Tag: inspiration

Wordle as a Metaphor for Life?

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“You can’t win a game 7 without losing three games first. Keep going.” – Shea Serrano

As I having trouble solving Wordle the other day, I realized that I have been unusually focused on the word I used to start the puzzle. I’ve asked my friends that also play it what word they use. I’ve tried a few different ones myself, often using S-T-E-R-N since it represents some of the letters used most frequently used in English.

[For anyone who hasn’t tried to play this game that was recently bought by the NY Times, Wordle is a game where you have six tries to guess a common 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. Letters can be repeated. There is one word a day and everyone gets the same word so rest assured, this post doesn’t reveal today’s wordle.]

But as I typed in my word and got the result that the answer had none of those letters, I realized that knowing what isn’t in the word is equally as important.

The absence of a positive result is also informative.

It makes me think of a story about Thomas Edison. As he was trying to invent the light bulb, he tried more than a hundred different types of materials to use for the filament. Someone asked if he got discouraged and he said that he didn’t because each failure told him one more thing that didn’t work.

So Wordle is just the latest reminder that life is best met by continuing attempts to try. Every failure is just another opportunity to see what doesn’t fit. When I feel great resistance to something I’m doing in work or parenting, it presents an opportunity to think about whether I should push harder or try another tactic.

Some of life’s lessons are the hardest because we learn what not to do. But they are also some of the most valuable lessons, especially when we are able to distill the information and heal the trauma.

I did finally get the Wordle on the sixth try – phew! Because there weren’t very many letters left to combine into a common word (letters in dark gray on the keyboard indicate they have been tried and are not used in the word). It reminded me yet again, failure is an excellent source of information. Here it is in case you want to guess.

Wired to Learn

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“Sharp people learn from their mistakes. But the real sharp ones learn from the mistakes of others.” – Brandon Mull

I got a new client this week. She was introduced to me by a mutual contact that told her I could help. She is clearly very bright and has done a lot of research but given the huge amount of documentation on the technology choices she has to make, she just needed someone to weigh in on what would work best because she doesn’t have time to try out every option herself.

After only a 30 minute phone call in which we talked through her options, she was ready to go with what I recommended. Of course, the technology we were talking about is my specialty and has been for 20 years but what struck me was how openly she was able to learn.

According to Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist from Yale, this is the hallmark of the human species. Christakis’ work in the field of sociology is about the long view of human history. He’s deeply optimistic about our ability to cooperate, teach others and love because we are one of the only species that does that outside of the family structure. In his book, Blueprint, Christakis lays out the case that “natural selection has given us a suite of beneficial social features including our capacity for love, friendship, cooperation and learning.”

Of course one of the places this is easiest to see has been with my kids over the last few years as they’ve learned to talk. When my son was one and just starting to talk he called water, “Mamu.” He and my brother’s wife, who was nannying for me, use to have a funny verbal game they’d play. He’d said, “mamu”, she’d say “water” and it would go on for a minute until they both broke out in laughter. And then eventually he accepted that it was water, just like he’s learned all the other hundreds of words he can say, because he trusts the caretakers in his life.

Which reminds me of my ex-husband. He had good reasons to believe his parents weren’t reliable sources of information. His dad used to say to me, “I knew my boy was smart when I came in to beat him with a belt and he asked for me to beat him with the wooden spoon instead.” And it was in his senior year of high school when he was living with his dad and step-mom and they moved in the middle of a night to a different state to avoid a tax debt without telling him (or bringing him) so he had to find a place to live on his own.

I think they were one of the reasons that he couldn’t learn from other people (or maybe the primary reason he couldn’t). And that was behind my reluctance to have kids with him was because I couldn’t bear the thought of having him experiment on children as the only way to learn the best way to parent.

