As Polonius prepares his son Laertes for a trip abroad in Hamlet, he tells him “this above all, to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” This is one of my most loved Shakespearean quotes and one that I try to live by daily. I can’t imagine the alternative.
Why live for someone else’s expectations? Why even try? What do you gain when you do so and more importantly, what do you lose? The price is too high to put other’s expectations in the forefront and live your life accordingly. To me, that is soul-trouncing and I want no parts of it.
This week the world lost an icon and, to me, his death while senseless and sad, was not the tragedy. To me, trying so hard to change yourself into what others expect you to be IS tragic to say the least. Michael Jackson seemed to always be determined to change himself. He always seemed to be wanting to be someone other than who he really was. Is this a condition that comes with enormous fame and fortune? Is it the condition of starting a career at such a young age? Is it the result of having every move you make scrutinized by the press and the public? Is it fear? I don’t know. To me, the sadness lies in not ever being able to find yourself. To me, the tragedy is dying without ever having been able to look at yourself in the mirror and love the person looking back.
It always seemed like Michael was that person - someone who Paul Laurence Dunbar had in mind when he wrote “We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes”. It was evident by the way Michael tried so dilligently to change who he was - with his bizarre actions and relationships in and outside of his family - but also with how hard he tried to change the actual image of who he was. He was on a never ending quest to change his own face.
Many years ago, Michael Jackson sang an endearing and beautiful song for the movie Ben. The lyrics went:
Ben, you're always running here and there
You feel you're not wanted anywhere
If you ever look behind
And don't like what you find
There's one thing you should know
You've got a place to go
I wish he had listened to those words himself. If he only could have loved and accepted himself for who he was instead of running here and there trying to change everything to become something else. I’m fairly certain that, if Michael had a Polonius of his own telling him how important it was to be true to ones self, this ending might have turned out a whole lot differently than it did. If only Michael had given to himself a tiny portion of what he gave to the world.
Raise your hand if you’ve done any of the following in the past week:
a. Brought your daughter 30 minutes late to her last soccer game of the season because you had the time written down wrong
b. Had a flat tire because you forgot that your mechanic told you the back ones needed replaced…SOON
c. Had a sibling tell you that for the past six months you have been under the mistaken impression that you’re a whole year older than you really are
d. Forgot to leave your signed receipt for a meal at O’Charleys causing the waitress to run out into the parking lot to get the receipt from you. Realize the next day that when you pulled the receipt out of your wallet to hand her, it must have been some other restaurant receipt because the O’Charleys merchant copy was still in your wallet. (Must have given them the customer copy because my bank account was debited appropriately.)
e. All of the above
You know where this is going, right?
Yep, in the last week - the last week - I have done all of these. Probably did more too - and then forgot about them. Is dementia setting in? Gosh, I hope not. I don’t think that it is either. I think that sometimes stress simply wears us down by demands that we (and others) place upon ourselves. I was getting ready to start a new job, trying to get the house in order, having contractors come in to give quotes on badly needed work, still dealing with the appliance store for my dishwasher (see previous blog post), taking my daughter to get some academic testing done, shuttling to soccer, school, 3 lunches with friends and one interview for my examiner.com column and whew - some things just escaped me. Well, the age thing has been ongoing but I just found out last week that I was actually a year younger than I have been telling everyone (and myself) that I am since December. My sister told me the truth and although it makes me happy that I'm a bit younger than I thought, it also makes me a little concerned. Does that make sense?
So, now I know I have a bit of a - well, let’s call it a dilemma - I dislike the words issue or problem. I have some stress (who doesn’t) and I need to eliminate it to free up some brain space. One of the things that can really help is meditation. Since I have trouble sitting in meditation, I love to walk and meditate. I rarely listen to music or walk with another person. I like to have that time to myself to clear my mind and just relax and breathe.
Besides simply feeling better, now I have a ‘real’ reason to make myself meditate - clearing the mind and eliminating stress. It’s important and it’s something I am going to do for myself before I forget something really important like turning off the stove or where I placed my keys or where I left my kids or when the next big Macy’s Beauty Event is going to take place. Important stuff !
