Tag: inspiration

Dear Mom

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“Life doesn’t come with a manual. It comes with a mother.” – unknown

It seems like when I see a headline on the news relating to something that happened to a mom, it starts with something like, “Mom of two is ____” (fill in the blank with missing, found guilty, bitten by a dog and so on). She also might be a real estate agent, banker, engineer or some other profession but it seems in my non-scientific survey, that they always lead with her parental status.

Which I take to be evidence of the importance of mother figures. This post is a both a celebration of moms and also a chance for me, as a somewhat new-ish mom, to learn what is the essential stuff of motherhood.

If you feel comfortable, please tell me in the comments what was the most important lesson your mom or a mother figure taught you and/or if you are a mom, what is the primary thing you want your kids to get or learn from you. I’ll compile a list and publish it.

Here’s my start for the list:

My mom taught me to speak and write. Her precision with language is extraordinary so just by listening to her and having her guidance, I learned a great deal about speaking English properly. It’s only in later years that I’ve realized that my mom only speaks what she believes to be true, which is another dimension of her gift to not only be precise in how she says something but also in what she says.  

As for being a mom: I observe my kids eat better, communicate more clearly and follow the rules more closely when they are with people other than me. I sometimes, just for an instant, wish they would want to step it up and impress me. Then I remember what an honor it is to hold their fragile conception of love like a baby chick in my hand. When they are grown and have learned to behave and handle themselves well, I hope I’ve created a space in each of them that knows you don’t have to perform to be loved.

(featured photo is of my mom, my son and me)

(quote comes from a post on Philosophy through Photographs blog)

Working Out My Change Muscle

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“Everybody wants to be enlightened but nobody wants to change.” – Andrew Cohen

Last Monday when my mom was over, my 6-year-old daughter asked her if she wanted to get the stem out of a strawberry. Thinking that Miss O meant for her to do it, my mom grabbed a paring knife and reached for the strawberry. Then Miss O explained that she was going to show her how to do it.

Grabbing a straw, she pushed it up from the bottom of the strawberry until it popped out of the top, taking the stem with it. A pretty neat hack she learned from a You Tube video.

This makes me think of the quote from Andrew Cohen at the top of this post, “Everybody wants to be enlightened but nobody wants to change.” For me, I take that to mean at this phase of life that change is more about attitude than substance. That is to say, an openness to change is more important than what exactly it is that I will change.

I can name a half a dozen reasons why I wouldn’t stem a strawberry with a straw without even trying it. But that leaves me in a position of only trying change when I deem it to be important. How can I believe I’ll have the spiritual wherewithal to recognize and accept the one change I may need for enlightenment if I’m out of practice of changing at all?

So this week for Miss O’s school lunches, I’ve been popping the stem out with a straw all week. A change I’m not committing to stick to because I usually have knives more readily available than straws. But I consider it a workout for my flexibility.

What does change look like for you in your stage of life? Have you ever tried to stem a strawberry with a straw?

Reach Out and Touch Someone

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“Compliment people wherever you go. Praise every single thing you see. Be a ray of sunshine to everyone you meet.” – Rhonda Byrne

A couple of weeks ago my friend, Scott was watching the movie The Net and it reminded him of me. When that movie came out 27 years ago (I looked it up), it was in the brief time we worked together and I commented on a small technical detail about an IP address that pertained to the work we were doing at the time. He saw that detail as he watched the movie again and texted me.

I wonder what it is that makes us pick up the phone when reminded of someone from a long time ago – or answer when someone else does.

It seems like our imaginations often get in the way because I think more often than not I think we think of people and DON’T pick up the phone – we can’t imagine what their reaction will be because it’s been too long or we imagine that it will take more time that we have. And then we stop before we’ve even dialed or written the note.

Many years ago, I had a friend who was writing a novel and was trying to think of a plausible way to introduce time travel. We brainstormed ideas and I remember not having much to offer. Thinking about it now – I realize that reaching out to someone when we think of them is a great way to travel in time.

