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Why I Like Engineers and 6th Graders

1 Feb

Today I hung out with some sixth graders.  I haven’t done that since…well, I taught sixth grade which was a long time ago before I went to college and then moved to England and then worked in Portland, Maine and then came to Boston to watch the Red Sox and get an MBA. Or something similar.

A number of us, mostly engineers, ate lunch with a couple classes of sixth graders.  Mostly African-American (except for one) and all attending a school weighted heavily towards math and science.  I had a blast.  Our engineers had a blast.  (Granted, this was a subsection of engineers who had volunteered for the task and were therefore unnaturally extroverted.) The rest of the employees – those in HR, Finance & Administration, did not.

They came to me, one at a time, asking “Wasn’t that exhausting?  I’ve never tried so hard to get kids to like me before.”

I don’t think they were prepared for my answer: “Why did you want them to like you?  The point was to engage them in conversation, answer any career questions, get a window into their lives.  The point was never to be liked.”

Most people want to be liked.  It’s true.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  But one of the great not-so-secret secrets of life is that one does not approach a group of sixth graders hoping for some encouraging words.  For some validation.  For security and acceptance.  If you go in with that mindset, you will be disappointed.  To say the least.  More likely, you will enter a mild identity crisis (even if for only an afternoon).

I think it’s the same with engineers.  Sixth graders are so insular, focused on themselves and their emerging abilities and world, too absorbed with being cool and popular but also still shyly vulnerable – willing to tell you that they love reading and hoping you won’t tear them apart for the maybe-not-so-cool-truth.  Engineers can be insular too, solving their problems, diagnosing other people’s problems, finding solutions.  It’s not about you being less cool than their robot or their math problem or their lab.  Ok, you probably are.  Just accept it.  And maybe they aren’t cool and popular, except amongst other engineers, and maybe they don’t realize their shy vulnerabilities make them more approachable.

You don’t approach a group of engineers hoping for encouragement.  For validation, security and acceptance.  You approach a group of engineers with a problem, hoping for a solution, an open mind to entering their world and learning about what fascinates them.  The same with sixth graders.

Other employees tried to begin conversations with “What’s your favorite subject? What do you want to be when you grow up?”  And then they got stonewalled, tuned out, ignored.  Not saying it’s good behavior, but it is typical.  I began my conversations with “What will the Super Bowl score be on Sunday? If you could have any dream job in the world (but you’d have to do it forever/someone who has treated you poorly also has the same job/you wouldn’t get paid for it) what would it be?  What are you interested in enough that you’d be willing to skip meals and ignore your crush in order to do?”

The answers were fascinating.  Our hour and a half flew by.  I had a great time.

When an engineer or a sixth grader compliments you, it matters.  It rarely happens. But it matters.  And when they don’t, it does not mean you’re any less of a person.  It means that they are focused on something else, something other than buoying up your psyche and making you feel good about your existence.

If you enter a room seeking validation and security, most likely you’ll end up frustrated.  Even if your interactions are positive.  But if you enter a room seeking information and bent on listening and observing, you’ll end up rewarded.  You may learn something. You may become passionate about something you never even knew the acronym for before. Or you may just survive. Enter a room completely secure in yourself rather than seeking it from others and you’ll be freed up to explore just how great other people can be.

Sixth graders.

Engineers.

Basically everyone.*

 

*except clowns

Pick-pocketed by A Friend

30 Jan

“People in your past have dipped their hands in your purse and taken what was yours.” – Max Lucado

We are all owed something by someone.  An apology.  An explanation. Justification.  A childhood.  A marriage. A chance to prove our worth.  Trust.

Every one of us carries wounds from a hurtful conversation, a past snub, an intentional slur. And the closer the person was to us who did it, the deeper the gash. A thief enters a home he has not been granted access to and steals things that are not his.  A friend enters a home that she has been invited into, takes things that she has been offered, and then, once you are both comfortable with this arrangement, occasionally oversteps the boundaries and takes more – often of a personal nature – knowledge. And disperses that.

When a thief steals, we feel unsafe.  When a friend steals, we feel betrayed. And we retreat or shut down or vow to cut off all friendships and live a pathetic hermit existence. Or we vow to get even. Even though we often dip our hands in another’s purse while our own is being ransacked.

