Author: Ack

Who are you? When was the last time you thought about this? Being the person we want to be is just like anything else in our lives. If we are not actively and consciously pursuing a goal or an agenda then we will be swept away by the current of our daily lives. Then what happens? We may find that we are not who we would like to be. We became the person who was made by that current instead of the person we once hoped to be.

My kids are often under the control of their emotions. They have big reactions to little things and have a hard time incorporating other people’s wants and needs into their thought process. It’s all about them and everything is a big deal and once the train of emotions leaves the station there’s no getting off the ride. Ok, they’re kids. That all seems pretty normal. 

But I work with the public and I see these same behaviors in adults every day over and over again. It makes me wonder how many of us are asking ourselves “Who am I?”. It also makes me wonder about the other internal conversations going on in people’s heads. It seems like those are one-sided conversations. The only one talking is the emotion. “I’m angry. I’m not getting what I want.” 

I always thought that as an adult someone would have a bit more of a real internal dialogue instead of just letting the emotion take over. A back and forth between the emotional response and the thinking adult.

“I’m angry. I’m not getting what I want.”                                                                                   “Ok, let’s take a look at what’s happening. Maybe there’s a reason why this isn’t going the way I’d like.”                                                                                                                                     “No, I’m angry. Let’s yell!”                                                                                                             “I’m not going to yell. I’m going to find out what the problem is so that I can solve it.”

Another way to describe what I thought being an adult was all about is self-control. I really thought that adults were driving the car but it turns out that for a lot of people their emotions are sitting in the driver’s seat and the people are just along for the ride. 

It’s not easy to stay in control and keep our emotions in check. And it’s not easy to be aware all the time of who we really are. There’s a lot of distractions out there. The current of our daily lives is strong and it can sweep us off our feet. That’s enough to make it hard to focus and work on these internal dialogues and stay in the driver’s seat. 

But because it’s hard to resist our emotions and it’s often unpleasant to see who we really are or to hold ourselves accountable, people find other ways to distract themselves. Drugs and alcohol are the cliche way to avoid taking a look at ourselves and to quiet that internal conversation. But now there’s an easier, more socially acceptable way to distract ourselves. Just pick up your phone. You don’t even need to plop your ass in front of a TV screen to zone out and get numb anymore. Now you have a little screen with you at all times. You can surf the internet. You can shop! Being a consumer is a great way to distract ourselves from our internal world, that’s why it’s used so successfully by marketers to profit off all of us. Or you can just constantly be texting someone. You don’t ever have to be alone again if you have your phone in your hand!

But you can’t work your shit out if you don’t have any alone time. The hard work is done alone. The hard work is done during those internal conversations. It’s done when we decide to resist our emotions. It’s done when we really ask ourselves who am I? And when we are willing to see things that we might not like and hold ourselves accountable. 

Life is a hard road even when we’re numb. It’s a hard road even when we let our emotions do the driving. It’s not easier when we are trying to take back the steering wheel from our emotions. And it’s definitely not easier when we are being honest with ourselves about who we are and how we are acting. But it’s way more satisfying. 

Numb rhymes with dumb. Don’t be dumb. Ask yourself, “who am I?”.

Last year I was as down and sad as I’ve ever been as an adult. It lasted, on and off, for a large hunk of the year. There were times when part of me didn’t want to live anymore. I didn’t feel bad about feeling bad though. I allowed it to happen and run its course. I didn’t start feeling like I was used to feeling until early December.

But it didn’t last long before that sadness was starting to rise back up. I always hear people talking about how hard the end of the year is. So many people seem to get down and depressed around the holidays. I had never experienced that before even during other years when people we loved had died. But it happened this year. I didn’t make it happen. I didn’t start thinking sad thoughts. It happened on its own. I was sad. It didn’t matter that I had just started feeling as happy as I’d felt in a long time. All of a sudden I’d find myself feeling sad. 

This time I was unwilling to just allow it to happen. I had grieved already. I had plenty of things to be grateful for and to be enjoying in these moments. I didn’t want to allow this sadness to overtake what I had to be happy about, I didn’t want to give in to it and feel bad when I had so much to feel good about. In the same way that I felt like it was right to allow myself to feel sad earlier in the year, I felt like it was right to push back against it this time. 

