Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Weekend Nonchalance
Another weekend arrives right on schedule. I’ve got no excuses not to take full advantage of the predicted sunshine and warm temperatures. I’ve got a full allotment of chores available, a breakfast date and lunch invitation, and the bike is all ready to ride. Let’s just see how fast time passes for the next two days.
Drip Dreams
We got a little rain over night Wednesday and into early Thursday morning. It wasn’t heavy enough to rouse me from my slumber, even though we had the window open wide, but it was enough to create a constant drip, drip, drip from the roof. It was the dripping that disrupted my pleasant night’s sleep.
In my mostly unconscious mind that ardently intended to stay asleep, the sound triggered a memory of when my gutter would fill up with debris in the past. That problem was supposed to be solved. The second story eave just above our bedroom window is near the spot where the plugged gutter would begin to overflow and drip on the deck and furniture below. That sound was drummed into my procrastinating mind whenever it would rain during the period I continued to neglect the chore of risking life and limb to clean that back gutter. The way I finally solved that dilemma was to pay for the installation of gutter covers that guaranteed I would never need to clean my gutters again.
As I desperately tried to remain sleeping, my mind took the bait of that memory and began working over the disaster that appeared to have occurred which would allow my gutter to be dripping over the side, regardless the cover installed. If the system was plugged again, then the whole cover as solution turns out to be a waste. That would also mean I needed to either get up there to investigate and maybe remedy the situation, at significant risk, or convince the company that installed them to get back out here and live up to that guarantee. I don’t know which is the worse option.
By now I expect you are getting a feel for what kind of gentle, restful sleep I was enjoying in the pre-dawn hours yesterday morning. Those thoughts I was having morphed into some classic dream struggles where situations changed constantly and whatever it was I was trying to accomplish continually evaded my grasp.
When the alarm triggered to signal the end of my allotted slumber, I was prepared to start the day in a dreary gloom for the torture I’d been forced to endure with the drip, drip, …drip. That, and the frustrating dreaming which had launched off my concern over our gutter problem.
Cyndie spoke first. “That drip off the neighbor’s roof sure is irritating,” she moaned while trying to stretch toward the state of being awake.
The neighbor’s roof! Why didn’t I think of that!? Obviously, it was irritating, either way. But I spent a lot more negative energy over that drip than Cyndie did. At least the morning no longer appeared near as gloomy for me as it had initially.
Wait, Don’t
Some things wait and some things don’t. I was contemplating writing about the subject of patience. You know the saying, “Wait for it, wait for iiiit”? It’s all about not jumping the gun. Not being so over-eager as to miss the better opportunity that presents itself in the next moment.
Don’t ask me about that question of how you know there is a better opportunity coming in the next moment. I have no idea. That is the mystery. That is why, when it happens… when you do wait and are rewarded with the prime opportunity, it is so magical.
The place I see this manifest most often is in the sports of indoor soccer and floorball that I play. If you rush your decision, the number of times you succeed in your objective is less than when you have the patience to delay your action. I watched this happen several times yesterday as players in front of me held the ball long enough for the defensive position to get impatient and shift, opening up a new opportunity to score which the shooters then took full advantage of. It was a beautiful. It’s the magic of the game!
However, on my way home from work, my focus on the art of waiting became distracted by Mother Nature. There is no waiting going on out there right now. Tree branches are filling with buds of new leaf growth. Dandelions are blossoming en masse. Shrubs are going gonzo with new growth, and any plan I had of doing some preliminary pruning to improve their shapes before the new growth happened is now well past the prime opportunity moment.
Another classic lesson on the duality of things in this life. Things aren’t so much either/or as they are both/and. Things wait, and things don’t.
Speak a Positive Message
I can’t think. My head hurts. It seems I have developed a cold. Where does thinking go when it disappears?
I find it particularly annoying to be sick with a cold during the spring or summer. It just doesn’t seem logical and it doesn’t feel fair. Is that one of the reasons our parents teach us that life isn’t fair?
