Water Fills The Space It Finds Itself In

Water fills the space it finds itself in.

            When I recently found myself in an uncomfortable situation where I felt attacked, I was, at first, drawn into anger, in many of the dimensions of that old and familiar emotion.  Anger seems the first place I go, when a situation spins out of order and sense.  My “buttons” get pushed and I am dragged off in the direction of my reptilian, crisis oriented brain. 

            The dark clouds of raw, untamed, uncivilized emotions and untempered responses obscure my usual cheery, gentile approach to the daily challenges of life.  It is a quick journey to the Dark Side.

            I want to just throw my thunderbolts, and shoot endless rounds of arrows into my foe, throwing my weight around and relentlessly wage my own private war.

            Old fears show up, ghosts of anxieties past, spurred on by familiar inadequacies, the voices of old and powerful critics, and the scars of self doubts. 

            My rational, more civilized mind, just sits there, paralyzed by all the sabre rattling, until I can take some deep breaths.  I’ll need to allow myself to listen to my frontal lobes, home of reason, logic, and good memories of my prior successes in peace making and problem solving. 

            Slowly, thoughts of how I am a good problem solver come to mind.  I can entertain the idea that challenges in my life don’t need me inputting launch codes into my own arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

            I am capable, I remind myself.  And, my many talents at peace making and problem solving can be applied to the problem at hand. 

            I realize I haven’t faced this particular problem in the past, but I have worked through things and lived to tell the tale. 

            I just need to apply those hard-earned skills into this new challenge.

            Filling the challenge with my own unique abilities is what is needed.  I need to be adaptable, flexible, and, yes, methodical.  The reptilian reaction of anger, rage, and war-making won’t work, and will only lay waste to relationships and problem solving. 

            Change and crisis, and that initial response of anger, spiced with overpowering feelings of shame, guilt, inadequacy, failure, rejection, jealousy, and revenge, all stirred up, makes for a toxic cocktail.

            Sometimes, I wonder if I’m addicted to that gut-wrenching response, and those stress chemicals are my own kind of heroin. Or, am I just a human being, hardwired to be the cranky alligator awakened from his nap. 

            Yet, when I can pull myself away from all that, and let my gut unclench, I can see the forest for the trees, and I can adapt my problem solving skills, and get to work.

            I pour myself into the shape of the problem, like water in an ice filled glass, and fill in the spaces with my skills.  Once I take this approach, and take off my armor and lay down my sword, and pick up my peacemaker tools, the solutions show up, and I can move ahead.

            “Let it go,” I tell myself, pushing away the hot coals of rage and anger.  “Give it time and this will play itself out.”

            When I slow down the war talk, and take my time in walking through the battleground, I do better, and I start even liking myself. I begin to believe that this too shall pass, and I don’t need to start World War III. Later, that seems a simple truth.  But, in my first response, I just don’t see it.  I’m only the ‘gator in the swamp.

            Life does that, giving us opportunities to revisit a lesson, and dust off some old tools. Again, I relearn the lesson and realize that not every affront and perceived insult calls for my reptilian warrior mode. 

            “It’s just life,” I remind myself.  “I’ll get through it, and move on.”

            I can deal with this, and do that work well. 

            I come to that, eventually, after I remind myself that I am like water, able to fill the space I find myself in.

--Neal Lemery,  August 8, 2017

            

Outside of My Prison's Walls

“Even though I’m out, I can’t seem to make my own decisions.  Six years of someone else telling me what to do, where to go, how to act, and now I can’t seem to move ahead in my life, and do what I need to do for myself.”

“It’s like I’m still in prison.  I’m still behind the walls,” my young friend told me, as we were deep in conversation about his life and where he was headed.

Yet, aren’t we all still behind the walls, the walls we make ourselves?  Don’t each of us have that fear of moving ahead, and taking on our hard issues, and that tough challenge of having our own walls to climb over?  

Life has a way of moving along, and we don’t often see ourselves in control of the directions we are taking, or our ability to find our own path.  Our jobs, our families, our friends all seem to be the movers and the guides in our life that are shaping our daily lives, and where we are headed.  

