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This is Me, this Might be Me, Is this Me

Random thoughts April 30, 2014 Leave a comment

I am currently reading Harriet Reisen’s biography of Louisa May Alcott. I was given the book by my aunt and I am greatly enjoying it and learning a lot. I am also remembering how much I enjoyed Little Women, Little Men, and Jo’s Boys when I was younger. I am named after Beth. (She dies you know, which devastated me when I read that part at the age of twelve. Thankfully I survived past the age of fifteen despite the fate of my namesake.)

Anyway, her parents were idealists and the part that I want to ruminate about today is something that the author mentions had an effect on Louisa – falling short of who you should be. I am taken with this concept. I’m not sure which thought thread to follow first.

Who decides who you should be? What criteria do they apply if it is someone other than yourself, such as your parents? What criteria should you apply to decide for yourself who you should be? Who is to decide if you are falling short of this ideal of who you should be? How long should it take to get to who you should be? Maybe you are just still on your way to this end point.

From an ethical standpoint, I do agree that there are aspects of self that you should be. You decide what this ideal ethical self is like, where your ethical barriers lie. And life is all about falling short of this ideal of who you should be, in small moments and less than ideal circumstances, and then striving even harder to be it.

What do you think? Are you intrigued by this notion of falling short of who you should be?

Change: Affinity vs. Ability

Personal Growth, Work Life April 7, 2014 Leave a comment

Life is so much nicer all around when we like what is happening; what we are doing, where we are living and so on. Sometimes we forget that there is a difference between liking, affinity, and skill at a task, or ability. We all have skills that we could use to our advantage but often don’t because we just don’t have the affinity.

I’ve met plenty of people who, without saying it straight up, think that they will know they are on the right track because everything will snap into place – life will be easier and smoother if they are in the right place. If things are difficult, it must be the wrong direction or place or whatever. How many times have you been in a discussion with someone who shuts you down on a topic with something like, ‘oh, I’m not any good at (fill in the blank)’?

The world is ever changing. (public domain image)

Math doesn’t have any sort of magic for me like words do, I just don’t have much of an affinity. But I have come to understand the importance of having a math competency – in financial dealings at the very least. I will never gravitate to math, but I can be proud that I can master the more important math concepts and make use of them in my life. And I have discovered that there are fascinating parts of math – statistics and economics do stir my curiosity.

We don’t get to arrange all of the pieces of our lives so that we can focus only on those things that we like. (We’re lucky to arrange most of them, the big ones hopefully.) And it isn’t always clear to see when you are on the right track, because that track might be just as bumpy and difficult as the wrong one.

Writing is a skill that makes plenty of people grimace, I both understand and feel consternated about this fact. But like math for me, it is an ability that can be developed to serve your overall purpose. You can like what a competency in a certain skill brings you without having an affinity for the concepts of the skill.

Plaintive Pull

Random thoughts March 19, 2014 Comments: 2

The nature of blogging lends itself to posting in early morning. Morning is a time for building energy, gathering thoughts to plan a successful day and not necessarily a time to bring up a plaintive, lamenting note. But seasonal transitions seem to lend themselves to a plaintive and wistful mindset, at least to me.

I had a cat once who would stride through the house, usually in the evening and let out a sorrowful loud plaintive cry from a room or two away. Perhaps he wanted me to do what I often did, which was to come and find him and ask him to tell me about whatever seemed to be on his mind. And give him a nice scratch behind his ears. Maybe he just liked the way that his meow would bounce off the walls and ceilings when he got a good lungful of air behind it. (He did occasionally seem to have a theatrical bent.)

Evening seems to be the right time for plaintive reflection – not as heavy as a lugubrious or dolorous ponder but a few moments to think. The right sort of evening reflection can lead to a better day in the morning.

Plaintive thought isn’t meant to be about all of the things that I meant to do in that day and didn’t get around to completing – too many people spend too much energy at the end of the day in this mode. How about what I learned, what I can build on in coming days, what needs to be reworked…

As thoughts for this post started to form in my head, I realized that plaintiveness is often best expressed in music. And songs by The Fixx and Counting Crows among others went through my head. But I really sat down to write when the evening light brought Taps to mind.

photo credit: Wikipedia

The mournful sound of a single bugle in the soft summer evening air brings me back to my childhood when my dad was Camp Director. This day is over, time to rest. Nature and humans have done what could be done in this day.

All is well.

Loose Ends & Cross Purposes

Random thoughts March 14, 2014 Leave a comment

Perhaps it is because the world is in transition from one season to another. At least, oh please, I hope that it is finally starting into the transition from winter to spring. The birds seem to think that it is because more and more of them are returning each day. I feel like the dot, dot, dot that trails along the end of a sentence when the speaker isn’t sure where the ending happens to be.

I feel at loose ends.

According to dictionary.com we humans have been at loose ends since the mid-1500s or so. Oh dear. At least we are in good company when we don’t quite know what to do with ourselves next. If we are tying up our loose ends, it appears to have something to do with getting our ropes in order on a sailing ship. This makes plenty of sense, one doesn’t want ropes just lying about on a ship. One trip and you could go overboard.

photo is from publicdomainpictures.net

I am also at cross purposes.

