Love

 

Love stories abound in literature, but they are not uncommon in real life either.

I loved my husband beyond understanding and yet we ended up divorced. He could not and cannot ever believe that he is loved in the way he understands love. What a true horror story that is!

My youngest son fell in love with a woman seven years older than him. No one in our family liked her, but we held our tongues because he was so obviously in love. She was very creative. His whole life became about trying to make her life happier and better because he loved her so much. 

Everything he did was for her. When he cleaned the house he did it in her name. When he did the grocery shopping after work it was for the love of her. When he home schooled their son it was a true labor of love. Their son was the ultimate physical manifestation of their love.

He planned intricate celebrations for her that included songs and music he had written and the music of local famous artists. He helped her promote her creative work and made himself an invisible support who always stood behind her, ready to do whatever was necessary to make her life better in any way.

And one day when the police came to evict him from his home and issue an order of protection so that he could not come within 100 feet or her or their home, his first thought was, "Be quiet or you will wake (her) up."

She had a habit of discarding those she was finished using and that day he discovered he was one of them. Nearly 25 years of pure love and care were thrown in his face along with a packet of obscene lies. Their friends were stunned. Their son was baffled. He was crushed.

It was the worst moment in his life. Worse than the time he worked three jobs around the clock to support her, so that he slept less than a few hours at a time for months. It was inconceivable. No one understood it. Not her family. Not our family. Not friends.

Now, looking back, we, and he, all realize it was a gift. She finally set him free. Not out of kindness, but out of narcissism and her total inability to truly love anyone.

The most valuable relationship

 

Sometimes I think you cannot really help most people. 

And that is because they are not really looking for help. They are looking for validation that they are right, or they are looking for sympathy, or even just wanting to be enabled.

I went to couples counseling for years and felt vindicated when the counselor told me things like, "The only thing you and he have in common is that you both love him."

Validation? Yes, but it didn't solve my problem.

Being right doesn't make things better. There has to be change for other things to change. Sitting around feeling sorry for myself, or patting myself on the back thinking, "By golly I knew I was right!" Neither of those things changed either one of us.

And nothing in our relationship changed, or improved. The sad truth, after knowing each other for over thirty years, was that our divorce was the beginning of my growth. 

I went to a counselor who asked why I was there and by the time I left her I had a much better idea of the things that made my life better. And it was all about me making changes in my thoughts, actions, and goals. I realized I had been passive aggressive and began stating my real needs not trying to placate someone else. I stopped blaming anyone else for my unhappiness and became accountable to myself. I allowed myself to experience the freedom of being me and doing what made me happy instead of trying to be who Grandma wanted me to be, or Mom wanted me to be, or some man, or some absolute stranger. 

I stopped passing the buck and did my best to find out how to feel joy in being me just because I was who I was. 

Somehow I grew up believing that if I made everyone happy I would be happy, but you can never make everyone happy. You have to start closer to home with yourself. If you aren't happy it is up to you to figure out how to change things and whether you do it by trial and error, by counseling, or simply dumb luck, it doesn't matter.

As long as YOU do it. It's not easy. In fact it may be the hardest things you could possibly do, but in the end life is better. One tiny increment at a time, things get better. It may take a long time. You may never reach what you believe is the perfect life, but you will be amazed at the satisfaction you begin to feel.

With yourself!

And you are the one person you will always have to live with. Work on that relationship first!

Accidents waiting to happen

 

There is a difference between people who panic and people who get flustered.

I get flustered and have a tendency to talk too much as I sort it out.

My sister panics.

She was in a car accident yesterday. The call I got from her son said she had probably broken her hand, crushed her chest and they didn't know how badly she was hurt. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital in a nearby city and admitted overnight.

This morning she discovered that other than a few bruises from the seat belt and the air bags she is fine. She was scared. When our children were toddlers her son got his fingers pinched in a huge door. She stood there crying and screaming while I took charge.  She is a nurse! She has cultivated being scared, thinking it is feminine until now it is a liability.

That kind of response is going to cost her a fortune. Her friend, who was thrown into the dashboard, simply walked away. The car is totaled.

It was not my sister's fault that the guy who hit them ran a red light going 55 in a 30 mph zone, but she is not a defensive driver. I have been with her many times where my scream to stop was all that saved us. She thinks this lack of defensive driving is a cute womanly response. I find it scary. Also, this is the second time in three weeks that she has done major damage to a car. Last time she hit the posts at a local drive through. Twice! 

She has also gotten lost going home twice, but none of this seems to bother her family. They chalk it up to being a ditzy woman. Eventually she will really hurt someone, or herself, and then maybe they will believe me, but it is a shame it has to go that far.

Lucky?

 

People talk about luck as if it is some magical property.

I think people make their own luck.

Honest self evaluation can almost always come up with a reason why something succeeded or failed.

Attention to detail.

