Here's to more gentle living and a better view of everything in 2020

This looks like a nice place to practice
  some gentle living, doesn't it?

Wouldn't it be such a waste of all we learn, all the time, from each day, from each other, from our mistakes, from our brilliant ideas if all we did was lament not knowing it sooner?

Yes, is the answer to that. It would be. 

"Forgive yourself for not having the foresight to know what now seems so obvious in  hindsight," is what a recent meme said about that.

With that, I've put together some favorite takeaways from the past year that I will refer to often while I travel as gently as possible through the next. I hope you like and can use them as well.

My favorite rules for a gentler life, brought to you by experience. 

Share things about other people that you hope will get back to them.

When something is beautiful and unexpected enough to make you choke up, that is your soul saying,  Hi, I thought you'd like this.

You were not ready to use that thing you know now, but wish you knew a decade ago. Back then, you knew other things you could have used when you were ten. Respect, don't regret this gift of age.  It doesn’t work any other way.

Don’t assume that caring about you is motive enough for a person to change their behavior. It may be a behavior they’ve been trying to get rid of for a long time for their own sake and can’t. Have your line in the sand, but if you must ask, make it “will you?” and not, “why can’t you?”

Where there have been issues in the past, there will be triggers in the future. Fix that shit before it jumps out of the alley and steals your hard-earned, well-deserved peace of mind.

Most of the time, there’s nothing wrong. You’re just tired. Go to bed.

It’s sometimes those people who are least likely to be one of your people, who teach you very important things about yourself.

You can get through anything as long as there is one person with whom you can fall apart and feel better for it, not worse.

Your most important job is to know who you are and what you want. Your heart is where those answers are. Even if you decide to defy it and do something else, your heart is not wrong.

It is perfectly okay to be with someone who is in distress and not have a single thing to say as long as you are holding their hand.

Use and love your skill set. But now and then, also say hello to your flaw set and give it some attention. It’s there to make sure you always have something to work on, and improve your opinion of imperfection.

And finally:

Compliment a stranger every now and then – their clothes, their dog, their baby. You will turn whole days around for some people doing that and probably like yourself a little more, too. 

That's it, that's the stuff that made me love my life and days more than I did the year before. It is the stuff that makes me look forward to all of the days, of every year. 

With love, and best wishes for more gentle living and a better view of everything in 2020,

Susan

It's December 20th. Pencils down.

A little arrow of joy sailed into my heart this morning to realize it is the twentieth of December. 

Because. When you are in the twenty-somethingth of December, you are not close, but really close to Christmas. And, in my blue exam book of what holidays should really mean, this means pencils down. 

This means it's time to do stuff that matters. If you're a list and task freak, all stressed out over what you haven't done yet, it's time to realize that if the only holiday plates and napkins left at The Paper Store have toys and snowmen on them, that's fine.

Ever since I was a wee me, there has been something magical about December 20. 

Back then, it meant the start of classroom parties and school vacation and the long awaited (and single showing) of How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Frosty the Snowman. 

Afternoons started to turn dark before the bus finished dropping us off, and little homes with candles in the windows made every neighborhood look like villages in a snow globe.  

For me, December 20th starts a short stretch that is not about undone tasks on the real list, but stuff that you've been adding to the spirit list like this:

Thank someone for making a difference in your life. You know someone did.

Pick up a simple sugar cookie mix, make many of them, and only use green and red sprinkles.

Say something encouraging to a stranger who looks like they're making an effort.
Change the whole day of someone who is off, or down, or anxious with a heartfelt compliment.
If someone needs space, give it to them. If someone needs attention, give it to them. 

For me, in these last days, have-to's become hope-to's which eventually yield to want-to's as time, blessedly, runs out.

I was hoping to receive and wrap the balance of gifts I've ordered by now. I was hoping I'd find a new centerpiece for the Christmas Eve table. It would have been nice to replace some of the linen and towels before everyone arrives. I should buy new candles. 

But it is December 20th now and my "want to's" are here.

Handwritten cards - meaningful ones - will be composed  for best friends and others.

There will be a date with my husband in a quiet place where we will likely have a conversation about life; how it changes, how it doesn't, and how it should, and what memories that we'll embrace in the future have yet to be made.  