  • Learn to ask for forgiveness  and to mean it.
  • Learn to love your friends and be genuinely open with them without entrusting all of them with especially important information.  Use the term “please keep this confidential” sparingly.  Your really good friends don’t need to be told that in order to keep it to themselves.
  • Keep things confidential that others tell you. If you don’t think you can, be honest with them before they share their concerns.  Wounds on top of wounds take much longer to heal.
  • Learn to walk away.  Learn to not respond to hurtful emails sent just to bait you. Learn not to respond to vindictive comments said just to spite you. Learn to be okay with leaving things unsaid.

In the movies, there is almost always that scene – where everything is confessed and everyone realizes just how woefully wrong some of their previous judgment calls were and how utterly confusing their conflicting communications were.  If it’s a romantic comedy, this is followed by a lot of mushy I Love You and let’s start over and forgive the past because you’re the only one for me.  If it’s an action film, this is usually followed by a slap on the back or a quick-witted barb or something to show that the guys realize they were always fighting on the same team.  If it’s a science fiction account, there’s really no need for this scene because everyone is too busy handling the alien carnage and getting patched up, unless they are lucky enough to book a vacation stay in a Ewok village in which case they can learn that the person they were crushing on was their own twin.

That scene rarely happens in real life.  In real life, you don’t always get to know the how and the why and the when and the for how long.  Often because the other person doesn’t even understand why he or she is acting this way.  In real life, you get told that you walk too fast, apologize too often, ask for too much, ask for too little, talk too much, talk too little, have wacky personal beliefs, aren’t negative enough about life and…slash bike tires.  And then, when you choose to walk away, you are told that you are acting immature because you won’t fight back. And so you keep walking away.  But then realize you are being followed.

It’s times like these you want to slash a bike tire. Instead, you just keep walking, knowing your shadow will eventually get distracted along the route and take a different path.

Still beats finding out you were in love with your twin.

 

The Horror of The Same Old Thing

28 Jan

“Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.  The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart—an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, [God] has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating Pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together on the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme.” – The ScrewTape Letters by C.S. Lewis

I’ve rarely read such a truthful paragraph before. As humans, we need the union of change and permanence.

We don’t like the status quo. We don’t want to be viewed as boring. We get depressed at the thought of the daily rat race.  If you don’t believe me, check out a few Facebook statuses.  Or listen to the next phone conversation with an old friend.  After the “How are you?” we typically jump right into the “What’s new and exciting?” phase of the conversation.

And we also like permanence.  We like the guarantee of seasons and holidays marking the passage of time.  Always bringing something new but always bringing a sense of tradition and stability with them.

Seasons.
Holidays.
Baby milestones: rolling over, sitting up, crawling, walking.
Age.
Morning, noon, and night.
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Weekdays and weekends.
September – the beginning of a school year, May/June – graduation.

Because temporal rhythms are so important to us as humans, and we do not do well without them, we make up markers and then retrain our activities around them if need be.  They may be surrogate markers for real beginnings and middles and ends, but they work just as well as the real thing.

Trimesters in a pregnancy.
Mid-life crisis.
Semesters at college broken up with fall and spring breaks.
Dating, engagement, marriage.
Fiscal years broken into financial quarters.
Workweeks for work and obligations, weekends for errands and relaxation.

While change is good and permanence is good and we need both, sometimes we use our built-in High Beams to look too far ahead.  So instead of enjoying our crisp fall air, we are already gathering and squirreling away to prepare for “the best Christmas ever” only to find ourselves on Christmas Day already planning for something else.  We spend  time asking freshman/sophomore/juniors about their classes (with occasional side discussions on career plans) but we only ask seniors about their job prospects. We plan the next vacation while on vacation.  We spend the weekend preparing to make the next workweek manageable.  All good things but we sometimes miss the relaxation, the fun, the opportunity in The Same Old Thing.

When doing The Same Old Thing makes us lethargic or moody, maybe we need to revamp The Same Old Thing. But when doing The Same Old Thing makes us consider ditching our responsibilities, having an affair, or walking away from a friendship, our attitude is in the wrong.

If you want to grow strong, you have to challenge your muscles.  You stick with a routine for a few weeks or a month until it is no longer challenging. And then you switch it up.  This is called change.  But even though the activities you do and the sets you perform may vary, the muscle groups you are inevitably working remain the same (that is, if you are committed to working them all and gaining overall strength).  This is called permanence.  Change without permanence gives you very little results for your effort.  Permanence without change gives you an imbalance – inconsistent results (maybe you end up leg-strong with a weak core) and eventually a plateau.