Because whenever I take the time to pick up the phone, write a letter or make a comment, I get a boost of good feeling. Even in the cases that it doesn’t work out the way I expected, I feel more connected to others for making the effort. It is another way of experience the goodness of our interconnected humanity.

So when Scott texted, I said “yes” to meeting him for tea to catch up. Not only did I get to find out how he, his wife and kids are doing, I got a little chance to travel in time and remember the energy and promise of those days when we were getting paid to wire people to the Internet. It probably was back when AT&T ran the commercials reminding us, “Reach out and touch someone.”

Have you called an old friend lately?

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Peak-End Rule

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“All’s well that ends well.” – William Shakespeare

On our way home from the airport after 9.5 hours of traveling, my kids broke into a scrum. Mr. D was saying, “This is not our car. This is not a Toyota!” and Miss O had discovered on the trip that giggling softly when he talks is a truly effective way to make Mr. D mad. After doing so well on all the different legs of our journey including all the waiting when our plane was delayed, we were at risk for falling apart.

It made me think of the research of Daniel Kahneman, psychologist, behavioral economist and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow who found the way that we remember both painful and pleasureful experiences as defined by the peak moment and the end moment. So, if we are getting a painful medical procedure, we’ll generally not remember how it felt all the way through, just how it felt at the end and at its most intense. Research bears this out for positive experiences as well.

Applying this to life, it made me think of my relationship with my ex-husband. Over 8 years of marriage, we laughed a lot. In fact, that was probably what we did best. But I have a hard time remembering that because I most often think of the moment my business partner told me of my exes infidelities and I not only had to deal with that in my personal life but also walk into work the next business day and face all the people I worked with who knew. And I think of the end of the marriage, when no amount of talking could overcome the defenses we’d built.

Now, a dozen years later with the remove of time and healing, I strain to think of the fun times and I honestly can’t. I come back to the peak moment and the end moment.

Conversely when I think of every mountain I’ve ever climbed, even though I know it was a lot of hard work, what I picture is the summit and having beers with friends at the end. The peak-end rule as applied to fun stuff is capable of filtering out a lot of discomfort.

Not wanting the same rule of memory to apply to our very enjoyable recent vacation, I sat in the car trying to think of how to turn around these last moments when we were all tired and past our limits. But the kids did it for me when they started singing The Lion Sleeps Tonight from the Lion King and we bopped along to wim-o-weh. I needn’t have worried – it felt so good to be home, we all ended on a good note!

Confession of a Writer

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“What you are afraid to do is a clear indication of the next thing you need to do.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the year before my dad’s sudden death in a bicycle accident, I had a soul whisper that I needed to get to know my dad on his terms. He was such an enthusiastic supporter of so many people that it was hard to get him to talk about himself. But I sat him down and asked questions and recorded his stories. It was one of the most inspired things I ever did. His death catapulted me into an ambition to write a book about him.  In those months as I was pregnant with my daughter and writing about my dad, spinning between death and birth, I met Sheila, my writing coach.

With her help, I finished and published the book, and after my daughter was born, I found more to write about. When I contacted Sheila again, she asked, “Do you remember the first thing that you said to me?” I didn’t so she reminded me that I had told her I wasn’t a writer, I just wanted to write a book about my dad. But as we worked together, she told me along the way that I would have more to write about.

I think back to how I was so quick to disavow any greater aspirations to be a writer and it showed how much I feared admitting what was calling to me. I didn’t want to presume that I had anything valuable to say (or write) and it wasn’t what I went to school for. In fact, when I was finishing my BS in Electrical Engineering, the last course I needed to complete was a technical writing course, and it took me until after I walked through ceremonies and had a real job to complete those credits and finish my degree.

Sitting down to write and publish blogging posts every morning has been my practice to walk what my inner self already knows is true. That I’m driven to write about this one wild and precious life of mine, to quote Mary Oliver, and that it’s not presumptuous to own that.

