Somewhere

Who am I?
I am a dancer,  a writer,  an artist at heart.

I am a scientist,  a humanist, an intellectual.

I am not timely,  organized or well spoken.

I process slowly. I think deeply.

I seek meaning in actions,  in words, in art,  in silence. 

I find boredom in complacency.

I feel socially awkward.  I think of my friendships often.  I reach out to them infrequently.

I am one person in a country on a planet spinning on its axis around a sun in a solar system in a galaxy somewhere in the universe.

Who are you?
Do we matter?
What has meaning? Biologically? Individually?  Culturally?  Spiritually?  Artistically?  Professionally? Globally?  Universally?

What does it mean to be alive? Biologically? Individually?  Culturally?  Spiritually?  Artistically?  Professionally? Globally?  Universally?

What does it mean to be dead?
"You are dead to me. "
"It is dead to me. "
"He was dead to me,  once. "

I am alive.  No one is dead to me.  I breath,  eat,  think,  sleep, feel,  heal,  move,  express,  love,  withdraw,  confess, reach out timidly to people in a world spinning on its axis around a sun in a solar system in a galaxy somewhere in the universe.

simple questions, no simple answers

I was recently at a party when someone asked me if others were accepting when I told them that I couldn't deliver what they wanted.  My first thought was, they have no choice but to be accepting.  My second thought was, do they?

To answer their question, I had to ask myself what does it mean to be accepting? What does accepting behavior look like?  To me, acceptance means surrendering to reality, no longer resisting, pushing back or trying to change it to be what one wants it to be.  This means no arguing, foot stomping, chest puffing, silent treatment, guilting, shaming, or bargaining.  It certainly doesn't include name calling, use of pejoratives or threats.

The next question I had to ask myself is how do I define reality?  Reality is not the bendable thing I have tried to superimpose on my children, the type they could alter by pushing back or by any of the other before mentioned behaviors of non-acceptance.  Those of us who grew up with such malleable realities tend to lack in adulthood discrimination between the arbitrary realities set down by a weakly committed parent and the true realities of life on life's terms.  Even if you didn't experience this, acceptance doesn't come easily.  It requires an admission of powerlessness, not an American ideal.

We grow up hearing "we can be anything we want to be," "do anything we put our mind to," "we can overcome," "nothing is impossible," and "where there is a will there is a way".  These pump you up, feel good sayings I believe to be blatantly untrue and harmful.  I postulate that we would be better served by growing up hearing that "some things we cannot change," "where there is willfulness there is disappointment," "some things are impossible" and "maturity is recognizing when to surrender".  How much more peace might we all experience with such slogan soaked psyches?

As you might imagine, there was a long pause after I was asked that original question, a pause which belied the answer I wanted to give.  The truthful answer is largely, No.  Others are not accepting when I tell them I cannot grant them their wish, and for the most part, I am okay with that now.  It is not pleasant being in the presence of another who is fighting acceptance, but I've been there and I will be there again.  I do my best to greet others in the grips of willfulness with understanding and compassion because I don't like it when life doesn't go according to my plan and timeline.  So in those moments when I am receiving their push back, I try to remember that life is not going according to their plan right now and that sucks for them.  Most importantly, I try to remember that the person whose happiness is most disrupted is the one who has not surrendered.  In those moments I am grateful that this time, it is not mine.

I wrote this earlier this year while camping at Rock Island Campground in the Leavenworth area.

Will you meditate with me, Wise One?
Is this where you reside?
Are you inside of me or walking by my side?
Are you everywhere, by every tree I pass?
Waiting and watching, your patience outlasts.

I like that you are near me, never too far to hear my voice.
Of all that is good and wise, you make me feel deserving.
Tenderness, a gentle kiss, a forgiving heart, a kind goodbye.

With you I feel a rejoicing, a dance, a song of joy.
You're a parent, a friend, a breeze, a bird, a fire's flame, a kind word.
You're in the hardships, the lessons that I learn.
You spare me no part of you.  
Without the worst I wouldn't know the good that lives here too.

On spiritual practice

I have chosen to spend some time in silence today, to connect with God and to be with myself.  It feels good.  It feels loving.  I want to practice today continually asking God what his will is for me now.

Right now I am receiving the message that taking a shower, cleaning the kitchen and making meatballs is how he wants me to take care of myself.  Rather than those being dreaded and boring tasks, they become ways of saying, "Laine, you are important to me."  Hmm. That is a new way to think about it.  I can do the same when it comes to picking out clothes for work tomorrow or sitting down to look at finances.  For now, I look forward to getting out of bed.  I look forward to taking care of myself - in all of my affairs.

God - Help me to choose your will.  I can trust in so doing, that you will provide the time to accomplish all that is important.  If your will is for me to write, than I needn't make it happen.  You will give me the opportunity to do so.  I am glad that trusting in you and doing your will doesn't mean that something is sacrificed.  As I allow your will be become mine, the less I experience deprivation.  Thank you for transforming my life from one of self-sacrifice into one of abundance.

