That said, I like the idea of a set ritual time that inspires reflection. We as humans are good at zoning out and missing the guy in the gorilla suit playing through our basketball games, after all. These holidays - whether they be birthdays, Thanksgiving, Valentine Day, whatever - can be little alarms reminding us to stop and think about the things we otherwise push to the back of our brains (our friends and family, gratitude, love, etc.). New Year's can be a little alarm reminder to do a useful inventory. So I'm not totally against resolutions, but I prefer reresolutions: finding what's been working for me in the past year, noting them, and recommiting to keeping them up.
These are the ones from recent times that I am re-resolving for 2013:
1. Three Things: I got this from a book somewhere. At the end of every day I write down three things that "went right." On days where Andrew and I aren't together, I send mine to him and ask him to send me three back. I don't usually like to talk about myself (especially anything involving pride or excitement that could be quashed by an unmatched enthusiasm in my interlocutor) unless somebody is asking specific questions and thus expressing interest. By contrast, Andrew is the kind who assumes that if something is there to be said, somebody will say it; I don't have much of an inclination to share and he may lack a certain curiosity about people (bikes, never; people, often), that could go down a very unfortunate road if we didn't work to moderate our tendencies.
This way, I get to share my life and I don't feel like I'm forcing something he's not interested in hearing on him. For one, I don't have to overanalyze his face as I"m trying to share and determine with hyper sensitivity that he doesn't care so I should just shut up. Which I would never ever do ever. But... yeah. And sometimes he learns something about me, since we are so much more defined by the little events in our lives than the really big ones. Sometimes, even, it leads to conversation.
In many ways, it's crystallized what things really matter most to me. I've noticed that my "right things" are usually in these categories:
I also get to learn a little more about what things really matter most to Andrew. Mostly accomplishments - problem solving, homework, meeting training goals, really pushing himself beyond prior limits in a race - and he likes our mornings together too.
I posted this list on G+ and a lot of other folks chimed in with some great experiences of their own, a few of which I might have stolen through vagaries of memory ("oh yeah, me too!"). One of my definite me-toos was walking through nature, particularly when I'm really focusing on my surroundings through a single sense. For instance, I like to just try to pick out every sound and noise. Or other times every smell... amazing the things that blend into the background usually. And surprising people with little gifts that are uniquely them.
A few were not really things that would have worked for me - like gardening, which for me is a dirty-fingernailed plant holocaust - but it was really cool to get glimpses into the inner essences of so many people I've known more peripherally.
2. Taking Agency for the Energy I Send Into the World: This specifically applies to public areas, since inevitably I have to pass through them on a regular basis. I've noticed over the years that if I'm out in public and in a so-so mood, a stranger's scowl can bring me right into snarling peevishness. If I scowl back, it feels oh-so-good like scratching a rash, but that little burn intensifies until I'm blissfully irate and projecting hostility through my body and movement. If the same so-so mood encounters a stranger's smile, the opposite happens. I think as human beings we're prone to mirroring the gestures and attitudes of those around us, and this has an internal impact that easily magnifies in larger groups (mob indifference isn't quite a riot, but it's the same source I think). I don't take responsibility for changing the mob, but I don't have to let it hook me in and make me a carrier.
My second reresolution is not to feed back that negative energy and continue its escalating ricochet. Concinnous with that is focusing on my energy and acquiring habits of language and speech that reaffirm a neutral to positive energy. A short half-smile and eye contact, or a "sorry" if we happen to cross each other's way, will suffice. I'm still an introvert and any interaction with strangers can be a little exhausting, of course. I will never be one of those happy sunny faces that strikes up conversations with strangers in the powder aisle, although just being softer and willing to smile may open me up to being involved in some of those from time to time.
My particular field of practice is Fred Meyer's, a madhouse of disoriented people criss-crossing each other's paths and increasingly projecting their frustrations onto each other that not even Thomas Mann could have conceived. I am not always successful when my sunny "excuse me!" is met with a blank or ornery stare. More often, I'm able to keep my own energy and sometimes even elicit a smile or laugh from others. The smile in turn takes a practice of habit and spins it into a genuinely positive mood forged by a fleeting connection. The moment where two strangers are both reminded that they are encountering other human beings is a surprisingly powerful, brief, and rare moment in a world of personal gadgets that allow us to depersonalize the tangible world. While doing this, I'm really trying, adjust my filter to focus on those positive moments where I encounter considerate people and shrug my shoulders at the ones who aren't in the head space to respond positively.
