Tag: relationships

Back In The Game

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“The difference between winning and losing is most often not quitting.” – Walt Disney

My 83-year-old mom has returned to playing ping pong after her infamous ping pong dive where she admitted her competitive nature got the best of her common sense. When my family came over for dinner the other night, my brother asked if she was making any concessions in her game to be safer. She nodded yes and said she’s trying to keep a hand on the table while she plays for stability.

Apparently the physical therapist who’s been working with her on a sciatic issue asked the same thing. Not really convinced by her reply, he asked, “Have you ever considered just saying, ‘Good shot?’”

We all got a good laugh out of that one. It reminded me that I’ve read and seen a lot of great advice about staying in the game, whatever our game may be, lately.

From An Audience of One, the wisdom that we need to choose the path we are going to travel and stick with it. Not that other forks won’t arise in the future but that nothing good comes from wavering at the decision point too long or mourning the path not chosen.

And from WritingfromtheheartwithBrian a pep talk straight out of the Buffalo Bills locker room to be fully present. Brian rousingly writes an hearty exploration of the Bills saying, “Where else would you rather be, than right here, right now?” that reminded me to love the life I have and the path I’m on.

Finally I watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade again recently. In it, Indiana Jones is reading the clues from his father’s grail diary to pass the final challenge to find the grail and save his father’s life. He has to believe as he steps forward into the chasm that a path across the void will unfold. He checks his options one last time, confirms he’s in the right location, and then as he leaps, the path appears.

Decide on the path, commit to being present for it and then have faith to take the leap – it’s about as good as it gets for finding our way through this life.

I’m glad my mom has a strategy to keep safe by keeping a hand on the ping pong table. But equally as relieved she’s still in the game. It just wouldn’t be her if she just watched shots go by!

(featured photo from Pexels)

Owning This Emotional Ride

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“Diaper backward spells repaid.” – Marshall McLuhan

I read Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina when I was pregnant with Miss O. It had these great categories for nature versus nurture (which the author re-branded as seed and soil) and what we can do as parents and caregivers to influence and understand both.

It said that as our little ones’ brains developed, it was helpful to help them identify the emotions that they were feeling. And it advised that to do that, we need to own our own emotions.

I remember laughing and thinking there was no way I was doing that. I was going to be the one parent that could help their child be emotionally mature without doing it myself. Ha, ha, ha!

So, add one more thing to the list of things I thought I’d never do that parenting has taught me how to do. Identifying some of my negative emotions is the topic of my Wise & Shine post today: Emotional Literacy

Leaps of Faith

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“Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith.” – Margaret Shepard

When I was 6-months-old, and my sister and brother were 4 and 6-years-old respectively, my dad took an offer to be a pastor of the church in Manilla, Philippines. It was 1970, the Vietnam war was raging. Ferdinand Marcos was the President of the Philippines. Six months after our family moved there, there was a phony insurrection and Marcos declared Martial Law. We stayed for almost 6 more years after that.

I’ve often wondered if that gutsy move by my parents set up a pattern in us kids. Bigger than any theological belief, did they show us that leaps of faith are possible? It’s the topic of my Heart of the Matter post today. Heart Dreams That Call For Big Leaps

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Practice of Kindness

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“As rain falls equally on the just and the unjust, do not burden your heart with judgment but rain your kindness equally on all.” – Buddha

For Christmas, Miss O bought Mr. D a Buzz Lightyear spaceship. It was a big deal for her – she picked it out and paid for it all by herself. Then she hid it away in a spot in the laundry room she thought was safe and guarded his access to that room for three or four weeks. I cut the wrapping paper for her but she wrapped the present herself and placed it in the perfect spot under the tree.

Then on Christmas morning when he opened the present, she was right next to him. She helped him opened the box and then started assembling the few pieces that needed to be attached. She was being really helpful and had so many reasons to be proud but there was a point where the gift really became more important to Miss O than Mr. D.

Watching this all, I thought of all the times that I’ve tried to control how my kindness lands or had that done to me. It perfectly illustrated for me how letting go of control is so essential so I wrote it about this topic for my Heart of the Matter post today: When Kindness Falls Like Rain.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Depth and Breadth

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“The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has pearls too.” – Vincent Van Gogh

In my house when we have a fun announcement, we blow the imaginary trumpet in our hands and sing “Doot-doot-da-do!” So please, humor me and imagine a “doot-doot-da-do!”

