We're kind of moody. We're perfectionists. Easily irritated. Easily exhausted. We notice the good in everything but get weighed down by the everyday disconnect between what we actually see and what we think we should see. Yes "World," we're the ones who are telling you how it should be done and raising hell either in front of or behind your backs when you tell us you don't want to do it. My nickname at one of my former jobs was "Super B," and they weren't kidding. I'm sure if I could've gotten away with bringing a whip to the office each day, I would have.
Seeing the rainbow in life isn't something that comes naturally. If a car cuts us off on the Interstate, we're likely to get upset, maybe even flip the bird a few times. If someone doesn't reply back to us or call back right away, we worry that we did something to upset them or that they no longer like us. If someone is short in conversation, we automatically think we're not interesting. And if someone gives us the slightest little suggestion on how to do something better, we may become suicidal. Ok, maybe not to that extreme, but we'll beat ourselves up over and over again in our minds.
In order to see the rainbow in life you have to start within yourself. This means finding out why you're putting so much pressure on your shoulders. Yes, it's mostly you. Take a look at your expectations. Are they realistic? Are they more than what anyone would reasonably ask of you? What's the gap between who you currently are and who you want to be, and why is it so important? When I was twenty-three, fresh out of undergrad and working as an assistant for a commercial property management company, I was so focused on getting a job with a "real" title that I missed the opportunity to really dig in and learn a new side of the real estate business. I was worried enough about losing the other half of my budding relationship and our "status" that I forgot to truly enjoy the moments we spent together. And of course, I was worried about how all the ways living in Florida were so different from those in Colorado that I didn't truly explore all the Sunshine State had to offer until I moved away and returned there on vacations.
The Universe knew I was in need of a good lesson or two. Someone upstairs had a lot of fun and is probably still laughing everyday when they drew me into my current everyday life. I even laughed about it myself today. Over the course of the past four years, I've learned to (almost) let go of the "Super B" complex. My best is going to have to be good enough, because it's all I've got to give. It doesn't really matter whether or not I have "Manager" or "Leader" or some other fancy, important sounding title behind my name. The stress and politics involved in those types of positions doesn't suit me anyway. Besides, regardless of your role in an organization, you have the opportunity to make a difference, lead and develop yourself. And those titles aren't following you to the other side. Mistakes are bound to happen whether you're learning or a pro. Mistakes are often how you learn in the first place and discover a better process. Laugh at them. Laugh at yourself. The world isn't going to fall apart because you've shown that you're human. Finally, learn to have compassion and understanding for the mistakes and misgivings of others. Learn to help them do it better, guide them, show them. Dig deeper to see it from their perspective rather than assuming that they're incompetent.
Everyday life isn't a picture perfect postcard. Nor should we expect it to be. There's something beautiful and moving about a thunderstorm. The sound of the rain can calm and soothe your soul, bringing a much needed spiritual cleanse. Flashes of lightning, while sometimes scary, can be more thrilling than a Fourth of July fireworks show. If you listen hard enough, you can almost decipher a code in the boom of the thunder. You have to remember that the dark clouds are really just an illusion. Within them is what brings life to what exists below. Within them is the possibility of a rainbow or two.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Magic, Miracles and the Inexplicable
Magic is a mystery to a lot of people. A lot of people who make up the rest of the world that doesn't believe in the unseen and the unspoken. Of course, we know different. We, being the 15-20 percent of the world that knows that magic is simply the manifestation of what our imaginations have already known to be real. Most would have us believe that imagination is simply make-believe. That's it. End of the story. Nothing more than wishes and fantasy contained within the untouchable clouds that somehow suspend themselves in the air above us.
A part of me still believes in the idea of angels. Those unseen spirits that come around to guide, comfort, help, inspire, and at times even rescue us. The other part of me realizes that angels are both seen and unseen. They can be whispers of our own selves, not bound by the continuum of space and time. They can be a fictional being that exists in our hearts and our minds, and yes, perhaps in other realms we have yet to understand or discover. They can be someone we come across in this realm, that we see every week or that we only know exists, but somehow feel as though we've always really known them. We don't see them yet, we don't actually know them. But we feel their energy, we hear some of their thoughts, we feel what they need to share with us in a sort of telepathic exchange that we learn not to question.