Perseverance.

Even a positive attitude can eliminate failure or create success by keeping the focus on what is happening in the moment and not letting the mind wander off into what ifs or could be.

If the skills are perfected and the materials are correctly used by knowledge and perseverance then success is often just a matter of time. It is important to want something badly enough without letting that wanting get in the way of clear thinking and correct action.

Most bad luck is due to negligence of some sort. It may not be intentional and it doesn't make someone a bad person, but it is still a factor.

People don't like to take responsibility for their mistakes and some people are afraid to claim responsibility for their successes, but that doesn't make these things a random result of luck.

Whenever I am tempted to claim good or bad luck I try to step back and honestly evaluate exactly what happened and why. So far, most of the evidence points to hard and fast facts.

Not luck.

Belonging

Belonging seems to be a pretty common human desire. People go to great links to belong in some way. They dress a like, wear similar hairstyles, choose similar neighborhoods, drive cars they believe reflects who they are, even choose to eat in certain ways that define them.

Belonging is comfortable. It is a safe feeling. It can also be a defensive act. Certain nationalities or ethnicities are safer in today's messed up world.

I belonged to my birth family and with my children while they were growing up.

That is the last time I truly felt like I belonged. Otherwise there has always been a caveat that made me feel separate, or apart from most people around me. And yet, I feel a kinship with all of nature that makes me know we are all interrelated much more closely than most of us imagine.

Other people seem to need lots of human contact. I am content to be physically alone most of the time. I do like human contact, but it has to be specific. I like to be intimately involved in a conversation with one person at a time whose ideas are creative and varied, but only for a short part of each day. Groups of people groping for conversation or simply acting out do not draw me in.

I love my life. It is full of creative thoughts, beautiful music, lovely living spaces, comfortable furniture, good books, and hobbies that are creative. It is comfortable in almost every respect until invaded by someone outside my realm.

It may sound selfish, but I enjoy my own company and, sometimes, those people with like minds. The rest are simply a part of nature I prefer to watch from a distance.

Happiness is not

 

Negative people often do not even realize who they are, but they are a drain on those around them.

I have tried every way I know to redirect a negative person's conversation without any real success.

They believe they are just sharing information, but all that information centers around sad, bad, or even cruel things. Their friends all have problems with family using them or ignoring them. They focus on the one child they say they want protection from. Their pets all have quirks that they find funny but annoying, only not annoying enough to take the time to change. 

They are constantly having minor problems with their car. They don't know how to use many of their car's amenities. They don't know how to use their own phones or computers and don't really want to learn.They think people don't send them the same photos and texts other folks get because they really don't know how to use their electronic devices.

They hyper-focus on things and want to share how vigilant they are by shampooing their carpets all the time or counting the bugs in their vacuum cleaner dirt.

No matter what they are asked, they will find a way to turn it into a negative reply of some sort and if you point this out they become angry and accuse you of thinking they are dumb.

It is a losing proposition that upsets me unnecessarily. I have tried to think just let them be who they are, but they have a way of wriggling it around to where they seem to need a response from me - just one that enables them or else.

I find myself angry, frustrated and my blood pressure soars to the point that I am actually ill sometimes.

I know you think I should just ignore these people. Avoid them. Keep them at arm's length, but that is very difficult when it is a close family member. Any and all family gatherings must include this person. They are not avoidable.

And they are not going to change. In some strange perverted way this life style makes them happy.

The right way

 

There is a time while we are children that the adults in our lives rule! We believe they know. They really know! And so we love them and honor them and try to emulate them in every way. We believe this is the right way. The best way. Maybe even the only way.

Growing into young adulthood we branch out, go off to school, or move away to live among other people and most of us gradually discover that other people often have other beliefs and they are as adamant about them being right as we are ours.

But over time we grow. We discover other ways of being and some of those are just as good or better than those things we grew up with. And sometimes we discover that the things we took for granted as normal were not so normal, or even so good.

Not everyone comes to these decisions or has these thoughts. There are people who never really grow up. They just continue to parrot the ways and words of their families as gospel. Some people discover their families were not as odd as they might have felt they were and some people find that the things their parents or families did were not always as good and kind as they believed.

These discoveries can create mental blocks, or even anger, but they are learning situations and important in our growth as whole human beings.

We can forgive our families for many things. Most of the time they were truly doing the best they knew how even if it hurt and most of the time they would be crushed to know that they hurt us the way they did.

It creates a strange dichotomy of feelings. Love and anger, resentment and nostalgia. It is the road to wisdom when we realize we can accept these things for what they were and move on along our own road to try and do better.

It is true, I am what I am. But it is also true that I have the power to be stronger, wiser, kinder, more open to learning and understanding. If I am still trying to do everything Mom's way when I am an adult I have failed to mature into myself.

Live

 

I think women in my generation especially used to get caught up in the idea of who we were.