The Horror of the Same Old Thing should push us forward, help us embrace the cyclical nature of life and make us stronger. The Horror of the Same Old Thing should never be used an excuse to give up, run from activity to activity without committing to any of them. Delight in change coupled with delight in permanence provides us with a stabilizing and refreshing rhythm that is our gift to enjoy.

My Dad Isn’t Superman

26 Jan

My Dad is not Superman.

We do have a classic family photo with both my Dad and brother wearing matching Superman shirts (and capes!). But I knew my father was wearing a costume just as much as my brother was.

Lucky kids are those who go through the growing up trauma of learning that their Dad isn’t a superhero.  Unlucky kids know this immediately – they have no father or their father is emotionally distance or physically and verbally abusive.  They know their Dad as a villain. Maybe, as they grow older, they begin to see him as a terribly flawed human being.

The rest of us know our Dads as heroes.  Then, as we grow older, we begin to see them as flawed human beings.

Superhero —-> Flawed human being <—- Villain

The hints are always there.  Your Dad goes to sleep at night just like any other human. Bad things happen on TV or you drive past a car accident and your Dad doesn’t “disappear” briefly with no explanation for his sudden departure.  Your Dad doesn’t wear spandex under his clothes.  Your Dad looks the same with or without glasses.  Your Mother is not Lois Lane.

But seriously.  The hints are there.  You fall down the stairs and bruise your knee.  Your brother gets lost in the woods with his best friend for hours and although your Dad frantically searches, your brother eventually reappears on his own, having found his way home, not riding safely on the triumphant shoulders of your Dad.  Your Dad doesn’t hold you tight enough on the Raging River and you slip under the water, below lots of feet and inner tubes where you realize you are stuck and cannot get back up to the surface.  This happens again in the Wave Pool.  Although most people like your Dad, a few people don’t.  You are vaguely aware of this as a child although never quite sure who they are or why they don’t like your Dad.  There are hushed conversations between your parents, no raised voices, but enough discussions throughout your childhood that you get the idea that your Mom doesn’t think your Dad is perfect.  Which means that your Dad probably isn’t perfect. Mothers know these things.

And you realize that your Dad will do his best to keep you healthy and fed and financially cared for. But he can’t make people like you. He can’t stop rejection from happening. He cannot get you into college and find you a job and buy you every Christmas present that you’ve thought about wanting but haven’t expressly written down on your wish list.

And this is a relief.

Because if your Dad isn’t SuperDad, then you don’t have to be SuperKid.  You can just be blessedly, weirdly, comfortably, normal. Since the propensity to love has nothing to do with the depth of flaws, you have nothing to worry about.

My Dad isn’t Superman. He can’t save the world. But what he does do is…

  • Get excited when I call him at work.  Say over and over again “this was so nice! Call me again sometime!”
  • Tell me over and over again how proud he is of me.
  • Get really excited when I come home and tell me how happy he is.  For instance, “Well, now that you’re home, Christmas can officially begin!”
  • Tease me so much that I wonder what life would be like without a jokester father and a how-far-can-I-push-the-envelope brother.  Then dismiss the fantasy as boring.
  • Attempt to develop interest in sports.  Because he ended up with a son who doesn’t follow them and 3 daughters and two son-in-laws who do.
  • Cook really fantastic meals. Like Chinese food and omelettes.  And once, when we were little and had read Amelia Bedelia books way too often, cream puffs. They took hours.
  • Support us in whatever whenever for however long it takes.  And if anyone has ever sat through a 4 hour dance recital where your child was showcased for exactly 22 seconds, you know what I’m talking about.
  • Find more parental pride in any of our accomplishments than he ever does in his own.
  • Love my mom.
  • Pretend he loves all of his kids equally even though I know I’m his favorite. (Just kidding.)

Who wants SuperDad when you can have imperfect-excited-proud-happy-teasing-chef-ballet-viewing-loving-won’t-care-that-this-sentence-contains-poor-grammar-General-Tsao’s-stirfrying-Dad?

I thought you’d agree.