There will be a reunion with our other-coast daughter who just got married and is bringing her new husband into our mix of festivities and traditions for the first time.

There will be meaningful conversation with another daughter and her husband about career dreams and marriage and life goals and raising children and other stuff that matters.

There may be attempts on the part of both of our sons to teach me about football again with diagrams on post-its of tiny figures and directional arrows. I will not understand them a week from now, but will add them to the others that I keep in a box near my bookcase.

And as this day fades into tomorrow, marking exactly two years and one month since my father's death, I will focus on a memory I've gone back to a few times over the last four weeks.

It was Dad's last Christmas Eve with us, his nineteenth.  At the end of the night, he said the same thing he said every year. "This was the best one ever. I don't think you can top it, next year."

In a few days, when Christmas is finally here and we raise a glass, I will think about that and offer a special toast to Dad, the best one ever. 

Happiest of holidays to you. Make them the best ever, surrounded by people who know what they mean to you, because you've told them.  

An airport, a three hour delay and the loveliest parenting I've seen in a while.

That looks like a lantern, but it's actually
 the picture of of a young teen's parent

Recently, I got stuck at the airport waiting for a plane which was being treated for mechanical failure, thank you very much. Hour by hour, the flight was delayed into the later part of the day.

I’m the only person I know who really doesn’t mind this kind of wrinkle. I use the time to watch how people talk to each other, and handle the unexpected. 

They say it is a test of character to be faced with tangled Christmas lights, an unexpected rainy day, or lost luggage.

I would add: knowing you may be boarding an aircraft that is currently undergoing plane surgery, three hours late, with a small child who badly needs the nap that was supposed to come with that plane and now has no choice but to fall apart.

Any parent who is still soft-spoken and patient with a child after all of that is a person who can probably handle anything.

One mother took out her ponytail and asked her very little boy to help her fix it. It took forever, and that mother is a genius.

It is the way of a young child’s world to expect a parent to be bigger and stronger when they are small and messy.  And here is where good parents understand their truest power – that responding with only the strength of their presence may not feel like enough, but usually is.

And while this stage may be exhausting, it doesn’t last forever. In no time, they're in the middle-school tunnel and our role is no longer about keeping them busy, but being the lantern hanging at the other end.  

Note to parents of toddlers: there actually is something harder than answering eight or nine questions a minute from your child when you’re tired, and it is silence when you’re worried. 

I run a small support group with young children who are often struggling to understand their family lives while they navigate their own. Despite what hardship might challenge them, what I hear all the time is “My mom said,” or “When I told my dad…” because bigger and stronger is in the eye of the smaller and messier. 

Bigger and stronger is about someone who respects their child's world, even if they also must expose that child to a more complicated one they don’t understand.

If there can be only one thing that we do every moment of a child’s life, it should be that - to think about their world as much as we expect them to think about ours. 

Later, when children are off the grid collecting themselves, will be when this matters most. Because, what helps keep kids upright is the known – not hoped or wished or longed for, but known – presence of a person to whom they know they can say anything, and around whom they can fall apart safely.  They may know all of this in silence but then, they'll say to someone like me,  "Well, my dad said that I should..."

Note to parents of teens who answer questions with facial expressions: it’s still easier to be you.

Putting aside the outliers for a moment – parents who are abusive, living through their kids,  narcissistic or addicted – it becomes truer with every too-mature child I meet, that the best parents can possess the least, and still give the most if they can do that – separate those worlds, and visit the smaller messier one, often.

Maybe with a ponytail to fix together.

I'd rather be here now. Where is that again?

Here is a nice here.

Before we had memes, we had bumper stickers. A few years ago, while I was stuck in heavy traffic I saw one that said:  

I'd rather be here now.

While our car-herd crawled along, I continued to think about that. I was still thinking about it many years later. 

A few weeks ago, with the holidays looming, you couldn’t turn around without bumping into reminders about living mindfully, or, "here."

I'm a fan.

There is not a better lifelong habit than being in the moment, even if it takes many of us half a life to figure out what that means.  Lived-in moments are what will teach you about everything – you, your persons, things that are bigger than you, the truth of your life and the depth of your love. 

