Chain Letters and Concrete Thinking

Lola got her first chain letter (email) yesterday.

They were so much more work when I was her age.  I remember getting the intricately folded sheet of notebook paper slipped into my palm or underneath my textbook on my desk during class, excusing myself to the restroom to open it up, and feeling my heart sink.

I distinctly recall sitting in the bathroom stall contemplating my next steps. Once entrusted with the note, smeary with pencil lead and softened in the creases, I now had to choose 10 or 15 others to pass the message on to...OR ELSE.

Sometimes I was promised magical outcomes upon successfully forwarding the note - the boy I had a crush on would walk me home from school or my most fervent wish would come true - but more often there were dire threats should I fail to identify enough friends to pass it to.

The difficulty was embedded in the intricate social structure that existed for a girl in the fourth or fifth grade.  There were a multitude of 'best friends,' many of whom the note had already passed through. Choosing the wrong girls meant that I would either hurt someone's feelings or look like an unsophisticated fool.  Not passing it along was not an option.  Boys didn't count, even if they were my friends, because they would never keep the chain going. You had to pick people that would perpetuate the note, and you couldn't give it to anyone who wasn't cool or skip over girls in the established hierarchy.  I was somewhere near the middle of the pack, which made it hard because I was never the one to start the chain.

Inevitably, on the evening that I received the note, I would settle down on my Hollie Hobby bedspread with ten fresh sheets of notebook paper to hand-copy the message. By the time I was done, the callous on my middle finger would be throbbing and red, complete with pencil-imprint in the center, and my heart would beat along in desperation that I had chosen the "right ten."  Finding a clandestine way to pass the notes at school the next day posed nowhere near the danger that not passing it did.  I didn't want to die in my sleep, for goodness' sake!

For all of that, though, I never faced the fear that Lola experienced when she opened the email from a trusted friend last night before bed.  Lola's unique perspective on the world is often quite literal. She has difficulty sussing out nuances when it comes to threats or promises and discerning whether or not they are real, and while I am fairly certain that she didn't truly believe some horrible fate would befall her before morning if she didn't quickly choose five friends to forward the email to, she definitely felt some sense of foreboding.  It made for a very difficult bedtime routine.  Following a candid discussion of what chain mail is (complete with the admonition that it's more of a scam to get people to pass on viruses or phish their email inbox than anything social like it was in my childhood), we went through two rounds of cheesecloth and a meditation before she would even consider laying down.  It was another hour and a lot of cuddling before she was able to get out of her own head enough to feel safe and fall asleep.  This morning, we're crafting an email to her friends to ask them to please not pass those emails on to her and I am struck by how much more work it was for my generation to hand-write each and every note we were passing on. We had to put in a lot more sweat for our terror!

No Negativity

I had a lunch and dog-walking date with a new friend last week on a gloriously sunny (unseasonable) June day.  We hurtled ourselves down the block through conversations about parenting and feminism, justice and writing, laughing and marveling at shared sentiments.  We sat down to a lovely lunch of salads with another friend under the shade on a tree-lined sidewalk and the discussion was as satiating as the food, filling us up and nourishing us with the camaraderie of friends who share passions.

As it came time to meander back, the conversation turned to a more challenging subject with a history of hurt feelings and misunderstanding and while the two of us took care to tread lightly and with solid intent, the tone was certainly different.  At one point, T stopped and cocked her head to listen.

"Is that? Yes, it is!" she crowed as two children popped out onto the sidewalk from their front yard.  These kids, a young boy and his younger sister, were T's neighbors and had just closed up their lemonade stand.  They were headed to buy a slice of pizza and some ice cream with the cash they had made and stopped to introduce themselves to me, all sunshine and smiles and enthusiasm.  We spent a few minutes chatting with them and when they had moved on, T turned to me and said,

"No negativity! See? I told myself that whenever something starts to get negative, something positive will show up to take its place.  We were talking about something hard and then, boom, the kids showed up to interrupt it. The world is a marvelous place!"

I loved her perspective and joy at having run into her neighbors and thought about what she said for several days afterward.  What a fabulous idea - that we can choose no negativity.  What if I tell myself that every time something starts to turn negative, something positive will show up?  It speaks to my belief in balance (I am a Libra, after all), and the tendency of energy to come back to equilibrium.  What if that is what always happens and I simply have to tune myself in to it?

It's worth a shot.

"...And We Broke Him"

Staff Sergeant Robert Bales pled guilty last week to killing 16 innocent Afghan villagers in March of last year in order to avoid the death penalty.  He is a young man with two small children of his own who now faces the rest of his life behind bars.

