The Unkindest Cut

For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel.
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar lov'd him!
This was the most unkindest cut of all;
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms,
Quite vanquish'd him: then burst his mighty
heart.
–Shakespeare

Have you ever done anything unforgivable? Has anyone done anything against you that you think is forever unforgivable?

Who are our favorite targets of eternal unforgiveness? Perhaps an ex. Parents, of course, are often high on the list. Sometimes political or spiritual leaders who have betrayed our trust. Someone who has committed an act of violence against us or against someone we love. Someone who has hurt our children. Or any children. And, secretly perhaps, ourselves.

If we start our list of those from whom we would withhold forgiveness, we might find that some of those at the top are people we once loved. Maybe we still do. Like Caesar, we are most vulnerable to those to whom we have exposed our tender hearts. From those, we receive the unkindest cuts of all.

Therapists’ couches are populated with legions come to exorcise the demons of childhood, set upon them by well meaning or sometimes not so well meaning parents, by bullies, by best friends gone bad. At some point, forgiveness will enter the conversation, and become the key to freedom and moving on.

Not long after my mother died, I had a dream about her. In the dream she was standing alone chest deep in a small, shallow pond, fully clothed. She looked confused and disoriented. She tried to move to the side of the pond to get out, but wherever she turned, she couldn’t seem to reach the edge. I was standing nearby. Initially, I felt detached, like a neutral observer, but as I watched, I felt my heart slowly soften and I was filled with such deep, sad compassion. I wanted to take her in my arms and lift her up out of the water. I wanted to wrap her in warm blankets and stroke her hair and soothe her with lullabies.

When I woke up, I knew that whatever grievances I still harbored had dissolved. I saw her as she was, as we all are, perfect in her imperfection, loving in her own way, battling her own demons as best she could. A lot like me.

At some point in our lives, most of us find ourselves in our own pond of murky water, not sure how we got in there, not seeing how to get out. There are secrets lurking in the water. Draining the pond will give us a way out but will expose what we want to keep hidden. A tough choice.

A memory that still crushes my chest with shame is something that happened when my son James was two. At that time, I was living in Abidan, Ivory Coast, and I had traveled with him to Dakar, Senagal, where I was scheduled to participate in a panel discussion. Earlier that day, I had taken a ferry with some friends to do some sightseeing. As we were walking onto the dock to head back, I was horrified to see the ferry casting off. Somehow we had misjudged the time. Waiting till the next ferry would cause me to miss the panel. The ferry was still close enough to the dock that people, who like me had apparently thought they had more time, were reaching out and grabbing the rail, and stepping across to board.

Easy enough, but for me to do that, I had to hand my toddler to someone standing at the rail, so that my hands were free to get on board myself. I can remember like I am reliving it right now holding him out across the water while a friend reached out from the boat. I could see that she had him, but still I held on, asking her several times to assure me that she had him. She did. Letting go of him above that dark, oily water was terrifying. She clasped him in her arms while I easily took hold of the rail and jumped on board. I made it in time to the panel, but my mind was still on that dock, that moment of handing him over seared on my soul like a brand.

I’ll tell you I did much worse things than that as a mother. Things I have acknowledged and moved on from. So why is that that scene, even now decades later, now as I dredge it up from the murky depths of my dark pond of secrets to write the words, causes my heart to pound like the tell-tale heart of Poe? In my rational mind, I know James was not in any danger. But in my mother mind, terrorized by goblins of the night, I have a secret fear that in that moment I was more concerned about being late to speak, about letting people down and the attendant embarrassment, than I was about my child.

True or not, it doesn’t matter. I’ll never know. But how do I forgive myself for that? The unkindest cuts of all, the ones that haunt us, are sometimes ones we inflict upon ourselves.

I Totally Don't Know What That Means

In a TV commercial for DirecTV, Jessica Simpson, in her Daisy Duke short shorts, serves beer to some good ol’ boys at their table in the honky tonk. When one of them slaps her on the derriere, she kicks his chair over and pins him on the floor with her spike heel on his throat. As he writhes, she tells him the wonders of DirecTV using technical jargon like pixels. Then she looks into the camera and drawls, “I totally don’t know what that means, but I want it.”

I never thought I would have anything in common with Jessica Simpson, but I totally get this commercial! As some of you have noticed, I’ve added a Facebook page to my blog. And I’m grateful to those of you who “like” it. I’m trying to figure out how to “like” you back.

Like Daisy, I don’t know what that means. I’ve also added share buttons at the end of posts. I don’t know what that means either. I do indeed like your blogs, and I’m happy to click a button that makes that official. And sharing sounds, well, nice. But I confess I’m a bit lost in all this social media technology mumbo jumbo.