The Saturday before Christmas I was supposed to go to a party at some friends’ house after work. When the time came I really didn’t want to go. I wasn’t super sad and depressed but I was a little down and had been at work all day dealing with all the grumpy people (you know how the holidays brings out the best in everyone). But my family was going to be expecting me to meet them at this party and I had agreed to go and I knew this was the exact kind of thing I should be doing to fight back against feeling sad. I went even though I was unexcited about it. 

The host of the party was wearing a suit and tie that all matched. It was red and white and Christmasy. It was pretty awesome in its festive ridiculousness. That moment right after I arrived when I saw him and he was smiling and clearly happy about the suit too is all that it took to wipe away all those things I’d been feeling. Instantly, I was so happy to be there. The rest of the party didn’t even matter anymore. That moment was all that I needed, but the rest of the party was good too. I got a lot of time with my son in the beginning while he was waiting for a friend to show up and I got a lot of time with my own friends after that. 

The next morning I played tennis with some of those friends. More good stuff to appreciate and be grateful for. These tennis matches are so great because of all the ingredients that go into them. We’re outside, we’re getting exercise and playing a fun game, we’re competing and we are spending time with friends and in some cases getting to know each other and make new friends. 

After tennis I went to work but when I got home later that night another family was at my house to hang out with us and an old friend (not just that he is actually old, we’ve known him a long time too) who lives in Colorado was there to spend the night with us too. 

How great is that? Fuck you sad feelings, I have all these people to help me fight you off. That was another fun night followed by another early morning tennis match. Then more time with our Colorado friend and the kids and Christmas Eve with my wife and kids and wow Christmas this year…it was a good one!

We didn’t have a lot of family at our house for Christmas because we don’t have a lot of family anymore but we made the most of the people we had. There’s just so much to feel good about, to appreciate. There’s so much that makes me feel grateful despite the sadness. 

There are lots of good people in our lives and we get to see them and spend time with them regularly. Making that even better is that so many of us are raising our kids together so we are not alone on the harrowing journey that is child raising. There are plenty of us who have each other’s backs. 

Even in our most miserable moments there are still good things to appreciate in our lives. When we’re miserable and sad and suffering, it’s hard to see that there is anything else in our lives but it’s there. Am I walking around with my head down or am I remembering to look up and see what’s happening all around me?

 

I didn’t really know how to say what I wanted to say in this post without giving all the examples of things that happened that I had to feel grateful for over those few days. I’m not really excited about posting a rundown of what I do from day to day. And I am not writing about those few days to pat myself on the back. “Look at me. I have friends and we go to parties. We’re so awesome.” This isn’t supposed to be about my life being special, it isn’t supposed to be a comparison to how any of you might have spent those few days. I’m just using these events in my life as an example to support the point I’m making about how we always have things to be grateful for even though we might not always feel like we do. Maybe I don’t need to be clarifying this but with all the social media b.s. now and how people just post the good stuff and we never see the bad stuff and people get all depressed and anxious comparing themselves to the perfect picture someone paints of themselves on social media…well anyway, I’m just explaining because of all that.

The best antidote to feeling down is to consciously remember all the stuff we have to feel good about. It’s there. Gratitude is a good feeling and it’s humbling and perspective-shifting. 

Perfection is unattainable.
Strive for Acceptance.
Can you find joy in the Chaos
and beauty in the imperfections?

This one isn’t as well researched or well written as it could be. This idea has been in my head for weeks but I haven’t been able to find the time to write it. So rather than a thorough discussion of this topic this will be more of an introduction to the idea.

America is currently moving in two different directions at the same time. Trump got elected even though he spoke crudely, made threats and had talked about grabbing women by the pussy. Oh yeah, and it’s not really wrong to say he wasn’t well qualified. Over the past two or three years the largest increase in violence in America has come from right wing extremist groups (although the Dept. of Homeland Security is spending very little time/resources on that because they have prioritized deporting illegal immigrants). American policy is loosening protections on the environment. We’re threatening and disrespecting other countries to show them we won’t be intimidated. We’re in what is becoming a trade war with China despite the economic pain it’s causing us.