So I understand that we all have different levels of openness to learning and that it might vary within a person by topic. But it gives me great hope when I witness the human ability to trust and learn like I did with my client this week. Because it resonates with what I’ve gleaned from Nicholas Christakis’ work – that we have come this far because we are wired to cooperate and learn. Coupled with Arthur Brook’s concept of crystallized intelligence that I wrote about last week, the idea that as we age we develop intelligence more suited to synthesize, tell stories and teach, it seems we have the right ingredients to pass on goodness to the next generation and beyond.

(featured photo is of my dad teaching a class)

Efficiency

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“It’s not the heavy load that breaks you, it’s the way you carry it.” – Lena Horne

I needed to go downstairs to empty out the recycling bin. While I was down there, I thought I’d bring up some sodas from the store room. Then I remembered that my friend Eric was coming for dinner and I grabbed cans of the seltzer water he likes too. Before I even got to the door of the storage room, I dropped one of the cans. I picked it up, dropped it again and this time when I picked it up, it had been punctured. Nevertheless, I still continued to carry it upstairs, balancing 6 cans and a recycle bin dripping seltzer water the whole way.

<Sigh> The things I do for efficiency. 😊

This seems to be a lesson that I have to learn again and again. I think it’s a tangible reminder when I’m carrying too much.

When I slow down and do things well, I feel the simple joy of completing each task well. When I overload myself, all I feel is the sensation of juggling balance.

And then I drop one thing and instead of noticing it as a cue to empty my hands, I focus on just the thing I dropped.

Finally when I’ve persisted in bumbling my way through, I see the ridiculousness of it all and start to laugh. Humor makes sopping up seltzer water more bearable as I shake my head in wonder at my stubbornness.

I know it’s a human affliction to believe that we can contort ourselves in all sorts of shapes in order to juggle it all. And then we are reminded to put the load down, ask for help, or not do it all at once. If we listen, we are rewarded with the pleasure of doing one thing well. If we don’t, we get to laugh at our humanity while we clean up the mess.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Self-care

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“Sleep is the best meditation.” – Buddha

I had a moment this week when I felt unappreciated. In my exhaustion from the endless loads of laundry, the sudden need for spot cleaning and the excessive attentiveness that comes with potty training, I was running at 100% and no one seemed to notice. The way I remember it, my 6-year-old daughter asked me to get her something right after I sat down and my internal dialogue whined, “Can’t she see how hard I’ve been working?”

And then I had the inclination to be elusive, enigmatic and mysterious so that those around me would seek me out. Funny because I have never embodied mystery in my 52 years but somehow it seems viable as a strategy when I’m feeling tender. As if somehow retreating will make me feel more seen.

It’s a silly idea but thankfully I finally have come to have some sympathy for myself at this age. That I can recognize that as I sign that I need some self-care instead of calling it stupid or just powering through it is progress in my friendship with myself.

But the inclination to hide when I am exhausted and feeling unseen reminds me of something I heard in a podcast with Dr. Laurie Santos. She teaches the “Psychology of the Good Life” course at Yale which she described as:

“Evidence based strategies students can use to feel better. The problem is that it’s hard because our minds lie to us – like negative emotion, run away [from it]. Our minds lie to us about the kinds of things we are going to enjoy. When I’ve had an exhausting day, I just want to plop down and watch Netflix and never get off the couch. My mind doesn’t say, ‘Hey why don’t you go for a hard workout or why don’t you call a friend you haven’t talked to in a long time?’ The point is that we have intuitions about the kinds of things we need to do to promote our mental health and the kinds of things we need to do to live a happy life but often times those intuitions are wrong. They [the intuitions] are like – change your circumstances, get a lot of money, succeed, succeed, succeed at all costs. In practice those intuitions are leading us astray. We are putting in the work to become happier. But we are doing it wrong.”

And what are some of the right things that Dr. Santos has found that she has to remind the students in the course? To eat well and sleep.

And eating well and sleeping is what I’ve found cures my inner whine at least 98% of the time. I’m grateful that I can be friends with my mind. Even though I’ve learned not to listen to what it suggests, it often is telling me to take care of something and I appreciate that.