Because I’m really excited to announce a new shared blog space that Vicki Atkinson (from the Victoria Ponders blog) and I have created with a team of incredibly talented group of contributors and thinkers. It’s called The Heart of the Matter – https://sharingtheheartofthematter.com. It’s intended to be a blog that digs into the depth of how we find what matters to us and keep our eyes focused on that horizon as we are swimming through our days.

This topic of what matters I something I believe to be different for every person and different every day but with a lot of common elements of experience, learning and love. Which is why it’s important for us all to be collaborating on this topic and space so that as we figure it out, we are contributing to the journeys of others. It’s found in what DOESN’T matter as what does. The other things we plan on diving into are:

  • What is fueling us to figure out what’s important
  • Celebrating who is helping us discover our own keys
  • How we get stuck thinking it’s one thing long after that one thing has ceased to be vital.
  • Linking to resources that help uncover what’s real
  • Heartening each other to have the faith and confidence to pursue what matters
  • Healing what is broken so that we can uncover what’s essential

This shared blog space is for surfacing our stories that help us discern what matters so that others are inspired and it pulls us all along.

So please follow us there – but more than that join us there. As we figure out how to make this a collaborative and supportive space of contents, comments and topics, I hope to see all my dear blog friends in a rich space of discussion around the Heart of the Matter. My first post in that space is The Small Decisions that Matter.

Which doesn’t mean that I won’t be also blogging here on Surprised by Joy. As I see it, my personal blog covers the breadth of life in all its glory and surprises while The Heart of the Matter digs into the depth of authenticity, inspiration, values and love found in what really matters.

The Give and Take Problem

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“Alone we go faster, together we go further.” – African Proverb

For my birthday six months ago, my brother and sister-in-law gave me a voucher for taking care of the kids for two nights. I haven’t used it yet because I’m saving it up. I’m not sure for what but it’ll be big. For example, if some great opportunity to spend the weekend with the love of my life (not yet found or looked for), I want to have that voucher in my pocket to use.

This uncovers what I think is a flaw in my default mode. I tend to think of relying on others as “using chits.” For a project a couple of years ago when I was replacing the tension coil on my garage door, my mom suggested that maybe I should get my brother to do it. And it was a good idea but I thought I’d give it a try first so I could use my “chits” for something that I couldn’t fix.

In this way, I’ve learned to be very self-reliant. And I value that. But I’ve also become increasingly hardened against needing others. I’ve forgotten that needing others isn’t a bad thing.

This is probably no surprise to anyone reading this. After all, this might be exactly how I came to choose to have children on my own. While on the practical level it was because I hadn’t found the right partner and time was running out, it’s probably healthy to admit that I have some work to do on being inter-dependent on others.

I’m thinking about this because of the gift giving that goes on this season. We have to be as good at receiving as giving. It reminds me of a great post that Todd Fulginiti wrote: Helping Others: Can You Dish It Out But Not Take It? He made the point that receiving with gratitude feels good. It doesn’t make us needy, it makes the other person feels like they’ve given something of value.

I know when I find the love of my life, I’ll need to drop that independent shield to be vulnerable. And I bet my brother and sister-in-law will be so thrilled that they’d happily take the kids whether or not I have a voucher.

(featured photo from Pexels)

(The quote for this post came from a post by my lovely Wise & Shine colleague Cristiana Branchini on her blog Appreciating the Differences)

Sliding Into the Holidays

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“You must not abandon the ship in a storm because you cannot control the winds…What you cannot turn to good, you must at least make as little bad as you can.” – Thomas More

There’s a scene from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark where a stone wall is dropping to seal off the chamber and Indiana has to slide through the crack at the bottom to get out in the nick of time.

This is how I’m feeling about the holidays – I’m sliding into our Christmas plans feet first, barely making it. And it doesn’t help that Seattle got a couple of inches of snow yesterday so that nothing is happening reliably as we collectively panic through our weather conditions.

As a result, I’ve come up with some strategies for coping that I’ve written about in my Wise & Shine post: The Vortex of the Metaphorical and Messy Storm

Getting the Best of My Common Sense

Posted in loveTagged , , , , 60 Comments

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” – Bertrand Russell

My 83-year-old mom had a ping pong accident this week. One minute she was playing a game at her senior residence and the next she dove for the ball, fell on a cot-like thing, hit the rail with her back and was injured enough that the firemen, paramedics and ambulance came and she was on her way to the hospital.

She’s out of the hospital now and doing fine. With a couple of cracked ribs and a little bit of bleeding, the injury is painful but nowhere near as serious as it could have been. She’s chalked the whole thing up to “her competitive nature getting the best of her common sense.”