We humans haven’t been at cross purposes nearly as long as at loose ends according to merriam-webster.com – since 1668 to put a fairly fine point on it. (Looking up cross purposes is also in the bottom 30% on this site so maybe we can stir up some interest?) It seems to me that we have probably been at cross purposes as long as people have interacted. We just didn’t use this particular term for it.

But I am not at cross purposes with another person. I am, as the seasons are, in a bit of a brain muddling transition. Dangling this loosely and crossing that. Maybe I should start, but first I should finish… I want to do this, but it isn’t ready yet. I can’t do winter anymore, and yet I must.

Transitions are confusing. This seasonal transition from winter to spring makes me cross.

Patterns, Collections & Repetition

Random thoughts, Work Life March 12, 2014 Comments: 2

What is it about a certain thing that makes us want more? It makes sense that we want to categorize things, like solving a puzzle by snapping the pieces into place, we know what we need to go and find based on the items that surround the missing piece. But most of us want to create combinations of things that are pleasing. Either by shape, size, color, texture, sound, usefulness – what have you.

Patterns can also tell us when something goes wrong and help us to figure out how to set it right again. When one customer tells a company that they are having a problem with a product, it might be assumed that it was an anomaly but when the same complaint comes up again and again then the company better get busy on that pattern.

I used to watch my mom sew clothes when I was little. There was a pattern to her whole effort; deciding what was going to be made, going to the fabric store to pick out all the needed items – which included the pattern to make the piece of clothing – preparing and cutting and then finally sewing. Some of the pattern pieces made sense right away – you could see it was going to be a sleeve or other recognizable part. But some of the pattern pieces looked quite random, they only made sense when combined with other pieces.

Collections can be useful or informative, say tools, or aesthetically pleasing. My dad had quite a few tools, some had been his father’s before him. The hand tools were made to last, worn smooth by years of use. My grandfather’s power tools were a bit scary since they were produced long before safety features had come into being. Belts and other moving parts were all open and ready to snag a finger or worse, not hidden behind plates and covers as they are now.

I think that I am in the majority in finding comfort in my collections and something soothing in repetition.

Breaking the Escalation Pattern

Random thoughts February 19, 2014 Leave a comment

How many times do we see the news or hear about a situation when we think how did it get to that point? Why didn’t someone intervene, somehow put a stop to it?

When to step in? How to step in? Who should step in?

I don’t remember how old my boys were when I started to talk to them about the part they could play in keeping things from escalating to a point where there is a loss of control and something unfortunate results. Somewhere in their grade school years, long before their brains would mature enough to develop impulse control. (Of course, age doesn’t always correlate to impulse control.)

public domain image

The calmest among us still has a trigger or two – perhaps one or both of the universal triggers, hunger and lack of sleep. The calmest people are less likely to be set off by their very calm nature, do they also better understand how to take action to keep their surroundings more serene? Or how best to respond to chaotic surroundings to keep themselves serene?

We are under constant bombardment from outside forces – bills, relationship pressures, the world around us – which can keep us at a low simmer. Add in one more aggravation and it might make a volatile mix. What do we each do to understand our own simmer, our own triggers; what do we each do to counteract or prevent our triggers from being tripped?

Diffusing a volatile situation takes some skill, but helping ourselves, a friend or a family member to ease down their simmer is a much simpler and more pleasant task. Breaking the escalation pattern early, before it even has a chance to start, is sometimes as simple as getting a meal with a friend, sharing a laugh or offering a hug.

Different isn’t Deficient

Personal Growth, Random thoughts, Work Life February 17, 2014 Comments: 2

When I was learning to drive, no one said that your foot had to always be on a pedal – either the gas or the brake. Maybe my dad actually said coasting bought me some time to think about the right way to handle an oncoming situation and maybe I figured it out as I gained experience. I don’t exactly recall. But I did teach my boys that you can coast sometimes.

Similarly, somewhere along the line I realized that there are more categories than right and wrong. I don’t have to put something or someone into a ‘right’ or a ‘wrong’ category when they are different from my own understanding of the world and I need time to think about how I think about them. So things and people that I don’t readily understand go into the different area for further evaluation.

Different isn’t a good or a bad thing, it isn’t more than or lesser than what I do feel confident that I understand. It isn’t deficient. It is just different – different than what is familiar to me, sometimes just slightly so and sometimes radically so.

they all hold liquid to quench thirst…

I can grow to understand different. I can learn from it. If I decided that it was wrong because I didn’t understand it, then I could never hope to understand it and learning from it would be a much more difficult proposition.

My son who loves to cook asked me to give onions, specially prepared by him, a try even though he knew that I’ve disliked onions all my life. He just wanted me to move a category of onions, ones that he has prepared into the different area. I resisted. He persisted and now sometimes I eat onions. They haven’t moved into the ‘right’ category exactly, but I eat them and even allow that they add to the overall flavor of a dish.

