Written Along the Way

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.

So far I have learned that…

1. “The Rules for Being Human” are true (see below).

2. Everyone over a certain age, if you know them well enough for them to share it, is carrying around some significant pain and sadness.

3. We make choices.  A lot of life is out of our control but life doesn’t “happen to us”.  We make it happen.  Many people aren’t willing to take responsibility for this.

4.  The noise and rat race of our modern world is like a hammer coming down on our heads leaving us dazed.  In the midst of all this noise it is easy to forget the fundamental things about life that we knew as a child.  Life is good.  Playing is fun.

5.  Striving to be better, to be more is a challenge.  But it is rewarding.  Our lives are unfolding right now.  If we pay attention and are willing to push ourselves out of our comfort zones amazing, wonderful things can happen and we can become different people.

6. Life is better when it is shared with a dog (or a cat).

7. Being outside is better than being inside.

8. The idea of compassion is beautiful and easy to understand.  But the practice of compassion is like carrying boulders up a mountain.

9. The ego is what keeps us apart from each other.  It is a barrier to be knocked down.

10. We are all in this together.  Despite our differences we all feel the same pains.  We worry when our children are sick and we suffer when someone we love dies.

The Rules for Being Human

(I don’t know who deserves credit for these rules. When they were given to me in the mid 90’s it said “anonymous”. They may have first appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul but Dr. Cherie Carter-Scott also seems to take credit for them in her book and on her website.)

1. YOU WILL RECEIVE A BODY.  You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.

 2.  YOU WILL LEARN LESSONS.  You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called life.  Each day in school you will be presented with opportunities to learn what you most need to know.  The lessons presented are often completely different from those you think you need.

 3.  THERE ARE NO MISTAKES, ONLY LESSONS.  Growth is a process of trial and error, and experimentation.  You can learn as much from failure as you can from success.

 4.  A LESSON IS REPEATED UNTIL IT IS LEARNED.  A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it.  When you have learned it (as evidenced by a change in your attitude and ultimately, your behavior), then you can go on to the next lesson.

 5.  LEARNING LESSONS DOES NOT END.  There is no age of life that does not contain its lessons.  If you are still alive, that means there are still additional lessons to be learned.

 6.  “THERE” IS NO BETTER THAN “HERE”.  When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply discover another “there” that will, again, look better than your “here”.

 7.  OTHERS ARE MERELY MIRROR OF YOU.  You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.  When tempted to criticize others, ask yourself what behavior of yours they are mirroring to you.

 8.  WHAT YOU MAKE OF YOUR LIFE IS UP TO YOU.  You have all the tools and resources you need; what you create with them is up to you.  Remember that through desire, goal setting and right effort you can have anything you want, but not everything you want.  Persistence is the key ingredient for success.

 9.  THE ANSWERS LIE INSIDE YOU.  The answers to all of life’s questions lie within you.  All you need to do is ask, look, listen, and trust.

 10.  YOU WILL FORGET ALL THIS.  You will forget all of the above rules unless you regularly practice some means of staying focused and grounded in the present.  Your ego will continually try to trick you into blaming your past or becoming anxious about your future.  Thus will you lose contact with the present and become asleep to the lessons and realities of life.

There’s a lot going on out there. It’s hard to sift through all the noise and know what to focus on. It’s hard not to be overwhelmed. People say to focus on your own stuff and not let all the negative news drag you down but it feels like some of the things happening are important. How do we know what to ignore and what to see as important?

War with Syria
Trade war with China
Russian interference in the election
Gun control & school shootings
Global warming
Plastic in our water
Health insurance & health care costs
The national deficit
Police shootings
Racism, sexism, MeToo
For profit prisons & the criminal justice system
The consolidation of wealth & power
The corporate shift to take care of the shareholder instead of the employee

Are you freaking out yet? How are we not freaking out? That list could go on and on. What do we do with all this information? How much should we be worried? Should we take action? What kind of action should we take?
Madeleine Albright is on TV warning us about fascism. Are things really this bad? How do we know if things are any worse now than they’ve ever been? Someone else is probably writing about this. I could do any internet search and probably find an article in an academic journal that is well researched comparing how bad things are now to other points in human history and then I’d know if we were really on the brink of something terrible.