At the same time, there are places with transgender bathrooms or places that are open to anybody using either bathroom based on how they identify. The word transgender is commonly used now. It was not that long ago that I probably hadn’t even heard the word or at least didn’t really know what it meant. And there’s the MeToo movement. That’s been well publicized and everybody knows at least something about that. 

Do you remember learning about earthquakes and tectonic plates in Earth Science class? When two plates move in opposite directions and grind along each other watch out. That’s what’s happening. I wasn’t around in the 60’s so I don’t know if this is what it was like but I’m sure there were a lot of people pissed off about the civil rights movement and those people were feeling like the country was moving in the wrong direction and pushed back hard against it. 

It’s sad that when one group of people gets more respect or more rights or more acknowledgment there always seems to be another group of people that feels like they’re losing something. I could feel sorry for those people who feel like something is being taken away from them if their close-minded, selfish, bigoted me first attitude wasn’t causing so much pain for everybody else.

This is the part where I don’t really have a conclusion to transition to or more information to transition to or really even know what to write next. I just find it interesting for a lot of reasons that we are moving in two truly opposite directions. It’s not just like tectonic plates. That’s a good comparison for the upheaval it’s causing but it’s also like a rubber band being pulled hard in opposite directions. Are we going to be pulled back to some place close to the middle but a little closer to one side than we used to be? Or are we just going to snap and have a fucking civil war?

In my last post I wrote about death, illness, and sadness. About how those things are always all around us. They’re part of life and they’re unavoidable. Sometimes it can feel like the sad moments are all of life. But they are only part of life. We can get stuck and forget to see what else is happening all the time all around us.

Over the past weeks I’ve noticed a few little things. I worked close enough to home one day to ride my bike to work and I went down to the shore first and watched the sunrise. After work a few days later I was standing in our front yard and was surrounded by color. All the trees on our street hit their peak fall color at the same time. Across the street one tree looked like flames, a tree in my front yard was half dark red/purple and half bright red, a neighbor’s tree was almost pink, another neighbor’s tree on the other side looked like flames too and in the back was a whole stretch of bright yellow. The other night I watched the sunset as we crossed a bridge. The next morning I was looking out my front door and got the chance to watch a chipmunk. It was only about six feet in front of me munching on maple seeds and leaves. Chipmunks are cool. I like their racing stripes. 

These little things are always going on around us. Just doing their things whether we are paying attention or not. I used to notice these sorts of things more regularly. Taking in the awe. Now I’m definitely busier and have more responsibilities which means more mental clutter. It’s the clutter that gets in the way of noticing all this action that always right in front of us. 

But it’s always there independent of us noticing. 

The hawk that flew over our heads when I was outside with the kids.

The kids’ ridiculous laughter while playing Uno.

The smiles.

The good interactions with people.

The good vibe from something you’ve done to be helpful or useful to someone else.

Dave knocking on my front door to give me a beer he brought back from San Diego.

Playing early morning tennis with friends. 

Hugs and kisses.

The little costumed trick or treaters. 

The sad things are always there too but they don’t undo all these good, happy things. The sad puts the happy in context. The happy, good things are even better when shown in the light of the sadnesses. Just like it takes the hours of light and dark to make up a day, it takes the sad moments and the happy moments to make up a life. It’s up to us to notice the good stuff. That’s what it means to be present in the moment. We can’t help but notice the sad stuff. It will find us. But the happy stuff is right there too, it’s not hiding, it’s just casually going on all the time. We can be more aware so we notice it and participate in it. It’s like two strands of the same rope, wrapped around each other and intertwined so that they aren’t individual strands anymore but just part of the rope. The happy things and the sad things are all wrapped up to make our lives. 

You’re going to feel sad sometimes and that’s ok. That’s normal. That’s expected. But getting stuck in that feeling is where the trouble starts. One moment flows into the next just as one emotion flows into another. It’s ok to have some miserable shit making us sad and still participate in a moment that makes us happy. Allow yourself to move out of one moment into the next and be open to the good stuff. Be on the look out for the happy stuff. 

A friend of mine said something to me yesterday. It was something that I had been thinking too. He was talking about all the people he knew who died this year and other people he knew who were dealing with illnesses. I had my own similar list. But I hadn’t just been thinking about this year. 