Last night it struck me that something I have been trying to develop in myself related to my desire to strive for optimal health, is something that I didn’t have the benefit of witnessing within my family growing up. I want to send positive messages in my home with my words. There was a fair amount of sarcasm in my family that became a pattern I developed and executed all too well. Speaking positive messages did not come naturaly for me. It takes a fair amount of practice and a concerted dedication to enact changes in patterns that have been developed over the most impressionable years of a life.
I don’t recall ever specifically feeling any doubt that my family loved and supported me. That familial love was present in a way that I intuitively sensed and the nonverbal message of it provided plenty of comfort. But the verbal messages were coded. It was rarely as simple and clear as, “I love you” or “You are the best!”
Verbalizing positive messages to those with whom you live and work just may be the most dramatic positive influence you can create for the least amount of energy. Even when you are miserable and totally drained from having a cold, you can speak of love and appreciation. And the reward is doubled, because both the person speaking and the person hearing such a message are rewarded with positive, healthy energy.
I invite you to make an effort to listen to the words you speak and the messages you are sending to those closest to you this week. See if you become inspired to develop a more conscious pattern of verbalizing positive messages that will seed better feelings for both yourself and the people around you.
Considering Birth Order
Somewhat out of context, I find the topic of birth order on my mind of late. Like so many other things in life, when I begin to think on this in a more focused manner, it appears to take on a significance so great as to be all encompassing. It defines most everything about people and social habits and opinions and behaviors and reactions to situations. At the same time, when birth order is entirely disregarded and unacknowledged, it becomes a trivial anecdote in comparison to the dramatic realities that transpire throughout lives daily.
I am absolutely certain that my birth order of being the 6th of 7 births for my parents, and the 5th of 6 children to grow up together, has been prominent in defining the person and personality that is me. One aspect of my birth order is that I didn’t ever develop a close bond with my parents. It was a rather formal distance of respect for their authority and appreciation for their providing for me. Much of my direct contact and physical interaction came from siblings, as Mom and Dad were occupied with higher level details. When older siblings were off to school in my pre-school years, my memory of care-taker is a neighbor woman who no longer had young children at home. She worked for us doing cleaning and helping my mother.
Recently, I became aware again of my memory of times when I would notice that my parents rarely were present to watch my sports games in school or my choir performances. Seldom did I notice it as a lacking, because it seemed normal to me. But there were times when it engendered feelings of loneliness for their support and attention. Ultimately, at the time, I considered it more of a blessing than a curse as I was afforded quite a bit of autonomy compared to some of my friends. One incident in which my mother did agree to be a volunteer parent supervising one of my school events made a significant memory for both Mom and me. It was when I was in Middle School and for some reason that evades my memory, I was the student in charge of the inaugural event we named, “Friday Fun Night.” For the rest of her life, I heard her tell the story of how amazed she was at how responsible and capable she discovered me to be when she witnessed me order pizzas and direct the variety of events that were planned for the night.
As I think on it now, it comes to mind that it was indeed only some of my friends that had closer parental support and scrutiny. We were late members of the much ballyhooed Baby Boom. There were an incredible number of kids in my grade in school who had older siblings that were in the same class-years of school as my older brother and sisters. I guess most of the parents of that time of large families were stretched thin to the point of allowing the younger kids to fend more for themselves and rely on older siblings for support. For most of the gatherings of my gang of classmates that I remember, we had little, if any, interaction with parents.
The influence of birth order gives me new insight to consider for the multitude of families I’ve uncovered in my personal genealogy research that had large numbers of children. I will now make a point to note the birth order of my ancestors when filling out the details of the grand story of my family’s history.
Healing Palms
What a difference a week makes. I’m home in Minnesota and have been dreaming of Nepal memories all week as I troll through the business of the day job, only to arrive at the weekend with the onset of some affliction that announced its arrival by way of a sore throat. Last Saturday was all sunshine and palm trees and swimming pools and vacation food and fun.
Now, with a morning cloud cover and temperatures in the 40’s, I’m staring at palms as an antidote for whatever the heck it is that’s ailing me.
Failing Rehab
Not only was yesterday the anniversary of my flight to Lukla, it also marked 8 weeks since I injured my hamstring playing soccer. I haven’t played soccer since. It has been a struggle for me. For some pathological reason that I haven’t quite identified, I have undercut my own intense desire to return to playing soccer by entirely failing to maintain a rehabilitation routine. I’ve fallen off the wagon of muscle rehab.