My dishwasher broke on Memorial Day weekend. The timing couldn't have been worse. It broke right after I had to have my heat pump worked on and a thermostat replaced. It also occurred while I was unemployed without a prospect in sight. Frustrated and tired from hosting my sister and her family for the weekend (which meant I took the couch while they took my bed), I sat down in my family room and I announced “I am at the end of my rope”. My eleven year old nephew sat nearby. He looked up from the television and he asked me “why don’t you get more rope?”
I could tell by the look on my sister’s face that she wasn’t impressed with his comment but I was. I thought about it more than once since that day and I came to the conclusion that not only is he right but having some more rope on hand is absolutely a necessity for me. I better have some extra around for when times get tough.
The dishwasher is still broke and it is now two weeks later. I’m annoyed because the appliance company didn’t do what they were supposed to do and they let five days lapse before ordering the part. I’m annoyed because the thing is only 2 years old and shouldn’t be broken. It’s frustrating to have to look at the dishes in the sink. But something interesting happens every night and has for the past fourteen days. I have to wash those dishes by hand and it isn’t half bad. It’s certainly not the ordeal I build it up to be in my head. I do have enough to do without the extra burden of having to wash dishes but when I am in the process of doing that task, I enjoy it. It gives me time to focus and meditate and look out the window and just breathe. And isn’t that what I’ve been wanting for months? Isn’t taking time to just slow down and be still something that I’ve been asking for? Yet when I receive it, I want to kick and scream and strangle the appliance guy.
Why is it so hard to recognize a gift just because it hasn’t come in the package I thought it would come in? When I wanted time to slow down and feed my soul, I envisioned myself on a getaway weekend on a mountain or at a spa or meditating in an Indian Ashram creating my own version of Eat, Pray, Love. But when I received the chance to slow things down just a tiny bit, I didn’t appreciate it. Does that mean I won’t get the chance again? I hope not. I hope it's a process from which I'm supposed to learn something.
And I am. I’m realizing the importance of having gratitude for all things, not just the things I want or think I want. Truth be told, rarely have the things I thought I wanted turned out to be all that great anyway. The things I didn’t want - like being laid off from my job - gave me incredible opportunities. I have created this website and written numerous freelance articles I wouldn’t have done otherwise. It really is the proverbial blessing in disguise.
The next time something breaks or the next time things don’t go exactly the way I want them to, I hope I can remember to look for the silver lining before the cloud. I hope I can see the gift that might come in a stained and unattractive wrapping but all the same, realize that it is a gift nonetheless. And that sometimes the gift will be small and sometimes it will give me more than I could ever imagine wanting for myself. All I have to do is appreciate it. And make sure I say thank you.
My daughter’s soccer team played in a tournament this weekend. They played two games on Saturday and then a third Sunday morning. Depending on points scored and all that, they would or wouldn’t have played in the final championship game Sunday afternoon.
As soon as the first game started, the other team outplayed them. They had a great strategy and passed to one another and our girls just sort of did what they could but lost by 5. It wasn’t a great start to the tournament. Our team won the 2nd and the 3rd and ended up playing the 4th and final game. It was against the same team that defeated them. This time it was different - even though our girls played the same team just a day earlier, it was as though a different team showed up. They looked so good and they remembered their own strategies and plays. They lost but could hold their heads up when they left that field. They are champions.
Today made me think about the fact that every day I can decide which one of me is going to show up - not in a schizophrenic way - but what attitude am I going to display. Am I going to be defeated by this recession and just give up? Nope - to me that is epic failure. Every day I am going to decide to be that team that I watched today. The one who knew they were facing tremendous odds against a team that initially stomped them by a lot. But they showed up to face them again and they weren’t deterred by the odds. They weren’t deterred by the fact that they just lost by five. They did what they were supposed to do -the next right thing. They got out there, they listened to their coach, they played by the rules and they got 2nd place in a tournament where lots of teams didn’t get anything. You know what? Second place is good enough.
I’m a big believer in attitude being everything - if you don’t believe me, just read some of my earlier posts. But watching this team today reinforced that believing in yourself and maintaining a positive attitude can make all the difference in the world. I’m going to remember that this week as I go on interviews and network. I’m going to remember that if I don’t believe in myself nobody else will either. I’m going to keep the faith and remember that ultimately the final score doesn’t matter. What matters is the journey that gets me there. Peace!
