Tag: blogging

Synthesis

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“Whatever you are, be a good one.” – Abraham Lincoln

My best friend since second grade, Katie, was telling her college aged daughter that I was one of the smartest people she knows. I laughed knowing all the stupid stuff I’ve done over all the years that Katie is very well aware. But getting my bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering was one of those things that made people think of me as smart and so I just smiled.

But it also struck me that it’s been a long time since someone called me smart. And then I heard a 10 Percent Happier Podcast yesterday that explained why that might be. The podcast featured Arthur Brooks, a professor at Harvard who has just written a book From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. In it, he discusses two types of intelligence: fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence.

Fluid intelligence is raw smarts, solving problems and doing it quickly, thinking very quickly. It is the brain power of young brains and it starts to decline in our mid-30’s to 50. Young tech entrepreneurs tend to rely on a lot of fluid intelligence.

Crystallized intelligence is what emerges as fluid intelligence declines. It is the ability to synthesize so that we become better story-tellers, teachers and are able to put ideas together and explain them to others. Historians are great examples of people that are using their crystallized intelligence to its fullest potential.

Which brings me back to thinking about my friend Katie. She graduated with honors as the 11th in our high school class and I graduated 12th. The reason I go to Katie for advice isn’t because she’s smart – it’s because she’s wise, kind and understanding. Most often, she is using her crystallized intelligence to relate the stories of her life to mine.

It also struck me that with those descriptions, all of us over 50 bloggers are in our sweet spot. Telling stories and synthesizing life, we are making the most of our crystallized intelligence as it starts to come to the fore. And if I’ve done a decent job telling this story, you all should be feeling great that you are right where you need to be!

(featured photo from Pexels)

Story-Telling

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“Life is not measure by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” – Maya Angelou

I met my friend Phil on the side of Mt. Rainier in the middle of the night 20 years ago. The group I was with was just crawling out of our tents to get ready for a summit bid. The group he was guiding had started 1,000 feet lower down and was passing by on their way to the upper reaches of the mountain. He gruffly joked with me, “Keep that tent open, I think I’ll just crawl in and sleep awhile.”

Phil is a very accomplished climber and mountain guide – the first American to climb the north side of Everest, the eighth person to climb to the highest place on each continent, over 500 (I think) ascents of Mt. Rainier. But one of the most noticeable things about him is his ability to tell stories.

It seems like mountain climbers and story-telling often goes hand in hand. Probably because there is a lot of down-time waiting for the right time to summit. On our way to Everest base camp in 2001, we would trek one day and rest one day so that the group of 5 people who would be climbing Everest that season could acclimatize. On the days off, we’d just sit in the mess tent, play cards and tell stories.

Blogging reminds me of that. I’ve been blogging every day for over 6 months. The other day reading this blog post about lessons learned in marriage and parenting a special needs kid by Ab, I realized that blogging is part of my self-care. It’s a way of processing and sharing the things that I want and need to learn from. But it’s also just daily practice in telling a story.

On every trip I’ve done with Phil I’ve noticed how deep his relationship is with the people his climbed with over and over again. I’m thinking about a really nice man from Michigan that we climbed with both in Nepal and Peru, that Phil used to joke, “I keep saying to Bill that he reminds me of a helicopter. Just looking at him, it doesn’t look like he should be able to climb, but he does!”

Phil is now 70 years old and doesn’t climb much any more. But when I’ve visited with him over recent years, I’ve found that telling stories is a way to bring what means most alive to the fore. May we all live our best stories and then tell them again and again to celebrate where we’ve been.

Writing a New Chapter

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“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C.S. Lewis

I heard someone years ago make an interesting distinction. She said that she ran, but was not a runner. It stuck with me once I heard it as a way I could differentiate doing something without claiming that I was any good at it.

I ride bikes but I’m not a cyclist.

I plant and water things in my yard but am not a gardener.

I write but am not a writer.

Part of the reason that I don’t think of myself as a writer is that I’m an electrical engineer by education. The very last class I took before I got my degree was technical writing. I put it off until the very end because I thought it would be easy and found out the hard way, with my degree on the line, that it was just as challenging.

And yet I keep finding myself drawn to write. Recently I was selected to be part of the talented group of writers that make up the Pointless Overthinking blog. Since I am by disposition a lot like a golden retriever – happy, goofy and energetic, my reaction was pretty much along those lines: ecstatic, a little teary and enthusiastic.

I don’t join groups very often these days. I work as a freelance technical consultant primarily alone, I parent alone, and since my Budheo-Christian beliefs don’t align with any particular church, I even worship alone. So for me just applying to join a group is a big deal.

It was an even bigger deal for me to be selected because it came with the sentence, “We were looking for someone who likes to both tell stories and mix in a little philosophizing, and you perfectly fit that description.”

I think I need to update, for my own self-image and not as an act of hubris, that I might not only write but in fact might actually be, a writer.

(Here is my first post on the Pointless Overthinking blog: Creating Context.)

(photo from Pexels)

Trust Falls

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“The angel seeing us is watching through each other’s eyes.” – Rickie Lee Jones

My friend Eric was over the other night and my daughter accidentally did one of those “trust falls” when she tripped over something, fell backwards and he caught her. She thought that was so much fun that she wanted to do it again and again.

Watching this, I was trying to think who I trust to catch me. As I started listing all the wonderful people in my life in my head and thinking whether I’d trust them to catch me if I metaphorically fell (like if I got sick), I started automatically providing excuses why I wouldn’t ask. Like there’s Lindsey but she is so busy, there’s Eric but he just started a new job, there’s Katie but she’s a half hour away, and there’s my mom but she should be enjoying her senior years.