It is a mystifying and sometimes maddening thing about life that many opposing things can be true at once. You are where you are because you had or have reason to be, and you must honor that. But if you’ve started looking out the window a lot, you must honor that, too, because "here" evolves, as it should.

I am a believer in feeling answers, more than intellectualizing them; posing a question to ourselves and feeling what our gut says. But the noise of everyday - a thing that kills reflection - is hard to cancel. 

And so here is a suggestion that is worth considering if you are beginning to feel both the thrill and fear of new "here" questions but can't be still and quiet enough to feel your answers. 

It’s both simple and a bit painful, but it works and it is this: get up early. 

I mean it. 

Some of you should get up really early.

In the quiet, teach yourself to imagine the moment you're in one year from now, five years maybe, doing exactly what you are doing right now, more or less, or something else.  More of what? Less of what? What else?

In the quiet, picture a route you took to get to what you wanted. Imagine telling someone, "first, I..." and "then I..." First you did what? Then, you did what? Start thinking about first-and-then.

I did this right after I had newborns, when I felt like I was always trying to hop a moving bus. I liked my life so much but I was not living in the “here” as much as the “later on and after that.”

They were always up before sunrise, and so, I started getting up before before-sunrise. 

A day that hasn’t started yet is a gift. The pocket of time when not a soul even knows you’re awake is yours for the taking. You belong to nobody.  

Right now, some of you belong to way too many people, and not necessarily the ones who matter most, like you and your loved persons.

If only for a half hour, belong only to yourself, because first and foremost and until the end of time, you will. You will always share yourself, give of yourself, but you will always be the one who knows you best, and hopefully, believes in you most. 

If you are one of so many people who don't take the breaks they know they need, I have three things to tell you. 

First, getting up early may be the only space you’ll get in your day to do the “want to” thinking about your life vs. the “said I would” kind that makes it all about finishing things, not beginning them. 

Second, everybody wakes up with the choice to visualize and actualize the days, or just get through them. Because we are partners with our lives, not witnesses to it, our job is to manage the "here" of it, each one of those days at a time.  

And finally, if you are poised for change but are finding that answers won't come right away, know that mindfulness is what walks you to the door of resolve. Don't rush it. When the time comes, you will decide whether it's about changing or keeping the "here," but with new operating instructions. 

Until then, get up early. It hurts for a minute, but it's free. Then, let your mind wander until your awareness of "here" begins to show you that changes in small things can change all things.

It's Thanksgiving. Leave your politics in the driveway. They'll wait.

Note: Three years ago, after Trump was elected, and after I'd been reading about the political divides that were infecting friendships, family relationships, and marriages, I worried for the first time about immunity. 

Thanksgiving was coming, a day I have always cherished for its power to bring even far-flung, diverse family members together in a place of warmth, trust, love and gratitude, things that should always be more important than politics. 

I wrote the piece I've re-posted here,  the third most popular of all I've written. Now, with three years of back-story, it's more relevant than ever and so, here it is, on this newest, ever-cherished Thanksgiving day.  

Before we begin...

It's Thanksgiving. Leave your politics in the driveway. They'll wait.

Near my computer I keep a doodle page. I decorate it with swirly designs when I'm in thoughtful conversation with someone on the phone. Other times, I write down true, clear things that come from nowhere. 

The other day, I wrote:  

"You can't write with reason and balance about a thing until your passion has been captured by the next thing." 

Since the election, I've been reading stories about relationships – some lifelong – that have ended, or will, over the way people voted  two weeks ago.  

One couple moved their wedding to another country to make it financially out of reach for their family members. 

That sort of thing.   

Those stories of broken relationships captured and saddened me for days. To imagine how friends or family who have known and loved each other forever could estrange over the election was beyond my powers of empathy or imagination. 

Today, it is Thanksgiving. My children are home. It is the next thing, and I am captured again. 

These days are precious to me. We are apart geographically, now, and often too immersed in our own daily lives to catch up. 

And I have missed them.  I have been craving their company, their stories, their voices. I'll get those glimpses of how they've changed since we last gathered, I'll hear of other people they've encountered who changed them, maybe enlightened them. 