I didn’t even list any personal things just big picture topics. What about all the personal headlines we have going on in our lives?

Job stress: could be more work with a promotion or worrying about getting laid off
Money: bills, trying to save, unexpected expenses
Health worries
Chores: just finding time to do the dishes and laundry isn’t easy
Family issues: could be just raising kids, dealing with a spouse or something bigger

Are things worse than ever? I don’t know. And if they are I can’t undo it anyway, but I’m still forced to deal with all these stories and all this information. The amount of news available to us no longer has to fit into a thirty minute evening news broadcast or a few pages of the daily paper. We are seeing news on multiple websites, in emails, in text messages, on the radio, and on social media. It is almost impossible to stay away from it.
How do we sort through it? We have to decide what even matters to us. Then we have to decide what to do about it. Not just what we think we should do but what we can actually do. If things are worse now than ever and we’re on the verge of a fascist take over of America or the over heating of the planet, then I feel like I really should be doing something! But if things were always like this and we are just more aware of it now then I should still do something, right? I can’t just sit back and not try to help make a positive change about what’s going on with school shootings (I have kids in school) or global warming (I live on the globe). But there’s so much going on, how do I decide what to do?
We take in all this information. Dealing with it is like a full time job. Sorting it out, prioritizing it, deciding what to do about it and if we can even do anything. There are so many things happening and we are so entrenched in how our society operates that it’s impossible to act on all these things. We can not all stop going to work and create a revolution.

It’s more than overwhelming. And I come back again to our personal stories and headlines. Most of us have a lot going on already in our lives without having to convince legislators and other Americans that it’s not ok to have kids shot in school or that maybe the healthcare system should be about providing healthcare instead of about providing a profit to shareholders. I feel like I should be doing something.
I think of one friend who I’ve discussed these concerns with a few times in a near panic. He has always calmly informed me that he just tries to do the best he can in his daily life. He acts in his immediate surroundings. And he actually does. He isn’t just talking about it. I try to help people at work. I try to be of service. But is that enough? Does it count if I’m at work?

Finding a balance is difficult. It takes a continuous effort. Once balance has been found something changes or moves or shifts and the balance is gone and we have to move or change or shift too. Balance is not static. It is not achieved and then held on to just as it is. It is in flux. Just like balancing on a skateboard or surfboard or bike, you don’t just stand on the board or sit on the bike. There are little adjustments constantly needing to be made.

And there’s more than one balance to be found. There’s a balance between how much we care about all this information and what action we take. There’s a balance between what we think is real and important or fake and unimportant. There’s a balance between what we decide to act on and what we don’t act on. Between the big stuff and the personal stuff. Between the have tos and want tos. Between caring & paying attention and freaking out over the enormity of it.
How much to worry about these big issues and what kind of action to take is what I get hung up on.

I don’t have answers to all the questions I’ve asked here (Ha! I don’t have answers to any of these questions) but I do know that my balance won’t work for you. Your balance is yours. Ignoring all these things going on seems like a bad idea. Freaking out and becoming paralyzed by it all seems like a bad idea too. Being aware, keeping our eyes open, trying to find a balance and trying to take some action seems like a good idea. I wonder if doing the best we can in our personal lives is enough or if we really should be participating in the big stuff going on.

 

Postscript: That guy I mentioned above who just tries to do good in his own life…This is what he’s up to: https://www.goodnightlights.org

You are standing in the ocean, at least waist deep, maybe a little deeper. Your back is to the shore and you are watching the waves coming in toward you. You’re looking for the wave that you’re going to body surf into shore. It’s got to be a big enough wave. It has to break at the right spot. There will be smaller waves hitting you while you wait. They push you and test your balance. There will be waves that break too early or too late. When you’re standing in the water you might get a great wave at just the right spot and jump at just the right time and ride the wave all the way into shore. That’s so much fun. And there are a lot of waves that you jump for and miss.

You might not be trying to body surf. You’re just in the water. There are days when the waves are big and you’re getting pounded. You dive under one as it crashes towards you. Then you pop up out of the water and the next big wave is already on you and you’re smashed. There are days when the big waves just keep rolling in and you have to always be ready. There are days when the water is calm and even if you aren’t paying attention the waves won’t knock you down.