So please bear with me as I take some baby steps to catch up to all y’all racing ahead. I feel a bit like the new kid in school...on another planet! And please forgive me for all the social media faux pas I have already made and will no doubt continue to make. I generally have good manners, but right now I’m not sure what good manners look like or how to practice them in this new milieu. Please don’t hesitate to instruct me in these matters.

I’m going to be tinkering with the blog in some other ways, too, to make it more user friendly and to offer some new things. So please pardon the construction dust.

Right now, I think I will go make some tea and read a book. Now that I understand.

Rise and Shine

The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. –Carl Jung

I spend a lot of time reading and thinking and talking about happiness. People sometimes question the value of what might seem to be a self-centered pursuit. How can we focus on happiness when there is so much suffering in the world? Indeed, how can caring people turn their backs on hunger and disease and violence and poverty to seek inner peace and contentment? How dare we close our eyes to the ugliness and terror in the world and go about with hearts full of joy?

Is that what happiness is? Massive denial and self-delusion? A heart hardened to the reality of pain? The refuge of fools and princes?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a radical statement. I believe that the most generous, selfless, precious gift we can give the world is to awaken our natural state of calm, abiding joy. It’s always there, just a breath away. It’s where we came from. It’s our home.

We don’t need to kindle a light. It already burns brightly. It always has and always will. If we remove whatever blocks its light, it will shine forth in the darkness.

And oh, how much darkness there is these days. I just finished an historical novel about the war in Biafra. I remember the photos of the starving children with swollen bellies from that time. We see the same faces and swollen bellies of children starving today in so many places, while war and violence spread across borders and through neighborhoods. Fear continues to infect American politics, fear that arrived on airplanes and has spread like cancer ever since. Newsweek magazine features Chinese women billionaires on its cover, while Tibetan dissidents are jailed. Children are killing children in schools. The weight of despair threatens to crush us all.

We want to make things better, but how? Not by doing more of the same. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, thinking you will get a different result. Doing more of the same is what blocks our light. Buddha recognized that Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed.

Gandhi exhorted us all to be the change we want to see. What change do we want to see? A world that is safe? Then be safe. A world that is kind? Then be kind. A world that is not driven by fear? Then fear not. A world permeated with joy? Then be joyful. A world no longer shrouded in darkness? Then be light.

One of the lessons in A Course in Miracles says “I am the light of the world.” Although that might sound arrogant, the Course explains that this is not a statement of the ego, but a humble acknowledgment of the purpose we all share – to shower fear with love, to soothe hatred with compassion, to comfort despair with joy.

From one candle burning bright, a thousand candles can be lit.

Arise, shine, for your light has come.... –Isaiah 60:1

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Reflections on Lent

When Marie asked me to write a guest post about Lent, I almost declined. Although my faith community is Christian, I feel unqualified to speak with any knowledge or experience about a church season that often passes beneath my spiritual radar. Wouldn’t someone with better Christian credentials than I have be a better spokesperson? No doubt.

And yet, who better than a person with imperfect faith to speak about a season of reflection, penance, and devotion? Maybe I’m exactly the kind of person that spiritual seasons like Lent are meant to call.

Read the rest at Diary of a Heart in Transit.

Related post: Spiritual Simplicity, There is No Them

You Can Choose Happiness Despite the Obstacles

I’m delighted to introduce my first guest blogger, Ken Wert of Meant to be Happy, winner of The Best Personal Development Blog 2011.

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” ~ Gandhi

Happiness is no arbitrary emotion.

Granted, happiness may often be experienced as a fleeting condition, but it is not due to some unpredictable set of circumstances that spontaneously creates it then equally spontaneously runs off with it.

Happiness is, in fact, the predictable result of the correct and consistent application of certain timeless principles of thought, attitude, belief and behavior.

In other words, human happiness is largely a product of choice. We can simply choose to be happy. But what does that mean in light of the obstacles to happiness that so often get in the way of the experience?

Following, are three of those obstacles that can limit happiness and ways we can grant ourselves permission to be happy anyway.

Obstacle #1: Dwelling on Negatives

Roses come with thorns. Sunshine gives us life and sunburns. People are dual natured with both character strengths and character flaws. Spring indiscriminately brings us flowers and weeds. Cars transport us to our families and they sometimes crash into them. Parents give their children life and they give them neurotic complexes as well.

In other words, life is a mixed bag.

Just about every good has an element of bad somehow connected to it. Almost all positives have a negative flipside. Every silver lining has its cloud. All light has at its outer edge, darkness.

But here’s the thing: We have the power to pick which side to pay attention to. What we choose to focus on determines the level of happiness we experience even as roses prick fingers and sun burns skin and parents parent imperfectly.

