Nature vs. nothing

Energetic storms rolled through with what epic gloriosity the likes of which such stale, desert concretescape had never seen. Hail smashed onto the pavement and fat raindrops gathered into puddles, moving with the purpose of a river and pooling around sleepy gutters suddenly called to function.

The cars carrying the patrons of Big Box Retail sloshed and skidded through stop signs, still trying to get to Target, Wal-Mart and Kroger before turning back – no inclement weather could interrupt a consumer Sunday already underway. The lesson of the ensuing rash of traffic accidents was lost on them; the habit to spend money earned (or not) during the week and to accumulate more was deep and essential in their small, narrow worlds

The poor, pinched trees, planted by some inept developer hastening to manufacture landscape and ambience, buckled and smarted from the unfamiliar pelts of water. Attention from Mother Nature was as foreign to them as the watering vast plains of concrete was fruitless to her. The trees were strangled in ruffs of bark chips and had never known a breath of fresh air. It occurred to me that might be why I always feel short of breath here. There are too many of us, we inhabitors of suburban sprawl, for the oxygen available. A parking lot here feels more natural than a park. As the cars dimpled from hailstones and buckled under a suicidal tree, I felt keenly the incongruity of this use of the world.

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You do the best you can

“Ultimately, I believe, whether you choose one way or the other doesn’t matter. If you’re present when you make your decision, then you’ll be present in the next situation—and be ready to make choices as the need comes up. Of course, you always could have done things differently. But the ultimate importance is not what you do, it’s how you do it—the state of consciousness brought to the process, which hopefully will let you feel the aliveness of all your experiences.” -Eckhart Tolle (who looks like Yoda…appropriate resemblance?)

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Fomtoolery

I’m afraid of squandering the tools I have been given and earned by chasing “happiness” and still ending up unhappy.

Maybe the secret is that you are most likely to find happiness (however you define it) by putting those very tools to use. The tools and the happiness are both means to their own ends.

This idea could be thickheadedly obvious but, like a memorable nightmare, it felt powerful and sharp like a new blade when it bumbled into my thoughts and then sliced right through them.

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TKO

Today’s match-up in the internal ring:

The relief of leaving something behind dukes it out with the struggle of starting over.

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Creative Problem Solving: Figure out how to eat the cake

Here is a familiar exchange:

Me: Blah blah, here is my dilemma, what do you think?

Conversant: “Sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it, too.”

Um…duh?

If I give the impression that I am anything but human, who wants anything less than the most of the best I can possibly have, please allow me to hereby set the record straight: I want to have my cake. And eat it too.

Speaking of food, I love going out to eat. I admit I can be a bit scientific when it comes to ordering – I assay my own appetite and degustatory desires, considering the menu’s specialties, season, price-to-value ratio, and the rest of my party’s choices. All that, before landing on the correct beverage pairing. It’s not always easy, but it’s lovely when it works. It’s just that I don’t love when the person sitting next to me orders the exact same thing, I don’t love when the table orders 5 glasses of wine instead of a bottle, I don’t love finding out that the halibut was $2 more than advertised because if I’d wanted to spend $14 I would’ve had the tuna.

The way I engineer these things can be pretty obnoxious, and overthinking this kind of thing can ruin an otherwise simple pleasure. This rarely happens, but I feel a childlike glee when I simply want a slice of pizza. When at least one constant can be cemented down among a cloud of variables, it feels a lot better. Of the zillion restaurants we could go to tonight, we can narrow it down to five because I definitely want pizza.

I struggle with black and white – the world is most alive in gray. When I have a dilemma, I know that the best solution is not this OR that; it is one that incorporates the best part of this with the best part of that. When I find the solution, it’s always compromise among options. This is why even after I have the menu of choices before me, I spend some time considering and marinating and imagining. I may appear idle, but there are actually combinations and permutations firing off in my head, hunting for the right answer.

In my experience, the right answer reveals itself slowly, and then all of the sudden. It begins by nudging and shouldering the other options until EUREKA! I finally pay attention to it and acknowledge its superiority over other options.

Life does not often afford the time required to make decisions this way.  Sometimes, the waitress comes before I’m ready for her, and I just have to pick something on the fly. When this happens, I always feel a little bit anxious after ordering and may even try to change it. Sometimes you just don’t know you want something until its no longer an option. If I change it, sometimes I wish I hadn’t.