The Learning Curve

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“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela

We worked hard on potty training this weekend. I found it to be a fascinating window into the nature of learning. And that’s not just me putting a positive spin on it.

Day 1: Chaos. The first morning was hit and miss (or more miss than hit). By naptime we were both exhausted. My son because of the huge change that comes learning how to use his body and me because infinite patience takes a lot of energy! So the first lesson came after we’d both napped. Rest helped consolidate the learning so that he was a better student and I was a better coach.

Then after an afternoon and evening of more efforts and celebrations, my son was never happier to have the feel of a nighttime diaper, jammies and to snuggle up and read books. And it underscored for me the need to have comforting rituals to soothe ourselves when in the midst of big change.

Day 2 was characterized by a lot of resistance and efforts to control everything else around. It reminded me of a Brené Brown podcast I heard years ago that whenever she has led or attended a three-day conference, day 2 was always marked by the doldrums. Brené likened it to the middle part of the hero’s journey as described by Joseph Campbell. The hero does everything in their power to pursue all options except for the one that they are called to that leaves them feeling vulnerable.

Day 3: We needed expert help. Which is uncomfortable for me not have it dialed but the amazing teachers at my son’s daycare have said repeatedly that they are more than willing and able to help with this journey. For which I am so thankful. I left him on Monday with a “Good luck” and “God bless you” and I couldn’t have meant both more!

This learning curve at times has felt impossible, exhausting, vulnerable, and not worth it. Somehow it reminds me of learning to snowboard – and also mastering a new technology, figuring out to give my dog allergy shots, starting to blog, and learning how to do mosaic tiling.

Each new venture has roughly followed the same pattern of chaos, resistance and then leaning in and asking for assistance if needed. And it’s not just me. I have a dear friend who didn’t learn how to swim until she was 60 years old. And my 82-year-old mom has been figuring out how to do piano performances online for her retirement community.

Watching my son, I am reminded how hard learning something new is – until it isn’t. And while grown-ups might not be taking on changes as transformative as potty training, we still need to give ourselves the rest and rituals to support our learning, grace to survive the resistance and the courage to lean in to expert help when we need it.

Because as Nelson Mandela says, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Threshold to Love

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“The best way out is always through.” – Robert Frost

I’ve been divorced for 10 years and a single parent now for 6 and a half years. I’ve written about the reason I didn’t have kids when I was married and instead chose to do it on my own. Since I went into this phase of my life choosing to be single, I think it’s largely exceeded my expectations. Although there are tough moments, it’s been incredibly joyful for most of the time and I’m grateful for all the people around me that provide encouragement and support.

I’ve always thought that I would circle back around to dating at some point. This pandemic has shown me again and again that my optimism makes me a terrible prognosticator but I still believe I will end up with the love of my love.

The problem is that at a base level I don’t believe that adding a man to my life will improve it. Intellectually I know this to be a result of having a crappy husband the first time around. I don’t think his infidelities hang me up much. The fear is more based on the give/take of our relationship. As my gentle father put it when I finally got divorced, “he loved to BE loved.” Perhaps we were just mismatched but I could never make him feel loved or secure enough, and I exhausted myself trying.

So, I have this threshold between me and my future that I need to cross. It is returning to the belief that I held before I was married that romantic relationships can be life-giving and refreshing. That belief is one that I embody in all my other relationships but have taken a step back from when it comes to love. And as much time as I spend analyzing it, writing about it, knowing it, it is just dancing in front of the door without stepping a toe over.

It is one reason that my breath was taken away when I read this quote by Henri Nouwen’s, “The future depends on how you remember your past.” I know it isn’t just me that needs to do the work of genuine risk to face the thresholds installed by the pain of the past. As the Robert Frost quote at the top of this post says, the only way out is through.

