Posts Tagged ‘change’
Constant Change
How many dark and stormy nights does it take before we learn not to step down into the unlit basement? There is something creepy about the way things change while staying the same.
“Everything comes and goes
marked by lovers, and styles of clothes”
from the song “Down To You” on the album, Court and Spark by Joni Mitchell
Something triggered me into thinking about the time period when I was entering the work force after finishing school, 30-some years ago. There is so much that has changed. There are so many things that I don’t remember. But mostly, I feel like I keep doing the same work, over and over again.
It is the same, and it is different. Everything.
Have you ever heard the notion that the experience of deja vu could be the simple result of an imperceptible delay between the two signals arriving to our brain from each of our eyes? It is possible that our mind senses the delay and interprets the second input as already being familiar. The same, but different.
Same problem, different day.
Even the days keep repeating. Maybe we should rename each day of the week so there are no repeats. That would help.
Who gets that job?
It’s Happening
The weekend is over and the date has passed when Cyndie was to give an answer on the job offer she received. There are still some issues to be worked out before a contract is signed, but she has given notice that it is her intent to accept. I will announce the position when it becomes official.
It is official enough for me. On Sunday, she was cleaning out her closet to figure out what goes and what stays. By evening, she was sorting the silverware to find a set to take. The garden has been fully harvested. It feels like she is getting deployed. It is an interesting step in our dream to move us toward living on a small horse farm, but we still envision it as just that: a step toward our dream.
I think I may have more time to write. And, I think I may have less time to write. It isn’t clear what life will be like for me in the house all alone. I’m looking forward to exploring to find out. Obviously, I’ll have a story to tell.
Exploring Between
Nestled subtly between the moments of life when we are actively engaged in preparation for an activity, or slowly winding down from the post-action review that people naturally do, there is a time that I label as ‘between.’ There is no shortage of tasks awaiting my attention during these times, but lately, I find myself more interested in exploring how long I can put off tending to any of them before my next spurt of activity.
It seems to me to be a lingering residual of the recent span of time when my back pain prevented me from participating in any of my usual activities. I have successfully completed a series of physical therapy sessions which relieved me of my back pain and released me to resume as much normal activity as pain allows. Yet, I hesitate. But I am not just hesitating to resume all of my former activity. There is also significant neglect, lately, for my daily therapeutic walk and exercises.
I’ve decided that I might as well explore this in-between place while I’m here. I keep looking for what the trigger will be that finally kicks me back into a more normal level of activity. I can’t help wonder about the one variable that is always changing in all of this. I keep aging. I’m not clear on how much a role it is playing in my current situation, but it does color my thinking on the issue. Maybe one of these times I’ll find that I end up never going back to something I did before.
There is another thing that complicates all of this. I tend to compartmentalize my work-time at the day-job from the rest of my free-time. I don’t have the luxury of any ‘between’ time to explore at work. In fact, the extremely heavy amount of business lately, (and the fact that I am covering for the owner’s responsibilities while he is vacationing) is an obvious influence on the level of energy I have for investing in the variety of my non-work activities.
Maybe it will all be as simple as, …I’ll pick up my free-time activities again when the work load at the day-job finally settles to a reasonable amount.
Could this whole thing be the result of having succumbed, this summer, to paying a young neighbor to mow my lawn, like ‘old’ people do when such chores become too much for them? Time will tell.
Quick Change
The nice thing about spring snow is that it doesn’t last long. Saturday was cloudy and snowy, Sunday turned out sunny and nice.
Ian, Cyndie spoke about thinking of you while she was transplanting some pansies she bought from a garden store. I finally got out on the back deck in the warm sun and returned to my long-dormant bracelet sculpting project. As the chilly breeze was moving across my ankles, I thought about the high heat you have described in Portugal already. We are a long way from that. But we will soon be able to work on the landscape around our house.
We can’t get started on planting much yet as our forecast for the coming week calls for low temperatures overnight near or below freezing. Cold morning temperatures like that are enough to keep me from wanting to start riding my bicycle to work yet. Luckily, I’m prepared to return to exercising my ankle with morning indoor futsal matches starting today.
That isn’t really a quick change, but at least it is change in the desired direction.
Mental Revelations
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Life, so they say, is but a game and they let it slip away. (lyrics by James Seals)
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Are we letting February slip away? It’s not like we can stop it. In two days, it will be March. The game of life is marching on whether we think it is us who are doing the playing, or are the ones being played. If you don’t feel you have the ability to make choices about your own life, you just may feel you are being played.
We always have the option of choosing to alter our thinking. Regardless how sure we are about our take on the world, there remains mystery and complexity that deserves acknowledgment. Imagine if technology were able to produce a mirror that would reveal our suppressed anger and sorrow in its reflection. It could be particularly valuable to those who proclaim themselves as having nothing to gain from professional therapy.
