Tag: breathe

The Tool Kit

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“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” – Charles R. Swindoll

The other day I was making a cup of green tea and the pod got stuck in the machine. Immediately my brain assessed that I had something shaped like a cylinder trying to come out of a space shaped like a cone.

It started me thinking about metaphorical toolkits and how we go to them. It seems, at least in my family, that when faced with a problem or a project, we each have a sweet spot tool that lines up with our vocation or avocation.

And for me, an engineer, my tendency to face anything is problem-solving.

My mom, who by education and mindset is a great linguist, edits her way out of problems.

My dad was a Presbyterian pastor. And his primary tool for everything good and bad was to find a scriptural reference.

For the litigator in my family, history has shown her go-to is taking legal action.

My brother, an entrepreneur, always looks to innovate himself out of a tight spot.

My sister-in-law, who has many talents and careers, organizes when pressed.

Have you heard the joke about the person holding a hammer? When you are holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

But as I watch my young kids who have not yet trained to be anything, I see their instinct is to hug, cry, sing or dance when faced with anything big.

After I solved my problem and was sipping my tea, I wondered if all of us who have “become something” are missing a key first step in the process – to allow our bodies to feel it all the way through. To take in a moment of pause to acknowledge where we are and use it to breathe underneath our programming. At the very least, we might at least acknowledge that there we are predisposed to handle things in just one way of many, and then tackle it wisely from there.

(photo from Pexels)

Recovery

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“It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.” – Agnes Repplier

I was sitting with a group of friends from high school at our 30th reunion and one guy starting talking about his marriage. They were hanging on because of their high-school aged kids and the money but it was a relationship of closed doors and “why can’t she just be?” and it sounded like from her side “please just leave me alone.”

It brought to mind a whole scrapbook of memories from the end of my marriage. I felt like I was suffocating and starving. Suffocated because he had a long list of his needs and entertainment that he pressured me daily to meet and starved because he had no interest in listening to or participating in what fed me. I stayed in that marriage because I didn’t know what the difference was between hard times and impossible to fix. My sense of responsibility kept me in a situation that was irresponsible to my own being. In the waning days, I just came home at the end of the day and drank wine, a lot of it. And while I drank, I smoked.

There was no doubt that I was headed for a recovery program but then my business partner told me of my husband’s infidelities and although it was many confusing months ahead as I’ve written in my post Projections, my life changed. As I see it now, the Universe plucked me out of a self-destructive situation and gave me another chance to figure out happiness. I found my way to my own recovery activities. I spent time each day meditating and the long, rhythmic breathing replaced smoking. I read, journaled and leaned towards the feelings I was having instead of trying to numb them with wine. The people that I hung out with changed. Instead I found trust in the Higher Power to walk with me through life. I lost my marriage but found myself again.

As I was thinking through all of this, the question had come up whether our friend should stay in his marriage and someone said, “Ask Wynne” as I must have been the only divorced person sitting there. Of course I can’t answer for anyone else, especially when there are kids involved. But my answer for myself was “Not if you can’t breathe.”

Calm and Still

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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit” – Aristotle

Bees and I have come to an agreement. I’ll stay still and be calm and they won’t sting me. This agreement has taken a lot of years to broker since when I get stung, I puff up and stay that way, itchy and uncomfortable, for about five days. But I consider it part of my work to breathe deeply and not see them as an enemy.

The agreement went down the drain the other night when a yellow jacket stung my toddler. We were eating outside and they started swarming around. Since he’s just almost two he hasn’t had the chance to do his work and learn to be still and calm. In response to the sting, I wanted to kill them all.

It’s insidious – this ratcheting up of life’s lessons. I’ve come to accept pain as a great teacher, aches as a sign of growth, and to slow down and take life as it comes. But now I see I have so much more to learn about not taking umbrage on my kid’s behalf when pain comes.  This feels especially hard because I think it’s hard to hold other people when they are hurting and I can’t control the pace of how they move through it. In my discomfort, I want to problem solve and be done. It’s also hard because it’s my job to keep my kids safe so it feels like failure.

So all of this swirls as I consider my murderous rage for yellow jackets. My work on being calm and still is never done, I just have more to learn. But I take heart from a great quote I saw last week posted by TheEnglightenedMind622  “Don’t be afraid to start over again. This time, you’re not starting from scratch, you’re starting from experience.” I sit and try to be grateful for the chance to deepen the lesson and try not see neither bees nor pain as an enemy, not even on my son’s behalf.

Sunday Funnies

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“The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.” – Mark Twain

I inherited my dad’s folder of quotes and jokes. He was still collecting these 13 years after he retired from being a Presbyterian pastor, probably because he still did a lot of speaking engagements. He knew there’s nothing like a belly laugh to make us fully exhale and then deeply breathe into the delight of the day.

So here’s one from his file – the results from the Washington Post 2006 Neolologism Contest where they ask readers to supply alternate meanings for common words:

  1. Coffee
    (n.) the person upon whom one coughs
  2. Flabbergasted
    (adj.) appalled over how much weight you have gained
  3. Abdicate
    (n.) to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach
  4. Esplanade
    (v.) to attempt an explanation whilst drunk
  5. Willy-nilly
    (adj.) impotent
  6. Negligent
    (adj.) describes a condition in which you absent-mindedly answer the door in your nightgown
  7. Gargoyle
    (n.) olive-flavored mouthwash
  8. Flatulence
    (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller
  9. Balderdash
    (n.) a rapidly receding hairline
  10. Testicle
    (n.) a humorous question on an exam
  11. Rectitude
    (n.) the formal dignified bearing adopted by proctologists
  12. Pokemon
    (n.) A Rastafarian proctologist

Life in the Waiting Room

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“Things are always in transition. Nothing ever sums itself up the way we dream about.” – Pema Chodron

I received an email last night from Seattle Public Schools. They aren’t going to be able to make the promised return date for in-person school for Kindergartners and 1st graders of March 1st. I have many reactions to that like “What, it’s been a year? How could that not be enough time?” but I also understand the huge number of details they need to work out. Whether or not I rationalize it, I still feel disappointed and in suspense. We’ve been packed in this house together for a year, doing the best to learn something including how to socialize with others and be happy about the circumstance and I’m ready for a change.

When I first decided to try invitro-fertilization to have a baby on my own, I went through all the steps and then sat down at my desk on the day that I’d gotten it all done and was prepared to start. I thought “Wow, life is about to change!” The next day my amazing father was killed in a bike accident and I was heartbroken. I thought “Not like that! That wasn’t the change I meant!” Even with this ever-present example of the most final way that don’t always change in the way that I anticipate or want, I still am very impatient for change and I’m an optimist that it’ll change for the better. I’m always looking forward to the next milestone or hanging my hat on “what I’ll do when…” It’s like living life in a waiting room, where you are isolated with the old magazines, never quite able to start something because you’re name might be called at any second, not enjoying where you are because it’s on the outside of the room you are waiting to be in.

There’s nothing to do but to return to now. Gratitude does that for me. I breathe into all the many things I’m grateful for including that, even amidst the grief of losing my father, IVF worked and I was blessed with my little family. Even when it feels like I can’t live in these circumstances for a moment longer, I practice returning to the sweetness of what is. It saves me from splitting myself between now and a time that has not yet happened. It saves me the energy of preparing for a future that will likely happen only in my mind. I stray from the moment, I return, it’s a cycle I repeat sometimes with every breath in the day. Life will change, I just try to meet it with my full and present heart.