In place of intense mental scrutiny over the reasons for my behavior, I am choosing to disregard my self-defeating behavior and pick battles that, for the time being, I feel up to. After an entire week in Florida, where I rested not just my leg, but my entire being, top to bottom, mind and body, I returned last night to my weekly floorball sport. I spent plenty of time in goal, where I noticed my reaction time is returning to my former productive performance, and I did a few successful shifts of running the floor. The next step in my plan of incremental return to activity is to try showing up for soccer on Friday morning. I will be far from full capacity, but I am interested to see what it will be like to run and try to control a ball with my feet. A pretty major test of leg control that floor hockey doesn’t require.
My inactivity over the last few weeks has produced remarkable results in terms of muscle loss and flab accumulation. It sure doesn’t take long to see the outcome of my slothfulness. This is one of the true injustices of our existence. It takes such a long time, and such extremes of effort, to produce evidence of positive results in muscle tone and reduction of love handles, when just a short period of neglectful power-lounging brings about immediate results. I shoulda been a sumo wrestler.
One Year
One year ago today on April 7, 2009, I was flying from Kathmandu to Lukla in the Himalayan Mountains of Nepal. If you haven’t read about it here already, I invite you to visit my posts describing the adventure. I’m reliving it in my mind this week and it definitely ignites a desire to be there once again. For now, I have to settle for looking at my pictures. It was a truly wonderful experience.
Time Again
College basketball is over and Major League Baseball has started. Time marches on.
Have you ever noticed how slow time moves on the first Monday back at work after a vacation week? I started the day in a sluggish fog, but then I actually began to get the hang of it by quitting time. I think I already wrote about how mind bogglingly fast the days passed while we were in Florida. Makes me wonder if a person who has learned how to truly live ‘in the moment’ at all times, ever has any sense of time passing faster or slower.
It makes me dizzy just contemplating it. One thing I am certain about, it is disorienting to suddenly switch from the quickness of the NCAA Championship basketball game to the slow pace of the Twins’ opener against the Angels. It’s a good thing that sleep beckoned and I could at least enjoy the quiet calm of a slow night’s rest to reset my equilibrium.
Time to test a Tuesday following a week of vacation. Do we really work five 8-hour days in a row? Oh boy. I think I need a vacation.
Flying
Flying is amazing. I think the majority of the world takes flying for granted. For the first half of my life, I had no experience with commercial air travel. Since then, I’ve had what I consider to be ample opportunities. I feel like I have both perspectives.
If you never fly, it really doesn’t hold much meaning. You remain oblivious to all the nuances of activity related to being a customer of the airline industry. For that reason, I include in that majority group who take flying for granted, those who don’t fly. It’s not like they can hold an opinion that flying doesn’t happen. It happens, and they don’t get to participate, so the end result becomes something along the lines of disregard.
On the other extreme, there are those who fly so frequently, it appears equivalent to stepping on a city bus. The wonder of it all is gone. They come to expect the whole operation to serve them without hassle. It becomes a minor inconvenience in their larger goal of traveling long distances.
Meanwhile, there are clouds to see from above, where the sun shines down upon them. The ground becomes a tapestry of geometric shapes defined by roads, rivers, farms, and communities. Sleek machines with jet engines roar to life and then float along to a mesmerizing hum. Worlds of people come and go, mixing culture and commerce at an insane pace. You can find yourself in two different parts of the world, in the very same day.
The middle group of people, those who don’t fly often, are the likely ones to find the experience still a remarkable one. For me, as amazing as it is to fly, I get a little disoriented by it. Getting home last night was nice for all the reasons it is good to get home again, but it is a little freaky to have been sitting in the Florida sunshine at 3:00 and then in the time it takes to watch a movie and have a little nap, find myself back in my kitchen in Minnesota.
I’m happy to trade the luxury of frequent flyer miles for my comforts of home. I guess it is easy to say when I know I already have tickets reserved for a flight to Portugal in the fall. I certainly won’t take for granted that opportunity to fly. It will be worth the challenge of managing the disorientation.