I like to think that I’m purposeful in what I do, and what my action plan is for the day, the week, maybe even the year.  But, my daily routine and my usual “to do” list means the day has a lot of routines, and I end up responding to other people’s agendas more than my own, long term, “what is good for me” list.  

And, often, other people’s expectations of me can soon turn into my own prison walls.  Just playing follow the leader and letting other people’s plans and needs fill my day becomes pretty easy, and pretty comforting.  I don’t have to think much, at least the thinking I should be doing about where I’m going in life, and who I want to become, and the dreams I want to realize and achieve.  

I let the walls get built up, and I get comfortable with that, instead of speaking up for myself, and finding that voice inside of me that talks about my dreams and my goals.  

Some philosophers would say that each one of us is living life in the prisons we’ve built ourselves, too afraid of taking charge, and finding the ladder to climb over the walls, or to search out the key to the lock to the gate.  

I think I’m free, free to go outside and smell the fresh air, and walk down the road, or meet a friend for lunch, or mull over an idea and speak my peace about a hot topic.  Yet, my daily routine and my well worn path in the road of life is pretty comfortable if I let others do the thinking and gently prodding me into going along with the plan for the day.  

After all, it is easier to just nod my head and grunt an “uh, huh” when someone pontificates an idea that my heart is telling me needs to be challenged, needs to be explored at some length.  That would take some work, and I might offend the other guy, and end up getting deep into a serious and thought provoking debate.  And, I might actually learn something and find some flaws in my own thinking.  I may even have to take some action, and get out of my routine.  

Or, not.  Just let their thought slide by, and I go along with the flow.  

“Don’t rock the boat,” my grandmother used to say.  

Yet, I recall she was pretty opinionated, and wasn’t shy about challenging some popular ideas and politics in her day.  She wasn’t a model prisoner inside the walls society had built in her day, and she was good at teaching me to think outside the box and not take the usual way out of a dilemma by simply going along with the flow, and not rocking the boat.

A few weeks ago, I listened to Leymah Gbowee, the Liberian social activist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.  She was a young medical student when a civil war broke out in her country, devastating her family and community, and halting her promising medical career.  She wanted to break down the walls that kept her country from seeing an alternative to war, terror, and lack of opportunity for women and children.  

She didn’t have an army, and she didn’t have money or power.  “But, I had my voice,” she said.  ‘And I used it.  I spoke up, every chance I got.”

She wouldn’t take no for an answer, and she wouldn’t let any walls, any thinking that social change was impossible, get in her way.  She told the stories of the women and children in her country, and she talked about non violence and civil disobedience.  She challenged and she provoked, and she taught and she argued.   

She used her voice and moved her country towards peace.  She made people think, and pushed people out of their ruts, helping them find the keys to their own prison gates, and to find their freedom and their true destiny.

Leymah Gbowee didn’t start down that road with the idea that she’d win the Nobel Peace Prize someday.  She simply wanted her country to be at peace, and for her family and neighbors to be done with war, and to live in peace.  She spoke up, using the only tool she had, her voice.

My young friend is finding his voice, and I see a lot of other people finding their voices, and finding the keys to their own prison gates.  Folks are moving out into freedom, out into the sunshine outside of their own prison walls.

Neal Lemery, May 14, 2014

The Gift of Listening

There is power in having some space.  

At the end of the day, that time of simply being outside, in the sun of midsummer, taking in the moment, the quiet, there is space.  Space for thoughts, for sorting out the events, the emotions, the experiences of the day, and giving all of that jumble time to breathe.  All of that becomes sorted out, thought through, and given some rest.  

In being with a friend, hearing their story, giving them the space in this thing we call time, to be given the opportunity to find their voice, to share their words, to show what is on their heart, and in their mind, is a precious gift.  By being ears for them, they are free to give expression, to not be judged, to not be lost in the cacophony of chatter.  

