Category: life lessons

Dancing In the Dark

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“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” – Sarah Williams

My kids are going through this “scared of the dark” phase. It seems to be seasonally inspired as the nights and mornings get darker. When we have 16 hours of daylight in the summer, they don’t see the dark very often but right now we’re at just over 10 hours of daylight. By the time we get to the solstice, it’ll be something like only eight hours of light each day.

I asked them what the dark feels like to them. Mr. D said surprise. Miss O added that someone could be a foot away in the dark waiting to snatch them and they wouldn’t know.

It makes me think of one of my darkest moments. When I miscarried a baby 4 years ago, overnight the world completely lost all its color and I couldn’t give a care about anything. In the moments that I felt anything, it was anger like I’d never felt before – rage, really – and nobody could do anything right. Except Miss O – I could muster some energy to pull it together for her. This started 4 days before Christmas, and I stumbled through the motions of the holidays just trying to be polite. I could get the smallest glimmer of peace in the morning when I meditated and every once in a while something amused me but overall the landscape looked completely black/white/gray with an occasional spot of color that pulled me through.

In a few weeks I evened out and I could work through the loss. I had stopped taking all the hormones that come with invitro fertilization when I miscarried so I guessed that there was a strong physical component to my experience of darkness.

Going through this gave me the great big a-ha that my assumption that my life experience and outlook were solid was totally wrong.  And I also began to understand that others might come at life from a completely different felt experience.

Mr. D told me his strategy about his dark – get a flashlight. And I love that because it’s a brave looking into the dark. To illuminate the things that scare us so we can lean in to look more closely. And I keep reminding them that there are many things we see in the dark that we can’t see otherwise – like our adventure to see the stars, Halloween decorations not to mention our own frailty. It’s easier to be vulnerable in the dark.

Sometimes the dark makes things visible– and they are different things to see and learn from than in the light.

My kids love Rihanna’s song, “Dancing in the Dark” from the movie, Home. So I’m suggesting that we can dance in the dark until it doesn’t seem so scary and then stay with it long enough to maybe even understand ourselves and others better.

The Price of Learning

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“Living is the art of getting used to what we didn’t expect.” – Eleanor C. Wood

The other day my friend Katie asked Miss O what she’s been learning in second grade. Miss O said that she’s been learning a lot about coins. Not only the value of each one but adding them up – they are doing a lot of math using coins.

This reminded me of the experiment I tried with Miss O based on a beautiful post written by Chaya Sheela. In the post, When my children were rewarded with the Westminster family, she recounted how her kids learned to save and the bank awarded them with new ceramic pig figurines. Chaya is an experienced and talented teacher as well as beautiful writer so she inspired me to try something new with my kids.

Drawing from her wonderful story, I thought I’d try to create a similar lesson for Miss O about making buying decisions when we went clothes shopping. At the store I told her she had $100 for buying the clothes and shoes she needed. Anything that she didn’t spend of that money was hers to keep and save. My estimate was that she’d spend about $45 on a good pair of sneakers and $45 on clothes and have about $10 left over.

We went through the clothing and it worked. After we calculated the prices out, instead of buying six items, two of which were very similar to things she already had, Miss O decided to buy only four. It reduced the total to about $30 instead of $45.

But then we looked and looked for a pair of sneakers that would fit her narrow foot. And with all the choices, we never found a pair that was just right. I loved that she was being responsible about finding a pair of shoes that would really work and last for the year.

But it meant when we went through checkout and she paid for everything, she pocketed $70. I reminded her many times that she’d have to use that money to buy sneakers when we found a good pair that fit.

Eventually we went to multiple stores, found the right pair and she used the money to pay for them. But she’s been telling people that she pays for her own shoes even since. 😊

So I’d say she’s doing fine in the money and math department. If that’s all they teach in second grade she’s going to do fine and I’m grateful that it’s the school teaching, not me.

However, Mr. D swallowed a penny yesterday so it seems like we are all learning about coins, one way or another.