Our kids took serious interest in this election, and some of us were immensely disappointed over Hillary's loss. Reflexively, I tried to offer some explanation of why others might not have shared that choice. With one daughter's help,  I realized that everyone deserves to own their  disappointment, however sprawling and angry it gets, and for however long it takes for the next thing to capture them.

But we need Thanksgiving.  Had it been necessary, I would have extracted a promise from every individual to leave their politics in the driveway, because politics won't disappear or run away, while people will if they have to.

I hope others can find a way to do this today.  

Because rage will quell. The craving to lash out will pass. 

And mostly,  next things will continue to happen. 

Our lives will change, end, and begin.

Our elderly will leave us and our babies will arrive. 

We will fall in love, and we will be claimed by illness. 

We will fall into stretches of terrible luck and we will shine with good fortune.

We will drive into telephone poles, lose our homes, get fired, get arrested.

We will get fantastic job offers, become engaged, marry, divorce. 

We will be joyous over bigger wins, and disappointed over bigger losses. 

The longer we live and the more next things that happen to us, the more we will wish to be near the ones who have known and loved us from the start.  

Won't we? 

In my house, and in my world, the next thing is here. It's Thanksgiving today and my kids are home, where they will  forever be more important than anything – even politics – for a few precious days. 

Love to you all. 

I wish you glorious next things, and mostly, loved ones to share them with.

Today, praise a parent who is trying.

As a parent, I was never as challenged, relative to my experience, as I was when I was the at-home mother of four children under eight-years-old. No other period compares to the unknowns, and twists and turns, and sudden joys and gifts of perspective of that one.

However, as chaotic as this dance with the universe may have felt, it was greatly balanced by the illusion of control. I had everyone where I could see them.  At some point, when you don’t have them where you can see them, they begin their own dance with the universe.

From the smallest beautiful things – seeing my small son lost in a book, singing on the swings with my daughter – to all the rest, emergency room visits, boundary issues, worn out teachers, mean kids,  and so on, my gift from the universe was the awareness that  praise for handling everyday uncertainty wasn't what I needed as much as the everyday certainty that I would cope with whatever I had to. 

But praise was nice, too.

At a local youth organization, I have just implemented an “empowerment” program for little kids.  I will be witnessing their introduction to the universe in real time. In large and small ways, I will see them step into it every day, and witness the good and not so good choices they make to get along. They are just learning that there even is a universe beyond the driveway, so I feel privileged to be a person who might help them stay upright.

I think about their parents thinking about them, out of sight like that. At the end of my day at the club, I sometimes see them at pick-up, signing their kids out. Some are cheerful and ready for their second shift of grocery stops, dinner and homework help. Some look like they may be dealing with residual worry from the work day they’ve just left, others look like they are hovering between patience and fatigue. Some are solo parents, and some are guardians or grandparents. 

Few look like they expect someone to hand them a reward for their coping skills.

Yesterday, I met with my new group – four ten-year-olds – to sign them up. They must have crept into my heart through an open door while I was asking their names and what kind of things make them worry, but smitten, I was.

As I was leaving, I saw a mother signing her child out who happened to be one of my group kids.

I was headed her way, and I could have kept walking – it was cold and rainy and I wanted to check texts in my warm car. But this mother, now quietly standing and waiting for her daughter to appear, looked like she could use a bit of unexpected praise.

So, I turned around and walked back.

“Are you (name)’s mother?” I asked.

She looked startled, guarded.

“Yes,” she said, as if what I said next could go either way, a discipline thing, or a behavioral observation. You don’t expect those things when children are still asking you for juice and grapes,  but out of sight, where they will make their tiny choices, you begin to expect anything, from any direction.

I told her that I’d just met her daughter, and about the group she’s in. Her face was still fixed in that startled position, so I said, “I just want you to know, she is probably one of the sweetest, nicest and kindest kids I’ve met here. I was charmed."

And now the face changed. She gave a big relieved laugh and said, “Oh! Yeah! She’s quite a pistol, yeah!”

“I’ve noticed, that kids like that, who are so good with others, usually come from some example of that. So, nice job," I said.

On the way home, I thought about the way she looked when I said that.  When people don’t get, or stop expecting rewards for things they are doing with all their heart, but then do get a few words of praise, well, the look is like one you’d get if you walked up to a child,  handed them a cheerfully wrapped gift with a big bow and said, “Here. This is for you because you work very hard and it’s something you really want.”

