The Voice of Self-Reliance

In 1830 Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered a sermon to his congregation on self-reliance. Self-reliance was a common theme throughout his lifetime, one that formed the basis for all of his work. Generally, it encouraged independence and personal resourcefulness, but more importantly, it pointed to the great value in being authentic...in being who you are and letting that inner instinct guide you to do what you were meant (or need) to do.  Emerson's words and ideals are valid, even 181 years later. The whole notion of self-reliance, I realized, puts the responsibility for my life in my hands. We have been shown how powerful self-reliance is by so many, especially those persons in history who stepped forward against all odds to create change for the rest of us.

My mentor, Bob Stevens, often said that life is like an onion, with so many layers. I see self-reliance also being an onion. What I tell myself about it activates the motion I put forward in my life. There are certain things I realize that none of us have a say over: our skin color, the color of our eyes, our genetic predispositions (to a point). These things, particularly, cannot be changed by any great degree. We can get a spray tan or we can buy contacts, but generally the naked child who enters the world never changes; physically, we are who we are. Sometimes this presents great challenges and obstacles, other times these non-changeable things work to our benefit. Today, I considered that I needed to address that which I had mastery over and let the things go that I had no mastery over. What I decided to do is take responsibility for how I care for the vessel I was born into. That, I decided, was self-reliance.

As I look back over my life I realize that the times I have practiced self-reliant were the times when I felt most at peace with my life. Even when things were not going well for me, in retrospect I moved through those times with much less anguish when I was practicing self-reliance. When I felt victimized or subjected to whatever life was trying to throw at me is when I felt the most pain and most stuck and wanted to be saved by someone, anyone. Self-reliance, when done with intention and a universal sense of caring for others, always moved me in a direction that was a "win-win" for everyone. Sometimes the win was not evenly split, but it always felt balanced and fair. In those time when I met self-reliance and made friends with it, I found my health, my order, my sense of equality with the world. I found peace. There is great personal power that comes when I know I can care for myself or the people I love, in spite of hardship or challenge. Self-reliance is the invisible muscle of life...so thanks Mr. Emerson for speaking to me from the past. It was a nice reminder.

The Voice of Caring

The definition for "caring" as listed in the online dictionary defines it as "to be concerned or solicitous; have thought or regard." As I consider what this means to me, I realize that my "care and concern" for another is  based upon examples set forth by my family of origin.While my family had great "heart" and "emotion" the messages of how to care were skewed and very humanly flawed. It is that very flaw that has motivated me to write, to spend years in self-reflection and perhaps has even created a fertile pathway to my own spirituality. All those things are wonderful and I am deeply grateful for the fire. It has, too, left a tender wound that sometimes gets activated. We all have those wounds and by definition, we cannot escape the humanness of those who loved and love us. But if we understand how the caring we received as children have shaped us, then we can perhaps reshape our own methods of caring in a way that serve us and the people we love.

Caring for others comes in so many colors and shades. There are as many ways to care for another as there are people in the world. With so many layers of complexity, it is hard to offer a simple formula that covers all our bases. There is, though, simplicity in caring. The first step is always the hardest because it is the foundation of everything. Foundations being the critical part to any structure tells me that I must have my intention and my heart cleared before the caring I offer is understood. What I have learned to be important is that my caring must come from a non-judgmental place, holding in high esteem the value of myself and the other person. Without this as a foundation, no caring (no matter how well intentioned) will be understood or even received. I do know that caring has no room for entitlement, prejudice, or opinion of what I think is good for someone else. I do know that for a person to show their care and concern is not given based upon what they "do" for us but for who they are. It depends upon me to be present and willing, to be kind, and to listen and hear what is said and felt. It also requires a deeply abiding patience that can be lost in the turmoil or our own reaction to who they are as a person. (And yes, sometimes this patience requires a very super-human kind of effort!)

All of my primary caretakers are now gone, living beyond life's veil. My experience with them, as they each reached the end of their lives, was that most of them felt deep regret for what they missed, how they might have cared differently or more compassionately...more intentionally. Regret is the greatest weight of the soul and I have witnessed it first hand. So the ghosts of my ancestors ask me to ask myself, "What if that person were gone from my life tomorrow, what would I miss?" I always say to myself, "I would miss everything." But the truth is, I would miss and long for their uniqueness and quirkiness, their flaws, as much or more than their perfections. If I could do those little things that tell them they are important to me in every way, why wait until that intention is a regret. There is no time like the present to be kind, to be caring, to love and value someone with the little gifts that cost us nothing at all but when left unspent, cost us everything.

The Voice of Definition

As I walked our dogs this morning, among nature in our neighborhood, I was at once in a forest but with a rushing river of cars speeding by me on their way to some hurried destination. I realized that we all live within the life limits of contradiction. I listen to the birds outside my window, chirping their songs and I hear the clicking of my nails on my computer. We live in a metropolitan city of 3 million people, in the country. My husband and I have four children and three grandchildren in a family that has experienced great joy, sorrow, celebration, anger, delight, and frustration, but great love. I have a blessed life and a challenged life. This morning, as I listened to the cars speeding past me, I pretended there was a rushing river running through the forest I walked in. I could have chosen to be annoyed with the sounds of cars, their "breath" as they rushed past me in my solitude. Instead, I redefined them. There was a time in my life when I would have been unable to do that.