That is a precious gift, a gift we seldom give, and we seldom receive in our world of endless tasks, deadlines, meetings, agendas, and projects.  How often do we simply “be”, and allow the sense of completion, of satisfaction, resolution of a task to simply fill our souls?  How often do we listen to that sweet silence of realizing that we have completed something, that a task has ended, an experience has been completed, and be simply in a state of recognition of that event?

And, that gift of listening, of space, is often best given to myself.

After a long and arduous meeting, on a beautiful summer’s day, I found myself in a quiet park by a bay, alone at a table.   I’d brought a simple supper and my guitar, and took off my shirt to enjoy the feel of warm sun on my skin, and the bit of a breeze coming off of the ocean, rustling the pine trees and the wild flowers.  There was a bit of salt in the air, and that warm, mellow summer smell of dry grass and sun warmed dirt.   

The jumble of all of the discussions, the planning, the decision-making, the politics of the group still bounced around in my head.  Trying to make sense of all of that, and what I was going to do with the day’s experience, filled my brain.  

Then, in the peace of that moment, and that quiet space,  the ideas, the emotions began to fall into place, to be put in order, and, finally, to be given perspective.  The cold beer, the cheese, the crackers, and the breeze on my skin brought me back to earth, back to the moment of this beautiful day.  

Slowly, I began to be aware of the bank of fog just offshore, the nearly full moon peaking over the mountain ridge, the group of hikers starting out on a trail, simply ready for adventure.  I could taste the age of the sharp cheese, feel the crunch of cracker in my mouth, and savor of bitterness of the hops of the beer.  My fingers became eager for the feel of guitar strings on calloused fingertips, repeating patterns and the joy of learning something new, by feel, by intuition.  

The noisy chaos of the day’s work faded now, my soul pushing it away, restoring my sense of perspective, my sense of what is really sacred about the day.

In that simplicity, I picked up my guitar, tuning the strings, bringing order to the guitar, to my experience, to the moment.  Soon, old, familiar chord patterns and strums, making melodies, making songs, filled my ears.  The conflicts from the meeting, the politics and the pushing and pulling of the meetings all fell away.   My ears, released from all of that, now were able to hear the sound of pine branches and grass in the breeze, the distant call of birds, the slow movement of the tide across the mudflats, the thud of a paddle against the hull of a kayak, and the vibrations of the guitar strings.

Wristwatch time faded away, only the movement of sunlight across the table, and the guitar, and its dance with the tree branches above me were left.  I became inside of the music, inside of the place, meeting up again with my soul, simply being present, quiet, at ease.

And, space opened up, space for me to simply “be”, to breathe, to experience this life in all its glory.  

Driving home, I felt alive, complete, re-oriented with the sacred, the holy.  All of the noise of the meeting had been left on that picnic table by the bay, alone with itself, left to disappear with the setting sun.

Actions for the Year Ahead

• Honor the artist within me. Pay attention to the Muse, who is around me, and heed the Muse’s call. Take time each day to be quiet, thoughtful, and listen. Take time to create.

• Always have a good book, or other good writing around to enjoy, to savor. Be fully aware of what I read.

• Be open to new ideas, and be able to objectively consider my own point of view, and, perhaps, reconsider and change my ideas and opinions. Don’t be afraid to grow.

• Treat relationships as sacred. Honor them. Give them time and give them air to breathe.

• Work well, efficiently, and with passion.

• Honor the Golden Rule: treat others as I would like to be treated.

• Hone my spirituality, and keep this at the center of my life.

• Live with love in my heart: love of others, of nature, of self.

• Be quick in compassion, slow in judging.

• Spend 10 minutes a day on working towards my long term goals.

• Ignore the frivolous, the inconsequential.

• Mentor others, show them by example.

• Celebrate accomplishments, don’t overvalue disappointments.

• Take time for the unexpected.

• Find pleasure in simple things.

• Stop to smell the flowers.

• Declutter my life, my relationships, my to do lists.

• Savor each moment and live each moment fully, passionately.

• Hand someone else the tool they need, and pick up the tab for coffee.