It was a gift for both of us, from our friend, the universe.

Today, find a parent who is trying and tell them, "good job." They don't expect it, they don't need it, but it's something they really want, and they won't forget it. 

If you can't live happily in your moment, live happily in someone else's.

The other day I saw a meme that urged us to be happy right now, in the moment because life is the moment, and so on. A person was walking with flowers in her hand. 

My first thought was that if all it took to pivot and be happy right now was a meme's advice, why would we be any other way? Nobody doesn’t wish they were happy and it's simple to suggest that it’s simple. 

And then I thought about it all day.

People post things all the time that are so obvious to some as to be banal, while others may find sweet perspective that they've been craving in that simple string of words, and you know what I should do about that? 

Seize the opportunity to shut up, as my psychology professor advised us in child development.

I take happiness seriously. Everyone should.  And, the first thing to know about happiness is that it is not another word for mood.

If you are inclined to be happy, it is a drive that steers you, day in and day out, toward bigger life outside of yourself where you can test your expectation that good things will probably happen. Happy people tend to have that in common, an interest in the lives around them, even if they themselves are recovering from a slip and fall on the here and now.

Not-happy people, on the other hand, just want everything they're doing to be done and don't really notice or care about what other people do. They disagree and they take offense for the sake of it, like they didn’t get invited to something they wouldn’t have gone to anyway.

I thought about happiness a lot last week when a string of unrelated bad things happened to different people in my community. Things from which I think I'd maybe not recover, but know others will have to, who live in houses I can almost see from here.

This is the tails to the heads of the happiness coin. As lives outside of your own can inspire and energize you, so will they depress and immobilize you from time to time, and that is when you might need to go somewhere and see other lives that are happening as well, for balance.

In our rural, socioeconomic mongrel of a town, we have a medium size supermarket that serves all of us, on every walk of life between the locals and the newcomers, the wealthy and the barely getting by, groomed professionals and raggedy ones, teens, the elderly, young parents with a lot of babies, young married people with "dogs for now."

There are always things worth looking at for a little longer than usual at this place.

It might be a group of wry, cool millennials making hilarious observations about something, because millennials do this like the rest of us walk around and breathe.

It might see a clutch of very elderly people in the parking lot laughing at each other's stories. 

Or someone embracing his minimum wage job with cheer and pride.

Or a worn-out parent, being further worn-out right in front of you by her worn-out children but who still musters the patience to say calmly, “No, you can’t have that, we already talked about it.”

You might see content older couples who listen carefully to each other, or content young children who sing and can’t be still, or content other people who study boxes of cereal like they're picking a paint color for their house.  

I write a lot about change – conceiving it, making it happen, and celebrating it. But today, I’m thinking of happiness, and the joy of living in the moment as we are, when we can. And I'm thinking of other times, when we must live close to the lives of others, and accept the sweet perspective we've been craving when the moment hands it to you.

If you're the happy type, that is.

When we encourage others but can't give ourselves a break

My daughter, who teaches music to small children, bless her, said something the other day that made me think very hard.  

How can we – especially educators and parents – express such faith in another person’s potential, forgive their mistakes so easily, yet give ourselves so much grief when we mess up?

It spawned a discussion about how this habit can, over time, become so automatic you may not know you’re doing it, and would not do it at all if you knew what it does to your inside person.

We all have them, inside people. They embody our purest wishes, hopes, strengths, power, intelligence, humanity and talent. I have come to believe that what you understand in your bones about someone else is your connection to your own inside person. Whether you’ve struggled with, or conquered, or still have to overcome, or make a decision about the same issue, connection to your own inside person through another can change your life. 

I used to feel stressed and anxious so often I stopped considering it unusual. It was with me all the time – restlessness and uncertainty that I would have urged anyone else to resolve as quickly as possible. The more I listened to others, the more my bones felt it, and after a while, my inside person raised her hand and said, "Um, over here."

  

It took a long time to realize that in writing especially, I was choosing the thought stream that created the feelings, which created the behavior in response: I don't want to expose my true feelings about this. The period of procrastination before I became a more authentic writer was long.