Could we make healthier decisions if we became better aware of underlying issues that frame our perspective? Maybe.
I am inclined to believe that our mental health is not well served by our failure to recognize what it is that has hurt or angered us. It would be a shame to let life slip away without taking a chance of bettering our health by simply altering our thinking.
Dreadful Detail
The story of *this* John W. Hays and dreadlocks is one that I never considered until it actually happened. Who would ever imagine a man of my age, with marginally-able hair features, doing something so silly?
2008, before dreadlocks
It started back in December of 2008, about the time when I would normally cut off my long hair anyway, on my cycle of letting it grow long and then cutting it all off every 3 years or so. I was preparing to go on the 3-week trek in the Himalayan Mountains of Nepal. I mentioned to Cyndie, who loves my hair long, that I would probably cut it all off before the trip. She wondered aloud about the possibility of dreadlocks. Yeah, right. Me with dreadlocks. Ha! Really?
When both of our children offered their support for the idea, I agreed to make an appointment to discuss the possibilities with a professional salon, skilled in the art of creating dreadlocks. Carol, at Hair Police, Minneapolis’ best hair salon, assured me that she could pull it off without bringing any of my worst fears to life. It was close. But she did, indeed, pull it off. Over time, with Cyndie’s artful handiwork and incredible patience, we maintained them over two years and two international travel excursions.
I was able to avoid them becoming too unruly, so as to be presentable in work or other formal situations. It was a delight. Never in my life have I had so many people compliment my choice of hairstyle. I was a rock star without being a rocker, or a star. I will miss the strangers telling me, “Nice hair, dude!”
Just like all the times before, eventually, I reach a point where I miss being able to NOT have hair on my neck all the time. I become ready for a change. I usually need to verbalize, multiple times, that I have reached this point, for Cyndie to have time to reconcile the end is near. I love her dearly for the times she talks me through the occasions where I think I am ready to bail on the whole thing, only to find it was temporary angst speaking. Eventually, she senses when my comments indicate the time is really here.
I will admit to the possibility that she just lets me think it’s on my timing. It could very well be that she senses when the time is right, because she is the one deciding when that time is.
It was just a few days ago that she said she would cut them for me. We both agreed that the first of the year seemed like a good time for it. I don’t have any big travel plans on my horizon. I don’t have any reason NOT to cut them off now. I had thought I would cut them off when I got back from Nepal in 2009. Now is a good time. I am definitely ready to have short hair for a while again. Man, I love the feeling of rubbing my hand on the short nubs after all these years of not being able to.
I will miss my dreadlocks a lot. I will thoroughly enjoy not having them, too.
Into the Fire
Why does familiarity breed contempt? The more familiar I get with that phrase, the more I despise it.
In my grand acceptance of the belief that opposite realities coexist in all things, it makes total sense that familiarity would also bring respect and affection. For some reason, the classic winter holiday songs I adore –really, the only ones I ever want to hear– are the ones that are familiar to me from repeated hearings throughout my childhood. Not just the songs, though, but particularly the Bing Crosby, or Nat King Cole voices singing the songs I heard. They became my only accepted versions. It can be downright painful to listen to subsequent variations.
Another thing that reflects my belief in coexisting opposite realities is how pain can be both bad and good. What hurts us, can help us. One reality of that is emotional pain. Avoid it all you want, but that will never bring resolution. It tags along with you everywhere you go, like a trailing piece of toilet paper stuck on the heel of your shoe. But if you face such issues head on, speak about and deal with them, such problems can dissolve from your emotional carry-on, like magic.
Why haven’t I been able to get myself to act on that idea of stepping toward the pain? Probably, common sense. If it hurts, stop doing it. I haven’t learned how to get myself to step all the way through. I take that first step, meet the pain, and react defensively, often saying something that makes things worse instead of better. I find myself more hurt, and nothing’s fixed. I tell myself to never do that again. Might as well go get that toilet paper and intentionally stick it to my heel.
I was blessed recently by the experience of a lucid dream that directly reflects my idea of facing the pain and giving in to it, all the way. In my dream, suddenly there was fire. It was as if I was hovering above it. The fire didn’t appear to me as the individual pointy flames, but more as all-encompassing balls of fire, very orange. The area that was burning was very green. In the classic way that dreams can present, the image that I am left with is one of large flowery heads of broccoli. Maybe I can unpack that part later. There was a brief moment of anxiety over the threat of all that fire. Then my mind made the very quick acknowledgment that I was in a dream. This is the very precious moment in a lucid dream where I am able to sense that I am dreaming, without causing myself to wake from the dream. Instead of reacting in fear to the flames, and struggling to devise an escape, I made an immediate decision to fully give in to the flames. If they were going to burn me, then so be it. The word “immolate” suddenly filled my awareness, whether from my subconscious, as a sort of direction of my actions in the dream, or from my more lucid mind reacting to the decision, I don’t know. I held my arms out wide and allowed my dream-self to fall into the fire.
