Tag Archives: truth

For Your Eyes Only

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for your eyes only012Everybody’s got a thing. You know, that thing that is so tightly wrapped and tucked away in the corner of your self-protecting part of the brain. It peeks out once in a while only to be tut-tutted back where it belongs far from the earshot of the logical thinking part of the brain.

As part of Brave Blogging, I had the privilege of listening to an interview conducted by Andrea Scher with her writing teacher/mentor/friend Laurie Wagner. Aside from the easy talking with my friend while she’s waiting for her flight style it was full of writing tips, gems and an assignment: The blog post no one will ever read. Wild write it, just go, pen to paper, no holds barred. No right or wrong, no is it good enough, just truth, this is how it is.

I listened to the interview several days ago and I knew it started to grow in me when I began waking up at 4 o’clock in the morning head spinning with pen in hand and notes strewn all over the bed. It became the perfect storm when the interview combined with a very matter of fact statement I heard from someone recently, they said, “I knew everything had changed”. I knew what I had to write, I knew I would fill a legal pad with several decades of heart wrenching examples of exactly how that one thing changed everything.

It’s easy to be brave at 4, 5, 6 in the morning, it is exhausting, and it is exhilarating to find and go to your edges. However, what you begin to realize is that at your edge lies the edge of someone else. If we are all connected then this must be so. It was all true, every word, and the truth indeed sets you free but I couldn’t find it in my heart to impact another with my truth even if they’d never know it. I wouldn’t take that chance.

Part of the interview addressed, “when it’s not your story to tell”. This isn’t someone else’s story, its’ mine but I’ve gained enough from just writing it, the need to publish it seems overkill or someone else’s spirit kill, or negating the good work of simply taking it out of its protective covering, showing it the light albeit 4am lamp light, and NOT putting it back.

My favorite sentiment from this interview, “…the way you walk through the world is the way you walk through the page…” Thank you Laurie I will carry this with me always, it smacks of building an ordinary legacy.

I encourage everyone to try this, writer or not, for your eyes only. Find a spot, a pad, a journal, construction paper it doesn’t matter. Your favorite pen, crayons, marker just NOT your computer. Let those new connections that are created in the brain run wild from you taking pen to paper. Just go, get out of your way, unpack that thing or one of those things that you’ve so securely tucked away and have at it. You may find your aches and pains subside, your anxiety abates (I spent 4 hours in a meeting at the National office, which I swore I would never do again, without a bit of anxiety), if nothing else you will feel lighter.

I ritualized this for myself by rolling it up and throwing it in the fire the following evening. Watching it spark up the flue doesn’t mean it didn’t happen it simply means I unpacked and let it go. Doesn’t mean I won’t remember it from time to time either, I’m sure I will. There is a saying, you don’t see things as they are, you see things as YOU are (Anais Nin). Surely this will make all the difference.

Suffice to say no one will ever see that post but the sentiments, lessons learned, truth of it and feelings about it may very well become fodder for the blog. My edges will be grist for the mill, my experience a resource and my integrity in letting it go part of my ordinary legacy. I am better for having done this…

 

If Wishes Were Horses Beggars Would Ride

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Old City Philly 2014 (37)

In the week of resolutions and calls to action and life changing scenarios this Scottish proverb, originating in the 16th century, suggests that it is useless to wish and that better results will be achieved through action.  So how are your resolutions going…?  Since this has also been a week of lists let’s look at the top resolutions of those living life and the top regrets for those who are close to the end:

The top ten wishes for this year:              Top ten regrets of the dying:

1 Lose Weight                                          1 never pursued my dreams and aspirations

2 Getting Organized                                 2 worked too much/neglected my family

3 Spend Less, Save More                       3 should have made more time for my friends

4 Enjoy Life to the Fullest                         4 should have said I love you more.

5 Getting Fit and Healthy                          5 should have spoken my mind

6 Learn Something Exciting                     6 should have resolved my problems.

7 Quit Smoking                                        7 wish I had children

8 Help Others in Their Dreams                8 should have saved more money.

9 Fall in Love                                           9 not having the courage to live truthfully

10 Spend More Time with Family          10 I didn’t choose happiness

Interesting no?  I hate to be the one to remind you that at some point your legacy will take up where your life left off but the truth is, well the truth.  If you only made one resolution this year why not just resolve to live your life the way you want your story told.  Why not?

I’m not a big fan of anything that contains the words coulda, shoulda, or woulda so the regret list is certainly grating my spine…  Get rid of those words while there’s still time to change the road you’re on.  Don’t know if you’ll wind up with your stairway to heaven (jury’s still out on that) but you will relieve yourself of an awful lot of angst.

Is there a correlation between lists?  Certainly losing weight, getting fit and quitting smoking may keep you from getting to the thoughts on the right too early but check your motivation too.  If this is about health then you’re on track to solving what may be a huge life problem.  If it’s about trying to live up to the ridiculous standards that only makes money for the diet/beauty business stop it right now. Remember who you are, practice some self-kindness and choose to be happy where you are now.  I think you’ll see that most of the time that is just the impetus for the rest to follow.

Getting organized and spending less more often than not comes down to “stuff” .  Does your stuff define you?  Are you in constant pursuit of stuff?  Do you need to work harder and longer and spend less time with your family and friends because of stuff?  Then you may be able to kill several birds with one stone.  If you want a practical way to rejoin your life you may want to check out Becoming Minimalist.  Joshua Becker has plenty of first-hand information to help and no you don’t have to give up everything to be a minimalist, you can define your own parameters based on which of the things in the two lists above might be most important to you…just sayin.