How often in my life have I rushed from one destination to another, annoyed with the doingness of my life, anxiously trying to get to the next thing on my list? The trouble with living our lives is that the "to do" list is never finished. At days end, there is always another day to fill up. I understand a busy life, I have lived that kind of life since I was a child, chasing my mother around as she worked hard to be a professional business owner, mother, caretaker, and still have an attempt at her own life. I didn't stop when I left home; I fill up my days, like a water pitcher full of water and at most day's end I am empty and ready for rest. But now, instead of having anxiety over the amount of water in the pitcher, I simply have learned to drink one glass at a time.

Life today is far more complicated than it was when I was a child. The "busy" has been remodeled and redefined. But humanity still complains about the same things. The greatest gift Oprah gave to the world, honestly, is the reminder to be grateful. The job I have to suffer through traffic to get to feeds my family, the stacks of laundry reminds me that I have clothes to wear, the dishes I have to do reminds me that I have a full belly when many in the world are going hungry, the opportunities to do what I love reminds me to honor the minutes and hours of my day because I have awakened, once again, to a life full of contradiction...but to a life I love. It took me years to redefine my life and what each moment means to me. I am deeply grateful for the contradictions and the blessings and how just a slight change of perception has redefined my precious days.

The Voice of Happiness

Abraham Lincoln said that people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. I resisted that concept for so long. Life, as it looked from my perspective, did not always look happy. And so I reasoned, if my life circumstances were not what I wanted them to be, why should I be happy. If I saw a funny movie I laughed; if I heard a really good joke, I would chuckle; when I had my family with me cooking in the kitchen, I felt happiness. I simply did not get what A. Lincoln was talking about. I did consider him to be far wiser than I, I just could not reconcile in my heart or mind how "happiness" and "unhappiness" could co-exist.

In my wiser years (which I hope I have at least have crossed into) I have learned that I was right. Happiness and unhappiness are distinctly opposing forces and cannot reside in one room at the same time. They are a little like relatives who hate each other but cannot be at a holiday function together. But I think I now understand what Mr. Lincoln was trying to say. His life was laced with tragedy and yet somewhere in all of his sorrow, he found a piece of happiness that whispered its secret to him. I don't know, truly, if I have the words to sum it up better than he, or one of many others who have gone before me...but I am going to give it a shot.

There is the happiness that comes when I receive a surprise, whether it is a phone call, a gift, or something more miraculous like the birth of our children. Those events, those moments, that make us happy ignite our hearts in the same way that challenge and tragedy ignite sorrow. The emotion of happiness is different than the decision to "be happy." The kind of happiness that echos from the voice of Lincoln's grave is the concept that happiness is a state of being. It is about choosing to be happy. In my Buddhist inspirational message today, it read, "There is nothing clever about not being happy." (Arnaud Desjardins) Beside the quote, on the next page, is a picture of a horse on his back rolling in a beautiful green meadow. I have come to the place in my life where I have decided that my anguish has long outlived itself. Like that horse, I am ready to roll around in the life I have been blessed with, regardless of the manure that might be hidden in the beautiful green leaves called my life. Spending anytime at all being unhappy simply stole my goodness right out from under my nose. Life was asking me to open up my arms to receive the gifts it had laid at my feet. I don't know why it took me so long, but I am ready to live differently. Happiness, I am choosing you today.

The Voice of Conflict

We live in a world of opposites. There is no escape from the diametrically opposed forces that exist in the Universe or in our own lives here on Planet Earth. In Byron Katie's book, "Loving What Is," she exposes the dangers of mental conflict and the insanity we create needing things to be the way we want them to be. We isolate, separate, segregate, and sometimes hate instead of just accepting that not all things are lined up with our own views of the world. The demonstrations being held around the globe demands freedom...freedom to be allowed our own point of view, our own voice. But your song is more than likely sung in a different tone, with a different resonance than the song I sing. Instead of making it wrong, perhaps the symphony depends upon releasing my inner conflict so our notes can blend.

There have been more times than I care to admit when my inner conflict blocked out common sense. Perhaps it was someone else who whispered or yearned for my more practical approach; maybe it was my own inner voice trying to be heard that showed up in the form of a stomach ache or mental anguish as I prepared to do something that would result in the opposite result of what I wanted. If I am honest with myself, there are always signs when I am headed down my conflicted and wrong path. Sometimes conflict shows up when "my important" in our relationship is not "as important" to you. The only path for solution is to call it what it is: conflict. Not right or wrong, just conflict. From this very real starting point, rationale can become the vehicle that takes us into loving and thoughtful solution. Einstein said, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used to create them." Our personal conflicts usually depend upon an illusory foundation: our need to be right.

What I have come to believe to be true about "conflict" is that it exists for me when I am not heard. When my freedoms (or anyone's for that matter) are suppressed and constricted, my voice is being muffled or I am choking back my own wisdom. There are times when my conflict could hurt me and take me away from what is really important. And yes, sometimes I have to squander my precious time exploring that dark and foreboding territory. All I know is that when a hand stretches out to meet me and offers me grace in my craziness, offers me freedom to simply sit with my moment of confusion, then I know I am heard. In that moment I know that someone cares enough to listen and to give me a break for being human. All we need is love, truly, to take the wind out of the sails of conflict. Then, even if we are different from each other, the unique notes we sing can be the song that breathes life back into the way we live.