Sometimes we suddenly realize that we might be someone else's angel. We've crossed paths unknowingly and the connection may seem insignificant until we have a true conversation. The kind of conversation that happens when the stars are aligned just right, I suppose. The kind of conversation I had yesterday. "Mr. Lemon-Lime," I'll call him. A kind man in his 40's who always takes the time to say hello, swap vendor horror stories and supply me with more free energy drinks, tea and expensive spring water than I can fit in my one car garage. I offer him chips, cookies and crackers in return, but he always refuses.
After the brief bitching about the industry we're in and his comments on how I'm open, honest and just "tell it like it is," he said that he would like to run into me in ten years. He tells me about how I'm further along at 33 than he ever was, that he'll probably ever be. He tells me how he thinks I'm really smart, have my life together, about his gambling problem and how he finds inspiration in the fact that I once had $30,000 racked up on credit cards and managed to pay it all off. He admires my ambition and drive and is in awe that I can work 10-14 hours a day and attempt to complete a degree at the same time. I tell him about my writing, my plans to break up with the boyfriend and finally head west. He says I won't have any problems finding someone new and that he has faith that I'll "do good." He says he's about to cry and that sometimes he feels insignificant in comparison when he talks to me. I tell him I don't think I'm that much smarter than anyone else and that I'm actually a lot further behind at 33 than I had originally planned. He says it's probably because I put too much pressure on myself, my standards for myself are higher than most and that I should take the time to have fun. Inside I smile because I know he's right.
That conversation took twenty-five minutes on a Friday morning in the midst of our busy schedules. Unplanned. Unrehearsed. Certainly unexpected. Words filled with a little bit of everyday magic, miracles and the inexplicable.
Perhaps ten years from now when I'm looking at the sun set over the Pacific and I look at my finished novels, screenplays or whatever forms of writing my ambitions lead me into, I'll fondly remember those twenty-five minutes on a Friday morning. At least, I hope so.
Walt Disney said "I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing-that it was all started by a mouse." When we finally start living what we hoped would someday be true, we should remember that it all started within our imaginations.
A part of me still believes in the idea of angels. Those unseen spirits that come around to guide, comfort, help, inspire, and at times even rescue us. The other part of me realizes that angels are both seen and unseen. They can be whispers of our own selves, not bound by the continuum of space and time. They can be a fictional being that exists in our hearts and our minds, and yes, perhaps in other realms we have yet to understand or discover. They can be someone we come across in this realm, that we see every week or that we only know exists, but somehow feel as though we've always really known them. We don't see them yet, we don't actually know them. But we feel their energy, we hear some of their thoughts, we feel what they need to share with us in a sort of telepathic exchange that we learn not to question.
Sometimes we suddenly realize that we might be someone else's angel. We've crossed paths unknowingly and the connection may seem insignificant until we have a true conversation. The kind of conversation that happens when the stars are aligned just right, I suppose. The kind of conversation I had yesterday. "Mr. Lemon-Lime," I'll call him. A kind man in his 40's who always takes the time to say hello, swap vendor horror stories and supply me with more free energy drinks, tea and expensive spring water than I can fit in my one car garage. I offer him chips, cookies and crackers in return, but he always refuses.
After the brief bitching about the industry we're in and his comments on how I'm open, honest and just "tell it like it is," he said that he would like to run into me in ten years. He tells me about how I'm further along at 33 than he ever was, that he'll probably ever be. He tells me how he thinks I'm really smart, have my life together, about his gambling problem and how he finds inspiration in the fact that I once had $30,000 racked up on credit cards and managed to pay it all off. He admires my ambition and drive and is in awe that I can work 10-14 hours a day and attempt to complete a degree at the same time. I tell him about my writing, my plans to break up with the boyfriend and finally head west. He says I won't have any problems finding someone new and that he has faith that I'll "do good." He says he's about to cry and that sometimes he feels insignificant in comparison when he talks to me. I tell him I don't think I'm that much smarter than anyone else and that I'm actually a lot further behind at 33 than I had originally planned. He says it's probably because I put too much pressure on myself, my standards for myself are higher than most and that I should take the time to have fun. Inside I smile because I know he's right.
