on so many levels. I won a cruise, for crying out loud, not to mention healing relationships and recovering self-esteem along with some pretty amazing bike rides.  And I’ve been learning healthier coping mechanisms too.

Which, it turns out I’ve needed recently.  I got so accustomed to getting whatever it seemed I wanted, that I started to forget that life doesn’t work that way 100% of the time.  And BLAM! I ran smack up against it: not getting something I really wanted. Had this been something material, like an iPhone or a Nook, I think I would have taken it in stride.  But in the realm of emotional desires, I’ve discovered it can be much harder to find a way to manage extreme disappointment.  Here’s how I’m proceeding:

1.  I remind myself of the Randy Pausch quote, above.  Experience, as he refers to it, is just another name for living life as fully as possible.  And that is, deep down, what I truly want.

2.  I remind myself to be grateful for all I do have.  The list is long, and astounds me when I really think about it.

3.  I surround myself with people who make me laugh, to balance the private moments when, sometimes, I cry.

4.  I take action in other aspects of my life in order to feel positive momentum:  craft room clean, check; menu planned for the week, check; Tupperware organized, check. (If you know me, you’d better be laughing at this last one – when have I EVER been the kind of person who has orderly Tupperware?)

In these ways, even the awful feeling of not getting your heart’s desire can be transformed. Not what you expected, but not at all shabby.  And you’re able to remember that gifts come in their own time.  I believe that hope and patience are excellent qualities to cultivate because they contribute to resilience in the face of disappointment. And because, despite what you feel today, you can never know what the future holds.

Which brings me back to the Easy Bake Oven.  I received a Christmas gift on which there was a tag which read, “From Santa:  Sorry!  I’m a few years late with this. ENJOY!”  I’m sure you know what was waiting under the wrapping paper. Sometimes, if not always, you do get the things you want. Maybe in a slightly delayed time frame, or from a source you never anticipated.  Being ready for either outcome is, perhaps, what experience is meant to teach us.

Taboo No More

Sunday night, my friend Wendy and I went on a whirlwind Christmas shopping expedition.  As we finished two intense hours and were heading home, Wendy asked if I would mind stopping briefly at K-Mart.  She said she gets many stocking stuffers and gag gifts there each year, but often forgets to go there until she’s been everywhere else first. I don’t frequent K-Mart regularly myself, but I didn’t mind stopping.

As we wandered down one of the wide “center” aisles, filled with special gift items, I happened to see a gift box of Tabu — the scent I wore and loved throughout college.  The gift box came with a spray bottle of cologne, a small purse-sized bottle and a tube of scented lotion for the amazing price tag of…wait for it…$9.90.

Me:  I didn’t even know they still made this stuff!  I wore this all the way through college.  I used to love it!

Wendy:  Then you have to buy it, an early Christmas present for yourself!  Come on, you can’t beat the price!

Me:  It probably stinks.  I would guess that what I liked at 19 isn’t the same as what I like thirty years later!

Wendy:  No, you’ll probably still love it!  Come one, you have to get it.

And so I left K-Mart, the proud owner of the Tabu gift set.  And guess what?  I have been wearing it ever since, and…I smell goooood.  I smell like carnations, and spice, and a little powder in addition to young, hopeful, and idealistic.  I thought my tastes had taken me into more sophisticated sensory territory back in graduate school when I discovered Perry Ellis perfume.  But I guess I have always been a Tabu girl masquerading as a designer scent profile!

This has led me to wonder what other “childish” likes or pursuits I’ve given up in the name of maturity but should reconsider now.  As you know, I’ve already gone back to biking as a favorite pastime, and a couple of years ago I discovered that I still enjoy roller skating.  But what else did I decide, prematurely, I was too sophisticated, too sua-vee, too plain OLD for?  Here is a partial list I’d like to check out now, and see how they fare:

  • Strawberry soda pop.  Sickeningly sweet or deliciously decadent?
  • Yarn crafts: macrame, God’s-eyes, crochet squares that somehow never got sewn into an afghan.
  • Cheesy made-for-television Christmas movies.  OK, who am I kidding, I never gave these up!  ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas and FaLaLaLa Lifetime fight for my viewership nightly every December.
  • Driving around the countryside on hot summer nights, windows down, music blaring (will it be the same if the music isn’t playing on an 8-track tape?).
  • “Russian” Tea.  An instant tea and Tang concoction.  Hmmmm…
  • Bonfire, guitars and folk singing on the “beach” (using the term loosely for a sandbar along the Mississippi River).