When you get old enough it feels like you always know someone who is grieving the loss of a loved one or someone who is dealing with some illness or injury. How we handle that probably depends on what we’ve dealt with ourselves. Whether or not we can relate to other peoples’ losses and illnesses. Whether we pity them and feel sad for them or are we able to feel compassion and empathy instead. 

Our first child’s birth is when things started changing for me. The birth was a little complicated and we knew that the umbilical cord was around his neck and when our son was finally born, I was standing right there and he had the cord wrapped around his neck three times and he wasn’t moving or crying or anything and I thought he was dead. That was my first impression of our first child. I didn’t know that newly born babies don’t usually move around or cry or anything. Maybe I should have known that but I didn’t. It seems like a really valuable but simple thing that someone would have told us along the way but nobody had and I was crushed. Until I wasn’t. He was fine. But the feeling I had in that moment left a stain on me. 

Within 48 hours I was in the ICU of the same hospital with a potentially serious situation. Again everything turned out ok but those experiences left their marks on us and we probably really do have a little PTSD when it comes to health scares and that impacts how I feel when I find out that some friend of mine is dealing with an illness. 

Since then we’ve buried several family members so we don’t have to guess how that feels either when we find out that someone we know has lost a loved one. 

In just the past few months, a friend’s mother had a stroke, my mother died, a friend had a tumor removed from his brain, a six year old we know had surgery, a six grader we know was diagnosed with leukemia, and a friend’s father died. And that doesn’t include the other things we all find out about that have happened to people that we know but aren’t close with. We all already have our own sadnesses in our lives. Some of them present, some of them lingering from the past and there is always all this other sadness continuing to happen.

So what am I writing about? I guess I’m writing about how we all experience these sad moments and we know about our friends’ sad moments too. Our lives are affected by these deaths and illnesses and that affects how we react to our friends’ sad moments. We feel for our friends but we also relive our own similar experiences.

And there’s no getting around these moments and events. This is part of life. These nearly constant sources of sadness are fully intertwined with everything else that we’ll do and experience in our lives. Sometimes it wears me out. Sometimes it’s hard to see around the sadness to the other aspects of life. Sometimes it’s easy to wonder “Why?”. Sometimes it’s easy to just feel bad about it all. It can be hard to get out from under the sadness. We will always find out about sad news. We can’t hide from it and we know there will always be more.

After my last post, a friend mentioned that instead of looking at these situations as obstacles I could look at them as opportunities. That’s what I was going for so maybe I didn’t do a good enough job of explaining myself. But it’s also not as easy as just using the word opportunity instead of the word obstacle. It’s like anything else, it requires forethought, practice and training to get good at things and to do things or see things in a different way. 

It’s not that easy to put in that effort. It takes time. I’ve been so busy over the past few weeks that I haven’t been able to sit down and write this next post so I know that it’s hard for any of us to fit time into our days to think about how we’re handling our obstacles/opportunities. But if we don’t have a plan, if we don’t take time regularly to regroup, refocus and declutter our minds then we get stuck in the old patterns and just taken along with the tide of our lives. 

Here’s my step by step approach to the obstacles/opportunities that come up all day long. 

First step is recognizing how we are reacting. I’m not even trying to control my reaction anymore. Maybe some people are able to control how they react but for most of us we may never be able to do that. But we can recognize our reaction and then decide to let it go. Whatever our initial reaction to a situation is we can choose to get off that ride. We don’t have to follow through with that reaction.

Second, I remember a line from Bob Marley. “Speak happiness. It’s sad enough without your woes.” When we complain about the situation that just happened or vent to a friend or coworker we are just reliving it. We are dumping it onto the person we’re talking to and we’re holding onto it. We are creating a feedback loop. We hear ourselves complaining and those words go right back through our ears to our mind and we are reinforcing the beliefs and negativity that got us to react that way in the first place. It seems so normal to complain to a coworker about an interaction you just had with someone. But what good does it do?