That conversation took twenty-five minutes on a Friday morning in the midst of our busy schedules. Unplanned. Unrehearsed. Certainly unexpected. Words filled with a little bit of everyday magic, miracles and the inexplicable.
Perhaps ten years from now when I'm looking at the sun set over the Pacific and I look at my finished novels, screenplays or whatever forms of writing my ambitions lead me into, I'll fondly remember those twenty-five minutes on a Friday morning. At least, I hope so.
Walt Disney said "I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing-that it was all started by a mouse." When we finally start living what we hoped would someday be true, we should remember that it all started within our imaginations.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
How to Really Dance With Life
I was driving home yesterday on I-25 in the late afternoon, watching the snowflakes fall down from the sky. At first I was worried about how big they were, how fast they were falling, and how I might skid off the road in my less than "Colorado winter-proof" Honda Civic. I love my new car, but it's a little lacking in the traction department. The gas mileage, however, is awesome. But anyhow, I began to think about how it was pretty crappy that we were in the midst of yet another winter storm warning at the end of March. It should be spring for god's sake and now I was going to get home later and have to start work earlier tomorrow than I had originally planned.
I started thinking about how it's so different now, when it snows. Snow makes me sigh in a sort of defeated disgust. I don't like it anymore and it's not just because I got spoiled during my Floridian years. It's because I have obligations, places to go, things to get done, a life to keep afloat. Inclement weather interrupts those things, prevents them from happening and keeps me from accomplishing them as fast as I feel I should. I don't have time to slow down and experience the snow's magic. The last time I did that I was a child.
A child. A child who used to sneak out at 3 am when it did snow because she loved its beauty so much. A child who used to play and watch the flakes fall from the sky until the cold air turned her cheeks red and she had to go inside to warm them back up. My eyes used to transfix themselves on the reflection of flakes swirling beneath the street lights at night. The delicate blanket that it would form excited me, deep down in that place that some refer to as their heart. A picture postcard of Christmas or Winter or one of nature's more breathtaking scenes of calm beauty.
Suddenly yesterday, as I was driving, still on the Interstate, I got it. For a moment my eyes reverted back to the way they used to be. I was eleven years old again. It's 1987 or '88. Time doesn't exist. I'm watching the big flakes fall down from the sky, one by one, through the holes in the ceiling of the gazebo in our backyard. The house on 39th avenue, the haunted one. The beautiful backyard full of trees where I would sometimes escape to contemplate life, my soul, and how I was going to become something larger than what I knew. Innocence, I suppose. As full of innocence as I could be. The point is that back then I allowed myself to enjoy the small experiences in life because there was nothing else standing in my way. Back then I allowed myself to feel the moment and nothing else.
I believe that's what you have to do if you truly want to, as they say, "dance with life." Dancing is an art because it requires that you surrender yourself to emotion. You can't absorb yourself in thoughts, only what you feel. Control can't exist here, if you want to truly become something bigger than your own essence. If you want to feel, to live, you have to take more than just steps. You have to see what exists within them.
There are many ways to really dance. Many ways to feel alive. Many ways to live. This time around, in this lifetime, I think that's one of my lessons. To learn to trust my heart so that I can stop working and start living. To stop thinking so that I can feel and let my spirit become part of something larger and more mystical than just the steps themselves.
I started thinking about how it's so different now, when it snows. Snow makes me sigh in a sort of defeated disgust. I don't like it anymore and it's not just because I got spoiled during my Floridian years. It's because I have obligations, places to go, things to get done, a life to keep afloat. Inclement weather interrupts those things, prevents them from happening and keeps me from accomplishing them as fast as I feel I should. I don't have time to slow down and experience the snow's magic. The last time I did that I was a child.