It’s our choice to see the flower or the weeds below it. The direction of our gaze determines our view. We can choose to focus on what we love or what we hate at work. We choose to pay attention to the ugliness of the nightly news or the goodness played out everyday in our neighborhoods and families.

The choice is ours and ours alone. It’s in the tilt of our heads, the perspective we choose to look on life with, the condition of our thoughts and the quality of our choices.

And still so many people choose to pick and criticize, complain, whine, moan and groan about all that’s ugly and negative around them. They forget that rain brings more than wetness and cold. It also brings life. They forget that our challenges bring more than pain and sorrow and difficulty. They can provide us opportunities to build character and inner strength as well.

We so often and too easily forget to recognize that there is so much more than the things we don’t like in life. While the rose does indeed have thorns, every thorn is also attached to the branch or stem of a rose. You see, it’s all in the way we choose to see things.

So grant yourself permission to be happy, right now. Simply allow life to be the mess it often is with all its dual conditions of something good associated with something undesirable. We can choose to see the ugly, dirty side of life or the birth of beauty that so often springs out of the muck and mire.

Obstacle #2: Self-Doubt

We may have been raised by critical parents. Or perhaps we were compared to a sibling or neighbor. Maybe it’s the media constantly showing us what we’re not. Or possibly it’s just a part of our flawed natures. But whatever its source, we are very good at doubting ourselves.

The problem, of course, is that self-doubt often leads to immobility. We stop and hesitate and stutter in our steps toward the life we dream of.

But we can give ourselves permission to act in the face of our doubts. We can grant ourselves the right to be human. We can grant ourselves permission to doubt, and then rise above those doubts, letting doubt have its say, then ignoring its plea to remain in the spot we’ve stayed in for too long.

And yet self-doubt seems to keep finding its way back home despite the actions we take and the growth we experience.

We look in the mirror and see flaws while we look at others and see only perfection. We feel uncomfortable, sometimes even within our own comfort zones. We secretly think others are better, prettier, cooler, smarter. Our insides ache to overcome our insecurities and yet they seem to follow us wherever we go.

We look at the facts and see the results and know the meaning of so many parts of who we are and what we’ve done cracked and broken on the sidewalk of our lives. There is a map, a history, an autobiographical reality we can look at and weigh and measure and in each category of life, it’s clear that we just don’t measure up.

And so what!

It simply doesn’t matter. At all. So give yourself permission to be imperfect. I know I don’t look like Brad Pitt or think like Albert Einstein or have the success of Bill Gates!

And chances are that you don’t look like a super model or dress like a movie star or play piano like a concert pianist or have the character of Mother Teresa. What’s it all mean?

Oh yeah, NOTHING!

Grant yourself the permission needed to simply be who you are at this moment! Learn. Grow. Improve. But accept yourself today as you learn and grow.

In the end, we can dwell on what we don’t have and don’t like or on what we do have and do like. Neither attitude will change reality. But the former certainly changes the way we feel about it.

Obstacle #3: Trials and Tribulations

Mom may have hit you. Or maybe dad abused you. Life crashed and pinched you into a corner and just kept beating and beating and beating down on you in a relentless avalanche of adversity. And so no one really understands you. No one can fully empathize with you. Life hurts and is unfair and you feel it just couldn’t care less about you.

And some of that very well may be true. Still, life is full of two kinds of abused people: Those who define their reality by the abuse they experienced and those who tuck it away on a back shelf and create a new reality for themselves that is much bigger and more compelling than their abuse ever dreamt of becoming.

You have permission to live your life free of the shackles of the past. You have permission to stand and punch your way through the challenges of life, no longer letting history predict your future.

Grant yourself the permission needed to discard old, worn-out thoughts and replace them with new, vibrant ones, ones focused on the rose, the warmth of the sun and what is happening here, right now.

See the birds singing, the kids laughing, the music playing. Be filled with gratitude that the heart is pumping, the eyes seeing, your thoughts still, calm, at peace, focused on the moment, on what’s happening now, around you, above you, under your feet, inside the miracle called your body, between you and the person you’re with.

As you focus on now, yesterday and all its disappointments and even its horrors are replaced by a simple joy, a single thread of recognition strung into an eternal point called The Present.

Each present moment evaporating into the next present moment, leaves no room to mourn over a former life no longer directly under your feet.

Afterthoughts

Obstacles abound. Detours litter the road of life. Some of that road will be washed out, muddy, swampy, precariously dangerous. But happiness is not a prize waiting at the end of the road. It can be carried with us as we travel it, safely tucked away in the chambers of our hearts.

But how does it get there? We give ourselves permission to hold it there by virtue of the choices we make in spite of the challenges we face. In other words, we grant ourselves permission.