I'm trying to transfer this to the other lunacy of public life: driving. I used to take it personally when another car drove dangerously close. My instinct still is to engage, either by blocking the way to passing me or intentionally antagonizing unsafe drivers by slowing down, etc. I've kind of tried this year to just say "it's about me and what I can do to stay safe and mentally together... why make it about them?" With all my might, I've managed to pull over to the right if somebody's coming up on my car too quickly. I know it sounds small, but it really was a paradigm shift for me, and with all the driving I do back and forth to Seattle, a safer pleasanter driving experience does improve my quality of life.
3. Take advantage of Thank You cards for my own benefit. So, I feel like every time a ritual or holiday comes up, lots of people shrug contemptuously at the scheduled and prescriptive nature of the thing, saying "we should really be _ every day of the year." I get that, although I do think it's pretty silly to "live every day like it was your last," since I tend to think that long term planning, anticipation of future events, and the occasional deferment of pleasure on the gamble that we might make it through the last actually add quite a lot of joy to those every days. And, while I really enjoy sitting down and reflecting on how much my loved ones mean to me, and telling them just that, if every conversation we had were about this, it might get drearily trite and we'd be so busy telling each other these things that we wouldn't have time to be the amazing gifts that we are to each other. And of course, I prefer expressing complicated feelings - and once I'm done with my little mental nuances and flourishes, they all are - in writing.
Since I was a child, our family has embraced the Thank You note, which certainly can be painfully artificial I admit first off. Dear X, thank u for the toy. I played with itand thought it wuz cool. love A is not exactly on par with your average work of Horace, for sure. But the magic of the cards, the fun of remembering every little gift, and the official something of real cards that go to a real post office and really get mailed, still made it feel more fun than chore. And over time the effort and intent has evolved for me, at least. I don't write cards to many people, as I've blessedly weaned down my 'unnecessary gift giver' list. The ones I do write are to people who really make an impact on my life. I take some time to explain why the gift or gesture in particular was a great fit for me, how it reflects our relationship in some way, and how I am enjoying it, but I also like to add something broader about the giver him/herself and who they are to me. I'll admit sometimes I can't get through a card without tearing up a little with awe at how lucky I am. Not that I didn't know this to be the case in abstract, but articulating the specifics really overwhelms me at moments. I do like that others get to see these and know how I feel about them, although I would be almost as satisfied just for having written them. That it maybe gets spread into the world and reminds them how awesome they are and what unintentional gifts they bring to the world every day, is an added bonus.
4. Tell My Story Well - We hear that we chose our own stories etc. etc. I think when that discussion is had, it often centers around the actions we take and which page we turn to in the choose your own adventure book of life (where a pre-written story chunk awaits to happen to us before leaving us with the next great choice of where to flip). But there's another side to it that is equally powerful, perhaps more so from my perspective. Hundreds have expressed this concept with more eloquence and better credentials that I could claim, so I'll paint lightly: our brains are primed to make connections and narratives from the inundation of quotidian data points we perceive. We neurologically somersault about to find faces in clouds, meaning in experience, and intentions in the actions of others (and ourselves) that satiate our craving for causality. We smooth over our protean "identities" with stories about ourselves, and edit appropriately to maintain consistency belied by raw data. We steadfastly confirm our biases by applying the filters of expectations and hypotheses. We don't see the friggin' gorilla wandering through the basketball court.
This isn't a bad thing. There's too much data to ever process, and one of our strengths is being able to prioritize information and make connections. But it's worth recognizing the flexibility it gives us in experiencing the world. There are things I like to think of myself as being - and anyone threatening my conception of these things as applying to me will be attacked by a cornered chinchilla of ego-threatened psyche. When I act in a way that is dissonant with that, it can be distressing do naturally my brain will fill in the holes and justify why somebody which such qualities as I would act in such a way. I may not give others the benefit of that post-hoc rationalization. I still want meaning, but my brain may be more comfortable leaping to some more nefarious realm of intent or flaw. If an event happens to me, my brain will want to know why. This is the template for my story: I will do things, things will happen to me, people will affect me. How I weave these together into a single narrative is my choice.