I’m fascinated by that phrase because I can think of any number of things that have gotten the best of my common sense. Usually pride and stubbornness because I’m not particularly competitive. All the times I’ve carried too much (I’m thinking of my post about efficiency), haven’t asked for help, and stayed at something far too long.

And it seems to be passed down in families. The other day Miss O wasn’t feeling well and I asked her if she wanted to cancel anything or take a rest and her answer could have come right from my mouth. “NO! I’m fine, I’ve got this!”

On the other hand, the things I do out of love almost never make common sense. I’m thinking of the time I celebrated my friend Phil’s 400th ascent of Mt Rainier by buying 400 of each his favorite mountaineering provisions. The cough drops and tea bags were fine but the chips and the cookies were quite voluminous so that I ended up delivering 8 storage bins full of stuff.

In honor of my mom, I’m taking a deeper look at what gets the best of my common sense. For the times I extend myself out of love, I’m keeping it. But if I’m extending myself out of duty or pride, I’m going to try to let it go.

Because sometimes when we lunge for things we end up in the hospital. The good thing about taking a dive at a senior residence is that there’s a good portion of the population that can’t remember the gossip. A woman with a great sense of humor but maybe not such a good memory said to my mom when she returned from the hospital, “I heard something about you but now I can’t remember what.”

(featured photo from Pexels)

Keep Small Things Small

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“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” – Toni Morrison

The other day Mr D was upset and Miss O shared the wisdom, “Keep small things small.” I was taken by the phrase and asked her to tell me more after we got past our speed bump.

“It’s something Ms. Park says,” she elaborated providing the example that her second grade teacher, Ms. Park, said it the other day when there was a fly in the classroom. All the kids in the first row were trying to “attack it,” in Miss O’s words and Ms. Park wanted them to settle down. “Keep small things small.”

I thought of the parking problem I had the other day when I was turning around to take the space and someone slid right in. I was on the verge of making it a bigger story about how tough life is when someone made me laugh and I let it go.

It also reminded me of when Mr. D punched his sister in the gut the other day as they were wrestling. She said it hurt and he said he was sorry and they moved on. If they continue to be able to do that, it seems less likely that they’ll create a pattern of feeling disrespected and hurt that has plagued my siblings’ relationship in adulthood.

Keeping small things small speaks to me of airing wounds before they fester, identifying patterns before they become bad habits, stopping the internal dialogue before it goes on a self-critical rampage. It helps nail me to the present before I pile on added layers of time and repetition until whatever it is that is bugging me becomes unrecognizable. It means don’t hurt myself trying to attack a fly, whatever the metaphorical fly may be.

So here’s a new note to self courtesy of classroom 219 and all our brilliant and dedicated teachers: “Keep small things small.”

(featured photo from Pexels)

Say That Again

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“One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another needs to say.” – Bryant McGill

My brief foray into podcasting has taught me something about listening. I tuned in to the podcast I did with playwright and friend, Jack Canfora, about his play Step 9 that was just released as a theatrical podcast. As the podcast played, I heard things that I didn’t remember from the conversation. And it wasn’t that I forgot, it was that I never caught some particular details.

This surprised me because recording a podcast conversation is about as ideal of a situation for listening as I can imagine. I was at home by myself, no distracting music (or family members), my email was turned off and I’d done the work to get myself completely comfortable before the conversation began. I was in a space of complete focus on listening and having a conversation.

The biggest lapse that struck me was in a part of our conversation when Jack was moving his computer. We recorded the podcast on a video call so my visual field changed as he changed spots. There isn’t any break in our dialogue but that little disturbance was enough so that I caught the major drift of what was happening but not the undertones.

Here’s my take-away – we never listen as well as we think we do. And since very few of our conversations are recorded, we don’t have the chance to go back and understand what we missed (and thank goodness – that would be time consuming!).

And if we’re talking and someone is looking us in the eye and nodding, they still might not be getting it all. Especially if there is ANYTHING in the environment to distract them.

This brings to mind the classic experiment on selective attention where researchers asked people to count how many times people in the white shirts passed the basketball to each other. And then asked if the people that had watch the video if they spotted anything unusual that happened in the background. The finding was that many miss the other things happening in and around the action.

Some of the best wisdom I’ve heard about speaking and listening is from author Paula Underwood Spencer, “If you want to be truly understood, you need to say everything three times, in three different ways. Once for each ear…and once for the heart.“

If we assume we get it all the first time it’s said we’re probably wrong. I know because I recently heard myself on a podcast.