Ken Wert is a teacher and personal development blogger at Meant to be Happy where he inspires readers to live with purpose, act with character, think with clarity and grow with courage. Sign up for his free eBook, A Walk Through Happiness and newsletter! Connect with him on Twitter.

A Free Day!

Today is February 29! It’s just what I’ve been longing for – extra time. Maybe the day still has only 24 hours, and maybe the week still has only 7 days, but by golly, this year has a extra day in it. What a gift!

I’m torn between two options for today. I could use it to get extra things done. Or I could use it as day of rest and reflection. Is it a Mary or a Martha day?

For those unfamiliar with that last reference, there is a story in the Bible of Jesus visiting the home of sisters Mary and Martha. While Martha busied herself cleaning and preparing food, Mary sat at the feet of Jesus, listening to his teaching. When Martha complained that Mary was not helping her, Jesus defended Mary’s choice.

This is a difficult story for many, especially women. After all, someone had to get food ready. Someone had to be sure that guests were comfortable and cared for. Was Martha wrong?

I don’t think it is a story about the right choice or the wrong choice. I think it is a story about the different ways we are mindful, the different ways we show devotion, the different ways we are present.

So what does that mean for me today? How will I use this free day? Maybe I’ll be a little bit Mary and a little bit Martha. But whatever I choose, I will be grateful for the gift of this day.

What will you do with this free day?

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The Words Do Make a Difference

In my recent guest post on The BridgeMaker, I referred to the common call and response in church when the minister says, “This is the day the Lord has made,” and the congregation responds, “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” I bemoaned what I perceived as the congregation’s lack of enthusiasm in the often rote, monotone response, instead of what should be, in my thinking, a glorious affirmation of the miraculous gift of each precious day.

Rose Byrd very tactfully took me to task in her gracious comment. “Just saying the words may take a few moments to ‘sink in,’ but I have found over the years that the simple words DO make a difference!” She’s right, of course.

I can immediately think of two examples proving her point.

When my foster daughter Grace joined the family, she and Mia enjoyed only a brief honeymoon period before the fur started flying. Over time, their animosity became so entrenched that their attacks were automatic. They seemed incapable of seeing, let alone respecting, the other person’s perspective. Each saw herself as the victim of the other, on the receiving end of unwarranted meanness, self-righteous in retaliation.

I did everything I knew to do. We processed ourselves silly, went to counseling, discussed to exhaustion. Finally, I realized that getting them to understand the situation was a futile endeavor. Each was dug in too deeply. I decided I didn’t really care anymore if they “got it.” I needed the behavior to change, regardless of their understanding.

So I sat them down at the table and made a proposal based on the only thing I thought might motivate them – money. I promised to pay each of them $1 a day to get along. They had to be affirmatively nice to each other – ignoring each other was not enough. Only I got to decide at the end of the day if they earned the money. And either they both earned it or neither did. They would make money or not as a team.

The next day was a pleasure. They said please and thank you to each other. They offered to help each other with chores. They complimented each other. They were totally insincere, you understand. I didn’t care. Peace was restored.

By the time the novelty wore off after a few weeks, they had broken their habit. Over time I saw that they changed at a deeper level. They became genuinely kind to each other. The words that initially were spoken with thinly veiled contempt became words spoken in true friendship and affection.

Another time, it was I who was entrenched in hostility. I blamed someone for causing me so much stress and anguish that I thought I was going to die of it. I’ll call this person Fred. I blamed Fred for everything that seemed wrong with my life at that time, which was a lot. I hated Fred. I wanted bad things to happen to him. I fantasized about terrible things I’m too ashamed to describe. I felt no mercy. I wanted vengeance.

I repeatedly revisited all the wrongs I thought I had suffered at the hands of Fred, like watching news accounts of some horrible crime or natural disaster over and over. It was an addiction – a habit I couldn’t stop. And like any addiction, it was becoming unmanageable

My brain needed a new habit. Every time I thought about Fred, at the very instant I began to repeat my habitual pattern, I substituted a new thought before the emotions started churning. Before I was hooked. “God bless Fred and please help me mean it.” Let me be clear. I did not mean it. Not for a second. I did not mean the “God bless Fred” part, and sometimes I didn’t even mean the “please help me mean it” part.

Nevertheless, over weeks and months, very slowly, the blame loosened its grip. My heart began to soften. My feelings didn’t boil when thoughts about Fred crossed my mind. The thoughts didn’t come so often. By then, the prayer had become a habit, so that when a thought of Fred popped up, the blessing was automatically triggered. Sometimes I hardly noticed it. And finally one day I said it and gasped in amazement. I really did mean it. I really, truly wished Fred well. It was a miracle.

So my thanks to Rose, who reminded me of the innate power of words.

Let the weak say, “I am strong.” –Joel 3:10

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