I’m probably the last person who should be writing about feeding the soul lately. It’s been a tumultuous time in that crazy game of life and I find myself sighing a lot lately. One of the things; however, that I love about the soul is that it is connected to the mind. What the mind thinks, the soul feels so to speak. So if I can think about forgiving myself and starting over, the soul will start to compensate.
The other day I needed some ‘soul food’ rather badly. Things are sketchy (as usual) within the economy, the job search, and the weather. The rain has been relentless and it has derogatorily affected my mood…and so has the fact that many of my friends and I are still searching for jobs. It’s easy to be soulful and content when things are going well and even when things go sour for just a little while. But let things spiral for weeks on end and – whew- suddenly the chin weighs a thousand pounds and keeping it up is virtually impossible.
So off I went in search of healing and I went to the one place I knew would provide comfort – the Benedictine Abbey in Richmond.is a small adoration chapel where one can sit in relative silence and reflect on life without fear of interruption. It’s a place of devotion and a place of prayer.
The chapel is a special place to me – I pilgrimage there once a year on Christmas Day to consider the past and contemplate the future. I make plans and make right with God. It gets me off to a good start for the year to come. But this year, I gave it up. This year I had a sudden change in plans. My children, who were supposed to go out of town with their dad on Christmas afternoon as they do every year, ended up being at home with me. We went to walk dogs at the SPCA instead. I figured that it would be equally good for my soul to help out the animals on a day where workers and volunteers would be minimal. Boy, it might have been good for the animals but for me…not so much.
Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time with the dogs and the cats. It was pretty quiet compared to normal there and the animals loved getting some attention. But my soul needed attention too and I only do it once a year so I really missed the spiritual connection that came with taking an hour to sit still and reflect.
So here I am five months later, making my way again to the place I missed going on Christmas. On my way over to the Abbey that morning, I started creating a mental list of reasons why I should be doing something other than going there. I had laundry to do, I had groceries to buy, library books to return, and just in general – there was stuff that needed attention. How could I take time for myself when I could be…when I should be… doing something else?
When I arrived, I found I couldn’t pray. My only option was to just sit in silence and contemplate what I was doing to myself by not taking time to feed my soul. And not taking the time wasn’t the only factor, forgetting how to feed myself spiritually, through quiet contemplation, through music, books and art, was becoming a really big issue too.
I began to think about Mother Teresa who attended mass every single day while ministering to the poor in Calcutta. She knew the benefits of receiving communion and the daily blessings from the priests. She knew how important this was to her soul; therefore, she stopped everything and went. She put nothing else before this even though she might have been thinking her time might be better served tending to the poor and hungry. But I think she valued her soul enough to know that she needed to make it a priority in her life if she was going to be able to show up and help those in need every day.
In the event of an airline emergency, you are told to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before attending to a child. That makes sense because if we don’t, we couldn’t possibly help the child or anyone else. I can’t be of service to anyone if I am spiritually or emotionally bankrupt. Taking the time to feed my soul through contemplation, through prayer, through books, music, nature, art or through human contact will give me the energy to rise above a crisis and the strength to move forward toward what I am supposed to be doing next. It’s a gift I should give myself once a day, not once a year.
More than one person mentioned the fact that I haven’t updated this blog in a few weeks. I blamed it on the fact that I’ve been really busy with, well, you know…stuff. But the truth is, I’ve been ‘stuck’. And it’s tough to write or do just about anything when you get stuck. You know that place – where the “I should” meets the “I can’t” and all you want to do is play Mafia Wars and forget about searching for a job, cleaning up the house, taking care of your soul. Note: Mafia Wars does nothing for the soul.
So I’ve been thinking, okay really obsessing, on this blog and my writing and what I should be doing and that further exacerbated the 'stuckicity' I was experiencing. I got some great advice the other day about writing just a short blog to keep it updated. That helped because it took the pressure off of feeling that I had to write some big dissertation. Once the pressure was off, I could move forward. So I’ve created a list of things that I can do to become unstuck and figured that would make a good enough blog for today. Here they are:
1. Talk to someone else – getting advice from someone else helps because sometimes when you’re stuck, you are in it too deep and someone objective can look at things from another angle. This might help you to see things you wouldn’t see otherwise. This goes for asking God or the Universe for help too – and don’t forget to say ‘thanks’ when you get what you need.