People Are Not Leaky Faucets

25 Jan

“Figure out what’s broken and fix it. That’s the way we naturally think. But that attitude reduces us to things like faucets that sometimes break and fail to function properly…we are relational, not mechanical.”
- Dr. Larry Crabb

I like to figure out what’s broken and fix it.  If I can’t, it goes on the To Fix list until I find someone else capable of fixing it.  I know I’m not alone in this desire to see everything function properly.  Ask any engineer.

But people cannot be fixed by other people. (At least not by me.) A friend of mine passed away the night before his brother’s wedding.  I could not fix that.  A friend of mine chose to stay in a verbally abusive relationship. I could not change her behavior.  And trust me when I say that I’ve tried, to the point where I was so stressed that I stopped sleeping at night.  A friend of mine suffers from epilepsy.  There’s no tool for me to fix that.  Another friend suffers from depression.  I cannot change his attitude.

And the engineer a few years ago, who graciously told me to lose weight so I could run faster (thinking he was being incredibly helpful) did not fix me.  I still weigh about the same (actually, more. But I swear it’s all muscle.  And I’m happy about that.) I was treated like a leaky faucet.  But I’m a person.  With complex un-faucet-like emotions and needs and desires and choices and consequences and behaviors.  Learned and unlearned, natured and nurtured, and complex and simple.  A faucet is just a faucet.

But people cannot be fixed by other people.  We are not in control of other people’s reactions or decisions.  There are times when, in love, we have to tell people uncomfortable truth.  But it’s not our responsibility to fix their mistakes, change their attitudes or force their behavior to change.  Ask anyone who has attempted that and they can tell you how often it backfires.

If you think otherwise, that you can change people,  please explain to me how often you’ve been successful.  How many marriages have you stopped from ending in divorce when people tried to change each other rather than accepting and supporting who the other person truly was?  How often have your desires to mold someone else, like PlayDoh, ended in them looking exactly how you planned?  What parent has ever given birth to a robot?  Please.  Enlighten me.

Until then, I am going to treat myself like a newly landed alien from outer space.  You know, the kind that walks around with flashcards: This is a leaky faucet.  This is a human being.  These two items are not the same.

Leaky faucets are to be fixed.  And then used for faucet-needs.  Flawed people (aren’t we all?) are to be loved.  And then encouraged and propped up and loved some more as they make their own choices and behavior changes and attitude adjustments.  The best we can do is to be there for them.  Viewing them as a person.  Not a project.  Maybe even holding their hand.  Definitely handing over a Kleenex when they get leaky.  Rather than frantically searching for a wrench.

Accepting The Life I Never Wanted

23 Jan

If I could change one aspect of my childhood, it would have been the time I spent imagining how my life would turn out when I was “all grown up.”  Although how to dissect and separate the time spent planning my future (useless, unnecessary) from the time spent dreaming big dreams (essential, exhilarating) is something I have yet to figure out.

My life was not going to be lived in a city unless that city was D.C.  That was certain. And, although I loved soccer as a child, and still do, I am fairly certain my life was never going to involve running or biking or anything with the word Insane or Tough Mudder in it. The only ultras I planned on were ultra-reading sessions.  I did want a graduate degree but I was pretty sure no one would ever pay me to get one and I couldn’t imagine putting so much of my own hard-earned cash into it. I was going to live either very far away from home (overseas) or very close by (NH).  None of this in-between stuff.

This photo was never part of my dreams.  Tailgating? Eating grilled marinated chicken and wearing sports apparel and playing with a football?  Not in my dreams. Sorry to disappoint, but it really wasn’t.

This photo was even less a part of my dreams. In fact, I’ve only looked at it once since a friend sent it to me because it makes me laugh so much.  Ok, to be fair, possibly every girl dreams of at least one occasion where six guys (plus the one taking the photo, minus the one entertaining my friends while I apparently entertained his)  stand completely still listening to every word she says (what the heck was I saying? And why was anyone listening?) I have never felt such adoration before.  Granted, I think the dream doesn’t usually involve parking lot + jeans + running sneakers.  But hey, girls can’t be too choosy.