I like to think of writing as the last gift that my dad gave me before he departed this planet. And as such it’s the one that helps me integrate him with the life I have now with these two beautiful children. It’s the gift that has brought me depth and wonderful relationships with you all in the WordPress community. To not own that I love writing is a betrayal of all that so I guess I need to call Sheila back up and tell her I’m a writer.

How about you – do you admit that you are a writer?

(featured photo from Pexels)

Just Say Yes

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“Respond to every call that excites your spirit.” – Rumi

A couple of months ago when my high school friend generously offered me and my family a free place to stay in Vail, Colorado for 4 nights, I didn’t think about it much and just said “yes.” Now my little family and my friend Eric have made our way here. It took us 10 hours of car, bus, airplane, bus, and car transport to get here but we made it.

Then we walked in to a place so fancy I have trouble believing it’s a vacation place. If all the coffee mugs match and the appliances are not cast offs from some other home, it somehow doesn’t match with my image of vacation accommodations. But I have proof that we are on vacation, because I’m saying “yes” to most everything.

“Mom, can we stay up late?” – YES

“Can we make s’mores out by the fire pit tonight?” – YES

“Will you go swimming with us in an outdoor (heated) swimming pool when it’s 50 degrees out?” – YES

“Can I put this dirty brown snow in my mouth?” – NO

Okay, so I’m not saying yes to everything. But I’m finding that this adventure is all about living life without the rules and schedules that mark life at home.

And the effect has been to shake off the sliver of patina that grows between our hearts and living on a regular basis. Getting everything done in a day means keeping a bit of wildness in check and not listening to where our adventurous souls want to go.

Now we have a couple more days of leaving behind the rules and finding our natural rhythm close to nature and close to each other. As long as it doesn’t break any matching coffee mugs, I’m up for saying “yes” for just about anything today.

What are you saying “yes” to today?

Dancing with Our Stuff

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“Wherever I go, I meet myself.” – Tozan

When I was climbing Mt. Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains in Russia about twenty years ago, the first stage of the ascent was to climb to the hut we stayed at until our summit attempts. At about 13,000 feet, it was a pretty rough shelter with nails that hadn’t been all the way hammered in, porch railings that didn’t go all the way around (see featured photo) and no exterior finish but it afforded us a good place to rest and try to summit the 18,510 feet peak.

The outhouse was just down a little path and set right on the edge of the ridge. That is to say, the hole in the floor opened directly onto a rock field. The placement was interesting and created some aerodynamic challenges. Anything light put down the hole would come right back up again.

This was discovered by the first climber from our group to go in there — a really funny, nice guy from California. He came back to the hut with his cheeks flushed, a little out of breath with a surprised look on his face. He announced, “I just spent 5 minutes dancing with my toilet paper.” At that altitude, any kind of dancing would take your breath away.

This always reminds me that, as the quote at the top of this post says, wherever we go we meet ourselves. Even when we are in the most scenic places, poised to accomplish some personal milestone, we still might have to dance with our toilet paper. If we’ve done our work, that can be more amusing than horrifying.

(featured photo is mine)

Other climbing posts:

Life Lessons

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“Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending.” – unknown

The other evening on a clear night my kids and I were out riding bikes. As I pumped up a hill, my two-year-old son sitting on the back on my bike noticed the moon bright in the sky. He softly said, “I want to hold the moon.”

It’s a good thing parents and lovers aren’t omnipotent. I assume it would result in the moon being pulled out of the sky on a regular basis.

A few days later my 6-year-old daughter was excitedly awaiting a new clock to arrive from Amazon. She was so excited to have the very first clock that she picked out herself and could set the alarms on. I question why she’d want to start with alarms so early in life but keeping my opinion to myself, helped her track the package. On the day it was supposed to arrive, the status went from “out for delivery” to “undeliverable” right before bedtime.