However, where there is choice, there is the freedom to change. 

When you understand that you're doing this, you can focus on identifying and disabling such self-rebukes. I compare it to catching an arrow in the air before it can get in my head. Somewhere on this misty, wonderous path, I became good at arrow catching, being my own anxiety guard, asking the arrows to please show me their I.D. and tell me the nature of their business.  

I don’t know how often your inside people clash with what life tells you to do, but for many people, it is problematic from the beginning.  It not only can leave you conflicted between wish-I-could, and but-I-can't, it and can set up an inner clash between you and the idea that life is always bigger and smarter than you are. 

It’s the quiet kid who is told (or forced) to be more social. It’s the exuberant kid who is always told to chill. It’s the nervous kid who is told not to worry and just be who they are, which is exactly what the nervous kid is afraid of being at the moment.  It’s the conflicted kid who needs to know, but isn’t always taught, that at ages 12 thru 16, all feelings can be scary and weird and okay at the same time.

Life, with its rules and shoulds, and people who know better, and passive shaming responses to our organic ideas and plans, will, in the beginning, overwhelm the inside person. But later, maybe much later, after the inside person has shared its notes with you about why you're perfectly fine and has shown you the proof - look at your sweet friends, look at your capacity for love, look at your extraordinary kindness – well, life will start being more agreeable.

Inside people may not be ferocious, but they’re tenacious and patient. They wait. They don't leave. 

And it might take some of us longer than others, but  when you do get close enough to see how much that inside person looks, and actually is, exactly like you, be sure to notice the pile of arrows at their feet that were once too fast for you to catch.

The little love story that made me cry in my pedicure.

I cried in my pedicure the other day.

My pedicurist and I have known each other for probably a dozen visits. She is around 27, and her boyfriend, who has lived with her for a while, just turned thirty. I know, because my pedicurist has been planning a surprise party for him since at least ten visits ago.

She talks about him in our visits, what he does, the funny things he says, how sweet he is, how kind, how he will suddenly stop in the middle of a sentence to apologize for an insensitive remark. She loves him. He loves her. They have two cats who publicly dislike each other but, according to my pedicurist, are playful and affectionate in private when she and her boyfriend spy on them.

That was the story she told that made me like her, and her boyfriend, very much. 

There is a lot to love about love, especially young love when two people probably have the least of what they will come to have, and yet feel they have everything they need to live happily. Of course, like all of us, my pedicurist would certainly like more of good things, but need? No, she has what she needs and it is her boyfriend, and their wily cats.

I have seen a few young couples get married over the last year. Every time, it strikes me how the life side of things -  paying off loans, maybe looking for a house, settling into the first or second big jobs, establishing good credit and saving what they can, is dwarfed by the large-looming love side with all the giddy fun and laughter, easy joy and endless getting of Sunday morning breakfast.

For several months, I have been thinking about the simple beauty of a less-is-more mindset, even if the couples I've seen getting married may not know they share such a thing. The happiest people I've seen this year, are the ones who are firmly rooted in the pursuit of needs first, wants later.  

The last two times I came in for my visit, unsure of the time frame, I asked my pedicurist if she’d had the party for her boyfriend yet. “Nooooooo,” she dragged out the word. “But!” she said, “I think I know what to give him!” She went off topic for a minute, getting her things together, asking me if I had picked a color, and then, when we were settled, she said, “I just wish his parents could be here. He’s bummed that they can't do it.”

A while back, his parents had moved out of the state to begin the next leg of their life in another climate and he’d taken it “really hard,” she said.

He’d been a close kid, stopping on the way home from work, coming over for games, that sort of thing. Apparently, he and the dad were close, but he and the mother were also good friends.

“He’ll be okay,” my pedicurist said, “he just misses them, that’s all. But he’ll be okay,” she said. “I’ve been telling him that."

The comment hung there for a moment. 

Two weeks ago, I went for my appointment and as soon as I sat down, she pulled out her phone, “We did the party. I have a video!” she said, pulling it up.

Her cover was to bring him for a tour of a friend’s new house.  In the video her boyfriend is shown being led from empty room to empty room to check out the place. He’s making nice comments about the house when they reach a closed door. He is asked to open the door and when he does he finds his mother and father standing on the other side.

