Tag Archives: Introspective

Auditory Gifts

Christmas was blissfully free of large amounts of gift-giving this year, providing us with time to focus on the important activities of re-connecting with family that we frequently only see once or twice a year, and of just spending some relaxing down-time in front of classic Christmas movies while drinking hot chocolate and having fluid discussions about this and that (passionately avoiding the subject of politics wherever possible).

And, for the opportunity to do all of these things, I am thankful.

Nearly four years into the marriage, I’m just becoming well acclimated to Karen’s side of the family. I’ve had some hit-and-miss relationships with some members of the family on her side, for various reasons, and this Christmas I had some wonderful and stimulating conversations with some of them. I was very happy to have connected with them and to have experienced substantive interaction.

I couldn’t really decide why that had happened, however, until my father-in-law summarized it the best. He said that, often, we are far too interested in communicating ourselves to spend the time getting to know those to whom we are communicating. In my words, these individuals and I had always spent time talking at each other instead of to each other until this year.

For the first time in our marriage, I felt as though I truly took the time to listen to some of our family, and the result was that we found a great deal more common ground than I had ever anticipated. Part of this is that we have all progressed in our spiritual and life journeys since last we spoke, but a great deal of the reason is that we took the time to listen as well as speak for the first time.

Sure, we agree to disagree on some things. I’m very politically opposite most of Karen’s family, for example (hence the avoidance of that topic), but there’s so much more in common than not in common that I’ve discovered after taking the time to listen first and speak later.

Learning the obvious lesson from this made a wonderful Christmas gift.

Here’s to the upcoming adventures of 2011…and to hoping our flight is somewhat on time today.

Photo Copyright by Austin-Lee Barron. Used by permission. 

I’d Love to Be Silent, But…

I set my status update a few minutes ago to say that I was clueless as to what to post about tonight. My friend recommended the “art of silence.”  I’ll avoid that one, because I think it’s way too heavy a statement for my current faculties.

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. And, while all of it is exciting, it’s also a bit wearing. If you’ve read my musings here over the last year or so, you’re not surprised when I say that I need a career change. I’ve made my living in the social sciences, specifically in health care, for about ten years now. On my worst day, I no longer believe in my discipline. On my best days, I feel like I’m beating my head into a wall that isn’t moving. This is a field I stumbled into quite by accident, and its time in my life is drawing to a conclusion, for a number of reasons (namely, due to recent health care legislation, I basically am not marketable should I ever leave my current position).

Fortunately, I’ve been wanting to return to academia since I finished grad school. The problem is that I’ve simply got too many interests for my own good, and narrowing them down to even the two or three that could be incorporated into a good multi-disciplinary program has been excruciating at times. The positive outcome of the three years that have passed since I finished grad school has been that I’ve finally found everything cohesively tied into one research topic.

I think.

But, there’s the issue of making a living while returning to school…which is problematic considering I can’t pursue the type of study I want to here, which means leaving my current position…refer to paragraph one. So, making a career change that would allow me to return to something creative on a full time basis (instead of dabbling and freelancing as I do now) seems a logical choice. In fact, sometimes, it seems to be the more interesting choice.

At the crux of the problem is the old adage, “Those who can do, those who can’t teach.” I don’t believe that to be true, but I think it says something, in any case, and what it says is at the core of my dilemma. Do I want to study writing, or spend my energy writing? Do I want to study theatre, or work in theatre? Do I want to study, or do? Studying I’m confident in, doing sometimes brings up a host of insecurities. Ideally, I want to do, and have the doing make way for studying. Then I become concerned that that’s too much.

And, did I mention that I’m married, so its not just me that I’m trying to factor into this decision?

All that, not to whine, but because I have all of this spinning through my head and not a clue what else to write tonight. So, here I am.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Hello, My Name Is…

Sometimes there are joys to living in an apartment building that you just can’t experience if you live in your own home. For example, just two weeks ago, Karen and I were jarred out of a sound sleep by the piercing shriek of the building-wide fire alarm. A false alarm triggered by someone that had had too much to drink. We got back to bed at around 4:00 a.m. by the time the building was cleared.

See? That’s just fun you can’t find anywhere else.

While we were shivering outside, we had an opportunity to meet the neighbors, who were just as cold and just as irritated as we were. You tend to remember the people you meet under those circumstances. Bonding under pressure, and all that.

Well, you would think.

I walked into a local Starbucks late last week. The barista making my drink looked at me quizzically for a moment, and then asked, “Do you live at (enter name of apartment complex here)?”

“Yes.” I blinked. I should know this guy?

“Remember? The fire alarm?”

Ding ding ding! This was the neighbor I had met that night! I hadn’t remembered him. He explained that the girl he was with that I assumed was his girlfriend or wife was his sister, and talked about events around the building, and his life in general. We had a good, if brief, conversation about our lives that had its launching point in a shared experience. But, I hadn’t remembered him. I explained to him that I have a difficult time with names. In fact, though I remember his name now, I can’t remember his sister’s name as hard as I try.

I have a really hard time with the fact that I have a really hard time with that.

The reason is that I think there’s power to a name. Think about how many people you know that fit the etymology of their names. I find it to be very frequently true. The power goes beyond people, as well. Our culture is one of labels. Physicians diagnose illnesses, essentially giving them names. We have titles and labels for common issues and problems and phenomena. The reason we do this is that naming something gives you power over it. We go to a doctor because we are experiencing a problem that we can’t identify. The doctor names the problem. Then there is a staring point from which to begin treatment.