May he one day find peace.

This is a young man who went to Iraq three times for the military and was on his fourth tour of duty in Afghanistan, likely spending his waking hours plagued with fears of IEDs and surprise attacks.  I don't know the details of his service and I certainly cannot justify the targeting of innocent people or their brutal murders.

What I do wonder is how many other angry, frightened soldiers are out there held together with spit and baling wire (as my grandfather used to say), barely holding on to some semblance of sanity? How many others are there who have both witnessed and committed atrocities on the orders of their superior officers whose dreams are haunted? How many others are self-medicating with alcohol and valium, simply clinging to those muted moments until they can try to figure out what a peaceful life is again?  And how can we continue to send these young people into harm's way, revere them as heroes and then discard them on the streets of our cities after denying them the health care they need? How can we continue to be horrified at their acts of desperation and then send them away, sentenced to mental hospitals or jail cells simply because they couldn't handle the burdens we placed on their shoulders?

If this isn't a case for restorative justice (and pacifism), I don't know what is.  So many lives lost and shattered in this instance, and even today, it is old news, as the headlines move on to conflict in other parts of the world. Ahh, Syria. Is that where our soldiers go next? To kill and be killed? To go slowly mad at the violence and pain of it all?

I don't claim to have diplomatic answers to any of these conflicts. I certainly don't condone the targeting of innocents by the Syrian government or the Turkish government or any other entity, for that matter. But I think we have seen time and again that war doesn't do much but create victims on both sides for generations to come.

May he one day find peace.
May we all.

Idiot Compassion

"Idiot compassion."

I was re-reading Michael Greenberg's "Hurry Down Sunshine" last week for a writing workshop I'm taking and when I saw the phrase 'idiot compassion,' it struck me as though I hadn't read it before.  In fact, I think this was one of those memoirs I read so quickly and superficially that I'm very grateful I was led to read it again for this class.  I don't think I absorbed much of it at all the first time and I suspect that is because the notion of being locked away for mental health treatment is something I fear almost more than anything else.

But I digress....

The description of the phrase 'idiot compassion' was basically when you get so sucked in to someone else's pain and suffering that you begin to empathize on a cellular level. You begin to have trouble separating your pain from theirs and you render yourself completely incapable of offering any assistance whatsoever.

Been there, done that.

I suppose the reason the words impacted me the way they did is because one of them is a favorite of mine and the other one I generally abhor.  The word 'idiot' conjures up meanness, judgment, misunderstanding of another's true gifts. 'Compassion,' on the other hand, is something for which I strive each and every time I interact with another human being.  Putting the two together jolted me in to assessing how often I drag myself down that rabbit hole of compassion to the point of idiocy.  How many times have I over-identified with another human being so completely that I start to panic at the emotions that are triggered in my own body?  And how is that helpful?

It isn't.  Nobody who is suffering wants that kind of compassion. We may all want empathy when we are struggling with a difficult challenge, but not to the point where others appear to take on our suffering. For one thing, it isn't possible - trust me, if it were, I would have made the enormous mistake of onboarding Bubba's, Lola's, and Eve's discomfort from time to time.  And, if I'm already drowning, your flailing about in the same freezing water isn't going to do either of us any good. It might be a little less lonely there in the ocean as my lungs are filling up with fluid, but ultimately it doesn't change my suffering a bit to know that you're wheezing right along with me. In fact, it might increase mine by making me feel guilty you're there at all.

More and more as I age, I am reminded that the most powerful form of compassion lies in something that looks a hell of a lot like inactivity.  I call it "holding space."  It doesn't involve telling you about my life experience with a similar issue and offering advice. Holding space doesn't have anything to do with holding you, unless you want a hug and it will make you feel better.  It is simply the act of me sitting with the acknowledgment of your pain and allowing you to feel it as you need to.  Holding space is not judgment or an attempt to diminish or 'fix' your suffering, it is a validation of your feelings and your right to feel them.  It clears the way for you to sit with your own frustration as long as you need to, knowing that I will be there for as long as it takes.  I can't take any of your pain away but I can help you hold it for a while until the time comes for it to move on through.  And so if you ever have occasion to hear me say I am sending love and light your way, it simply means that I am holding space for you. It means that within that space there will be love and light surrounding you for as long as you need.  That doesn't mean I don't desperately wish there was something more tangible I could do to help, but idiot compassion doesn't help any of us.