Interrupting the Pattern

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“All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision.” – James Clear

When my kids and I went on vacation a couple of weeks ago, Mr. D and Miss O had a room together with bunk beds. Little D was on the bottom and Miss O on top. Apparently every night D would wake up and not be able to find his favorite stuffy and wake his sister saying, “Lala, I can’t find real Bun Bun.”

Mis O would climb down the ladder and help him find his stuffy. This went on all week without me knowing because I think Miss O liked having older sister duties and being helpful.

But when we returned home and Mr. D was in his bedroom, all of a sudden I heard him calling out in the middle of the night, “I can’t find real Bun Bun.” I’d go in and groggily help him find where the little bunny was. Since sleep is critical to our household being able to function, I was not delighted by this new little touch point in the middle of the night.

It was by accident that one night we turned on the little fairy lights in Mr. D’s room. They added a little light and sparkle to a room that is pretty dark because of the heavy curtains necessary when we have our 16 hours of light summer days.

Mr. D didn’t call out the night the fairy lights were on. Once I figured that out, I’ve turned them on every night since and it interrupted the calling out.

This makes me think about how we create new habits. We think a lot about forming good habits – working out, eating healthier, starting a meditation practice. But there’s also a lot to be starting about not forming bad habits – thinking poorly of ourselves, deciding we need an extra cookie at the morning break, falling asleep in the downstairs chair.

As James Clear says in his book Atomic Habits, “The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us.” It seems so easy to observe new habits in my young children because they are so fresh from the source and they’re malleable. But what if we can also be intentional to stop patterns from grooving in? Maybe we just need to shine a little light on it.

What has helped you keep good habits or stop bad habits?

(featured photo from Pexels)

Sacred Time

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“Although the world is very full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” – Helen Keller

Early the other morning, my cat came in with something in her mouth. It was so small, I couldn’t see what it was. When she put it down, I tried to pick it up and it fluttered against my hand and I saw a flash of green when it did so I discovered it was a bird. This was only about a week after the cat had brought a baby bunny in and both were during my sacred time, the 90 minutes I have to do yoga, meditate and write before the kids wake up.

I was irritated because I thought she was done with the phase of life of hunting little creatures.

I was distracted because wanted to go back to reading and writing about the precious things of life.

I was annoyed that instead of finding inner peace, I was scrambling around on my hands and knees doing the quiet angry whisper at the cat.

Despite all this, I managed to get the small lump of feathers between a greeting card and a paper towel and I took it outside. I thought it was dead and my plan was to just release it into the bushes off the side of my deck.

As I let go, the small lump of feathers fell for about a foot, then righted itself mid-drop and flew away. It revealed itself as a little hummingbird as it rose higher and higher.

Stunned, I just stood there for a long moment feeling the magic of that flight course through me. It was as if I had the after-image of that free fall into flight burned into my being. I had goosebumps all over.

It was life showing me that no matter what cat has got us in its claws, there’s always a chance that it will let up and we’ll fly away.

And to see it fly was poetry in motion that even as battered as we feel, we can always rise again.

Most importantly, I saw that this was my sacred time. This was the beautiful beat of life coming to me to be witnessed, held and let go.

Quote comes from a Real Life of an MSW post: Overcoming.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Win as a Team, Lose as a Team

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“When the water in the harbor goes up, all the boats rise.” – Chinese Proverb

The other day as we were driving home from the camp Miss O is doing this week, she grumbled, “It’s not fair that we lose as a team.” She explained further that the camp motto is we win as a team and lose as a team.  Earlier that day some people on her team had not been listening to their counselor so the whole team had to sit out for three minutes.

I’ve been volunteering at this camp every afternoon this week so I’ve had a chance to observe some of the brilliant team building activities the campers have been doing. In one, they needed to traverse a course set up with strings that have bells attached. Then can go over the strings or under the strings but if a bell rings, they become “blind” and have to ask for help from someone who is doing the course but not blind to lead them to home base where their sight is restored. Then they start the course again.