As is the case for most people, I think, I was in a hurry to grow up — or at least to appear grown up to the rest of the world.  “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me” (1 Corinthians) was a credo I took seriously.  I never wanted people to think of me as childish, so I was quick to monitor my choices for what they communicated about my level of maturity.  This bible verse talks about taking up adult responsibilities and mature thought processes, definitely important for all.  However, as in all things, a balance is called for.   “And he said: ‘I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’ ” says Matthew 18:3.  The balance between these two good admonitions is what I am seeking in my life now.

When I was in college, there were numerous silly things we did to amuse ourselves.  Last summer, I had a small reunion with several friends, and we resurrected our “snapping turtle” skills (see photo, below).  I can’t tell you (because I’ve never known) how this started or why, but we laughed so hard attempting the snapping turtle faces, 25+ years out of practice, that I realized it is time to stop worrying about appearing childish or foolish – and to start reveling in it!  Sincere enjoyment in the moment is childlike, not childish, and hits that lovely balance I’m seeking.

Now, how about it?  Anyone for a strawberry soda – my treat!

The Myth of “Timing”

I have often been asked, “How did you know that this time would be different?  That you would be able to make changes and they would stick?  It must have been the right time!”  Or, people have told me, “I know I need to (insert a change) but this isn’t a good time for me.”  I’ve been thinking about this, and I’ve decided that I have a strong opinion about this whole topic of looking for the right time.

The only time I have FOR SURE is this moment.  Next month, next year, three years from now when I am “ready”…those are times that may or may not ever arrive.  This moment, right now, is what I have to work with.

I am learning to let the future take care of itself, and to focus my energy on this moment.  That doesn’t mean I’ve given up the idea of planning, setting goals, or having things that I aspire to.  It just means that these goals and aspirations don’t bring themselves into being.   The whole, honest, and hard to grasp truth is that the timing may never be “right” because I decide the time.  If  I wait patiently or passively for conditions to turn favorable, I lose the gift of this moment – and the window of opportunity to create the life I want.

Thinking about this, the past sometimes threatens to emotionally overwhelm me.  It hits me anew just how much of my life has been lost to thinking the future would magically change me or the conditions in which I lived.  When I was unhappy in high school, I told myself I just needed to hang on till college, then things would somehow become the way I wanted them to be.  In college, graduation would take care of it…in my 30s I was waiting to establish a stronger professional persona…in my 40s I was waiting to be more financially secure.  I waited for the “right time” or for “the timing to feel right” for a lot of things I hoped to have and do in my life.  Consequently, all I managed to actually accomplish was…waiting.  Waiting is passive and reactive, not the words I want in my epitaph!

In the past couple of years, I have lost more than 130 pounds.  The day I lost my first pound was a day that I decided to make a healthy choice.  Each pound lost (or, sigh, gained) since has been an aggregation of singular, in-the-moment choices.  My relationships have deepened and grown as well.  I believe this is the result of repeatedly choosing people right now over other options for spending my time.  As the speed of my days accelerates with age, I am consciously aware that the people I love are also only promised this moment.  I don’t want to regret squandered opportunities later.

I don’t remember this every minute of every day.  And I am not always happy, in hindsight, with the choices I make. I can still fall prey to the allure of waiting for the propitious time, especially if what I want/need to do takes me outside my comfort zone.  I want to put off difficult conversations or procrastinate the mundane tasks that lead me in the direction of my dreams (I mean, who wants to keep their resume up-to-date?  But what if just the perfect opportunity comes along and you need to act swiftly to snag it?)   However, there is a direct and very real correlation between the fullness of my life and how well I maintain this orientation to the present.

For me, learning to live consciously in the moment has been a life-altering experience of magnitude.  So to those of you who are contemplating real change in your lives, I offer this perspective — “timing” is a myth.  Make an active choice to live fully right now, and you may find that NOW is the PERFECT time, after all!

Learning to Hear

“The first duty of love, is to listen.”  — Paul Tillich

In September 2002, Heather Whetstone, who had been the first deaf Miss America, had cochlear implant surgery which allowed her to hear again.  When they turned the device on, she had to begin the complicated process of learning to hear, something she hadn’t done since she was a small child.

I remember watching her being interviewed on television the very next day, day two of being a hearing person.  She described little sounds she was able to identify.  She said she was in the bathroom and heard the sounds of putting on makeup and spraying her hair.  Then, she turned the water on.  She said, “And it was the most beautiful sound.  It reminded me of my hero Helen Keller.  She felt the water and understood that it had a name.  My joy was like that.”