  • I never dreamed that I’d be excited about tailgating.  Or that I’d have to choose between tailgating with my friends and tailgating with some hockey celebs (I made the right choice!).
  • I never dreamed that I’d be able to talk to strangers.  Even if they are friends of my friend. That I’d go from not knowing someone and 20 minutes later, be laughing hysterically with them.
  • I never dreamed that I’d be knowledgeable about sports.  Knowledgeable enough to hold my own (and some) in a conversation with 7 passionate sports fans.  That a bunch of guys would actually listen to my sports analysis.
  • I never dreamed that I’d run a marathon.  On a fractured foot.  Then take a final exam for an MBA that my work is paying for me. Then throw up the night before Thanksgiving and  miss out on most of the deliciousness.  Then catch a bus to my friend’s boyfriend’s parent’s house (who I’d never met before). That I’d lose at Monopoly (that definitely never entered into my competitive dreams!). And a week to the day of the Philly marathon, be back in Philly, walking and talking and breathing sports.  Posing in this photo articulating some important point with my hands (another thing I DO not do – talk with my hands. I’m blaming the beer.)
We don’t all get to live the life that we want. That we think we need to live. In fact, I believe that none of us do. If I had the life I wanted, if everything was ideal, if everything was as I had imagined it, how disappointing and boring would that be?  Nothing left to dream about and push towards?  My best moment would be now.  Instead of waiting for me in the future.
We don’t all get to live the life that we want. Because those dreams might be big ones but they don’t typically include pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones. My dreams never included talking to strangers, the rush of fun I feel presenting to a large audience, the pit in your stomach as the race announcer begins to speak. I never dared dream about changing who I was to be a better version of me and yet it is happening.
We don’t all get to live the life that we want. But we get to live the life that is given to us.  A life that is full of ups and downs, sometimes circular in nature. We don’t dream of a life that involves tears and heartache and rejection but those things make the joyful-loving-strong parts so much more beautiful.
My childhood dreams were big but shallow.  My real life is full of depth.  And grit.  I wouldn’t have it any other way. I will continue to dream. And then continue to be grateful when reality never quite matches my dreams. And takes me places I never dared hope that I would go.

I Am Not My Body

22 Jan

When OccupyBoston occurred, those of us not interested in playing a role were still categorized – as part of the 99%.  But there’s a far larger protest afoot: OccupyYourBody and once again, many of us fall into the 99%.

An article that I read yesterday at the gym noted that a mere 1% of women are happy with their bodies.  1%?  Only 1 out of 100 women like the way they look externally?  It made me sad and a bit depressed.

Because the truth is that we are not our bodies. My body may be an external manifestation of my state of mind, of my ability to care for myself, of my desire to live a long life and die of natural causes. But my body is not ME.

I’ve always believed this but lately I’ve been thinking about it more. I love running. And I haven’t run in 5 weeks.  5 weeks is a very long time to not be able to do the thing that brings me great joy.  Early Saturday morning long runs – when the city is just waking up, there is an entire weekend ahead of us, the air is cold and brisk and I have set aside time for this run – those are my favorite mornings.

So a few weeks ago, when my test run (after resting for 3 weeks) led to severe pain by mile 4, I was pretty upset.  My mind and my legs felt fresh – they wanted to run for miles and miles. But my left IT band hurt so much that I knew running through it wasn’t an option.  So I stopped and went home.  And worked on finding joy and headed off to watch the Bruins (lose).  And, tucked into a seat, a bottle of water in my hand, a knowledgeable hockey friend on my left and my boss on my right, I loosened up and threw myself into cheering for the fights (err, I mean the game).  And because I hadn’t run 16 miles, I didn’t spend those two hours forcing myself to eat and drink large quantities of water, I never took a bathroom break, I didn’t check any marathon training schedule on my phone or obsessively calculate what training I should do the next day. I sat and watched and when my phone buzzed, I ignored it.  My boss said “I’ve never seen you so relaxed before.”  It was great.

A few days later, a friend commented on how happy I looked.  It was probably because I’d just been sitting with a group of coworker friends, introducing them to each other, and having a lot of laughs (probably at my expense). But I also told him that it’s because I am remembering that I am not my body.

Aside from running pain, I am healthy and can participate in most activities. But whether or not I do those activities doesn’t make me who I am. I am my words, my ideas, and my actions.  And I want to be known for my words, my ideas, and my actions. I will never have a perfect body, nor would I want the pressure that comes with it.

Attempting to conform to the world’s standard causes us to drift from our own uniqueness.  I cannot be both standard and unique. I can only choose to be me transformed (becoming the best version of me) or me conformed (becoming the version the world believes would be most accepted).  One brings freedom and one brings constant fear of rejection.