Step three is a good one. “Don’t give a fuck.” It’s not my idea. It is really just another way of stating the Buddhist idea of non-attachment. Not giving a fuck does not mean that we shouldn’t try; it means that we shouldn’t care what happens even when we do try. We are in control of how we handle our reactions and how we act but we are not in control of the outcomes. We are not in control of how other people act. So, don’t give a fuck about any of that and just focus on your own business. 

https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck

If I’ve tried to recognize how I’m reacting to something and reminded myself to speak happiness and to not give a fuck but I’m still having trouble dealing with a situation then I have a fourth step: Remember that the obstacle is the path. This isn’t any different than calling the situation an opportunity instead of calling it an obstacle. But let’s get real. A lot of the crap that we have to deal with in our lives does not feel like an opportunity. But even if it really feels like a pain in the ass obstacle that’s ok because the obstacle is the path. Just don’t give a fuck, deal with it and move on. That’s the point. Even the obstacles can teach us and help us grow. 

The last step is one that didn’t work for me when I was younger. Maybe you have to age into this one or maybe I just wasn’t paying close enough attention. I’ve been rereading The Tao of Willie and he mentions more than once to follow your heart. That’s not Willie’s idea. That’s an old idea but I don’t think it ever really sunk in for me until this time rereading his book. Doing what we think is the right thing or doing what our head says is the right thing isn’t always the right thing. We can think ourselves into corners. Sometimes the best, simplest path is to follow our heart. It may not be the easiest path. It may not be the choice that our rational, thinking brain would pick but it may still be the right path.

I’ve got one more thing that I use to keep myself aimed in the right direction. It’s not really a step in this process. It’s a separate but parallel thing. It’s just a way of framing what’s happening. Have you seen the movie Parenthood? The big analogy in the movie is comparing life and parenting to a rollercoaster. Some people see it as scary while other people see it as exciting. That’s a pretty good comparison but I think white water rafting is a better one. If you’re riding a rollercoaster you are passive. You are just sitting there. You have no choices and no control. In our lives, a lot of what happens is out of our control but not all of it. We are not passive riders we are active participants and the choices we make affect our outcomes and affect our ability to handle these situations that come up. When you’re white water rafting, you have to steer, you have to decide which side of that big rock you need to pass, you have to paddle hard sometimes and just let the current take you sometimes.

When I’m starting to feel a little edgy or a little stressed or I’m just not enjoying the ride I remind myself that I’m white water rafting. The rapids are exciting but if you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing in the raft then it can be fun instead of scary. Just reminding myself about the white water rafting comparison is usually all it takes for me to chill out a bit and start enjoying the ride again. Reframing the situation as an exciting ride gets me thinking about it in a different way, gets me back to thinking about the things I do have control of and also gets me back to trying to have some fun with whatever craziness I’m dealing with.

I might be insane but these are the things that I do in my head in an effort to not be stressed and in an effort to have fun with all the nonsense and crap that I deal with on a daily basis. Try it if you want or tell me your approach if you’ve got one that works. 

Good luck. 

It’s a common analogy to compare our life to a journey or path. Maybe this way of looking at life works for some of you. It works for me and I use it all the time. I think about how I could better handle the obstacles in my path, the twists and turns, the uphill stretches. If you get a flat tire does it do any good to yell in frustration at the tire? Nope, you still need to change the tire. If a tree falls in your path standing there staring at the tree doesn’t get you around it and yelling doesn’t move it. Dwelling on our obstacles is not dealing with our obstacles. 

I read something the other day that you may have heard before but it was new to me. “The obstacle is the path.” Whoa. I had to think that through for a few moments in order to really get it. It’s so simple but so easy to overlook. We don’t change if we are comfortable. We grow by getting outside our comfort zone. If the path is straight and smooth nothing happens. It’s the obstacles that create opportunities for us.

That sounds great but it isn’t that easy. I continue to struggle with the obstacles, with the gap between how things are and how I’d like them to be, with stress. No matter how many times I write about this, no matter how much I think about it and no matter how many times I deal with an obstacle successfully it just doesn’t stick. I still get stressed or frustrated or upset. I still judge the things that come up instead of just dealing with them. I still feel the pain of that gap between what I want and what really is. 

I learned how to tie my shoes when I was a kid and I can still do it every time I try. I learned how to ride a bike way back then too and I still just hop onto a bike and ride. I don’t sometimes forget how to pedal the bike or how to make a bow knot. But I’m not learning how to smoothly deal with obstacles. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I don’t.