I want to remember to find the joy in small things — waking refreshed in the morning, good nutritious food, a body that is healthy and works in all its parts. I want to linger on the goodness in my day instead of focus and obsess on the petty annoyances and frustrations.  I want to practice seeing the beauty in people who cross my path rather than picking out their flaws.

I also want to refresh my skills in the art of listening.  The past couple of weeks a parade of young people needing love and guidance have marched through my office. They have frustrated me, they have fought my efforts to assist them, they have worked hard to keep me at arm’s length.  I don’t blame them for that — I’m an administrator sticking my nose into their business, into the parts of their lives they would prefer no one even notice.  But I need to remember to hear what lies beneath the surface.   Sue Patton Thoele says, “Deep listening is miraculous for both listener and speaker.  When someone receives us with open-hearted, non-judging, intensely interested listening our spirits expand.”  I think we all want this, for ourselves and others!

If, as Paul Tillich says, the first duty of love is to listen, then I must try to do my duty. Listen closely enough to shut out the distractions and ambient noise so I can focus on what is important.  In other words, listen with my ears to what is being spoken, but hear with my heart what is being said.

As it turns out…

…curbing the violent thoughts which run rampant in my head while driving is extremely difficult.  (In case you didn’t read last week’s entry, I have decided that conquering my violent thoughts is the new frontier.)  On Saturday, I grumbled about another driver in the Barnes and Noble parking lot, realizing only after I verbalized my thoughts that I had a passenger — and she had read my blog entry only that morning.  We looked, startled, at one another then burst into laughter.  Embarrassed laughter, on my part.  Humbling moments, such as this, serve to either convince me that a resolution I have made is hopeless or to recommit to it with greater vigor.  Which direction will I go?!

A few years ago, I read several publications, and watched some interesting films (What the Bleep? and The Secret) on the concept of the “Law of Attraction”.  The basic concept, and I am seriously simplifying here, is that we give off energy that attracts like energy to us.  I have experimented with this concept, and while my experiments have been limited, I have found that it works — to a point.  It’s all about focus: I need to focus on what I DO want, not what I DON’T want, to attract.  Behind the wheel, I am always focused on what I don’t want — a slow driver, or a tourist, or someone who doesn’t use turn signals, in front of me.  My friend, Sara, can vouch for the fact that I seem to be a magnet for unsure and infirm drivers.  This is one of the reasons that I am certain that I will have a better experience when driving if I somehow curb my thinking.

But it goes deeper than wanting a more pleasant driving experience.  Many minds more gifted than mine, from theologians like Pierre Theilhard de Chardin to visionaries like the woman who became known simply as Peace Pilgrim, have written about the need to take a close, hard look at what we allow to exist in our hearts and in our heads.  That these thoughts have real consequences in the world.

Many years ago, I was introduced to one writer who has had a profound impact on my understanding, if not my actual behavior. Etty Hillesum wrote extensive diaries and letters about her spiritual transformation during the period leading up to and culminating in her death in Auschwitz.  She had many offers from admirers and friends to go into hiding, however, she chose to work openly to try to relieve some of the suffering of her people — and to share in their suffering herself when the time came.  Before she was sent to the death camp, she gave her diaries to a friend for safe-keeping, with the instruction to publish them if she died.

In her diaries, which were finally published in the 1980s, Etty speaks eloquently to the point of managing your inner dialogue.  “I see no other solution…than to turn inwards and to root out all the rottenness there. I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we have first changed ourselves.  And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned from this war.  That we must look inside ourselves and nowhere else.”  By February, 1942, when Etty wrote this, she had seen enough inhumanity that she could easily have been forgiven for vilifying the Enemy.  But she took another route.  “By our own hatred…our greatest injury is one we inflict upon ourselves…True peace will come only when every individual finds peace within himself; when we have all vanquished and transformed our hatred for our fellow human beings of whatever race–even into love one day.”

You may be thinking it is a far cry from rising to noble heights while living through one of the greatest human atrocities of the modern world to training oneself not to curse at other drivers.  But that’s not really true.  How can I root out and unlearn my own ingrained prejudices if I can’t even curb this petty vitriol?  That is the real question behind my desire to get a grip on my driving problem.  Which takes me back to the question: decide its hopeless or recommit with renewed vigor?  Taking my cue from Etty Hillesum, what other choice is there if I value peace in this world?

