I like this little video. It’s a good reminder about keeping perspective.
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Nugent Family Counseling Center
It is good to have friends who are poets. This is what I told my friend, Eric, after I read a recent email he sent me. Eric is 46 and has had his share of adversity in the last decade, including open heart surgery when he was 39. If you are looking for plastic surgery or other body services consult now with Dr. Matthew Galumbeck. We have often talked about the importance of staying present and how truly short life is. I asked Eric what his thoughts were about this, especially for those of us who have not had life-threatening illnesses that tend to naturally create the urgency of the moment. So here is guest blogger Eric Bellscheidt on life and being in the moment:
You said it about this gossamer life, and every day I realize that more and more. But I tend to think it makes the days more precious. I truly do appreciate them more than I did as a young adult, even more than I did a few years ago. And we’re even talking post-heart illness. I don’t think the appreciation is simply a product of maturity or personal experience, but a realization and assessment of what is valuable in life, about what is important and precious, and maybe somewhat of a letting go and acceptance of the mortal beings we are.
I think one of the best ways to realize that every day is a gift is through our connections to life, whether they be interpersonal connections, or a communion with nature, or even a higher being. What you connect with. But it’s not what we believe in so much, but the fact that we simply believe. It’s a dedication. It is the connections that sustain and help us appreciate who we are and what we have. They hold us to this earth, gossamer strands that bind us in this life, to what we love, before we float away . . .
I also adhere to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks philosophy of life: Agent D.B. Cooper said every day you have to give yourself a gift, even if it’s simply a cup of good, black coffee.
My extrapolation of this is to acknowledge the gift. Then eventually you realize that it is not the only gift of the day. A hug, a smile, a sunset. Then it dawns on you that there are more gifts coming to you throughout the day, you just have to be open to them. And finally you understand that once the string of gifts is strong enough it becomes the tapestry of your life.
Your skein of days.
Eric Bellscheidt is a poet at heart and an editor with Microsoft by day. He is the husband of my oldest friend, Karen, and the father of two daughters. I am proud to call him my friend.
After my last blog post, my friend Susan wrote and said, “I liked what you had to say, but what about the corollary of ‘I don’t care where I am, I just don’t want to be here’?” She went on to say that she had gone dancing that night – an activity she usually loves – but had a terrible time because “I brought my ‘I don’t want to be here’ self with me.”
So I have some ideas about this, of course. A great myth propagated by our society – and sometimes my very profession – is that we should feel good all the time. People spend a lot of time and energy trying to avoid feeling bad; we don’t like feeling bad and we want to change it. That makes sense, but it’s not very realistic. There are times when we are going to be grouchy or mad or sad or uncomfortable inside our own skins. As the poet William Stafford says,
Look: no one ever promised for sure
that we would sing. We have decided
to moan. In a strange dance that
we don’t understand till we do it, we
have to carry on.
So the key is to not resist where you are. Here are five ideas on how to do that:
1. Accept your bad moods and learn from them. We resist the “bad” emotions of anger, sadness, anxiety, and irritability and yet they are just emotions – they are neither good nor bad. What they can do for you, though, is act as a signal that something is amiss for you. Instead of resisting the emotion, go with it and see from where it arises. What new thing can you learn about yourself from your mood?
2. You’re here now, so look around and see what you can learn. Even if you bring your “I don’t want to be here” self to the party, you’re there now anyway. Is there some reason you came to where you are? Is there a person you’re supposed to meet or a lesson to learn about yourself? Take a breath and let go of the idea that you should want to be where you are. The fact is, you’re there so what opportunity is presenting itself to you? Maybe the opportunity is just a chance to learn to be okay with being somewhere you don’t want to be for awhile.
3. See how you got there and maybe you won’t have to go there again. So, you’re in a place you don’t want to be. How did you get there? Perhaps you weren’t listening to the voice inside you that was saying, “I really don’t feel like doing this tonight” or “I’ve had bad experiences in the past with this person” or “I know I won’t feel well physically if I eat this thing I’m allergic to” or ______ (fill in the blank.)
4. Don’t waste your energy wishing you were somewhere else. Here’s a really simple example: I used to just hate being stuck in traffic or at a red light when I was running late. I wished really hard that I would be anywhere but where I was. I would get really upset and grip the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white, tense my whole body, grind my teeth, and either silently or out loud curse the person or light that was adding to my lateness. Since I tend to be a late person, this took up a lot of my energy and I would arrive to my destination drained, tired, and cranky.