You hear him, “Oh my GOD!!” and he wraps his arms around his mom and sobs, as does she, and as does the dad, and as did I at the sight of them all reuniting.

My pedicurist laughed very hard at this. “Oh my God, my boyfriend’s party made you CRY! You’re such a mom!” 

Less really can be more when it comes to happiness; for many of us, needs are simpler than wants, easier to meet, way less expensive, and, when met, produce happiness dividends for others. 

It's okay to get what you want. And you can see just how much that is, looking around at where and how you spend your time. That's fine.  But, we need our loves, we need our attachments and we need our huge hugs when we reunite. 

Always. Always.

And cats. Many of us need cats, too.

Moods that happen for no good reason at all

I have fallen in love with dahlias,  and so I'm going
to just leave this here on the blog until it's time to show
 you my Christmas tree, if that's okay.

First, I'm stealing this line that I overheard someone say:     

"My partner says it stresses him out the way I empty the dishwasher." 

We know what she means; all that bang-crashy, clangy noise from the other room sounds like anger, even if the person who is tossing and dropping things into place is humming  while doing so. 

I'll come back to that.

Last night, I talked with my newly married daughter about “let downs,” or, what I call post-moods, those weird, low-energy valleys that can follow a major event – two weeks after the holidays end, a month after the baby comes, three weeks after a glorious wedding, etc.

They happen of course, because the mental energy that has been expended in ever-higher amounts as an event looms is suddenly no longer required but shows up anyway, like a stray party guest who is still there the next day and wonders where everyone went. 

I experienced this in June, after I received my degree. One Friday I was celebrating the completion of the last final that I would ever take, awed by the prospect of graduation in only a few days.  The following Friday, I was rearranging things on my desk and spending a very long time trying to figure out what to have for dinner.  Eventually, my post-mood passed, as they do when they are tied to something that makes sense like a baby, a wedding or a degree.

But what about moods and attitudes that feel like post-moods but aren't tied to any good reason at all, or, the what's wrong with me mood?

People will do anything not to deal with these sluggish mindsets. They will put on music, and dance. They will go for a run. They will call a friend to go get a smoothie, or post something on Facebook to jump start a positive, if fleeting connection to something other than their thoughts.  

I drive. If I’m balled up, stagnant, or not in motion, I drive. I listen to music. Often I will add an overdue conversation with a good friend to my mood salad and enjoy a shiny new attitude about everything for a while.  

Or not. Because sometimes, none of it works. And when it doesn’t, I stop trying to change the mood, and think about how to use it.  

Life is full of wisdom-moments that remind us of what we know, and others that tell us what to do with what we know. They can come and go too quickly to process on the spot, or use, for what they bring. I believe that this is the purpose of no-good-reason moods – a way to let those moments come back around. I liken them to unopened mail, there's stuff in there that you probably need to know.  

Before you dart away from such a state, or quickly distract and switch to another rail, use the mood for what it might be trying to give you. Let your mind wander the way it's supposed to when you meditate. Don't stop it or argue with it, just see what it comes back with.

You may be suddenly aware of something you didn’t know before and now, will never not know in the future. 

It could be an answer to any of these questions:

What do you want? What do you wish you were doing? What do you wish you’d accomplished last week? What is a single focused thing you could work on for just this one day that would, to paraphrase Anne Lamott, get the birds all flying in the right direction for a little while? 

I’m dancing with my next novel again, which is great but which will be horrible at times because completing a novel is a long road with many, many exits leading to self-doubt, arguments for finding a real job, and confrontations with your partner over how his dishwasher noise is scaring your muse away.

It will be finished, I know that now. I know that because once, in one those no-good-reason moods, I realized that I don't meet all the goals I say I will, because even if I really want to, I'm truthfully unsure I can. You would agree if you saw my goals. You'd feel nervous for me. They're too big.

In one of those sluggish moods, I understood that as long as I could only settle for too-big goals, I'd do nothing at all to avoid a feeling of failure. 

And so, I kept the doable ones and made a choice to work on only one each day. They are my allies, these smaller goals. They sit on my desk in the morning and tell me that just for today, I should not post any cat cartoons on Facebook. I should do nothing at all until I give a character a trait.