Transitions

As I have indicated before, things in my life are changing.  I am preparing to move.  I am preparing to lose my dog, my companion for 14 years.  My professional interests are changing.  I am transitioning into a life of unity with a significant other.  My relationships with my children are transitioning as one inches toward adulthood and the other grapples with adolescence.

I wonder though, when is life not in transition?  I've held this idea that life occurs in discreet segments of plateaus followed by abrupt changes but as I write this, I feel this idea is changing.  Perhaps we are in a constant state of transition which at times is so slow that we cannot see it.  As the external landscape of my life transitions, so is the internal.  My thinking, my beliefs, my views of myself, of the world and my place in it is also in transition.

What is this correlation between the external and internal transitions?  Is there one?  Certainly changing life circumstances can occur without internal change, at least I believe that I have had that experience though I could be wrong.  I do know from my own experience, however, that internal changes allow me to experience my changing circumstances in a new way.  Yes.  There is a link between changes in my thinking and changes in how I experience the world.  I suppose this is why that while I am moving through changing life circumstances, I feel relatively unperturbed and on the whole, at ease.  I feel this way because of changes in my internal landscape.  Today I am grateful for the process of internal change.

On Peace

It is Nov 1st, 2010.  We have had a short and late summer this year.  However, fall is officially here.  The leaves on the trees are turning shades of orange and yellow and are forming a bright carpet on the sides of the road day by day.  Soon enough the trees of St. Edward's Park will be bare and I'll be able to see the sunset over Lake Washington through their skeletons.  How different the view is season by season.

Often I walk my dog, Rango, on the trails,  headphones on, lost to the external world of people but tuned into the sight of nature and into my internal world,  wherever the music transports me.

Music is magical that way.  It brings forward memory, dreams from the night before and emotion you thought was dead and buried over events long past or events you never realized had significant emotion attached to them at all.  One day you find yourself listening to

"The cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you coming home dad
I don't know when
but we'll get together then,  son
You know we'll have a good time then,"

and tears are streaming down your face.  For the first time in forty years you realize that you are grieving the loss of a father you never knew not because he wasn't physically present but because he wasn't emotionally present.  As your fingers could touch his skin and feel his warmth,  or your ears could sense the resonance of his voice or the rattling of his snores, so too you wish it could be so easy to feel connected,  loved, and that you mattered to him.  These are the types of things I think about when I'm listening to music and walking my dog on the trails of St.  Edward's Park.

At the waters edge I remove my headphones.  The gentle waves lap against the shore.  The leaves rustle.  A bird chirps. Kenmore Air passes overhead and the clopping of a runner's foot passes behind me and fades into the trails from which I came.

I continue my trek up the hilly trail,  back to my vehicle, back to what awaits me. My focus shifts from the present to what's next.  Anxiety and dread return but I know that on the trail, beauty surrounds me and peace lies within me.  I need only return to experience it.

It would be three more years before I would realize that the experience of beauty and peace lies not out on the trail,  but is accessible always within.  How nice to find this bit of writing nearly three years to the day,  to see where I was and to be grateful for how far I've come.

On Breaking Bad

What is it about breaking bad which resonates with the heart of me?  Is it that it is a story which  makes me think more deeply about the nature of good and bad?  Is it that at its core it is about existential crisis, transformation and connection?  Is it that I identify with the main character, Walt, who having lived his life according to other’s rules and doing what is expected has lived a canned life and yearns to break free?  Yes, yes and yes.

Walt, in facing his death to lung cancer, is freed to do what he previously feared, live life on his own terms, according to his own values.  It freed him to embrace himself.  The journey begins when Walt leaves his job as a high school chemistry teacher and part time car wash attendant to become a methamphetamine cook, a profession which will allow him to leave behind the legacy of having been a good provider for his wife and children.  He “breaks bad”.  Three of the primary, but not only, complex relationships Walt has are with his wife, his DEA agent brother-in-law, Hank, and his assistant cook and former degenerate high school student, Jessie.  It is through these relationships that we witness Walt’s transformation and the blossoming of his authentic self.  

Through the course of the show, Walt changed from a man claiming to do what he did out of self-sacrifice for his family, into a man who acknowledged to his wife what few of us can - that his deeds were done to fulfill his own needs.  This makes Walt for me, not only sympathetic, but a hero.  In contrast, Hank’s shallowness of insight and affection left me ambivalent towards his demise.  It was Walt’s grief at Hank’s death which moved my sympathies more than the death itself.  

Walt had been a hero to his teenaged son when living a life of pretense.  This was shattered in the end and never mended.  However, Walt gained a son in Jessie, someone who saw, accepted and I believe loved Walt for who he was. We see in the final scene of the last episode that Jessie, who could never do anything right in the beginning, became for Walt a beloved son that he was proud of.  In the end, Walt achieved that which I desire - an authentic life fully lived.