Even fun things can make me feel frustrated. I was playing tennis the other day. At first I was doing well but as my opponent warmed up and got into his groove it became harder for me to continue to do as well. I needed to play better too and I wasn’t. We were talking about it as we were playing and I told him that I didn’t even care if I won. It’s more of a competition against myself. If I’m making my shots or coming close then I’ll feel good about it even if I lose. That wasn’t just talk, that’s really how I feel. It was a Sunday morning. We were outside on a beautiful day, hanging out, playing a game, having fun, getting exercise. It was great. But I still felt a little bad afterwards. I knew what was happening. I knew that I was feeling frustrated about how I was playing. I knew that that was foolish and that it shouldn’t matter but I still felt bad about feeling bad or not hitting better shots or something. 

I’m finding that a lot of this is about control. The two things that cause me the most stress and frustrate me the most are dealing with my kids and dealing with things at work. In both of those situations I really have no control. If someone cuts me off in traffic and it annoys me I could pass them or turn and go a different way. Even though I can’t control how that person is driving I have choices about how to affect the outcome. But with my kids or at work I really have no control and I can’t get off the ride. I love my kids even when they’re misbehaving or not following directions so I’m stuck. And I’ve gotten used to and kind of like having a house to live in and food to eat so I really need to keep working to make money so I’m stuck there too. 

So let’s recap. I really don’t care if I win when I play games. I just play for fun and to challenge myself but I still feel frustrated. I do see this life as a journey and know that it is full of obstacles but still feel frustrated by those obstacles. I know that I can not control people or circumstances but still feel frustrated by my kids and by things that happen at work. There is a large gap between what I am understanding intellectually and how I am feeling and reacting to the things that happen. It isn’t easy to close that gap. Sometimes I feel like I’m getting better at smoothly handling the things that come up in life but that smoothness doesn’t last. I always end up smashing into another obstacle instead of calmly navigating through it or around it. 

I need to add another thing to the list of things I can’t control. I can’t control how I feel or respond to all these things that happen in life. Maybe it’s that simple. Maybe it doesn’t matter if I feel frustrated, maybe it matters what happens next. That could be the last little realization to make this whole process of dealing with obstacles work better. Accepting that not only do I not have control over any of these obstacles, but I don’t even have control over my own reactions. My reactions to these obstacles are just another layer of the obstacle. After my initial reaction then I can choose not to give into that reaction and just let it go and deal with what lies before me. Instead of being frustrated by my frustration, I could not respond to my frustration. Just recognize that I had that reaction, let it go instead of holding onto it and continue to navigate the obstacle without the baggage of my initial reaction.

I watched the movie Hostiles a few nights ago, a western about the relationship between settlers and Indians. It was excellent but not uplifting. Man’s inhumanity to man. The only hopeful aspect was about how individually we can do the right thing even if as a race we are horribly wrong. 

I couldn’t go straight to bed after that but I made the mistake of going on Facebook. There was a video of an ex-Amazon employee talking about how it’s like slavery. They penalize you for bathroom breaks and keep wages low so you buy stuff from them because they’re inexpensive and that’s all the employees can afford. Maybe it’s not true but I didn’t need to see that video to know that big corporations treat most employees like machinery instead of humans. Then another post was a letter from a local nurses’ union about the shit their employer was trying to pull during their strike. My mood was not improved.

That movie was about horrible shit in the 1800s. I was thinking how things are somewhat better now. These two women in the movie were alone by a creek washing dishes and some guys came across them and just took them to rape them. We are more orderly and less in danger of being attacked or killed now. But then those two Facebook stories…the powerful are still grinding the rest of us under their heels and holding onto their money and power with a ruthlessness and immorality that is shocking. 

What can any of us do other than just trying to do the best we can with our lives? And then I think that if everyone did live in a thoughtful, caring way then the big stuff would take care of itself but everyone doesn’t and then I’m back to the beginning of the circle again. 

It really has always been like this. Certainly there are improvements in little ways but the big picture is the same. The powerful have always been interested in consolidating and adding to their power at the expense of others. Humans as a collective are short-sighted, selfish, and can’t use self control in the present to make the future better for everyone.

It may feel like things are bad now. But are they really any worse than any other time? We are more aware, more connected and have more information sources. We can see the misery that’s happening and bound to happen more clearly. I’m not sure that there’s a way to do the math to add up how our lives have improved over time and subtract the ways things have gotten worse and come up with some answer about whether humans are better off or worse off. Whether we’re destroying this place and each other any more than we ever have.

