Getting Started by Recommitting

What seems like a hundred years ago now, a friend and I were both going through a rough time. Be each had crazy things going on in our lives and together, we decided we needed to simplify, clean house and move on. It was that day that we created our mantra – “remove the chaos.”

A couple decades later, my friend was living a happy, full life. Me, on the other hand? My life was loaded with stumbles, struggles and disappointments. My personal life, home and career essentially fell apart, riddled with conflict, loneliness, anger and despair – there was no focus, progress or satisfaction.

When I asked myself “how did I get to this place?” and “how do I fix it?” I found myself recalling my mantra from an earlier time when I thought things were bad, but oh, things were so much better.

And now, I recommit to that simple, yet profound, plan I made with my friend decades ago. I will work every day, in ways both small and large, to start removing the chaos and find my way to a better life.

The Noise

I’m one of those people who’s super easily distracted, especially by noise. I’ll be reading a news article and an hour later catch myself looking at beach houses in Belize or shopping for electronics I don’t want or need. I guess this is pretty common nowadays with our constant exposure to digital information, but for me, it’s always been problematic.

Noise comes in different forms for me. There’s the usual noise, actual sounds that distract me like a sub-woofer blaring from a car in front of my house, loud conversations near my desk at work or a guy singing with his iPod on the train. But then there’s the other kind of noise – the noise that doesn’t make any actual sound, but consumes space in my head and in my heart. The kind of noise that’s so loud it’s deafening and makes my brain hurt, and only certain people have the gift or curse to hear it.

What I’m talking about is the sound of all the unhealthy things we get distracted by, all the things we “hear” and pay attention to, all the things that don’t deserve any of our time or energy and rob us of a better morning, a better week, a better life. 

I get so completely distracted by the noise sometimes that I can’t function at all.  I dwell in the past, think about the what-ifs, focus on regrets, beat myself up and lose hope that I will ever be truly happy.  I focus on my failures and resent others’ successes and allow myself to become a victim.  And all of this because I allow myself to hear the noise.

In my clearer moments, I think about what really matters and then it starts to make sense again.  What happened in the past is past – whether it’s a great memory or a painful one, it’s the past and it’s not where I am right now, in this moment, in this life, at my age and in my present circumstances.  What may have brought joy at another time, may not bring joy now, and dwelling on its loss is a waste of my life right now.

What truly matters is now and not the past.  But, letting go of all that stuff that creates the noise is so painful and difficult and so daunting.

There is no choice any longer.  To move forward and start living, I must learn to focus on what truly matters.  Not what mattered in the past or what might possibly matter in the future, but what matters today, at this moment, in the present time… because everything else is just noise and robs me of happiness in the life I’m living today.

Waiting

I just realized that I was waiting for you to do it with me, so I did nothing. For 13 years, I did virtually nothing and my life stood still while I waited. You did whatever you wanted with whomever you wanted without any regard for my needs or feelings and all the while, I did nothing.

Can I ever focus on myself? Can I stop waiting for that which will never happen? Can I move forward and stop waiting for the unknown magical event that will make my life begin?

Hot Stove

When I was little, my mother taught me to never touch the hot stove.  “It’s hot, very hot, and you’ll hurt yourself,” she’d say and I would never touch the stove.  Unfortunately, I didn’t apply this important advice to other hot objects and managed to burn myself playing with matches when I was about five years old.  The flame created a big welt on my thumb and I hid it it from my mom fearing she’d be angry with me.  I never once thought that maybe, had I not concealed my injury and my pain, my mom could help me, kiss it and make it better or at least put some ointment on it.  Instead, I learned to keep touching the “hot stove” and keep tolerating pain rather than face anger or disappointment from someone I love.

There are a lot of different issues here but today we’re talking about the hot stove, or any other object of danger.  Fact is: I keep touching the hot stove even though I know with great certainty that the hot stove will cause injury.  I have seen the proof and the impact on my life over and over again and yet I keep putting my hand into the flame.

Why not avoid the object of danger?  After years of soul-searching, I’m still not sure why.  Some possible theories –  I don’t love myself enough, I have low self-esteem, I am co-dependent, I have abandonment issues and the list goes on.  There are so many possible explanations, but regardless of the reason, I ignore the heat and keep getting burned.