Maybe because we were sort of the first generation of television children. Kids who knew what day and time it was by which program they were watching was on the air.

Instead of relying on the fairy tales and folk tales from books, we saw soap operas and westerns. Lots of westerns! The women often standing in the background with their hands over their mouths in horror as the men battled it out with their fists. Heaven forbid one of those women pick up a chair and lob the bad guy over the head. They were bystanders. Watchers. People to be protected and honored. Judged on their beauty and money and clothing, but not much else.

So when these women grew up they seemed to either follow suit and put themselves in that make believe role of being pampered and protected, or they did an about face and became rude and crude in order to make their point. Both of course were extremes and neither one was enough for a whole life.

I see women now who spent their youth slaving day and night thinking that was the noble and only way to live. And I see women who are aging primadonnas trying to recapture a youth they should have outgrown fifty years ago. They seem confused and sometimes almost frantic as they realize something is missing, but they just don't know what.

Then there are the women, I was going to say lucky, but I don't think they really were lucky, I think they were realistic, who stopped trying to live somebody else's life, or emulate an idea that only existed on film. They got out there and did things! They were the ones who found fulfillment in jobs, art, sports, mothering, whatever seemed important to them. 

They made mistakes. All human beings do, but they lived and they were willing, wanting and able to accept responsibility for who they were and what they did.

I admire these women.

Independence is the ultimate gift

I know a family who considers helping people a Christian trait they are proud of, but what they really do is enable people

They do it with the best of intentions, but the truth of the matter is that what they do makes them feel better than the people they supposedly help.

The old adage that if you give a man a fish he eats for a day, but if you teach him to fish, he eats for a lifetime applies to everything in life.

If you wait on someone hand and foot, encourage them to ask you for help with anything and everything, you are turning them into eternally needy people.

I have always believed that the best gift we can give anyone is to teach them to think, to solve problems, to figure out how to do what they think they cannot do.

It is usually easier to just do it yourself, but that is truly unkind. There will come a time when you are not there to do for them and what will they do then? 

Teaching someone to be self sufficient is not abandoning them. It is a careful way of nurturing that encourages self sufficiency, increases self worth, makes people feel stronger and therefore more confident and content.

But if someone has spent a lifetime enabling or being enabled that can be tough. It requires real love to put up with the tantrums, the self pity and the destructive actions of people who don't want to learn or grow. Whether it is out of laziness, or fear, or some disability, relying on other people to get through life does not feel good, because there is always the niggling knowledge that this help may not always be there.

Being an enabler doesn't make people love you. In the end it is just the opposite. It teaches them to use you and not respect you.

Teaching people how to solve their own problems is a much better way of showing love. It requires patience, repetition, and intelligent redirection. It is laying a path through the forest, not carrying someone on your back.

Who are we

 

Over the years I have noticed that people in my generation often value themselves by who their relatives are, where they live, what kind of car they drive and how much money they have.

I once did this too. I was raised to do this. 

But the difference between me and some of the people my age is that I knew early on that something was off. I wasn't sure why, but I knew it felt wrong. We followed all the rules and there were rules for everything! How to sit. How to talk. How to set a proper table, make a proper bed, cultivate the correct friends, even how to laugh. It was all about presentation. How we looked to those around us and the world. 

We were taught this was the price for being who we were, somehow superior to many others. It created a generation of people out to please everyone else (who was worthy of being pleased that is.) Noblesse oblige took care of the rest of those poor souls around us who couldn't help being born who they were. 

Thank goodness for the sixties! The hippie generation had its ups and downs, but it taught me that there was more to life than the facades and faces we donned every morning before we went out in the world. It was one of those things my dad tried to teach me. There are extremes at both ends, but the middle is generally a better place to be.

I wanted to change. 

It took years of reading and therapy and meeting people and trying things out to learn that passive aggressive is really a terrible form of aggression used by people who are angry and afraid to show it for one reason or another. I discovered there was nothing wrong with stating my needs or wants, but that no one else was obligated to take care of them.  I discovered that simply being born a lion didn't mean I had to, or even had the right to, eat everything I could catch and devour.

I discovered that for every idea there were probably ten others that were different in some way, but they could all be valid in some ways too. And, sadly, I learned that all those rules I had learned were the very most basic lessons for being a human being. Each one had its uses, but not one was sacrosanct.

I can still enjoy setting a fancy table. Sometimes I like to dress up. Eating good food that I enjoy is still wonderful, but it's just that now I don't think everyone who does it differently is wrong. I don't long for the good ole days. They were sometimes awful too and I don't idolize people anymore either. 

I do have a hard time understanding people who refuse to grow and change. To me that is like collecting dead wood. All it's good for is the fire and as beautiful as a fire can be in some moments, it is so destructive left unbridled. 

Who we are is a product of who we were and we are artists creating an unending masterpiece if we choose to be.