That’s the backdrop, the world in which we find ourselves. Maybe humans are worse than ever or maybe not but either way there’s plenty going on to be concerned about. But there’s plenty of more personal worries to keep us on edge too. In middle age there are so many things to feel a little anxious about. The everyday concerns about money, health, preparing for our future, raising our kids. We have all those personal concerns in the foreground and in the background we have the big stuff. 

Back to living in the moment. If we are living in the moment then we are living. If we are not living in the moment then we are worrying. The answer is to be in the moment; to focus on our actions and to keep a clear picture in our minds of who we are and who we want to become. To keep true to that quest to be that person. To live these moments with our kids now and not worry about the what ifs around the corner. Yes be aware and when possible try to steer the course but know that it’s a really big thing and we are really small. We can care and try but need not worry. Just live. Be present in the moment. Be there for your people.

My current struggle is the direction of my gaze. All those big picture humanity sucks worries are distracting enough plus more immediately in my mind are the personal worries. Lots of distractions to keep me from being present in this moment. For some years I was really living in the moment pretty well. That was mostly fun. But I also didn’t have many immediate personal worries. Eventually I needed to shift my gaze forward. I got more serious about making and implementing a plan for the future. This was necessary because I didn’t want to end up living on a sidewalk.  But it’s been hard to shift my gaze back to the moment I’m in. And over the past few years there’s been a number of illnesses, injuries and deaths. My gaze is now often in the past reliving sadnesses. Too often I’m looking back or looking forward. Not enough of my attention is focused on my present moment. Is this the challenge of middle age?  Being old enough to have a pile of sorrows to haunt us, to get stuck reliving these sorrows or to get stuck in memories of easier times while at the same time knowing that the future will unfold before us whether we’re ready or not. We know we need to have a plan to continue to survive. In middle age we have enough past memories to get stuck in but we’ve also lived enough to know we must look to the future. The past and the future turn my gaze in opposite directions and pull my attention away from the only thing that’s real: the moment I’m actually living in.

These things pulling us backward and forward away from this moment are not going away. If we could learn to use our memories not as a way to get stuck but as a tool to appreciate what is happening now… Learn to peak at the future to keep our plans on track without keeping our eyes on the horizon. The plan for the future is just a means, it’s not an end. We must find a way to be grounded and shake off the noise and distractions and not get swallowed up by the big worries or the personal concerns. The big worries don’t change by worrying about them but they might change if we do our best to be decent in our individual lives. We can only control our own actions and try to be appreciative of what we have now.

Being able to let go and accept that so much of this is out of our control is a way to get there. We are aware of all these big issues but we are not in control of the outcomes. Being aware and doing what we think we should and can do to influence these outcomes is one thing. But worrying and caring about how it all plays out is different. We can be aware and try without the worrying.  We can exchange the worrying with focusing on our present moment. To be aware and to put forth effort is not the same as being attached to something we can not actually control. 

It’s difficult to appreciate what we have in the present when we are reliving the past or worrying about the future. If we really could accept the mess we’re in would we be able to calmly stand in the middle of this chaos and smile?

I’ve had lots going on in my head over the past seven weeks since my Mother died and I’ve not known what to do with those goings on. I wrote a letter to an old friend who I don’t see often anymore to explain it. Here is that letter:

 

 