Once someone gets to the end of the course, there is a bowl that they need to deliver back to home base. Except the person carrying the bowl can only hold it for 5 seconds and they can’t move their feet while holding the bowl. If they hold it too long or move the feet, the bowl goes back to the beginning and they start again.

Watching these 6-8 year olds, it was fascinating to see how they managed these tasks. First, they all seemed pretty willing to help their teammates when they were blind, even if it meant having to start over themselves.

For the bowl passing part, they clearly needed to create a bucket brigade but were too excited by the instructor counting down the seconds they could hold it, “5 – 4 – 3” that they had trouble organizing themselves. They rarely held it more than 3 seconds and everyone crowded around the bowl instead of stringing themselves down the line so that they could be passed to.

The bowl went back several times, usually because someone moved their feet while holding the bowl, once when they were just feet away from the goal  – but they stuck with it and eventually got it done. They won as a team.

But do we, in the bigger picture, also lose as a team? Climate change, poverty, drinking water for all, public health – it appears we are all affected by these issues, some more and some less. And yet we forget that we have to work together to solve these big problems. Perhaps we all need to go back to camp.

What do you think? Is it fair that we lose together? Are we remembering to celebrate our wins together?

Making Good Choices

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“Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play.” – Henri Matisse

Yesterday we were driving to Parkour camp when Miss O said, “I really like Coach Kurt because he’s always teaching us about making good choices. Which is important in Parkour.” Then after a short pause she added, “I think it might be really important in life.”

Parkour derives its name from the French phrase meaning obstacle course. A year into the pandemic, I think I would have signed Miss O up for any in-person class that gave her an outlet to use all the extra energy building up from having to do online Kindergarten but I was fortunate enough to make the good choice of Parkour.

Watching the kids learn Parkour, it appears that they are just running, vaulting, climbing, and dodging. But what Coach Kurt as the founder of his Parkour training company and his other coaches seem to be emphasizing is that we have choices in how we navigate an environment. Social emotional learning shows up in most curricula for kids these days but as I digested Miss O’s statement, it struck me just how much she was learning… from play.

Thinking about this sent me to my copy of Gifts of Imperfection by author and researcher Brené Brown. She cites the work of psychiatrist Dr. Stuart Brown about the benefits of play as derived from his research and work in the fields of biology, neurology and psychology. “Brown explains that play shapes our brain, helps us foster empathy, helps us navigate complex social groups, and is at the core of creativity and innovation.”

More than that, Brené Brown’s entire book is on the choices we make in life and how cultivating the right things can help us to live more whole-heartedly, as she terms it. “Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness.” It is all about making the right choices in life, to build on Miss O’s statement. Here are the ten guideposts that Brené offers:

Guidepost #1: Cultivating Authenticity: Letting Go of What People Think

Guidepost #2: Cultivating Self-Compassion: Letting Go of Perfectionism

Guidepost #3: Cultivating a Resilient Spirit: Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness

Guidepost #4: Cultivating Gratitude and Joy: Letting Go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark

Guidepost #5: Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith: Letting Go of the Need for Certainty

Guidepost #6: Cultivating Creativity: Letting Go of Comparison

Guidepost #7: Cultivating Play and Rest: Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and Productivity as Self-Worth

Guidepost #8: Cultivating Calm and Stillness: Letting Go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle

Guidepost #9: Cultivating Meaningful Work: Letting Go of Self-Doubt and ‘Supposed To’

Guidepost #10: Cultivating Laughter, Song and Dance: Letting Go of Being Cool and ‘Always in Control’

The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown

(Anyone interested in these guideposts might want to take the assessment that Brené Brown offers for free on her website.)

Thinking about how we are always making choices on how to navigate this obstacle course of life, I think Miss O summed it up that it’s important to make good ones. Or at least the choices that are meaningful to us. So when I saw Coach Kurt at Parkour camp yesterday, I made the choice to pause and tell him what my daughter had learned from this company and curriculum he so thoughtfully has put together. With glittering eyes he thumped his hand to his heart a couple of times and then said, “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

(featured photo from Pexels)

Know Thy Self

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“The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he’s an optimist after it he knows too little.” – Mark Twain

The other day I posted a picture of a Dove chocolate wrapper that said, “Embrace optimism” on Instagram. One of my friends from college commented, “I think it’s safe to say you’ve been giving optimism a bear hug for your whole life!”