Yesterday, a friend asked for exercise advice. She began cataloguing a list of her body’s imperfections. I had to stop her. “I will help you feel healthier and stronger and proud of what your body can do” I said. “In return, you will treat it with respect.  You are not your body.”

And yet we reinforce that daily.  Every time we say “Have you lost 5 pounds? You look great!” we are leaving people with one of the following reactions:
1) Did I not used to look great? Was I so horribly fat that people talked about me?
2) I haven’t lost 5 pounds. I guess I should wear these pants more often.  Or actually lose 5 pounds.  I must look like I have 5 pounds to lose.
3) Yay! People are noticing! I am getting compliments, I must work harder/eat less to lose more.

Wouldn’t it be better to compliment people on the actions they have taken: “You look amazing! What’s your exercise secret?”  ”I am so proud of you for working out 5 days a week, finding time in our busy schedules is such a challenge, you inspire me!”  Learning to compliment people on their words, their ideas, and their actions is a small step towards helping more people truly become the 99%.

You are not simply your body.  I am not simply my body.  We will age and shapes will shift and injuries will come and go but who you are, and what I love about you, will only get better.  Don’t waste your life striving for X when everyone else loves you for your Y. OccupyYourBody proudly because it is yours. Just don’t turn OccupyYourBody into OccupyYourMindEntirelywithhowtoOccupyaBetterBody.  It’s just not catchy.

From Despair Central to Disney World

20 Jan

Often, I let how the day begins determine how the day unfolds and certainly how the day ends.  If it begins poorly – struggling to get up because of lack of sleep, starving but no time for breakfast, having to take the usually-delayed T or bus system because it is pouring rain and I cannot bike – then the rest of the day slides into shambles.

Not necessarily outwardly. I can often begin on a bad note and still manage to be productive at work and cheerful to coworkers and get to class on time and participate.  That is my default mode.

But inwardly, the day seems wasted.  Things didn’t go according to my plan and I can’t wait to go to bed and hit the reset button and try again tomorrow. If we believe in the laws of regression to the mean, a really bad day means it is more likely the day next will be closer to the average.  A string of really bad days would be too much of an outlier.

The opposite is true, too.  A really great beginning to a day colors my perspective positively. Maybe little annoyances or tedious problems occur but I shrug them off.  Today is a good day, I think.  And I carry on.

What I need to do is to learn how to “reset” at any point.  To broaden my perspectives, to curb my expectations, to enjoy the unpredictability of life.  And reset after every bad moment rather than let it creep into the next moment as my unwanted but self-assured-sidekick.

Kids do it best.  They reset with amazing speed.  The toddler runs down the hallway, and comes to a very dramatic crash when the slippery tiles are too much for his unsteady legs.  There may be a boo-boo or a bruise or just a very red tender spot on his knee.  But that’s enough to purchase him a direct-flight-to-Despair Central.  You’d think he’s being either punished or murdered by the cries that he emits.  And the look he gives the floor tiles. It is a very bad day.  Probably the worst day he’s ever had.

Flash forward 20 minutes. Or 10. Or 5. And he’s spinning in the office chair, going round and round.  Laughing so hard that its contagious and people stop to see.  Great big eyes shimmering with excitement.  What happens next?  A cookie after lunch? A trip to the playground? The day is full of endless possibilities of fun adventures.  And right now, in this moment, finding such unashamed delight in a spinning chair, if you heard him down the hallway, you’d think he was at Disney World.

From Despair Central to Disney World.  All in less time than it took me to type this post.  That’s the sort of day I want to strive for.  To tumble off the plane into Despair Central’s airport, gaze around, think “Eh, this is not for me” and head to a  trash bin to shred my Despair Central frequent flyer points. I won’t be cashing them in.  And then, with no time to linger and buy a t-shirt, head straight for the next flight to anywhere hopeful and expectant. Even if its just the Land of Spinning Chairs.

Sitting in Discomfort

18 Jan

“It’s a useful skill, knowing how to sit in discomfort,” our yoga instructor said.

Usually, anything resembling yoga mumbo jumbo goes in one of my ears and out my nose with my next exhale. Or something like that.

But this time, I happen to agree.

Sitting in pain is bad.  Sitting in filth can be worse. But discomfort, best defined as unease or hardship, is something we all need to learn to handle.

