So Long!

The author is shutting down this blog. Thank you for your patronage.

Color comforts but to a point

This book was the gas thrown on the flame of discontent yesterday. I love this book, The Comfort of Color, bySusan Sargent. It's the first book about using color in interior design that is written well in addition to being photographed and laid out well, and the projects are executed beautifully. Having lived for the last four years in rooms with white walls, I got excited again by color's possibilities and felt eager to try my hand again at picking colors and painting walls.

But wait. I live in an apartment now. Forget that.

And all the feelings of discontent came waterboarding through and no amount of puny positivity could stand up to them.

Well, as Scarlett O'Hara said, tomorrow is another day and today is indeed the tomorrow I thought would be the same as yesterday. And it might, still. But at this moment, early, as the sky tints pale pink and Canada geese shout overhead, it's different, slightly. The heartburn is gone, with no residual ache in the throat as usually occurs, and my attitude is tightrope- tentative, determined to focus on just the rope in front of me and try not to fall in to the abyss of worrying about work and finances and bemoaning what was.

On to coffee and my rewrite of Ilona's Fire.

Some Days You Just Plow On

Whether for reasons of hormones, body chemistry, silly thoughts, or a reaction to reality, some days you're down, plain and simple. I find those days challenging to climb out of, not the least because there's the conflicting voices in my head.

One voice is telling me almost without words how colorless the world is, how tedious my moments on it, how I will never change to be like "the rest" of the world that accepts its fate and makes the very best of it, how I have "no right" to be sad when there are so many people far more worse off than me (a variation of the "clean your plate, there are starving people in China" saying).

The other voice, just as sneaky but more articulate, says "things will change, life is never the same from moment to moment," and "remember, these are just thoughts, they don't define you," and "count your blessings," and "walk your talk," and "get moving, your mood will change when you do," and "just try to keep the corners of your mouth up for a little while."

I can't complain to anyone about these voices, because that would be silly, they are in ME, not somewhere else. And I can't complain to anyone about the sadness and hopelessness that sometimes rushes over me, because I don't want to burden others who are just trying their best to get through these hard times and because what can they do about my problem anyway? Nothing. (Except a therapist, who could give me tips I intellectually know already from having read hundreds of self-help books since the age of 14.)

Now I understand the little outbursts I see on Facebook now and then. When I was in a better mood, I merely thought "stop complaining, see the positive and you'll attract it to you." In a down mood I think, yeah, but for not being able to properly phrase my feelings in a Facebook blurb, I'd be there too.

I wish when I'm in my more in-sync, positive, I-love-the-world-in-spite-of-sadness-and-pain mood, I could be more compassionate toward others who are in the mood I'm in right now. At the least to acknowledge that yes, they are right, their lives are not unfolding as they thought they would and that times are hard, but to hang on, don't give up, plow onward, we love you.

Now I see where self-pity comes in

I don't know why I didn't see this sooner, years sooner. Self pity also buys into that "reality SHOULD be a certain way."

I was thinking about a woman I know who has cancer and will laugh at you if you talk about how "brave" she is or express concern as to her wellbeing.

I think she feels it's as ridiculous as if I said to you, "how brave you are to have a wife and kids," or "how brave you are to work and support yourself," or "how brave you are to be alive in the 21st century--good job!"

You have a wife and kids, she has cancer, it's all part of what IS. Where we get into trouble is when we judge one to be a blessing and the other a misfortune. Reality doesn't label, nature doesn't label, God-or-whatever-energy-ruling-the-universe doesn't label--only humans do.

Our little human minds, so busily scrabbling away in the sandbox we call the world try to categorize this complicated experience into one word "blessing," and that complicated experience into one word, "misfortune." Absolutely ridiculous.

Self-pity buys into that "blessing" and "misfortune" labeling and bemoans the latter. And while it's busy bemoaning, the human who is doing the self-pitying isn't doing much else. How could your mind do this to you? How could it slap a label on an experience and in the process paralyze you?

As a child I was deep into self-pity--mainly for my lack of social skills and the loneliness that resulted. I felt that people who tried to get me out of my self-pity mode, mainly my mother and her parents, were insensitive. Didn't they understand?

I suppose they were doing the best they could to lift me out, mainly by pointing out that self-pitying wasn't doing me any good and by pointing out my blessings. Perhaps there would have been a better way to deal with it.

I remember being confused--wasn't it normal to feel self-pity? After all, my situation sucked. I would have been crazy not to have felt self-pity.
That's the the trap of those who feel they have no power.
A child has very little power. An adult has much more. I don't know if I could have overcome my self-pity as a child. But I find it much easier to overcome as an adult.

Thoughts ARE insects

I've noticed that my thoughts in the morning are very negative but seem to grow a little more sunny as the day goes by. Before I realized this, I'd be at the mercy of my thoughts every morning, but now I simply watch them flying around, virtual butterflies darting through my mind flashing their wings of crimson, burgundy, gold, and blue-black, and I say to myself, 'there they go, those morning thoughts. Aren't they interesting.'

It all sounds very airy-fairy, I know, but I was inspired by many books that say basically the same thing: Watch your thoughts, be aware of them, but don't become attached to them.

I never really knew what exactly that meant nor how to actually "do" it until I read a book by Byron Katie called "You Are Not Your Story." In the book she takes people through some negative thoughts they've written down and proceeds to question them about the thoughts until the people see that they're just thoughts, not reality, but they've been treating those thoughts as though they were reality and being harmed by them.

Fascinating and simple. Her method is called The Work, and even just reading about it helped me realize two things: that my thoughts are not ME, and often they're not even TRUE, but I've rarely questioned their validity.

Dark Clouds and Gratitudes

Some would say a dark cloud is hanging over us, what with my husband being out of work, my oldest son hurting his hand and not being able to do his research in chemistry because he can't use the glovebox in his lab and not being able to fully share in the physical childcare of 7 month old A.J., and now my middle son losing his job as an investment analyst.But things could be much worse and I'm grateful for what we have.

Let's delete this word from the English language

It's taken me many years to conclude that we should eliminate "should" from the English language. That's only because of the influence of the word should in our culture. Really, it's self-evident, if you get beyond the "shoulds" about should.
Should is anti-reality. Nothing in reality supports the notion of should. Things either are or they aren't. You can't change reality by using the word should and it only adds pain and suffering if you try. The best thing you can say about should is that when used in arenas over which we have control, should can get you doing something about a situation: I should work out; I should go back to college; I should try to be more kind. But in many ways, should is used harmfully by most of us: She should be nicer to me; He should get a better job; He should go back to college. Totally pointless to use should in those contexts, because there's not way you can "should" someone into doing what you think they should do.

To remember how pointless should is, I think I'll try to remember these cliffs in northern Colorado, south of Masonville, near Green Glade Reservoir. My friends can all see a profile of a man's face in the cliffs. I cannot. I have good eyesight and an often overly active imagination--I SHOULD be able to see a man's face. But I don't. I simply don't. That's the reality. That's what is.

In fact, I submit that we should replace the word should with is or isn't. Those are two obvious conditions, two comments on reality. Should is not reality. It's not real. And where we get into trouble is when we think it reflects reality.