Two or three or four weeks after it’s finished, and I’m in my “post-mood," I will gaze upon the forest of what now. And then, I'll go in and find the path of things I still need to know forever. 

Forests are a lot like no-good-reason moods that way. 

How love moves in

Jacqueline Bonifant and Matt Starkey
Married September 21, 2019

I have been asked in the past to write about love and marriage for weddings. It isn’t hard to do, I’m a fan of both. But last year, after my daughter Jacqueline asked me to write for her and her wonderful fiancé, Matt Starkey, I had no idea where to start.

Over the months, as I’ve observed these two people not plan, but design their wedding day, making every detail a reflection of their collaboration – their love – it became apparent that the deeper the love, the easier it is to observe but the harder it is to describe.  

One day I heard Jacqueline laugh over the phone in a conversation with Matt, and I had it.

I gave the following reading at their wedding on September 21, 2019. Several people asked for a copy, and I thought sending them here might be the easiest way to follow through. Herewith:

How love moves in

Hello friends and family, it’s wonderful to see you all here and wonderful to share a day that we once only hoped for. Very much.

It wasn’t long after they met that I suspected Jacqueline and Matt would decide to share a life together. It was just too hard to imagine them looking at anyone else the way they looked at each other. I’m sure it was for them too.

It’s a special look that I’m referring to, the one that people get when fascination and preoccupation have blossomed into love.

Love moved into the hearts of Jacqueline and Matt gently, but with deliberate speed, and intention because where love decides to drop its bags, is where love plans to stay forever.

Today, I want to share some thoughts about that, how love moves in.

I don’t believe love arrives early, or that it works alone. The way I see it, love has a whole staff that arrives ahead of time to check things out. They are what I call love lieutenants, and they have one job, which is to be sure that the best things two people are when they’re alone will be the things they bring to each other, as they grow together.

And, when each has shown the greater desire to grow toward each other than in an any other direction, and when each honors the strengths that have made their nearness to each other possible, it is then that love moves into those spacious hearts and makes them one.

And that’s when love begins to work from the inside out. And that’s when the outside begins to look like Jacqueline and Matt did that day at our breakfast table when I looked at him, and looked at her and knew an altar was in our future.

A word or two about love…

Love is the most desired thing in the world, and probably the most misunderstood because it is not a feeling or emotion. It is not happy or sad. Love is the immensity of all the feelings one has for another and the capacity to hold them all in the same place. And, so, love is 24/7, up or down, rain or shine, hangry or silly.

Love by some, is treated as a quest. But to search for love which grows wide and high with cultivation is like looking for the best friend you’ll ever have on the first day of first grade.

Love must be invited, but then allowed to reach us at its own pace. It can not be chased and tackled.

Love is not elusive, but will defy our wish to meet it if we are only willing to imitate the love we’ve seen between others.

Love is resilient but love knows its limits. From time to time it will allow itself to be exhausted. But you will not get away with forgetting to feed it.

And finally, love is the result of all that good lieutenant work.

I happen to know that Jacqueline and Matt were screened by Lieutenants Trust, Respect and Humor, and today, it is the marriage of those traits that have placed us here.

The result of trust:

…knowing that your happiness means as much to your love as their own.

…that when you set your fears or dreams or disappointments or shy joys free, they will be as honored by your love as they were by you when they lived in your heart.

… that when your faith in yourself falls short, your love will find you and hand you the part that fell out.  

It is the result of respect:

…the certainty that your love wants for you only to be exactly as you are, with all your corners and curves and potholes and lovely twists because that is the beautiful back road to joy that your love has memorized.

And it is the result of humor:

A quick story…

One time, Jacqueline was home in New England before Christmas. It was time for her to place her call to Matt and I was in the kitchen eavesdropping.

She told a story, and he told a story, and she laughed, and I think he laughed, and as I moved closer to hear better, I realized. This was certainly a funny story they were sharing, but more than that, this joyful sound came from the sense of life-inspired humor that they share. They will just never run out of reasons to laugh.

Today, as we celebrate this union of a funny engineer and an artistic consultant, may we cherish that they share a language that only they speak and understand

…and will build their lives around

…without even knowing they have been creating it from day one