2. Take a break – getting outside, either in the yard or on a walk, really helps. My problem is that I don’t do it when I need to. I’ll stay inside staring at the computer screen waiting for some sort of divine inspiration or for more energy in my Mafia queue so I can attack. So I have to make myself get outside regularly because I know this helps me tremendously.
3. Reading something inspirational helps me to get out of that quagmire that won’t allow me to move forward. Spiritual books are at the top of my list. Since I wrote a review just the other day, I have a stack of them sitting here and it helps me to refer to them for motivation. In case you need some inspiration yourself – here is a link to the book review: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1690949/spiritual_book_review_ten_books_that.html?cat=38
4. Don’t just do something; sit there…well, almost. Meditating is really good for my soul but to be honest, I have a terribly tough time sitting in meditation. What is supposed to be a calming and relaxing experience actually causes me anxiety. But, sometimes being stuck mentally causes symptoms to occur physically like headaches, neck aches and general aches, so I do combine meditation with some really basic yoga moves. That helps me to feel better physically; hence I can move forward mentally. I do a yoga pose and then just breathe for 30 seconds. Yoga fans are probably thinking – um, that’s what yoga is – poses and breathing but I call it meditation. Whatever it is, it works for me.
5. What you focus on grows. If you water and feed a flower in your garden, it will most likely grow. I say most likely because my gardening experiences are usually hit or miss. But you get the point – nurture it, spend time with it, focus on it and it will grow. That works with problems too; albeit in a detrimental way. Focusing and obsessing on something can make it bigger than it is. Get your mind off the issue that’s keeping you stuck. Do something else – whether it is one of the things I mentioned earlier or just something as simple as cleaning the house – inspiration comes from strange places at times.
There are lots of ways that we can get out of our own way – books, music, prayer, and nature are just a few ways that pop into my mind. The idea is to accept that you are stuck but then try to find ways to get your mind off the sticky problem. Free yourself and your mind by doing something else and before you know it, you’ve come unstuck and your problem is solved. The proof is in the fact that I actually wrote something today.
I've been thinking a lot today about a story I read of a man who had a dream. He believed in his dream and in himself so much that he went out to visit some banks asking for a loan to bring his dream to fruition. He went to more than one. He had to - the first one turned him down. Actually, the first three hundred or so turned him down. But he kept asking because he kept believing.
Finally, the man convinced some bank to finance his dream. It was pretty fortunate for us that this bank did, because that man took that loan and went out and built Disneyland and you know the rest of the story. I am trying to get inside Walt's head and think about how he dealt with rejection after rejection. I remember reading that he was actually in bankruptcy proceedings around the time when he was asking for this money. They must have thought he was crazy. But what did he think?
Well, he obviously thought he had a good idea. He obviously thought his dream could become the dreams of many and he obviously thought he could make people happy. And that is the Disney Corporation’s mission statement: To Make People Happy. And they succeed in the parks, in the movies, on TV and radio. They succeed everywhere. But their success is based on a man who started out small and knocked on doors and filled out applications. But most of all, that man kept on trying. He never gave up. He didn't have any more hindsight than any of us do today. What he had was a vision and what he had was perseverance. What he had was total, unshakable faith in himself and he was not going to take no for an answer.
How many of us share that ability today? How many of us stop immediately when someone tells us no? How many of us are ready to give up when the job search produces no call backs, no interviews and certainly no jobs? Who among us is ready to throw in the towel when we look at our 401Ks or read about the ongoing wars or receive our tax bills? Not many of us are going to get raises this year and for those who manage to stay employed in this recession, pay cuts or the loss of precious benefits may soon be a reality. It's very difficult to stay focused and positive when important things are crumbling around us.
But if we give up hope in ourselves and in our abilities, what do we become? We become just another person willing to get by with little. We become just another person willing to accept a 'no' from the bank who stands between us and our dreams.