You might be standing there watching a huge wave far out rolling toward you. It’s not even near you yet but you’re thinking about it. You’re feeling anxious about it even though that wave might break before it ever gets to you.

Sometimes the water is calm enough to just float around on your back feeling the little ups and downs of the waves. The water may be warm or chilly. It may be too cold to even go swimming. Maybe you are standing on the sand where the water slides up to meet the land just watching the waves come in. Just listening to the sounds the water makes. Your feet just got wet. That wave came up the sand farther than the others. Or it’s so windy that the spray from the waves is hitting you in the face.

These waves are the circumstances that we come across in our daily lives. The obstacles that pop up, the chores and to dos, the traffic, whether the computer is working, the snow storm…it’s all as unpredictable as those waves. We are always needing to navigate circumstances that are out of our control. Some things that come up are small, some are big. Some things are easier to deal with than others. We can laugh at ourselves when our feet get wet and take a step back or we can get angry. Either way are feet are wet. We can worry about that something that might not even happen or we can remain calm and wait and see. We can try to ride the waves or we can try to stand against them. Riding them is more fun and less work.

I wasn’t sure what to write about next then I had a conversation with an undercover Buddhist teacher. We talked for a while and he reminded me to look at the good that is right in front of me. Then we talked about having compassion for the miserable people we get stuck dealing with and also about faith.

He told me this story: Imagine you bring your children to get an ice cream cone. If you don’t have children, you’ve probably been at an ice cream place and seen this happen to someone else’s kid. The children order their ice cream and when it’s handed to them it seems bigger than it needs to be. In just a minute they have ice cream all over them. After a few more minutes you see what’s about to happen. That top scoop of ice cream is about to fall off the cone. Then splat, it hits the floor. Your child is now looking at the scoop of ice cream on the floor not paying attention to the cone in his/her hand. You see what’s going to happen next. The cone is tipping, the rest of the ice cream is going to land on the floor. There it goes, all the ice cream is on the floor now. How did the rest of the ice cream end up on the floor? Because your child was looking at the ice cream that fell instead of the ice cream still on the cone! We all do this! We certainly have legitimate complaints and real hardships in our lives but how much time do we spend looking at those things instead of looking at all the positive things we have going on? There are always so many things for us to be happy and grateful for but we’re just standing there looking at the ice cream on the floor instead of enjoying the ice cream that’s still on our cone.

This rolls right into the idea of having compassion for the person who is causing us pain. I can focus on the anger coming from this other person. I can focus on the abuse, negativity and misery that’s being dumped my way. Or I can wonder what this person’s life must be like if he/she really thinks it’s ok to flip out on me like they are. How much fun can it be to be this person? Their day must suck if this is how they handle the obstacles and inconveniences that pop up during their day. If I can think about how they feel instead of how they’re making me feel then I am less on the defense. I am less engaged in this confrontation and more able to step back and see it for what it is. Thinking about how the other person feels get me outside of myself. If I can find compassion for this other person I can free myself from being so affected by the behavior they’re sending my way. Caring about how they feel actually makes me feel better.

But it may not always be easy to feel for the other person. Then what? I don’t really understand Faith. It doesn’t make sense to me. But this teacher was so enthusiastic about Karma that I started to get on board. To accept the idea of Karma is to have Faith. Just thinking about Karma allows me to let go of my feelings of unfairness and injustice. The universe will take care of it. And it allows me to feel good about doing good shit. I don’t need to be upset by what someone else is saying or doing because Karma and the universe will handle it. I don’t have to feel angry or really care at all about what someone else says or does. It’s none of my business. I can focus on my business and my actions.

None of this is going to work if we are not really going for it. We have to be fully invested in every moment of the day. I was a slacker for so long, not appreciating each moment, not making the most of each moment. Now it’s like I’m squeezing a sponge trying to get every drop out of every moment. And we must also have some way to remind ourselves of these things. We will forget and get sucked back into looking at the ice cream on the floor. We need to take the time to step away, recharge our batteries and clean out our bullshit filters.

I’m not writing this as a way of telling you what to do. I am thinking out loud. I am trying to understand what’s happening and sort it out and create a plan to be successful at this life. To be successful while also being good to other people. Or at least be less of an asshole if I can’t make it to actually being good. If these ideas sound good to you that’s great. Go for it! If you are simply entertained by my struggles, that’s great too. Enjoy a laugh on me.