How A Random Stranger Helped Me Examine How Much I Trust Myself

A few days ago our neighbors had a tree service come take out an enormous tree on the sidewalk near their property. The trunk was probably five feet in diameter and I don't even want to hazard a guess as to how tall it was.  I think it was some kind of maple, rough-barked and stolid, standing on the corner like some kind of massive pin that held the block in place to the earth.

As I walked past yesterday, before they had come to haul away the chunks of debris, I could see the center of the trunk eroded like so much sawdust and thought to myself, Aahh, it was dying. That's why they took it out. I don't know about your city, but our city doesn't take too kindly to removing established trees, especially those considered 'exceptional' examples of their species - ones that are large specimens that have been in the ground for decades.  We like our greenery here in the Pacific NW and God help you if you want to embark on a construction project that might necessitate the removal of a tree on your property. The neighbors will stage protests and tie neon ribbons around the trunk, write letters to the city planning office and plead the case for this poor, defenseless tree like they wouldn't for a human on death row.  The fines for removing a tree without a permit are based on the assessment of 'fair market value' for the particular tree, and can run to tens of thousands of dollars.

But as I strolled past this one, I thought I could plainly see why they had removed it.  Until a man and his dog came around the corner and stopped short. Thin and grey-headed, the bearded man in his Seattle-uniform of khakis and work boots and olive green vest led his dog up to the remains to check it out.  I was still about half a block away and watched them circle the pile of limbs and trunk sections, the dog marking each piece in that special dog-way.  As I neared, I prepared to meet the man's eye and smile a greeting, but he looked at me and shook his head with a mixture of disgust and sadness. He was clearly unhappy that this tree had been cut down.

I immediately checked my thoughts about the tree removal.  Maybe my assessment had been wrong - maybe what I saw of the inside of the tree didn't represent disease or a good enough reason to cut it down. Had these people been wrong to do this?  

Fortunately, I was able to recognize this pattern of thinking for what it was. Namely, my tendency to assume that my reaction is the wrong one upon encountering someone else who feels very differently than me. Especially when that someone is a stranger, older than me, and male.

As children, we begin forming our opinions by mirroring or imitating our parents. As we move into adolescence, we slowly start to individuate, often by reacting to situations in the opposite way of our parents, but this generally lasts only for a few years as we try out different personalities in order to better determine who we are.  Generally, as we become adults we settle in to some middle ground where we are able to exercise more critical thinking and assess our own reactions and opinions with some degree of realism.  Hopefully, this comes about thanks to parents or other influential adults in our lives who have taken the time (and patience) to guide us through our teenage years as we react to things more based on emotion and erroneous assumptions than clear logical thinking. (That said, if you haven't read Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide, you should check it out because he reveals how much of our "rational" decision-making is actually based on emotion and gut-feelings and how important that is).

I spent much of my adolescence straddling the line between adult responsibilities and desperately wanting to rebel but fearful of the consequences.  I often felt as though I was faking it as I worked hard to convince the adults in authority around me that I was capable of taking care of myself both physically and emotionally so that I could be left alone. On the inside, I was terrified of being 'found out' for the chickenshit that I really felt like.  That set me up for a deep mistrust of my own opinions and anytime I encountered an older person who seemed like they might have it all together, I fell all over myself to defer to their ideas of right and wrong.  It took years to begin to put stock in my own thought processes and values and, sometimes when I least expect it, my tendency to doubt my own beliefs sneaks up on me.

Fortunately, it's not important whether or not I think the tree removal was justified, but it sparked a valuable inner exploration of how often I discount my own knowledge without thinking simply because someone else appears to think differently.

It Isn't Like Herding Cats

We have a pretty major construction project going on at our house right now.  Well, I hope the construction part starts to happen pretty soon, because so far it's mostly been destruction, but I'm holding out hope.

There are two components to the project - one outdoor and one in the basement - that requires some fairly delicate fine-tuning and cooperation between the two sets of laborers.  Here are a few things I've learned in the last four weeks:

1.  Each separate entity has their own set of quirks around how they like to work, when they like to work, and what their particular set of responsibilities entails.
2.  It is my job to facilitate constructive collaboration between these two entities.
3.  This is not like herding cats.

Herding cats is a phrase I generally like and have used often, but it conjures up discrete individuals with their own ideas and agendas who simply don't care about anyone else's silly little life. Unless it affects when they eat.  That is important to cats.  This task is much more like herding labrador retrievers.  The head of each crew is answering to me, loyal to me (the check-writer), and concerned with my needs, like a sweet puppy dog who needs my approval. That part is great.  However, they circle around each other, wary and sniffing and a little territorial and it is my job to keep the tails wagging and not get peed on.  That is more difficult.