So I take a deep breath in and thank my ex-husband for preparing me to love these two children. They at many times need as much care as he did but show great promise of growing out of it. And then I breathe out the fear of a relationship that only withdraws from me and never gives. When I do this over and over, I prepare myself to walk through that doorway into the possibility of love once again.

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Formula

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“One filled with joy preaches without preaching.” – Mother Teresa

When I would golf with my dad and a stranger was added to our group, I always found it interesting to see how people would react when they found out that he was a pastor, or retired pastor. Of course, not everyone asked but more often than not it would come up. I remember being out golfing with my dad once and my dad’s ball ricocheted off a tree and very luckily landed really near the green. The guy golfing with us said something like, “Wow, the Big Guy really is looking out for you.”

My dad just laughed. I think it’s fair to say that he didn’t think God spent any time worrying about his golf game. And he was so good humored that sometimes it was hard to figure out how he approached life because he made it look so easy and delightful.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about all the in-depth conversations we had, especially in those years right before he died suddenly in a bike accident at age 79. What I’ve concluded is that there were three things that came together so that he appeared to glide through his golf game … and life.

First was his attitude. Wherever my dad was, he looked around for what he could do to help. So when golfing, wherever the ball landed he’d think it was great because that’s where he could be useful. And it wasn’t just his ball – when I would hit in the woods, as I frequently did, he’d be the first person tromping in there to help me find mine, laughing and good-naturedly joking all the way.

Second was his faith. My dad was sure he could hit from anywhere because his faith had taught him his work was in partnership with God. If he had to hit out from a bed of pine needles stuck between three trees, he would try. He didn’t expect that God would make it easy but he did think that God would make it meaningful.

Third, was his personality. He was such an enthusiastic, caring person that you just wanted to be around him. He never entered a room with an authentic compliment for those he greeted. And his eyes were almost permanently crinkled from the delightful twinkle in his eyes. He’d make you believe that you could also do anything, especially with him by your side. And he believed he could do anything because he had God by his side.

He remarked to me several times that people had said to him that he’d led a blessed life. He knew his life had plenty of trouble. Thinking back to my early years when we lived as a family for almost 6 years in the Philippines after Ferdinand Marcos had declared Martial Law, I’d concur that my dad faced plenty of obstacles. But in the end, he agreed he’d lived a blessed life – not free of ups and downs but full of meaning and love.

That’s the formula that I’ve come up with from my dad – love where you are at, believe you are not alone and care for others along the way. I don’t know if the guy we golfed with gleaned any of that but I know even now, seven years after his death, my dad continues to inspire me to do the same.

The Joy of Repetition

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“Your life is an occasion. Rise to it.” – Suzanne Weyn

Recently I was talking to my 2-year-old about potty training. His reply was “I already went to a toilet.” And it’s true – he has gone in the toilet once.  About a month ago he got lucky when he wanted to try to potty before getting in the bath.

I tried to explain that there are many things we have to do repeatedly in life. So often I want to declare something to be “DONE!” only to have to repeat the task so I understand my son’s irritation about having to go potty again and again and again!

Talking with my mom about this, she flipped the question and asked, “How many things do we only do once in our lives?” Which I thought was a great way to illustrate that most things in life are done repeatedly. Even our mistakes take work not to repeat.

In addition to school and work, there’s also sleeping, eating, exercising, bathing, trimming our nails and hair, doing the laundry, cleaning. The other day I thought I’d swept the entire house of dirty laundry and gotten it all done – only to discover 2 hours later a small pile of dirty clothes stashed away by my 6-year-old.

But since the ultimate “DONE” is death, I try to celebrate that doing things repeatedly is a gift. A gift of the ongoing nature of life, a poetic reminder that life is a cycle, an opportunity to find a new song in the repetition.

And in my favorite example, breathing, my life has been measurably improved once I started noticing that every breath brings renewal and fresh air. Even in this task that is regulated by the autonomic nervous system and takes no real talent to do, can be improved when done with intention.