I spend most of my time in two worlds. At home, I’m raising two small children who are at the mercy of their emotions. They are easily upset and don’t hesitate to show it. We are trying to teach them to think before they speak or act. We are trying to teach them to feel their emotions instead of being their emotions. At work, I am constantly interacting with the public. I have no control over their expectations. I see adults’ inability to handle their emotions any better than my children can. And I must also deal with how poorly people communicate. Many people just can’t get to the point and plainly state what they want.

I am fending off other peoples’ bullshit all day long. It happens at work then I come home and it happens there. Sometimes as soon as I wake up it starts and it doesn’t end until I go to bed. My children are six and eight years old. My six year old is lovely and she is the most consistently fabulous greeter that I have ever known. A few nights ago, when I got home from work, she got out of bed and came running down the hallway, “Daddy, Daddy, I heard you come home and couldn’t wait to see you”. But last night I couldn’t wait for her to go to sleep so I could be done dealing with her. At work, I am in the middle of many different relationships but I am the one that people deal with. I am the one telling them the things they don’t want to hear. I am usually not the one in control of any of it but I’m the one who gets to tell them. And I am also held to a ridiculous level of service. It’s not enough to be polite. I am expected to be welcoming and friendly even when the people I’m dealing with are shitting on me.

I have been trying to stay calm, polite, and respectful in these situations. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I don’t. When I do not succeed I feel frustrated. But what I’ve been realizing is that even when I do succeed I feel frustrated. Even when I’ve handled a situation as well as I could possibly have handled it I usually still end up getting shit on by the person I’m dealing with. My respectfulness, my politeness, my calmness is not making a difference.

That’s frustrating.

It has recently occurred to me that I had the expectation that if I got better at handling these situations with other people that it would change the situation. That the other people would act differently too. That has not come true. If I speak calmly to my kids and treat them with respect instead of yelling they still continue to disobey. If I treat people at work with respect they still act like asses. There is a gap between what I expected to happen and what really happens and that increases my frustration.

The idea of non-attachment is that we strive to do things the right way without being attached to the outcome. Without expectations. That is not easy under any circumstances. It is especially difficult when I am at work getting judged for my level of service or when I’m telling my child not to climb on the furniture for the 3,000th time. But I clearly have no control over how other people will behave so doing my best without expectations of the outcome is really the only choice I have. And it frees me from the frustration. I own my actions. I do not own other peoples’ actions. I do not own the outcome of the situation. I’ve gotta get better at remembering this.

Another related idea is that our ego is the source of these frustrations. The ego is our sense of “I”. It is what makes me think that I am different than you. It is what makes me think I’m special. Without the filter of the ego I would be able to see that there is no difference between you and me. I wouldn’t be disappointed that things didn’t turn out the way that I wanted or hurt that someone was rude to me even when I was polite to them because there really is no “I” to get disappointed or hurt.

So, I can see all these never ending interactions as sources of frustration. I can be worn out and beaten down by it. I can feel bad about it. Or I can see all these interactions as many opportunities to practice non-attachment. I can see them as chances to set aside my ego. We practice everything else in order to get better and these interactions are practice. The more I practice the better I will get.

One way of looking at these situations is just as true as the other. We get to choose our point of view. It’s just so hard for me to not be attached when I’m telling one of my kids something that I’ve told them two or three times per day for the last two years. It’s even harder when I’m dealing with another adult who is so focused on his/her own want that he/she can’t see any other side of the situation. To be treated rudely by another adult is so much worse than being treated rudely by a child because we think adults should know better (that’s another expectation).

Does it sound a bit foolish to think of dealing with a rude person as an opportunity? Of course it does. But in these situations we are in control of so very little. One of the few things we can control is our point of view. We get to choose how we see the situation. We can see all these frustrations from a different angle. After all, the rudeness and insensitivity being dumped on us is not really about us anyway.

January 2, 2018

A New Year is good with new beginnings and all that but starting at the beginning again can also be an anxiety-producing, depressing experience. Another opportunity to be disappointed that things didn’t get done last year or that I didn’t make the changes I’d intended. I actually feel a pretty nice balance of excitement for another go around and anxiety from it all this year.