There are things that should not go into ‘different’ – people or situations that make you less than you should be, or make you feel uncomfortable, in danger. Anything that really belongs in the ‘wrong’ space. Different isn’t meant to remove this option. Just to provide an option for an unknown that deserves an opportunity to prove it’s worth.

I think of times when I was quick to judge and came out wrong because I didn’t take some things into account. I remember a story of a long road trip, a broken gas line and some questionable looking teens who made sure that my mom and sister got home safely despite my mom judging them initially on their appearance.

Do you have a ‘different’ category where you set things aside for further consideration?

Anticipation Deficit

Random thoughts February 12, 2014 Comments: 3

Ten years ago this month much of my extended family was eagerly awaiting a planned trip to Ireland. Mom would travel with the boys and I, we would meet my brother and sister-in-law in Dublin. It was a wonderful trip and we still bring up highlights today, particularly poignant because mom died later that year.

Mom did most of the actual planning – she had been to Ireland twice already herself and she had more time. I didn’t really care too terribly about specifics, I had just always wanted to go. I did want to see a castle (and saw the outside of several, but we went in off season and most were closed, so a reason to plan a follow up trip one of these days).

There is plenty of research that gets touted that tells us anticipation is better for us than the actual event. Planning and preparing, imagining how it will be, having something other than or regular routine to capture our minds – this is powerful stuff.

I have been so busy slogging through the every day, and trying to catch up to a to-do list that is overfull that I haven’t given my anticipation deficit any thought until today. At Christmas my sister-in-law asked if this was the year for a family weekend at Wisconsin Dells since we have tried to plan one every couple of years. I had to nix it due to finances, darn it all. (There is something to be said for extending yourself for an experience, but also something to be said about getting yourself to a certain financial stability, too.)

I am good at planning for the practical both personally and professionally, but I am woeful at planning for enjoyable future activities. I get the idea to go somewhere and will start to read about the place, or I hear about an event that I probably would like; but then I get bogged down in the logistics or something else comes up to claim the money I would have put toward the experience.

When I do manage to get out of my regular routine, I am rarely sorry. But it is often last minute, therefore no boost from anticipation. Any suggestions to push through my planning barrier would be highly welcome.

It’s on a Loop

Random thoughts February 7, 2014 Leave a comment

Recently, I went to go see August: Osage County with a friend and there are moments from the film that are still with me. The main one that is looping around in my head is about trying to find a generous place in the heart for another person. It feels as though Tracy Letts is speaking to me.

Couldn’t we all benefit from a bit more generosity of feeling toward each other? Both offering it and hoping to receive it.

Valentine’s Day is looming – a time to think of love in all its various forms, though the day seems to be mostly devoted to romantic love. Love and a generosity of heart can be one and the same or not related at all except stemming from feelings. It is possible to love someone and yet not have generous feelings toward that person – think of sibling relationships in childhood particularly.

public domain image

I’ve ascribed this idea of a generous place in the heart as benefit of the doubt, but I like this more poetic and visual notion much better. Am I open to another person, are others open to me – do we identify with each other as fellow humans and not just a means to an end. We are each certainly aware when we feel that our own needs, our own humanity are overlooked or ignored. How often do we look into our own hearts to measure the generosity that we hold there – even what steps to we take to replenish it?

This is one of those things, like mindfulness, that can hold great benefit but require vigilance to review and maintain. Or at least periodic thought, no recriminations with a slip into a stingier mode, but a redoubling of energy toward generosity.

The fine thing about enacting generosity in this manner is that it is easy to start. I can let the person with fewer items in front of me in a checkout line. Or send empathetic thoughts toward the parent with the unruly child in a restaurant. I can ask someone I know to explain their reasoning before I assign one to them. And so on.

There is a great deal about relationships in this movie that I will continue to think about while I test out this idea of a generous place in the heart.

Favorite Ways to While Away a Winter Day

Random thoughts January 29, 2014 Comments: 2

I think that my brain might be freezing up this long winter. I’ve tried to start a few new posts and they are all now waiting for me to find a way to finish the ones that are worthy and dispose of the ones that aren’t.

So perhaps I can at least conjure up a list of pleasant things to while (or wile, if you prefer) away some hours rather than wishing them away for some better weather:

A good book, a mug of tea, and my cozy fleece throw (in a fine shade of green to remind me of seasons to come)
A marathon session of Sherlock on Netflix
A leisurely soup and sandwich lunch with a friend
Slowly and calmly putting a space to rights (and not thinking about how long it may stay that way)
Learning something new, or getting better at something
Perusing a map or atlas – to remember a trip, plan one or trace a historical event
A game with my sons and daughter-in-law, perhaps Settlers of Catan
A hot as I can stand it bath with great scents, some music and a good book or magazine
Normally, writing would fit on this list…
A look through old photo albums

Wikipedia snip-it of Sherlock

I think that I need to add a new craft to this list perhaps, or revisit an old one. Maybe getting some ideas from people in the blogosphere will help me out. What would go on your list? If you put any outdoor activity on the list, do give a compelling argument why, please.