Life isn't about surviving; it's about living and living to the fullest. It's about believing in yourself enough to keep knocking on doors and knocking down doors until your dream is a reality. And believing in yourself is not a quality that is limited to superstars like Walt Disney. Because when that whole venture started, it was just him and a mouse. And a dream.
I was listening to the radio one recent Sunday morning when the hosts were talking about happiness. According to them the word happy is a derivative of words like happenstance and haphazard. When I checked out www.dictionary.com, the definition of happy consisted of terms like delighted, pleased, joy, felicitous, and flavored by fortune.
Be that as it may, none of the terms really describe what happiness really is. Is it marked by fortune as in "I'm happy because I won the lottery" or "I'm happy because I got a new job" (this I wouldn't know because I still haven't found one). The song Happiness in the stage production "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" leads us to believe that this is true as happiness, they sing, is two kinds of ice cream, finding a pencil, catching a firefly and setting it free. The Peanuts gang believes that happiness is caused by events.
Or is happiness really a state of being or a state of mind? Some people say that it is. You can will yourself to be happy and changing your attitude will allow you to be happy...or not.
Personally, I think happiness is a little of both. I believe that attitude is everything and that you can will yourself to have a positive attitude. I do this by having gratitude for everything in my life...yes even the fact that I recently lost a job that I loved. I am grateful that I have additional time to spend with my kids and my dogs and I am grateful that I have enough for today. I don't worry about tomorrow because truly it does take care of itself. Besides that, tomorrow is something that I've never come face to face with and most likely never will. I just put that out of my mind.
But I'm happier when good things happen to loved ones and to me. I'm happier when I am doing things I enjoy like writing. I'm happier when my house is clean and organized. But when things are a little chaotic around here - what am I? Certainly not miserable. When I'm doing things like cleaning up the yard after my two big dogs, am I bitchy and mean? Nope...well, okay some days I am, but not regularly. On a regular basis, I'm pretty consistent in my moods. Would that be because I am happy? Maybe. Or maybe I am just a positive person who wants to look at that proverbial glass as always overflowing - not half anything. Maybe I just want to believe that things truly are going to be okay no matter what happens because even if they're not - I'll have fooled myself into being positive for just one more day.
I looked around the grocery store today at the people making their last minute Easter purchases and I really couldn't tell if they were happy or not. Few were smiling, some were noticeably grumpy. Is that based on the fact that the store was overflowingly crowded and the weather cold and rainy? Or is it based on the fact that economic indicators say more of the same for a long, long time?
I don't know the answers to this but what I do know is that as I've been experimenting with smiling at random people recently - at the store today and on the DC Metro last week (don't ever do that - whoa - experiment smiling anyplace but there) people just looked away. I immediately knew it wasn't something they experienced on a regular basis. They didn't smile back; they just reacted by looking elsewhere as if I was crazy for being happy when the world's falling apart.
Maybe I am. But I'm going to keep on with my experiment. I am going to stay positive and smile at people and keep believing that everything is exactly how it is supposed to be in this world. And if that makes me crazy, so be it. And if that makes me happy, all the better.
Evidently the economy and I are not of the same mind set lately. I was sure that the job market would be picking up quickly after March 1 with many companies starting new quarters and fiscal years. I was wrong. So I am in about the ninth week of my job search and I'm staying relatively peaceful and serene through the process. Here's a quick layout of a day in the life of a job searcher and maybe this will help you with your own search.
Wake Up at the Same Time - Every Day!
It helps to have kids who need to get on the schoolbus or else I may never get out of bed. But once I am awake and get the kids on the bus, I stay up. I do not go back to sleep no matter how tired I am. If I was working, I wouldn't have that luxury (although many people were known to perfect the art of sleeping with their eyes open at my last job). Since looking for a job has now become my job, I treat it as I would any other job and I give it my all.
Routines are Important
These are keeping my job search on target and are keeping me focused. I check my email accounts first to see who wants to hire me usually followed by periods of banging my head because nobody does (just kidding - about the head thing anyway). I check the job boards but I use www.indeed.com because I refuse to search through all of them when this site does it for you. I then check www.Craigslist.com because sometimes indeed doesn't catch those jobs. Then I move onto facebook, Twitter, and linkedin. I update my status because I want to make sure I am in the forefront of every one of my connection's minds. Then I check my Yahoo account because that is where the writing jobs are sent (to my mailbox).