A child. A child who used to sneak out at 3 am when it did snow because she loved its beauty so much. A child who used to play and watch the flakes fall from the sky until the cold air turned her cheeks red and she had to go inside to warm them back up. My eyes used to transfix themselves on the reflection of flakes swirling beneath the street lights at night. The delicate blanket that it would form excited me, deep down in that place that some refer to as their heart. A picture postcard of Christmas or Winter or one of nature's more breathtaking scenes of calm beauty.
Suddenly yesterday, as I was driving, still on the Interstate, I got it. For a moment my eyes reverted back to the way they used to be. I was eleven years old again. It's 1987 or '88. Time doesn't exist. I'm watching the big flakes fall down from the sky, one by one, through the holes in the ceiling of the gazebo in our backyard. The house on 39th avenue, the haunted one. The beautiful backyard full of trees where I would sometimes escape to contemplate life, my soul, and how I was going to become something larger than what I knew. Innocence, I suppose. As full of innocence as I could be. The point is that back then I allowed myself to enjoy the small experiences in life because there was nothing else standing in my way. Back then I allowed myself to feel the moment and nothing else.
I believe that's what you have to do if you truly want to, as they say, "dance with life." Dancing is an art because it requires that you surrender yourself to emotion. You can't absorb yourself in thoughts, only what you feel. Control can't exist here, if you want to truly become something bigger than your own essence. If you want to feel, to live, you have to take more than just steps. You have to see what exists within them.
There are many ways to really dance. Many ways to feel alive. Many ways to live. This time around, in this lifetime, I think that's one of my lessons. To learn to trust my heart so that I can stop working and start living. To stop thinking so that I can feel and let my spirit become part of something larger and more mystical than just the steps themselves.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Sensitivity and the Enablement of Abuse in Relationships
I'm far from an expert on this topic. I can only offer a snippet of my experiences and my perspective on how being highly sensitive affects the way we develop (or avoid) intimacy and relationships. The one thing that I do know is that we tend to want to see the good in everyone and believe that only the good side exists. Even when our instincts are telling us otherwise, we push those uneasy feelings aside because somewhere deep down we believe that we are on this planet to make everyone else happy at the expense of our own self-respect. To put it quite simply, we don't do conflict, direct confrontation or face to face acknowledgement of the blatant truth.
I know. I still avoid it at times. I still pretend that everything is fine when it really isn't. I deny my feelings and my needs so someone else can have what they want from me. I still witness someone's good qualities and think that they somehow outweigh all the negative ways they made me feel, or their condescending remarks, their excuses for not fulfilling their half of the bargain, or their outright inconsideration for me as a person.
To be blunt, having a history of sexual abuse or violence only compounds these factors. When you're in that horror, you have no boundaries, no rights, no feelings, no voice, no choice, no soul. You're no longer a person. And afterwards, you no longer trust who you are or what you think or what you might want. You become robotic, on "auto-pilot," a machine. Sometimes you pretend that you, the one who was abused, doesn't exist. The anger, the pain, the suffering, the shame, the fear.....it's in a box that is never to be opened. Or so you think. Until you start getting asked out or approached and feel frozen. Until you realize that you don't feel anything or that the person you're with may not be blatantly violent, but they are emotionally and mentally abusive. Or that they really only wanted one thing to begin with. There is no self-value, no sense of self-worth or self-respect because those things were taken away a long time ago. Saying no wasn't an option then, so why would it be now. You'll take whatever good feelings you can get because you don't believe that you're capable of being loved. Deep down you feel flawed, damaged, defective and empty. Yes, I know. Firsthand. I live with the aftermath that can't possibly be contained in the words of this paragraph every single day.
The way I see it, I do one of two things. I either avoid/push away or dive in head first too fast, too soon. I avoid or push away because a relationship means I'll have to open that box and not just so I can see what's in it. It's too difficult to try and feel. It's too hard to think that I might be a disappointment and be abandoned again. Better to not risk it at all and remain a mystery. I dive in head first too fast, too soon so that I won't have to open that box at all. I can pretend that I'm someone else and be whatever the other person wants. The true me ceases to exist amongst the temporary high and rush of the feelings that can make it seem as if the emptiness isn't there. An emptiness that gets bigger once the feelings fade.