But it seems perfectly natural to want time to slow down if you could use more of it, or to want two seemingly mutually exclusive opportunities to be possible simultaneously. Of course I don’t want choosing Door A to mean that I will never, ever be able to open Door B.

So instead of, “Which?” isn’t the question better question, “How?” Instead of “Do I want what’s behind Door A or Door B?” why not, “How can I get what I need from behind Door A and Door B?” An imaginative approach to a dilemma can unglue useless assumptions, clarify wants and needs, and yield an altogether better choice than first imagined.

If I sound like I want it all, it’s because I do. The only way I can be sure not to have it all is to ignore even the possibility. This is why I like the gray area, where asking “How?” turns a clash into a collaboration. Even if the possibilities only start as hypothetical – well, how does anything real begin? That’s how bridges get built, right? From prototypes? Why not embrace solution prototypes? Non-physical solutions can follow the same process.

If you want to have your cake and not eat it, too…well, no problem. I’ll take your slice. And have mine, too.

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SRP: Final Thoughts (Part 2)

Choice. Balance. Choice. Balance. Choice. Balance.

Each day comprises a zillion different choices. Each choice we make takes us closer to or farther from our goals. Health: physical, mental, spiritual, social, emotional, financial, professional, creative – that is what I’m after. Having list items that address each of these facets of health is a smart way to achieve or at least approach that holy grail, Balance. If I am a gimmicky sucker for having to be so ploddingly deliberate, outsmarting my own weirdo psychology in order to find it, so be it. To me, it is work worth doing, the better alternative to surrendering to other distractions on offer.

For all the jesting I do about being lazy, why is it so much harder to change myself by inaction than action? I see this in my diet and fitness most clearly. I eat too much, so I exercise more (never seems to go vice versa!), and develop a cycle of frenetic intake and output hoping that the physical effort will absolve me of my excesses. Even if these do occasionally “balance” out, it’s hardly Balance, and it certainly isn’t moderation. Better to determine the root of the problem and address that (e.g. eating too much gets fixed by eating less) rather than create additional problems through overzealous prescriptions (e.g. exercising 2x as hard and getting shin splints).

This isn’t exactly breakthrough cognitive behavior science, but it’s so much easier to do than to not do. Ok  no, it’s not easier to run a marathon than to not run a marathon; I think it is easier (maybe just to Americans? Maybe just to me?) to burn off 250 calories than to not eat them in the first place.

Active resolves, efforts to change behavior that require doing, allow us to distract ourselves with charts and hope and effort. To distract ourselves from the inevitable pain of change. When we try to change our behavior by doing less, we either pick up a new distraction to fill the new void or we face the process change with no dilution. Not for the faint of heart, nor the faint of intent. In a world where we can never manage to do enough, it’s hard to imagine that we should just sit by and passively allow the exorcism of excess.

And yet, that is just what the doctor ordered. It is humbling to see how destructive our best efforts can be. Better to get out of the way, dammit, stop the masochistic overthinking and overdoing, and lower the volume.

Breaking down isn’t fun, but it presents an opportunity: to rebuild. When this happens, there are many tools and instruction manuals at our disposal – it is important to discern which will help be stronger than before and which add no value (or worse). The lessons and the tools and the process and the days and each hour and every conversation and all those articles: the ingredients of a life are worth sifting through and learning from. New combinations lead to new insights lead to new tools lead to a better life.

***

That’s the WRAP on the Self-Respect Project, folks. I can’t quantify self-respect, so there’s nothing I can point to and say “I improved by this amount!” The whole point was to see if I could pull myself out of the dumps and you know? I think it worked. A month after finishing this project (during which time I’ve been posting here), including long stretches of RAIN, I’m overall functional, productive, and happy. I’m more patient with myself, because I understand myself better. What quiet joy. What a gift to myself, and to people who know me (and therefore have to put up with me.)

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Summer

Sun, stay up late with me,
Just listen to music
And let us linger in this languor a little longer.

My hair is crusty from the pool,
From the sun,
Again and again, and one
Time more. Just ‘cause.

These clothes
Barely qualify,
An ancient and holey t-shirt covers
A halter top untied,
Swimsuit bottoms wet then dried.
Feet palms scratch like sandpaper,
Wearing thin sandals smooth.

One freckled knee crooks up under
My thoughtful chin,
I’m lucky and a breeze swings by
Kisses me on the neck. I sigh,
“Can it be like this always?”
My heart quiet, my senses thrumming with the crickets.

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