So, yes, my darling son. We have to do things over and over again. And if we are paying attention, we can even find some extra joy in these precious cycles of life.

(featured photo from Pexels)

A Trick of Time

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“How simple it is to see that we can only be happy now, and there will never be a time that is not now.” – Gerald Jampolsky

I wake up between 5 and 5:30am every morning. I don’t use an alarm but I have a clock that projects the time and the temperature onto the ceiling of my bedroom. So I open my eyes, look at the ceiling to orient myself and then roll out of bed.

This clock, that I’ve had for about 15 years, never needs to be set. It synchronizes with something out in the ether, that I have nicknamed the mother ship since I’m unclear what it is, and so with every time change or when it restarts after it has lost power, it is automatically updated.

Every once in a while, like 4-6 times a year, it does a funny thing. It gets out of sync and then is 40 minutes early. It might display 5:10 am but it’s really 4:30am. When this happens, I glance at the ceiling, get out of bed and it isn’t until I’m feeding the cat that I realize “I have an extra 40 minutes!”

<cue the oohs and aahs>

Forty extra minutes for doing yoga, reading, meditating, and writing my daily post. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a weekday or weekend, it feels luxurious. I hold my yoga poses a few beats longer, I read an extra meditation passage or two, I linger longer on the words I write.

But it doesn’t mean that I get anything more done. Whether I have an hour and a half or two hours before I get my kids up, doesn’t produce any measurable difference in productivity. Perhaps my closing sentence on my post is more thought-out but largely the difference is that I start the day with a sense of abundance.

Of course I could train my body to get up at 4:30am every day but then I’d expand my list of things I think I could get done. The trick seems to be in granting myself the permission to linger and not hurry through these things that matter most for my self-care and connection to the pulse of life and community. Because I have not yet mastered bestowing that gift upon myself, I rely on my clock to remind me of that lesson every now and again.

After I mentioned this clock behavior to my brother a while back, he looked at me as if I was crazy not to get rid of it. But why would I dispose of something that gives me the gift of time?  

(featured photo from Pexels)

Home

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“Stay close to those who make you feel alive.” – unknown

In the recent parent-teacher conferences I’ve had for each of my kids, I’ve gotten a feel for how my kids behave when they aren’t with me. It seems they are “go along to get along” people. Generally speaking, they follow the rules, don’t make a fuss, they don’t cry and they don’t get in trouble. My 6-year-old might talk a little too much sometimes but she gets her work done.

That’s not a big revelation since that matches my general approach to life. Although I am surprised that my two-year-old can do it at such a young age, especially because he’s never been told to. But hearing this is reshaping how I think of what my home is.

I used to think home was where our best-selves would shine through because of the love and nurturing there. I still think that – except that I’m realizing our best-selves are NOT our best-behaved selves, they are our most authentic, intimate selves.

Home is where we can take off our armor and practice speaking our truth. It is a place where it’s okay to have a soft underbelly and to let it all hang out. It’s where we can cry, have fits and let it fly (respectfully) when at home. Because, I figure, it’s the only way to get salve onto the sore spots and to receive sympathy for all the growing pains. It’s our place for practicing being leaders and followers and doing neither very well and learning.

Home is where we learn grace. We can cry when it hurts, express disappointment, find out what truly refreshes us, practice imaginative play, be bored and unscripted. Home is where we light our candles, pray for peace and then figure out how to find that in ourselves. It is where we can be held through it all.

While it seems that I’m writing this for my kids, the truth is, I’m finding great comfort in defining this for myself. Somehow typing out a list of place of where and how we will be received and held is making my slippers feel a little more comfortable. In the years of the pandemic where home became where we do everything, it seems I got a little disoriented about my purpose in this structure.

So, I’m setting this down for all of us. Home is not just where the heart is – it is where the heart feels safest to be open, glow and grow in all directions.