Tonight I'm a little angry that we get taken advantage of. Our willingness to forgive so easily gets thrown aside by those who wish to use us as a doormat for their needs. Our need to make everything "ok" at the expense of our spirits is something that we need to learn to recognize and stop. We can't possibly be what someone else wants us to be. We have the right to say "no" and be listened to. We have the right to not compromise one hundred percent of the time. We have the right to acknowledge the truth and not be made to feel as though we are "crazy" or "emotional" for doing so. We deserve honesty, appreciation, respect, genuine affection and to have our needs heard and reciprocated.
We have the right to be our true selves, without the intimidation of abandonment and abuse in the background. We are the ones that have to start believing and saying that we are worth it. Acceptance and knowing what you want begins within. Making the decision to be strong and not settle for anything less comes from a willingness to recognize that you're just as valuable as those around you. Without it, your soul slowly evaporates into the pool of reflections that others will so readily drown you in.
I know. I still avoid it at times. I still pretend that everything is fine when it really isn't. I deny my feelings and my needs so someone else can have what they want from me. I still witness someone's good qualities and think that they somehow outweigh all the negative ways they made me feel, or their condescending remarks, their excuses for not fulfilling their half of the bargain, or their outright inconsideration for me as a person.
To be blunt, having a history of sexual abuse or violence only compounds these factors. When you're in that horror, you have no boundaries, no rights, no feelings, no voice, no choice, no soul. You're no longer a person. And afterwards, you no longer trust who you are or what you think or what you might want. You become robotic, on "auto-pilot," a machine. Sometimes you pretend that you, the one who was abused, doesn't exist. The anger, the pain, the suffering, the shame, the fear.....it's in a box that is never to be opened. Or so you think. Until you start getting asked out or approached and feel frozen. Until you realize that you don't feel anything or that the person you're with may not be blatantly violent, but they are emotionally and mentally abusive. Or that they really only wanted one thing to begin with. There is no self-value, no sense of self-worth or self-respect because those things were taken away a long time ago. Saying no wasn't an option then, so why would it be now. You'll take whatever good feelings you can get because you don't believe that you're capable of being loved. Deep down you feel flawed, damaged, defective and empty. Yes, I know. Firsthand. I live with the aftermath that can't possibly be contained in the words of this paragraph every single day.
The way I see it, I do one of two things. I either avoid/push away or dive in head first too fast, too soon. I avoid or push away because a relationship means I'll have to open that box and not just so I can see what's in it. It's too difficult to try and feel. It's too hard to think that I might be a disappointment and be abandoned again. Better to not risk it at all and remain a mystery. I dive in head first too fast, too soon so that I won't have to open that box at all. I can pretend that I'm someone else and be whatever the other person wants. The true me ceases to exist amongst the temporary high and rush of the feelings that can make it seem as if the emptiness isn't there. An emptiness that gets bigger once the feelings fade.
Tonight I'm a little angry that we get taken advantage of. Our willingness to forgive so easily gets thrown aside by those who wish to use us as a doormat for their needs. Our need to make everything "ok" at the expense of our spirits is something that we need to learn to recognize and stop. We can't possibly be what someone else wants us to be. We have the right to say "no" and be listened to. We have the right to not compromise one hundred percent of the time. We have the right to acknowledge the truth and not be made to feel as though we are "crazy" or "emotional" for doing so. We deserve honesty, appreciation, respect, genuine affection and to have our needs heard and reciprocated.
We have the right to be our true selves, without the intimidation of abandonment and abuse in the background. We are the ones that have to start believing and saying that we are worth it. Acceptance and knowing what you want begins within. Making the decision to be strong and not settle for anything less comes from a willingness to recognize that you're just as valuable as those around you. Without it, your soul slowly evaporates into the pool of reflections that others will so readily drown you in.
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