I think that naming a person is a powerful thing, as well. I believe parents are exercising an enormous act of power in naming their children; I honestly think it shapes a part of that child’s future. Names aren’t something to be applied flippantly or without careful consideration. That’s why I have such a huge problem with derogatory labels and defamatory statements that apply hurtful or stereotypical labels to people. As much as we want to insist that these are “just words,” and that words aren’t powerful, that just isn’t true. Words are signs of our deepest reality, and they point to a meaning deeper than just a verbal formation of syllables and consonants.

So, someone’s name is symbolic of the totality of who they are. A name is sort of an umbrella under which all of that person’s beliefs and personality characteristics and thoughts and essence fall. To call someone’s name is a powerful thing, orienting both of you to a recognition that they are a person just like you, and worthy of the same respect.

I endeavor to approach everyone with love and respect, and so the huge memory gap I have with names bothers me a great deal. I’m bothered by it because I feel as though I’m not truly engaged with the person at a substantive level if I don’t remember their name. Whether that person is my wife or the waitress who takes my order at a restaurant, I want to connect with them as a human being. That means calling them by name, because to do otherwise is to reduce them to something less than human in my mind. I don’t want to be so pre-occupied that I don’t recognize a person’s name. I can’t think of anything more de-humanizing than that.

Yet, I do it so frequently.

It’s a work in progress. If I’ve ever forgotten your name, please forgive me. I know it’s a mistake I’ll make again, but hopefully with less and less frequency.

Photo Attribution: quinn.anya 

Music and Memories

What would you do over?

I could list a handful of definites: things I think I would do over a different way if I had the knowledge that I have now. I think all of us can. All of those definites would, I think, place me completely into a different place in life than I am now. Others would have kept me away from annoyingly negative effects (for example, I would have driven more slowly as I came upon a certain police cruiser last week…).

Music had its power over me today. I heard one of those songs that form such a powerful association with you that you’re picked up and taken away from where you are and back to where you were…in this case, with a specific person. There are a lot of wishes I could make…some to do over, some to not do at all. In this particular case, I was just left wondering what ever happened to someone I knew years ago.

What happened to me today isn’t all that unusual, though. Honestly, it happens quite a bit. In fact, I have specific songs in my library because I know they will transport me like that, and I honestly just want to vividly remember the people and events of which they trigger memories. Music has an enormous associative ability to do so, and, as a result, music often leaves me pondering the exact question I was pondering today: would I really have done certain things over?

For some reason, that question almost always centers around my undergrad days, possibly because I’ve looked back on them with a certain mystique and nostalgia over the past few years. The answer that I’m left with is always the same: I’m not sure. For all of the positive changes that I could arrange for my life by somehow traveling back and preventing myself from doing things that were either overtly stupid, or things that just really seemed like a good idea at the time, I think that there’s also a sort of curse that would be associated with knowing the future, with knowing the outcomes of all of your potential actions before deciding which ones to take.

For all of my fellow Dr. Who nerds, you may recall that, when visiting Pompeii with Donna, the Doctor mentions that there are certain things in the timestream that can be altered, and others that are cast in stone. The ones that are cast in stone must be left to happen, regardless of his ability to change them, because they simply must be. His curse as a Time Lord was always being able to know which was which.

I’m not sure I want that curse, because, as disappointed as I am with my past decisions at times, I know that they were formative to who I am today. There’s so much about my life that I could never have predicted, that has turned out beautifully. There’s so much that I know still will, providentially, without my being able to see now how that might occur.

Even if I could have the ability to know or to have a “re-do,” I don’t think I would want it. I think its an issue of faith, because, even at the end of a Monday, I have to believe that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

I hope it turns out well with your week, also.

Playful

An odd thing about my family is that we were never all that interested in the past. By that, I mean that it wasn’t a priority for us. Perhaps it was the fact that our genealogy became largely untraceable after a certain point on my father’s side. Whatever the case, the present was always much more important, and the future so much more so. A few attempts were made to establish traditions through the years, especially around the the Holidays, but few of them ever gained any strong footing. We were always much more established in today, in what was going on now, and where it would lead…not at the expense of history (I was always taught well and knew the family’s past), but as a matter of focus. The past was over. Learn from it and move on.

As a result, I dwell very little on my childhood…at least, I did until I was married. Something about starting our own family brought me back to those times. I’m fortunate in that my parents still live in the home in which I grew up. So, returning there, I can experience quite a flashback of memories if I let it happen. I began to dwell a great deal on my high school and college experiences during that time.

Over the long weekend, Karen’s side of the family visited, and brought along my little nephew, who’s not quite two years old yet. I managed to teach him about light switches and at least one new word over the course of the weekend…I was rather proud of myself.

After the family left, and I was retreating into some much needed introvert time and processing the weekend, I started to think about how formative all of those interactions were to this little guy. Every time any of us interacted with him in any way, he learned something. I started thinking about memories that suddenly recurred to me that I hadn’t thought of in years…lessons I learned about life from my parents, good and bad, both in the form of advice and in the form of the “school of hard knocks,” all from my early childhood. These are times that I almost never recall.  I wonder at how my parents, or any parents, assume the enormous responsibility that is raising a child. I’ve seen it done wonderfully, and I’ve seen it done horribly. The interesting thing about the situation is that its fun…that the responsibility, while it should be taken seriously, shouldn’t weigh us down with indecision and panic. I confess the thought of having our own children has weighed me down with those exact emotions at times, but I think now of how playful the whole process is…playful in the sort of way discussed recently over at Transpositions: a theatrical, exploratory sort of play in which we all need to engage.

Someone told me this weekend that he has seen old couples stay young because they were unexpectedly raising a child…that something about the process preserves an emotional and mental youth. Perhaps all play is just that way, and we should all engage in that sort of play for exactly that reason, lest we lose our wonder, or our sense of adventure, or…dare I say…our innocence?

Here’s to staying young!

Photo Attribution: eschipul