She’s right – I’m a congenital optimist. It took me 42 years to realize year to realize it’s a trick of the mind because I came with it installed. And then it’s taken me 10 more years to figure out what things I get wrong because of my outlook. That puts me a little behind the curve according to my Mark Twain quote, but I’m working on it. It’s the subject on my post for the Pointless Overthinking blog: Rose Colored Glasses.

Try Not to Hurry

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“I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date.” – The White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

My sister-in-law was over the other day and told me that ever since she was out sick for a week about 6 weeks ago, she’s felt like she is always running behind. Then she listed all the things she hasn’t done and it struck me that none of them had to do with being on time, but instead were all about what she wanted to do with her time.

It struck a chord in me because I’ve been reading Alan Burdick’s book Why Time Flies (thank you for the suggestion, Dr. Stein) and he talks about all the different ways we use the word time:

Duration – the ability to determine how much time has elapsed between two specific events or to accurately estimate when the next event will occur.

Temporal order – the ability to discern the sequence in which events occurred.

Tense – the ability to discriminate between the past, present, and future, and the understanding that tomorrow lies in a different temporal direction than yesterday.

The “feeling of nowness” – the subjective sense of time passing through us “right now,” whatever that is

Why Time Flies by Alan Burdick

It’s been my goal lately to try not to hurry even when really busy which speaks to that “feeling of nowness” that Alan Burdick describes. It also resonates with an idea that we need to distinguish between what is important to us as opposed to what seems urgent that Gary Fultz wrote about in his post A Good Interruption Solution? “We are all in a different place between the urgent and the important. Let me suggest there is probably not enough time in life to do all of both.“

With all those ideas about “time,” it inspired my post for the Pointless Overthinking blog this week: The Quality versus Quantity of Time.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Freedom and Responsibility

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“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” – Gandhi

A couple of days ago I converted Mr. D’s crib to a big boy bed by taking off one of the sides. I kept the crib thing going as long as I could because it’s so comforting to have a child stay where you put them but he’s been exercising his ability to push boundaries by climbing out so it was time.

The first night he got out of bed after I said “good-night” a couple of times, fell out of bed, and the next morning he got up 30 minutes early and woke his sister.

Of course I went through this with Miss O a few years ago but I’m reminded again of the lessons that freedom brings.

When we have freedom – to go anywhere we like or to use our time the way we wish or because we are the boss and no one tells us what to do – it is so exciting. Then we have to decide how to use it.

After the newness wears off, we have to learn to have self-control. We get to choose – within the limits of what is responsible and respectful of other people. We have to make decisions that don’t negatively impact our loved ones or people around us.

And when there’s more freedom, then everyone has to enforce their boundaries. In this case, Mr. D’s ability to pop out of bed is infringing on my ability to have morning kid-free sacred time and Miss O’s ability to sleep.

While kids who are almost 3-years-old are not the most reasonable people to talk and negotiate with, I find that having a strong relationship and consistent conversations about what does and does not work for everyone eventually gets through.

In the days that Miss O was learning how to manage her big bed freedom, I would turn on the Tibetan meditation chant music and say that if she got up early, the only option was to meditate with me. It didn’t take long for her to decide to stay in bed. I did the same with Mr D. except I notice that having another child there as a co-conspirator makes the conversation harder.

Yes, this is perhaps a strained analogy to the state of freedom in the US. But on this July 4th, may we remember that freedom comes with the responsibility to exercise self-control, be respectful of the others around us, the requirement to keep talking with each other and enforce our boundaries. Sometimes freedom works for us and sometimes the freedoms of others make us feel a little crazy and grumpy.  We have to keep working for the middle ground where freedom and respect are in balance. We made this bed and now we need to lie in it. 🙂

Happy 4th everyone!