A quick story that relates to this issue:  25 years ago, I worked with some cooks who liked to test me and push me to prove myself to them.  They were always doing some new, horrible thing to me or “making” me do things I didn’t want to do; one of these things was the game of “slap the flat top,” a burnerless flat cooking surface.  In their game, everyone had to slap the flat top as many times as they could before the heat became unbearable.  I had no interest in playing this game, but knew that they would torture me relentlessly if I didn’t do want they wanted.  So, over and over and over, I slapped the flat top, regardless of how hot it was or if my hand was hurting, simply so maybe they’d leave me alone and give me peace.  I never once considered simply saying “no” and walking away from their game.  Nor did I realize that the more I complied with them, the more hot stoves I would encounter in my future.

I still don’t understand exactly why, but I continue to touch the hot stove.  I never learned that I had a different choice and keep hoping that if I endure the heat,  that maybe, just maybe, I will eventually get the peace and happiness I deserve.  Strangely, I’ve never considered that I have another choice, the choice to create peace and happiness for myself and avoid the people and things that hurt me.  It’s such a foreign concept to me – chase after things that feel good and stay away from things that feel bad.

The hot stove is the biggest challenge I face and the biggest obstacle in my journey.  I am slowly learning to avoid the pain, but most of the time, it seems easier to walk into the flames and hurt myself rather than deal with the possibility that I might hurt or disappoint someone else.

It’s in my nature but doesn’t have to be in my future.

Remember to Put the Glass Down

My sister sent this piece to me today. It is so simple yet so meaningful that I want to include it in my blog and share it with others. I’d like to give credit to its author, but I haven’t been able to find the original and will give credit if anyone identifies it for me.

Anyway, it goes like this:

A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they’d be asked the “half empty or half full” question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: “How heavy is this glass of water?” Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz. She replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.” She continued, “The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything.” Remember to put the glass down.

Chaos, My Companion

The silence is deafening. Chaos was loud, but silence is so much louder. Ten years of coming home to the same mess, arguments, routine and you’d think it would all be so much better without it. But now, I grieve its loss and dread the silence.

This mess is too hard to explain, but it’s been my mess and the only life I’ve known for a decade. But the mess became unbearable and I had to do something, anything, to change my life. I couldn’t stand the lies and the loneliness anymore and thought I’d be better off alone. After all, we haven’t spent much time together in the last year anyway and fighting wasn’t how I wanted to spend our only time together. But time home from work (vacation?) combined with the winter holidays has truly tested my limits.

I wake up alone, spend the day alone and watch the clock all evening, still alone, hoping, waiting for a time that’s late enough to go to bed. I get up and start all over. Alone.

I’m trying hard to be with others, but friends simply aren’t around like they used to be. After all, I spent the last ten years filling my life with HER, her interests, her people, her needs… And, I lost some people, dear to me, who didn’t understand (or tolerate might be a better word) my relationship and chose to leave or, at the very least, create space. The space has now become so vast that when I look around, there’s no one there at all.

Chaos, dear companion, I miss you. And I grieve.

My Life as a Squirrel

I live in the city but have really tall trees in my backyard. This makes for great squirrel-watching.

They run and play and leap fearlessly, without hesitation from branch to branch and tree to tree. They don’t appear to worry about anything but just go go go. There is no helmet, safety net or parachute – they just live… as squirrels.

I imagine my life as a squirrel and this is what I see:

The squirrel walks slowly to the end of a branch and stops. He then looks for other squirrels and asks if it’s okay to jump, is it scary, what if I fall? He then backs up and thinks about going, but doesn’t. He continues to watch the other squirrels, day after day, and eventually expresses concern calling out to them – Shouldn’t you wear a helmet? Aren’t you afraid? What if you fall? But they don’t listen and keep jumping, high off the ground, limb to limb, tree to tree. The fearful squirrel continues to sit on the branch, paralyzed, doing nothing and starts feeling sad and resentful. He climbs back down and stays on the ground where it is safe.

He looks up at the tree in awe of the other squirrels, the freedom they experience and the joy they feel. He sits and wonders why he can’t live the way they do.