BYOC
What's that? BYOC = Be Your Own Cheerleader. That's what I do - I stay positive by remembering all the things I have today. I don't dwell on what I don't have. I am grateful that I have an opportunity to write freelance and that I have many networking groups to attend. When I ran out of networking groups to attend, I started my own. Had a good group too and I received positive feedback from everyone who attended and who presented.
Get Out
I mean get out of the house but you can also get out of town, whatever works. I simply do better when I treat my job search as a real job complete with lunch breaks, visits to the local cafe and mini-breaks thoughout the day to chat with friends. Unfortunately, the bulk th this last one is done via IM or phone calls but it is still chatting and they are still my friends. Today I am going to take a break and take Clay the dog to get his nails cut.
Do Your Part
Many years ago I reached the conclusion that I am not responsible for the outcome of anything. I am only responsible for the effort I put into any given task. So I use that philosophy when I am in the midst of the job search. I do my part to find a job and earn money and I simply leave the rest up to God and the Universe. This takes tremendous faith but I have been practicing it for a long time so it sort of comes natural. (Note - this does not mean I do it perfectly - quite the opposite at times.) I read blogs and join forums so I can stay on top of the writing field. I network, reach out to friends and I just pretty much show up every day grateful to be here and have my needs met and willing to accept whatever happens because I know from experience that however it turns out is how it's meant to be.
So that works for me - I stay sane albeit unemployed. But I do accept that as temporary and I am grateful for the extra time. I have found creative, inexpensive ways to have fun with my kids (instead of renting a condo at the beach, we took the train to Washington for Spring Break and scoped out all the free museums), And I have found my writing voice which I had lost while I was working for a big corporation. And for that, I'll be forever grateful as it came in the form of a lousy economy and I wouldn't have recognized it unless I had my eyes wide open.
Fear is running rampant through our society today. More businesses are closing, more people are unemployed, homes are lost and lives are shattered. You can't open the paper or click on a news site without bad news blasting through the headlines. People want security and they want answers. Unfortunately, what we want and what we get are often quite different.
So how do you manage to hold onto a little bit of peace during turbulent times when the core of our lives are seemingly mangled beyond repair? Well, it requires a little bit of work but it can be done. I lost the job I loved in January and I am a single mother and the main provider for my two daughters, so I know a little bit about fear. But I also know a little bit about peace. Here's what I know.
Fear will take over your life if you let it. It will cause illness, it will cause anxiety, it will cause you to lose your mind. Make a decision to put a stop to that immediately. The best way to do that is to get it all onto paper. Write your fears down, every one of them. Once you can see them clearly on a sheet of paper in front of you, you can deal with them.
Next, on a separate sheet of paper make two columns. In Column One put the fears that you can deal with. In Column Two, put the fears that you have no idea how to manage. Let's say your fears are outstanding debt, losing your home, losing your health insurance, becoming ill and having to declare bankruptcy because of potential exhorbitant medical expenses.
Now, separate those into the two columns. Column One (fears you can deal with) should include outstanding debt and losing your health insurance. You can take action on these. Calling your creditors and being open and honest with them will often allow them to give you options you never thought of. Call a private health insurance agent and if you don't know one, ask family or friends. Somebody knows a reliable insurance guy, trust me. Get a quote. Don't just give up - taking action will restore some inner peace.
Put the other items in Column Two. Those you cannot deal with right now. But ask yourself, what is the worst that can happen. I asked myself that when I lost my job. "Well, what if I lose my home" said I. And the answer was "Okay, then you move into an apartment until things pick up financially and make that your home for awhile" and I felt better. Peace was restored. I didn't have to worry about an unknown - 'what might happen' - because I knew the answer.
Taking action regarding things like your health will help you too. If you don't currently take care of your physical self, try to do little things to get started. This will help you feel like you are more in control. If you are getting healthy, you'll be less worried about 'what happens if I get sick" and you will keep that boulder from rolling back down the hill and keep the fear from starting up again.
So take some action to maintain a sense of inner peace during tumultuous times and you might just be surprised at the level of serenity you've achieved. Have faith because this too shall pass. Honest.
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