The last seven weeks have been rough. In a lot of situations I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what to expect with how I’ll feel and how I’ll handle something. This hasn’t been like that. I’m not even reacting the way I usually do to normal stuff anymore. There hasn’t been a moment where I’ve just crumbled in tears and had some big emotional outpouring. There’s been many small moments and there’s been an almost constant undercurrent of unhappiness.
The first few weeks I was truly in a fog. I knew that I was in a fog but being aware of it didn’t change it. That first week after my mother died…it’s like I have amnesia. That week is mostly gone to me. Even now I’m still not usually fully engaging with the moment I’m in. I am in my head. For Shannon, that’s probably the worst. I’m just away even though I’m right here.
And the kids are a double-edged sword. They snap me out of it. They keep me living my life. They keep the ball rolling. But they require a lot of patience and emotional energy that have been difficult for me to come by. A couple of weeks ago I had a Thursday off and then was scheduled to work Friday afternoon, Saturday, Sunday, and the day shift on Monday. I just didn’t think I could take anymore from the kids after that Thursday. I fully intended to leave for work the next day and not come home until I was done with work on Monday. I had nothing left and knew that there was a strong potential for me to just make things worse. But the kids had Field Day that Friday morning and I had agreed to volunteer. I’d never been able to attend Field Day before and even though I really did not want to go I knew I’d be letting down all the kids in the school, not just my kids. So I went with Shannon and the first few classes of kids we saw weren’t our kids’ classes. That gave me a chance to warm up to it all. We were running the three-legged race. We know kids in almost every class at that school. We were outside. It was a beautiful day, just the right temperature. It ended up being good for me and by the time we saw our kids I was happy to see them again and glad I was there. Field Day didn’t fully rescue me but it gave me enough to get through that weekend of work. If I was lost at sea just holding onto a log it was like finding a bigger log to hold onto. I wasn’t rescued but I was better afloat.
I am often feeling like I’m not doing very well. Or at least not as well as I’d like to be doing. But then I try to think of all the things we’ve accomplished and sifted through since my Mother died and it seems like maybe I’m doing ok but then it still doesn’t feel like it. Rationally, I can explain to myself that things are ok and I am on top of everything but it doesn’t actually make me feel better. I haven’t fully lost my shit. I haven’t attacked anyone or done anything too regrettable. I’ve been pretty well composed and have been methodically taking care of my Mother’s affairs as well as I can. But it’s not satisfying. It still feels bad. It still doesn’t feel like I’m doing very well. I take no joy in any accomplishment. No sense of closure when I cross something off the to do list.
The things that I normally enjoy are just kind of blank feeling. It’s like there’s an aching numbness to me. Those two words don’t mean the same thing but it still feels right to describe it that way. The waves of nausea that would hit me when I’d look at a picture of my Mother are gone now. I can function normally and laugh at funny things and even say funny things but that slow steady aching numbness is always there underneath the surface easily revealed.
Even dealing with other peoples’ condolences and expectations has been strange. It turns out that a lot of people look at someone else’s loss and grief through the eyes of their own loss or the idea of their own loss. Most people aren’t able to offer condolences or support without their own bias getting in the way. People have an idea of what grief looks like or an idea of how I’d be feeling. But their ideas haven’t matched up with what I’ve been experiencing and feeling. I’ve tried to take that in stride. I’ve recognized it and not been upset or offended. I’ve tried to be supportive to them because I know their intentions were to support me. But it adds up and takes its toll. It’s more to deal with, more emotional energy to spend. Eventually, I chose to be selfish. I chose to protect my small reserves of emotional energy. To save that energy for my own grief and for dealing with my kids. Shannon stepped up and dealt with the other humans for me so I could be left to just handle the tasks.
We are coming closer to being done with my Mother’s affairs. We emptied her apartment and left it for the last time two days ago. A few more phone calls, emails, and faxes and I’ll probably be done. We still have some things from her apartment at our house to sell or give away. But soon the steady stream of extra things that need to get done will just be a trickle. I’ll be left with the normal stream of things: my wife & kids, my house, its maintenance & little projects that go along with it, my job, our finances & bills and everything else that we try to fit into our lives.
And then what? I imagine that I will be better equipped to deal with this grief when I am not cluttered up by all these extra things that need to be done. But the suddenness and unexpectedness of my Mother’s death is not going to change. It’s like falling off a cliff that you didn’t see in front of you. There really is value in preparation. I was unprepared for this. I was careless with my love for my Mother and thought there was plenty of time left between us.
A few weeks ago when I felt like I was truly at my limit I wondered what to do. I realized that I could move my limit. I could grow and be able to take on more and feel more pain and find more patience. I could accept the challenge and respond to it instead of being knocked over by it. I think that was a good response to a bad feeling but it doesn’t really change what I’m left to deal with. I feel like there’s been a slow unraveling of this thing that has happened and it will continue to slowly unravel as I move on. All my thoughts and feelings about my Mother, about losing her so quickly with no warning will continue to slowly unravel at a pace that I can not control.