The H Word

“The way I figure it, Heaven and Hell are right here on Earth.  Heaven is living in your hopes and Hell is living in your fears.  It’s up to each individual which one he chooses.”  Jelly paused.  “I told that to the Chink once and he said, ‘Every fear is part hope and every hope is part fear — quit dividing things up and taking sides.”

–Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about hope.  First, I read a reflection titled “Fragile Frightful Hope” ( http://wp.me/p3KXs-wK ) in which Randy Greenwald suggests that many of us take shelter in the idea of ourselves as realists in order to avoid the fear inherent in allowing ourselves to hope.  Then, on Tuesday, I attended the annual fundraising banquet for the House of Hope, (http://www.houseofhopecr.org/) an organization offering hope to many women in this community.

The story of the House of Hope is one that highlights the relationship between fear and hope.  Melody Graham, its founder, was working with a woman who needed help, but the kind and intensity of help necessary just weren’t available via local social services.  The first time I heard Melody describe what happened, she said, “And as I was thinking about what this woman needed, I heard a voice ask, ‘Why don’t you open a house for women?'” Each step of the way to establishing the House of Hope was an exercise in facing self-doubt and fear — I mean, its scary to buy a house with no money.  It’s difficult to convince other people to invest in your inspiration.  Melody faced each of these fears, because her hope was stronger.

Melody has been an inspiration to me (and countless others) for years now.  We are amazed by what she manages to create, along with a strong group of friends and allies she has recruited along the way.  I’ve also listened closely as Melody says, “All I did was keep taking the next step.”  Hope leads us forward, if we have the courage to risk doing so without advance knowledge of the outcomes.  And really, the fear is all about outcomes — about being let down, hurt, broken.  We will never know the outcome when we take that first step. Or the next.

At this point in my life, I am not directly engaged in the work of changing my community or creating new structures to support those in need.  But I am engaged in the personal work of transforming a fearful life into one of hope. One next step after another.  Which brings me to the Tom Robbins quote, above.  I have loved this quote for decades, because I believe the wise Chink makes an important point.  When we are sheltering in the cave of Fear, it is easy to delude ourselves into thinking that our only “out” is to leave the cave completely behind.  Stepping out into the pure sunshine of Hope.  But my experience of reality is not that — instead, hope and fear become inextricably mixed.  Sometimes, when I experience that weird flutter in my gut, I can’t even tell for certain which of the two caused it.

This week, today, I living in a place of hope and fear.  I am both afraid I will and afraid I won’t acheive or receive in my life some things I am hoping for.  It doesn’t really matter what these things are — what matters is that I am choosing to hope after a long period of not hoping.  And some of what I’ve hoped for has come to fruition in wonderful ways.  Does it feel less fearful, therefore, to choose hope? Not on your life!  But the quality of the fear is different.  It is a lighter, less depressing fear:   a what if I risk it and it doesn’t happen? instead of a no way can I take that risk!  Sometimes, I can still plunge without warning into the “NO” of pure fear.  But then I realize I can see a little light beginning to glow on the horizon.  Fragile, frightful, hope returns.  And I take another step.

Angel Cards

I have a deck of “angel cards” in my office.  Each little card contains one word and a drawing of angels doing something or holding something associated with that word.  The cards sit in a beautiful abalone shell, a gift from my friend Wendy.

Here’s how they are used:  you draw a card and think about what that word is saying to you at the time you select it.  Sometimes, it feels like you’ve drawn a random word that might mean anything.  At other times, it is uncanny how you draw just the necessary word for your current mental or emotional state.  For example, one day I needed to run errands across town with a very limited amount of time between meetings at the office.  I was stopped both going and returning by midday trains, among other time-sucking annoyances.  On the way back, once the lengthy train had finally crossed the road, I was stuck in traffic behind a school bus.  I was feeling harried, impatient.  Road rage was overtaking me just as I spied an alternate route via a side street where I could get out of traffic and go the speed limit.  Unfortunately, the school bus, at the last second, entered the turn lane in front of me.  And it continued on my alternate route, running a leisurely 15 mph.  I couldn’t pass it, and I followed it right into the parking lot at work.

Frustrated, blood pressure elevated to risky levels, I stormed into my office and ranted a high-drama version of my cross-town trip to a coworker, ending with the school bus.  My colleague suggested, kindly, that I take a few deep breaths and draw an angel card.  I took her advice. The word I drew took the wind completely out of my sails — RELEASE.  But the truly unbelievable piece was that the little drawing on the card was of an angel waving goodbye to, you guessed it, a school bus! Direct message sent and received!