My daughter was so disappointed. Rightly so and exacerbated by being tired. In that moment, I would have driven the Amazon truck myself to make sure there wasn’t a tired six-year-old lamenting about unpredictability.

Sometimes I wonder what I’m teaching my kids. Fortunately life partners with me so that I have plenty of opportunities to talk about what we dream about. I get to review what we can and cannot control. And I can demonstrate how we can to flex our muscles of patience and perspective when things don’t work the way we want.

Gratefully, I have the chance to assure my kids that we might not always get what we want but we always get what we need. And remind myself of the same along the way.

(featured photo from JOOINN)

Influence

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“Be sure to taste your words before you spit them out.” – unknown

I went back to look at footage of an interview with Madonna in 2012 that has stuck in my mind. In the interview, she’s being asked about Lady Gaga’s music and she calls it “reductive.” Something about her facial expression made it stand out when I watched it even though I’m not deep into either of those artists’ work.

When I went back and watched it, I saw a lot of things that I didn’t remember. The ABC News interviewer was really pushing Madonna to say something unkind about Lady Gaga’s music – to weigh in on some perception of “feud” that was being circulated online. Madonna says a number of things about influence and being amused before being pushed to call Born This Way reductive. When the interviewer pushes further to ask what that means, Madonna gets this sassy look on her face and says, “Look it up.”

According to the Oxford Dictionary, it means, “tending to present a subject or problem in a simplified form, especially one viewed as crude.” Setting aside the issue of what we do to celebrities to try to stoke a controversy or conflict, I suspect I’ve always remembered this because I wonder if what we all do is reductive.

Speaking for myself, I think everything I do is derivative or reductive of someone else’s work. I’m endlessly influenced by the books I read, especially the Mark Nepo and Frederick Buechner meditation books that I read every morning before I write. But more than that, I’m influenced by all the posts I read from everyone else and the podcasts I listen to when driving. I try to carefully quote and link when I use material but often times what I get is inspiration or ideas about how to think about a topic.

Celebrity feud aside – isn’t what we are here to do to influence each other? And isn’t that an honor to be a part of someone else’s path? I’m not talking about plagiarism or giving credit where credit is due – but just knowing that our content might touch one other person in a way that is meaningful, isn’t that a good thing?

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Beauty of Failure

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“Don’t let the internet rush you, no one is posting their failures.” – Wesley Snipes

The other day I failed for the second time to guess a Wordle and learned another life lesson as exemplified by this word game. By the way, no knowledge or affinity for Wordle is necessary to understand this life lesson but for anyone who hasn’t tried Wordle and is curious, here are the basics:

You have six tries to guess a five letter word. You are not given any information to start with but when you enter a guess, you are told if you have any right letters and they are green if correct in the right spot and yellow if they are used on the word but in the wrong spot. There is one word per day.

By the third guess I’d figured out the pattern was _ O _ E R

There were too many possible combinations – LOWER, MOVER, CODER, JOKER so I didn’t work out FOYER within the allotted 6 guesses.

But here’s what I noticed – it was WAY easier to fail the second time. The first time ended my 50 win streak and I was pierced, more than felt reasonable for a silly word game.

Noticing this, I think failing helps me shake the belief that I can be perfect. The longer streak that I had, the more brittle I became about not failing. It felt like there’s a longer way to fall, even if it’s just a silly word game.

It reminded me of a definition of perfection that Brené Brown provides in her book, The Gifts of Imperfection. “Perfection is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment and shame. It’s a shield. Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it is the thing that’s really preventing us from taking flight.”

I’m not advocating practicing failing. But I am suggesting talking about it and laughing about it when we do. For me, it doesn’t change the impression of anyone around me who are well aware I’m not perfect. But it does penetrate my illusion that I think I can or have to maintain some persona that is impervious to failure. Even the fact that I have an ego still after years of meditating to find the Unity in life needs piercing.

So, thank you, Wordle. Not only for the two minutes of daily entertainment but a few good life lessons too!

(featured photo by Pexels)