After years of doing this, a couple of thoughts occurred to me. One was the reality that all of my tension and upset did nothing to influence either the stoplight or other drivers’ behaviors. I was expending all my energy on some sort of magical belief that I could change the situation if I just got uptight enough about it. The other thought that came to me was that lightning had never struck when I was late. Not that I wanted to continue being late all the time, but the truth was that nothing terribly bad had ever happened because of it. Sure, I felt embarrassed or uncomfortable sometimes, but the end of the world as I had anticipated it through my mental and physical gyrations never actually occurred.
Now, instead of wasting my energy, I think two thoughts: “I have no control over that stoplight or the actions of other drivers.” And, “It’s my own fault I’m late. It’s embarrassing, but not the end of the world.”
You can use this same system when you are expending a lot of energy wishing you are somewhere other than where you are right now. If you have no control over where you are, let it go. If you do, do something about it. And ask yourself if it’s really the end of the world to be where you are.
5. It’s okay that you don’t want to be there. Don’t overemphasize how bad it is to not want to be somewhere. Where you are emotionally or physically is probably not the worst place in the world. You don’t have to like it, though, no one says you do. Yesterday, a friend and I were sharing our experiences of deep grieving from several years ago. Neither of us ever wanted to be in that emotional place and we certainly did not like it. But there we were. And what did we do? I didn’t like where I was, but I was there, so sometimes I divided the day up into five minute intervals and thought, “I’ll just get through the next five minutes,” all day long. My friend said she just put one leaden foot in front of the other until she started to move out of that space where she didn’t want to be.
No one promised we would sing; we have decided to moan. And that’s okay.
William Stafford, An Introduction to Some Poems, in The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. Graywolf Press, 1999.
The other day I was listening to a radio show on travel. The guest was talking about his career as a travel journalist and the pros and cons of travelling alone. When it came time for listener comments, a man called in and said, “My motto is, ‘I’m never lost, I just don’t know where I am.’”
I turned this over in my mind a few times. I started wishing I had known about that motto when I was grieving and felt utterly lost in a world I no longer recognized. Or when the opposing forces of coming out as a lesbian and my conservative Christian beliefs collided and tossed my self-confidence about like a lawn chair in a hurricane. Or when I was laid off from my job and panicky about how I was going to pay the rent.
If only I’d known that I wasn’t really lost, I just didn’t know where I was. That the experience of not knowing where I was would make me stronger, and that it would open new doors for me as I explored areas I wouldn’t have explored if I hadn’t been unwillingly thrust into them.
Because I didn’t know where I was, I learned that grief doesn’t end, but it does get better. This lesson propelled me to help others who need an anchor when they, too, are feeling lost in their sea of grief. I can help them to eventually see that they aren’t lost, they just don’t know where they are right now.
Because I didn’t know where I was, I learned that there are many different ways to think about life rather than being locked into one narrow belief system. I was able to grow a healthy respect for different faiths, different viewpoints, and different lifestyles. And I learned that I was more okay than I ever thought I would be when my vision was so constricted.
Because I didn’t know where I was, I took the first job that came along after I was laid off, something outside of my skill set and training. My wild attempt to latch onto stability launched me on a wonderful fifteen-year experience that was rife with discovery: I had leadership skills I never knew about; I was more creative than I had given myself credit for; I found a passion for advocating for the underdog on the margins of society – people who need and want skills to bounce back from adversity.
Not knowing where I am brings color and vitality to my life. The difference between now and those past experiences is that now I can celebrate and anticipate not knowing where I am. Even if it’s uncomfortable, I still know that I’m in a space where I might discover something new about myself right around the next corner.
How has not knowing where you were influenced your life?
I want to start this off by saying I’m not being paid in any way by the company Life is good. So, I’m voluntarily saying that I really like them. I like their stuff, I like their simple, positive slogan, and I like how they inspire people. I don’t even think inspiration was their intention when they started the company, but somehow that slogan and the happy faces of their character, Jake, and his dog, Rocket, really move people to do good stuff and make it through some tough times.
They have a section on their website called Fuel: Inspiring letters that fuel us all to keep spreading good vibes. Want some extra fuel for your day? Check it out.
And remember, sometimes it’s the simple thoughts that get us through: Life is good.