I tell this story to illustrate why I pay particular attention to these angel cards.  It isn’t that there is magic in them.  But, as with many things that allow us to touch our less conscious mind (journal writing is another example) we sometimes surprise ourselves by going to the thing we most need to hear or think about at that moment.  And if Providence is also moving to assist – via our guardian angels – then that is a gift worthy of attention.

Over the past several weeks, I have drawn two words out of the abalone shell repeatedly: BIRTH, EXPECTANCY. First, I can assure you these words are not to be taken literally. Even so, they are powerful words.  I’ve learned to listen when powerful words come my way with such insistence.

What is trying to come into being in my life? I don’t know, but I am excited and just a little trepidatious.  Change, that wonderful, terrible “C” word, fills me with anticipation and fear.  I think I am learning to not only accept change, but to embrace it.  The fear is born of the knowledge that change always requires something from us — if only the internal readiness to go where we will end up anyway.  Friday, after several weeks of pondering BIRTH, I drew a card and discovered that two were stuck together — TRANSFORMATION and TRUST.  Alrighty then. I will try to trust myself, my guardian angels, and Providence.  Something big is on the horizon, though I can’t quite make it out yet.

Resilience

I had planned to write a humorous post this week, but that will have to wait.  What I find myself thinking obsessively about today is resilience.  “An ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change” (thank you Webster’s) is quite a profound grace.

When adversity strikes, it is tempting to wallow.  I mean, who hasn’t wanted to spend days – if not weeks – in the slough of despond crying “Woe is me”?  I know it doesn’t sound like something you would do voluntarily, except that when life falls apart around you it is suddenly a pretty appealing option.  Compared with the alternatives, like bearing it with good will and a sense of humor, self-pity seems incredibly seductive.

But as Samuel Johnson said, “Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.”  If this is true, then using the moments of our biggest hurdles to learn our own capacities can be an opportunity for deep growth.  But how do we develop this kind of resilience?  Are we born with it, or do we discover it within ourselves when we exercise the only real power we have in these moments — the power to choose our own reaction?

In “Man’s Search for Meaning”, Viktor Frankl wrote powerfully about this power of choice.  In his case, the crucible for discovering his own capabilities was life in Nazi prison camps.  For most of us, the adverse conditions in which we find ourselves do not compare with Auschwitz.  They are more likely illness or injury, burnout, stress, chronic financial strain, cars breaking down when we can least afford them to.  I don’t mean to minimize the pain of these experiences, only to point out their less than epic nature.  We think we might rise to the occasion in an epic struggle.  But what about simple, daily, hurdles which drain our pocketbooks and/or leach our positive energy?

I’ve come to believe that resilience can be cultivated.  I’ve watched my friend Dave build it in his daughters by telling them daily, “Is this how you want to feel?  If not, then choose something else.”  And those girls are able to redirect their emotional energy – the first step is learning that it is possible to do so.  (In fact, Dave has given me the same lecture time and again, with good, if mixed, results. Like a second language, children learn this more quickly than adults.)  Sometimes, you cultivate your capacity to bounce back by pretending.  During resident assistant training every year, I tell my student staff that they need to project calm in emergency situations — they don’t have to actually feel calm, just act that way.  The secret hidden in this advice is that projecting calm often leads to mastering your feelings of panic.  Projection won’t take you all the way, but it can help to jump-start movement in a positive direction.

The other day my friend Melissa was feeling burned out.  She found that focusing on something she could control, rather than focusing on her burnout, made the difference. She told me, “I’m glad to see I’m pretty resilient these days… a 4.5 mile jog and a swim at the beach helped me bounce back.”  Another friend, facing yet another financial setback, worked to get his thinking aligned in order to flow with the current rather than get caught in the riptide of self-pity. His mantra was, “I’m fluid, I’m fluid, I’m fluid”.

Important in both of my friends’ abilities to face these difficult moments was choosing to bounce with resilience rather than splat with despair.  This kind of choosing may look relatively simple from the outside, but superficial or platitudinous thinking won’t actually cut it.  We have to want it, more than we want to win the “I have the worst life” story contest we carry on inside our heads (come on, that’s not just me, is it?!).  And wanting it, we have to also choose it, consciously, in each moment.  So, today, I pledge to cultivate resilience in myself — and to support those I love in finding the inner resources to choose it themselves.  Let’s go for the bounce, people!