In yoga, some of the poses (ok, most of the poses) involve discomfort. If there’s actual pain, you’re either doing something wrong or trying too hard and you should back up. But discomfort means you are stretching something that is tight.  And if you breathe into it, choose to relax, it gets easier.  It may never get easy. But it certainly gets bearable.

We all experience tightness that needs to be stretched. Maybe it’s talking to strangers or learning to come alongside someone in sickness or sadness. Maybe it’s that period in between interviewing and waiting for a phone call. Maybe it’s having to give someone bad news. Or admit that we messed up. Or handle a performance appraisal that isn’t going to be all candy and cheer.  Or attend a rose ceremony and not give someone a rose.

Life is full of discomfort.  And shying away from it is the opposite approach to “getting out of our comfort zone.” Or maybe we got out of our comfort zone and now we’re looking for the nearest entrance back into it. The problem with running from discomfort is simple.  You back off and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.  You let a sliver of fear or doubt in and it makes it that much harder to breathe into the discomfort the next time around. Whereas if you learn to relax, if you learn to live with uncertainty, if you learn to put yourself into discomfort and survive it, the next time seems easier.

Harder. Easier. Your choice.

You may not be able to dance in discomfort.  And you probably won’t be able to sleep in discomfort.  But sitting in it?  That seems doable.

 

The Power of a Story

16 Jan

We all love stories.  If not, we wouldn’t watch movies or read books or follow court trials or get frustrated when the Super Bowl commercials don’t make any sense.  We wouldn’t sit around listening to each other, anticipating punchlines, figuring out what story we will share once they are done sharing theirs.

Part of being a family is being part of a story.  We can’t say that all families share genes, because some do not.  But we can say that all families share in a story.  They may be heart-wrenching ones or romantic ones or ordinary ones or horrific ones.  We may want to shield others from the true story.  We may need to shield others from the true story.  But family is a story.  And knowing that these people know your story, experienced your story, were decisive in your story, is often the best part (or, in many cases, the worst part) of being in a family.

Part of growing up is being vulnerable in our story-telling.  If you had told me, a few years ago, that I would share stories (mostly ridiculous, some silly, a few serious) with 1500 employees on a regular basis, I would have laughed.  And used the “Never” word. Because one of my principal beliefs as a child was to keep things to myself.  I don’t know why. I certainly didn’t learn this from my family.  My Dad is full of stories.  My parents are very open with just about anyone.  I’ve never met someone who actively disliked my brother. So I’m not sure why I thought that the P’s: Private, Personal, Protective were so important. But I did.

The beauty of sharing stories is that they lead to more stories.  To an enriched life where your story intersects with another one, where story-webs are created as each story builds on top of a past story,as the layers become richer and denser.  Sharing stories has led to making friends.  Has led to new opportunities.  And a lot of laughs.

And stories can be comforting. If not, Reader’s Digest wouldn’t sell so many copies.  We wouldn’t have Oscars and Golden Globes and Top Ten Lists to reward the best stories. Last winter, I had a few weeks of horrible nightmares.  The kinds where you wake up sobbing and suffocating and nothing that is real feels real. I never had nightmares as a kid so I was totally unprepared.  But I did have a good friend who slept beside his phone, in fact, sometimes slept with his lights on so he wouldn’t waste time trying to find his phone when I called.  And I’d call, usually around 1 AM, and I’d be crying so hard that I couldn’t speak and he’d try to make me laugh and then he’d pray for me and then he’d just be on the phone with me reminding me of what was real and what was not.  And then I’d calm down enough to ask for a story.  Stories were comforting. They helped me think about something other than myself and what I was going through. It didn’t matter if it was an epic story or just something simple: his first sports injury, the day the college dorm almost burned down, the time he got in trouble for watching Fight Club.

Part of living life is sharing a story.  A good life involves risk and reward, triumph and defeat, happiness and sadness.  It’s all part and parcel of being human.  Many people have bucket lists of what they want to achieve before they die.  It’s apparently all about accomplishments.

My bucket list is vague.  Kinda pathetic, really.  It only boasts one item: I want to live life in a way that is worth telling stories about.  I can’t pretend that I’m original. I just read this same sentence in a book.  My parents have both modeled lives that are story-rich.  The best stories have lots of ups and downs, risks and fears and triumphs and hardships.  Which means I’m well on the way to living a good story.  And surrounded by a story that I love being a part of.

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