I’m pretty sure that enjoying life to the fullest, learning something exciting or even just something new to you, and spending more time with your family will produce the kind of stories that will begin to make up a wonderful legacy.  I know like I know that helping anyone with their dreams, or their aspirations or redecorating their home or teaching them to cook or any service to anyone with good intention will rocket you into the legacy hall of fame.

I hope that you will embrace living your truth, if you don’t know your truth make that your life’s work. It will elevate the need for any forward or backward looking list and provide just the exhale you a really looking for.

If wishes were horses then beggars would ride,

If turnips were swords I’d have one by my side.

If ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ were pots and pans

There would be no need for tinker’s hands!

The one exception to the wishes dilemma is wishing good for someone else.  With that I wish you hope, peace, ordinary moments in time and plenty of food for thought toward an extraordinary legacy through an ordinary life well lived.

Wallyball Forfeit

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speak the truth

What the hell is Wallyball?  Oh you’ll love it.  You play in a racquetball court with a volley ball and a net. You play off the walls, it’s fast and it’s fun and it will be hysterical.  Was this the plan the whole time?  Well yeah, we didn’t want to tell you because…Because I’m not the least bit athletic, because I smoke, because I’m bigger than any two of you put together, because I’d be the one running for towels and wouldn’t that be perfect?

I’ll take the forfeit.  You can’t forfeit, it’s her fortieth birthday party.  Yeah I know.  I’m going to take the forfeit.  Why are you saying that, she’ll be crushed.  No she’ll understand.  I have no idea if she understood, I never saw her again.  In my heart I knew that would be the case but I did it anyway.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I was ready to quit this friendship but my method of breaking it apart haunts me to this day.

We had been friends on and off since high school.  It was an interesting friendship, she the blonde athletic beauty that all the boys adored and I the dark haired side kick that all the boys lamented to about never getting her attention. There were times when I thought she keeps me around just to clean up the messes and,  although I could hold my own on the looks side of things, didn’t I make her look all that much more beautiful for my curviness and Italian features.

The relationship was on again for most of the major life events, her wedding, my wedding, her annulment, her next wedding, and the birth of her children.  I was maid of honor, matron of honor, Godmother to one of her children and her mother used to call us sisters.

We weren’t sisters.  There came a time that we no longer wore the same size clothes.  There came a time that I began to smoke more.  There came a time that I seemed to be relegated to the kitchen during parties while she socialized with her, now quite beautiful, friends.  These were the young mothers with all that entailed and all that I had no interest in.  I am a favorite Aunt with all that entails but they couldn’t grasp the importance or the prestige of that title.

At the same time she moved an hour away.  Visits became infrequent and thankfully I didn’t need to recount the goings on in my life with a husband that had become addicted to drugs.  On the rare occasions we did get together, always at her much bigger much more expensive home, the uneasiness was palpable.  I knew this was not going to be a lifelong friendship after all but I’m a never-say-die kind that just keeps trying and blaming myself for the lack of improvement.

At one point in my life I realized that no one had ever left me.  Interesting thought to cross one’s mind but it’s true.  And why would they?  I am a giver, I’m the one who will loan you the money, clean up the mess, make an excuse on your behalf and generally make sure you are comfortable and accommodated. Not always to your benefit I came to find out when my husband and I finally divorced after twenty six years of marriage.

So as I was putting all the pieces together toward moving on, this party arises.  In my heart of hearts I couldn’t imagine I would ever do a thing like not show up.  But I couldn’t, I just couldn’t.  I could not bear the embarrassment of people jumping in front of me for a ball as they had so many times before.  I could not chance the unpredictability of my husband’s behavior.  Who the hell knows what side of the high he might find himself on and did I want to haul an hour away only to turn around anyway.  I couldn’t stand trying to put on a fun face in front of all the slender young mothers again.  And I could not be the one to fetch the towels.  Or serve the food.  Or take the pictures.  Or be invisible.  I just couldn’t.

So that was the end of that.  Why does it haunt me?  I’m not sure.  Did she turn out to be right about my husband and the one sided relationship. Yes.  Was she right when she warned me that being a Godmother was a big responsibility not to be taken lightly before I made the decision to say yes.  Yes.  Was she right about health and smoking and vegetables. Yes.

I’m sure it haunts me because it was heartless and it could have been handled better.  It haunts me because it doesn’t represent the way I do things.  It haunts me because I let them down and I’ve tried my entire life never to let anyone down.  It doesn’t haunt me because it ended but because I was completely selfish in my execution of the friendship’s end.  The irony of using the word execution does not escape me.  I didn’t speak the truth to the person who needed to hear it.

So now it is seventeen years later and I think of her on her birthday each year.  I wonder if I should apologize for my behavior.  And then it occurs to me that she has probably gotten beyond the Wallyball forfeit years ago and I am giving myself entirely too much credit for “ruining” anything.  I look at the state of my life on this day and feel I’ve done more good than harm in the seventeen years that have past but somehow I can’t seem to let it go.  It doesn’t stay with me every waking hour but it does give me pause when there are hard conversations to be had with friends.

I’ve developed an interesting mix of friends since leaving my husband four years ago.  The life I was living was one of isolation so now that I am reengaged I am careful to monitor when to engage fully and when to hold back just a bit.  This is not a constant vigilance but I never again want to fail to recognize when my comfort level is being threatened.  I never want to be relegated to the kitchen unless it’s my choice and oddly enough it’s usually my first choice now.

I no longer smoke. I am slimmer now but certainly not near the curvy figure I once had.  Thankfully, I am much healthier, nuts, berries and the occasional vegetable to thank for that.  I’m older now and I know I will never recapture my youth; it’s gone and mostly cherished for its lessons learned.  I know like I know, that I will try to speak the truth and continue to honor myself in my friendships and that the mishandling of a friendship, or its breakup, is nothing I ever want to repeat.