I had to meditate on this for a while. Why is it that I don’t “trust” any of the people that I really and truly trust? And the answer is my own fear of vulnerability. I don’t want to ask. I fear having to ever own that there are some days I’m a hot mess on the inside.

Of course this is all thankfully hypothetical but also represents my ongoing battle with over-preparing for life. It’s not just now. I can think back to when I climbed mountains and I would check the packing list over and over so that I wouldn’t have to ask anyone to borrow anything. Or sleep with my contacts in so I wouldn’t be late to tie into the rope team when we’d leave for our final summit bid in the middle of the night.

When I really dig deep, I see that I trust my spiritual guides like my dad and God much more than I do living people. Because I don’t have to ask out loud!

When it comes to trust falls, I think it is far easier to be the person catching than the person falling. Unless you are a 6-year-old and then you love doing the falling. But if I remember correctly from the group building exercises I’ve done in the past, you have to both do the falling and the catching.

A good reminder that we have to practice vulnerability. So I’ll go first. I started blogging regularly because working remotely and being a parent means that I don’t have enough conversations with adults that go deep. That leaves me feeling this weird kind of loneliness that isn’t bored or even unhappy but just scared I’m missing the point.  So I write but I don’t advertise this to anyone outside the blogging community just in case I’m overreaching. But I aspire to one day own all of me and to know the power of doing so.

Whoa! That was scary. But I’ll catch you if you want to take a turn!

And Then I Woke Up with a Tattoo

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“Knowledge increases by sharing, not by saving.” – Lyrical

About 10 months ago when I started to blog regularly, I remember LA of the Waking Up on the Wrong Side of Fifty blog saying in a comment that I would develop great blog friends. Given that the platform lends itself to self-awareness and sharing, it’s a reasonable assumption. But I didn’t really understand the familiarity that develops when you follow someone, dare to comment and create a history over time.

Now that I do, I’m so grateful for the blog community. The awesome power of sharing wisdom, practicing putting words to this experience of life and telling stories. I have learned so much and I have laughed a lot. It’s like spending an extended time sitting around a table swapping stories with people from around the world.

And then coming home with a tattoo!

Thanks to the hilarious Betsy from the ParentingIsFunny blog. Her friend had them made for her birthday and in recapping the adventure she offered to send extras to anyone who would wear one. Happy birthday, Betsy!

Witty Remark

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“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.” – Mark Twain

My kids and I were driving in the car up a long, gently rising hill when my son noticed a jogger on the sidewalk beside us. Here’s the conversation that ensued:

[My toddler]: What man doing?

[Me]: He’s jogging.

[My 6-year-old daughter]: Jogging is what you call it when grown-ups run because they are really slow.

Of course, I immediately burst into laughter and my daughter was delighted to have said something so witty that she has been trying to recreate the humor of it ever sense. Which is hard to do without the setup.

One of the things that fascinates me about witnessing my kids and their friends grow up is the development of their story-telling capabilities. Knowing that narrative shapes our inner lives as well as our interaction with others, I love talking with my daughter about the stories we read and see.

So when Mitch Teemley published this great post Hitting the Creative Bullseye, I thought about my daughter’s witty remark to see if his breakdown of the hallmarks of creativity helped analyzed why we laughed: is unexpected, feels right and surprises them.

Ticking through the points:

  • Was it unexpected? We were just chit chatting in the car so no one was primed for a joke and so yes, it was unexpected.
  • Did it feel right? Yes. There is so much undeniable truth to the remark “jogging is what you call it when grown-ups run because they are really slow.”
  • Did it surprise us? I think the benefit of being 6-years-old is that no one expects you to come up with observations that hit the mark so when you do, it’s both surprising and memorable.

Of course the problem is in repeating it. But that’s why we practice — so that we can access both wit and wisdom, the “Feels right” insight in the moments that are both unexpected and surprise us. Because after all, wit is often how grown-ups deliver wisdom so that others will remember it.

Creating a Clean Slate

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“The power of imagination makes us infinite.” – John Muir

There is a small room on the top floor of my house that isn’t on the way to anywhere so it’s filled with kids toys: wooden blocks, games, a big dollhouse, barbies. I was helping (that’s code for doing all the work while my kids were present) clean it up the other day and wondering why kids don’t want to play somewhere that’s messy. After all, they aren’t living up to any social mores that tell them they need to be tidy. And when we were interviewed on the local news during the heat wave, my toddler licked ice cream off the table so some portion of the greater Seattle area knows he’s not worried about dirt, dust or germs. It must be something like to be creative they need a clean slate.

That reminds me of my writing process. I meditate and then I write. Meditation declutters my head of to-do lists and chatter. And clears the game board so I am free to make new associations. Most importantly, it erases any sign of “me” so my inner editor is not calling the shots.

Something I read in Shonda Rhimes memoir, The Year of Yes comes back to me as I think about writing. To paraphrase (because at the moment I can’t find my copy of the book which has certainly been disappeared in kid chaos) that her writing process is such that it feels like she has to run 5 miles to just get to the start of writing. And then if she’s interrupted, it’s like she has to run 5 miles back to get back to reality. And to start again, it’s running another 5 miles. I’ve heard other writers describe their process similarly like Brené Brown saying that she has to go deep to write and normal life ceases to be possible.

These descriptions make me think that like with my kids, creativity is sparked when we make some space to begin. There is a Zen saying, “You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day unless you are busy. Then you should sit for an hour.” And that makes me laugh, but mostly because it’s true. Just think of what I could create if I could clear my mind…