It is a brilliant moment in a lucid dream, that instant of having faced up to the threat. I’m guessing it is so dramatic that it causes me to exceed the barrier that kept me dreaming. I usually wake up at this point. But the experience is not lost, and I am very aware of the sensation that I fell into those flames and did not get burned.
It must be time for me to unload some of my baggage.
Happy September
I know I’ve talked about the magic of the changing of seasons before. It is happening again. Magic. I truly believe that even if there weren’t harvested bounties to be celebrated at this time of year, nor anticipation for the start of a new year of schooling, this time of year would still feel magical.
Whenever the August humidity breaks, the crisp evening air quickly evokes the first sensations of the change. By September the sunrise and sunset have moved in noticeably, effectively increasing the impact that the hours of crisp air have. It is heavenly.
This is my favorite time of year (along with my other favorite, winter), and yet I will be leaving soon to travel across the ocean to visit Portugal. On one hand, the pending travel adventure lends more spark to the excitement of this time of year for me. On the other hand, I’ll be leaving home at the time when the weather is just getting to my liking.
I like this time of year so much, I picked the month of September to get married. Cyndie and I will celebrate our 29th wedding anniversary this year by traveling together to Portugal.
I couldn’t be more pleased, regardless the weather waiting for us at the forest garden estate of our destination.
Polishing
I had an insight the other day while sculpting away on that oak bracelet I’m making for Cyndie. Let’s see if it translates very well, from the catacombs of my mind of a few days ago, to words typed by my fingers today.
I tend toward doing my sculpting at an incredibly slow pace. I work by hand and use tools that don’t remove a lot of material in one pass. Still, there comes a point in the overall process where I switch from the rough file, or rasp, that I use for creating a basic shape, to one that is less coarse, for refining that shape.
What stood out for me recently when I made that switch, was how the use of the finer tool reveals scars in the wood made by the first tool.
As I achieve the shape I am seeking by using the first tool, the piece actually takes on an appearance of being smooth, compared to the untouched shape from which I started. In a way, I could stop right there and viewers would be able to perceive the contours of the form I am creating. However, there is even more beauty available by going further.
Continued filing with the finer grain rasp will smooth out the high spots, giving more of a polished look. Yet, at the same time, that makes the ‘valleys’ of scratches left by the previous tool, really stand out.
It all relates to my life of late. For the most part, things were in a form that had me adequately satisfied. Life rarely allows ‘adequately satisfied’ to endure unchallenged. There are an infinite number of ‘tools’ in the world, working together to smooth our rough edges, whether we seek it, or not. The process reveals some of those scars left by the previous lessons we’ve been through, allowing us opportunities to take measures toward polishing them out.
I think the trick is in recognizing what is going on when the challenges arise. In my sculpting, it is a very beautiful part of the process, seeing the transition occur when I change to a finer grain tool. Wouldn’t it be a treat to be able to see our challenges as beautiful while we are in the midst of the process? We certainly appreciate the beauty of seeing and being among people who display a particularly polished personality.
Next time you are with someone you perceive as being ‘polished,’ remember the work that occurs to grow to that state of being. Then be sure to recognize that all of us are truly works of art!
Newsworthy?
Seriously. Turn off the television news. Why do we give them so much power in our lives? It intrigues me how our minds formulate a perception of familiarity with the anchorpersons over time. We come to perceive them as family when they spend years in our homes morning and night. THEY AREN’T FAMILY! Of course, it serves the broadcast stations well to market the anchors to the public as such, but it is not accurate.
One way to visualize breaking the insidious daily habit of television news is using the example of going on vacation. When enjoying time away from our home routine we find plenty of ways to fill the time without tuning in to TV news. For some people, it takes a while into the vacation to shake loose from that feeling that there is a need to turn on the news at an appointed hour. It passes. A week, or if lucky, two weeks of vacation and it becomes easy to forget what day it is, let alone that it is time to watch the news. Now imagine carrying that carefree bliss forward, even after returning home. It is incredibly freeing to live without that soundtrack purporting to be news, bombarding your daily life.
Shunning television news doesn’t automatically leave one ignorant of world and local events. Glance at the headlines of a newspaper or online news source. Catch a news update from a radio broadcast. There. You are aware. If you need to know more, look it up. Be in charge of what you want to give your attention to, instead of relying on what is served up on commercial television.
If none of this resonates for you, at least consider this exercise next time you open your eyes and ears to what they are delivering… Determine who is paying for the advertising during the news. You are their target. The television station is making money off its ability to draw you in as a dedicated (addicted) viewer. The “news” they offer is just an ingredient in the recipe designed to bolster the value of their ad rates and avoid falling out of favor with their paying advertisers.
I don’t want it as part of my life.
Of course, I do give up learning the “news” about who got kicked off their featured reality show that day.
It is my bliss.
Relative Something 