>
I wanted to blog. But it’s difficult to blog well, when you’ve had a bad week. (It was easier, last week, in Guatemala, on pain pills.) But then, from what I see and read today, I’m not the only one who had a bad week. Friends in Southern California are worried about the rain (I know it’s bad. And we, in Seattle, feel for you, but sort of in the way that parents with grown children feel for a couple who just brought triplets home from the hospital. “Bless your heart. We just can’t wait to see how you figure it all out.”) I have one friend who is mired in anguish after an ugly divorce, another talks about lethargy and feeling the loss of passion, another lost his job, and another lost two friends in Haiti’s earthquake. Not a good week.
Honestly, when I feel some of these things — lethargy, gloom, grief, sorrow, pessimism, resentment — I am reluctant to tell people. Mostly because, there are times when their adivce only exacerbates the problem, and annoys me, and does unspeakable things to my blood pressure.
“You just need to think positive thoughts,” one woman told me after a recent lecture I gave about embracing grief and sorrow. “It’s just a phase you’re going through.”
“You are right,” I said. “I will think a positive thought about this phase. Thank God I’m almost finished talking with you.”
Call me cynical if you want. But don’t get me wrong. I’m impressed with positive thinking. However. There is a big difference between positive thinking and denial. You know, assuming that life can only be lived when everything is nice and tidy. It’s like some kind of shamanism.
“It is consoling and comforting to know that a member of the community is able to see what is hidden and invisible to the rest and to bring back direct and reliable information from the supernatural worlds.” Mircea Eliade (Scholar of shamanism)
But something about the woman’s comment still sticks in my craw, so today I stop by Barnes & Noble for some help. Not seeing The Power of Pause on the front table is disconcerting enough, until I notice the subject of the front-table-books: Losing Weight in the New Year. I discovered, very quickly, that it is not enough, apparently, to just shed a few pounds. Or eat the right food. Now, the goal is a “flat belly.” This phrase is in the title, of subtitle, or implicit promise of almost every book on the table. And it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, a flat belly will go a long way toward a positive mental attitude. So I stood by the table, sucked in my gut, and held my breath. It did not take long before I achieved a result. A young B&N employee tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Sir, I think it would be helpful if you would breathe now.”
Oh well, who needs a flat belly anyway?
On the ferry, headed back to the island, with no hope of a flat belly, no desire to read the newspaper headlines and entertaining thoughts with a hopeless timbre — furiously scribbling my mindset — I raised my head, and absorbed (literally) the view.
We had quite the day today. You could see (the vista) from Mt. Ranier (in the south) to Mt. Baker (very north of Seattle). To the west, the sun glints (a good word, the light actually bouncing) off the snow-capped Olympic Mountain range. I walk outside to the ferry deck and stand at the railing. The air is invigorating, and is good for whatever is ailing me. “Looook,” I wanted to say. “Everybody looook. The mountain!”
I do know this. While standing there, I knew that sometime earlier today I was awful worried about something. But right this minute, I can’t for the life of me remember what it was.
6 Comments
>Just read your blog, and realized why I like you so much (OK, at least one of the reasons)……….you have figured out how to support people in their processes without giving advice that might only make them stop in their tracks, let alone impede their progress.
It takes much practice to respond calmly when you feel like screaming………….you had some practice???
Oh! Yesterday it hailed while I was teaching my little ones!!! I went outside with a plastic box and collected as much as I could, and we spent about a half hour looking at it, touching it, talking about "hail and cold and wet", until it melted.
I wish you could have seen the faces: huge smiles and lots of "wow" and "oh my goodness" and "oooooo".
"Where 'hell' come from, Miss Debbie?".
"The rain froze into hail on the way down from the clouds".
"'Hell' wanted come say hi??"
I started laughing then.
>Love the previous comment. Excellent post today. Some days we're rainbows; other days we're wrinkled, wet newspaper. It's all good.
>It's like your recent tooth pain, Terry… you can't know that you are happy… you are pain-free… until you have had a toothache. The "downers" are every bit as important as those things in life that inspire awe, passion, enthusiasm… we need both :)
>Terry: I know what it was: You were into you and on the ferry, enjoying the view, you weren't.
Gretchen, our granddaughter, is eight. She would say"And that's a good thing. Jim Connelly
>That's true. Reminds me of John Jerome's great observation: "If I ever succeed, I dream, then I will be connected: numbness gone, insulation removed, eligible, finally, for a more sensory life. Or I will finally manage to crowbar my own ego out the center of the universe and for the first time be able to pay attention to something other that my own sweet, seductive self."
>Your post is refreshingly candid. I, too, recognize the power and benefit of positive thinking and attempt (the operative word—grin) to authentically practice it where appropriate, but I refuse to do so at the expense of love that is deeply felt and life that is robustly lived, both being deeply rooted in the soil of the heart. Love opens the door to astonishing gifts and joys, but by its very nature also exposes us to the worst possibilities of suffering and brokenness.
The annoyance you describe in your post resonates, as does your real positive thinking a la taking in the spectacular view.