Both jobs are big and will take months to complete. Both are fairly intrusive to my life (ahh, the perks of working from home?), and the two jobs dovetail in multiple areas which means that if one crew takes a little longer to accomplish something (or their subcontractor simply doesn't show up for work one day without notice), it affects everyone else.  The tension that ensues is no big deal unless I don't nip it in the bud.  There has been some almost-middle-school drama wherein a seemingly casual conversation quickly turns into a not-very-thinly-veiled accusation against the other crew for "passing the buck" or "screwing up" and it is all I can do not to crack up.  Thus far, I have been able to deal with these jabs the same way I do with Eve and Lola, by giving more details and explaining how such a thing might have come to pass. That said, I'm fairly certain that I have the power to tip the scales simply by appearing to side with one or the other and starting a full-scale war for my admiration.

At one point, I was describing such a scene to Bubba and he remarked that, while I'm learning a lot about how boilers work and gas lines are installed, perhaps my biggest lessons in all of this will be the ones about managing people and personalities.  I agreed, but didn't have the heart to tell him that running this household with him and two children had already given me an education in that subject.

Strike While the Iron is Hot

I was at the chiropractor's office the other day praising the massage therapist in her office.

"It was so different than any massage I've ever had before. Generally, I get deep tissue work done and I feel beaten up and bruised for days afterward, but this was gentle and soothing and I nearly fell asleep more than once."

"Mmm, hmm. She's really good." My chiropractor is less of a "rack'm and crack'm" and more of a manual therapist, using traction and gravity to stretch things back so that my body rights itself more often than not. That said, she won't hesitate to manipulate my spine if it needs it and I absolutely LOVE having my neck cracked by her.

"I was toying with the idea of asking her to push a little harder, because I grew up with the 'no pain, no gain' ethic and I felt a little guilty that it just felt good and relaxing.  I wondered if I ought to be hurting more."

The doctor stopped and let out a small laugh.

"You know, part of the reason she is so good is because she really listens to your tissues with her fingers. She pushes just hard enough until there is some resistance and then she works to gently increase blood flow and loosen that area up.  If there is a lot of resistance and she digs in, all she is likely to do is aggravate that area and make it more swollen and tight."

Dramatic, theatrical pause (mine - I'm sure this only happened in my head, but sometimes just before someone says something particularly impactful to me I remember that there was a momentous second before they said it).

"There is such a thing as a 'therapeutic window' for everything.  If the receiver isn't ready to receive the therapy, it won't be helpful."

That sentence rang in my head like church bells for days to come.

When I was struggling with depression, I had to get to a place where I was ready to hear what my therapist was saying to me.

I couldn't possibly have forgiven my father or my molester until I was at a place in my life where that was a possibility.

I remember my high school physics teacher introducing the notion of dead space to us one day. He talked about how everything is made up of atoms and how there is a lot of space between these charged particles and they are only held together by their electrical charges (I'm simplifying greatly, so if you're a physical scientist, don't get upset with this rudimentary description).  We explored the notion of crystalline structures and atomic structures and chemical formulas and he blew my mind when he said I could simply pass my hand through my desktop if the atoms just all lined up correctly.  It took a long time to even begin to wrap my head around that one, and I'm not certain I have, to be completely honest.

If we just wait for the right time for things to align themselves, we can make an enormous impact by taking advantage of that window.  By learning to recognize when someone is receptive to our message we can be more certain that our input will have the intended effect.  For many years now I have wondered how many times I will have to ask my girls to do the same thing before they change their behavior.  I looked for some magical number - 1,000? 2,500? 15,000? Whatever it took, I was willing to do it so long as it resulted in my desired outcome.  But what if it isn't a repetition but a receptivity principle?  What if I'm wasting my breath (and anger and frustration and eye-rolling) by bouncing my words off of a brick wall? What if I simply wait until I can see they are ready to hear my message and say it once?

The idea that simply talking louder or pounding my fist for emphasis or adding tears to the mix isn't likely to change anything is a revelation.  I know inherently that my chiropractor was right.  There is a therapeutic window for everything and my window isn't the same as anyone else's, but if I push harder and harder in an attempt to get my agenda across, all I'm likely to do is aggravate the situation more.  I know that lecturing Eve when she's already mad or embarrassed about something only serves to make her dig her heels in stubbornly.  I have observed that when I can hold my tongue and wait until she comes to me in contrition or asking for help, I have a much larger impact on the situation.

I can't promise I'll remember this principle every time I am desperate to impart some wisdom, but hopefully I can keep the image of this window in my head to prompt me to at least ask the question, "Is this person ready to hear what I want to say?"