I am no trained author, but I still take pride in the idea that my stories are interesting, funny, and nuanced. Why expect anything less from the story of my life? Why make myself a wooden character, or the motives of those around me bullheadedly simplistic? This applies in times of great turmoil, but more frequently in the day-to-day. When somebody cuts me off in traffic, I have three default choices for the story to tell: (1) that guy's an inconsiderate asshole, (2) that guy's in the middle of the worst day of his life - his wife just called to tell him that his favorite pet parrot (the one his father gave him after he moved to the retirement home and which still repeats some of his father's most idiosyncratic adages slurred in the language of the "old country" and mixing horses and rum and some kernel of deep truth no doubt) has swallowed a fish filter and is in the veterinary ER foaming aqua at the beak with its time running out.... (3) that guy's out to get me, because he hates silver kias and maybe something about my face reminds him of his ex wife who killed his pet parrot and then took the cat and the kids while he was rushing to the ER. Number one is kind of boring. Number two has infinite variations and lets me choose between going down the route to empathy or farce. Number three is interesting too, but maybe a paranoid way to shorten my life with additional stress.
I don't think that story telling means deluding myself. If somebody's actions are repeatedly impacting me, then I do think it's in line with my story about myself that I'd communicate that to them and walk away if the impact continues to be a net-negative. It also doesn't forestall self-reflection, necessarily, as I think I have a duty to constantly develop and improve my own character. What I hope it does is remind me of the part of my life where I do have control - the telling of it - and admonishes me from choosing a bad or boring narrative without recognizing that I have necessarily done so.
5. Stay in touch... literally - So, I may have just possibly mentioned before that I am quite sensitive to external stimuli in the sort of way certain kinds of introverts really are. This includes being easily overwhelmed by smell, noise, visuals, motion, etc., particularly in combination (hence my proclivity for ear plugs in public spaces and why air fresheners make me jittery). This unsurprisingly can make me particularly aware and protective of my physical space - my hamster ball as +Patricia Nordeen has inspired me to think of it. It's also why I tend to speak quietly (because oh I wish every one else would lower their decibels a few) and can be reticent about physical contact. Each fleeting contact is a deluge of new sensory input - smells, textures, muscular twitches, vascular surges both felt and heard, respiration changing the terrain of the contacted spot, and every visual just a little bit more vivid in propinquity. This is to say nothing of the myriad triggers of chemicals that surge through our own bodies in reaction to these stimuli. Certainly a high potential for "overwhelming" - particularly in the wrong context.
I was a very reserved child and teenager. Hugs were awkward and few between. Romantic niceties like holding hands felt constricting and often caused me to remove a bit from my body into my head space. Amorous contact, of course, was at the beck and whim of hormones that overwhelmed such reservations (and possibly a drink or two to dull the sensitivity in the first place), but beyond that, there was often a disconnect. Coming back into dance was an amazing lesson in the power of touch in a safe and contextualized arena. In dance, that intense focus on your partner's every breath, motion, sensation is facilitated and highlighted. It's how a dance becomes more than an exercise and breaks through into that mediator of spiritual and sensual life. The freedom to focus on that and only that may have been part aversion therapy or may have been a new insight into the beauty that such a focus can hold, but it certainly reframed my understanding of the power contact holds.
Sometimes just a simple palp of an elbow or a traced finger across the back can bring me back to the heady rush of first kisses and all the taken-for-granteds and you-nevers and other potentially toxic relationship pollutants will flush from my system and the first trace of a finger. The same is true with my friends and family. A hug can reconnect lines that would require a thousand words. A hand on the shoulder from a trusted friend can deflate my lizard brain's surging attack when my gut boils with bile. A chance brush of hands with a cashier can instantly pull us both into a sphere of mutually recognized humanity. Even the memory of that warm scent of Andrew's neck can calm me down when I am feeling stressed. I read now that affectionate touch can be the difference between staying connected in a marriage and drifting apart. I could believe that given my experiences. There's so much communicated without a word in a single moment of contact.
I'll never be the sort to join cuddle clubs (yes there was one at my first college), or be comfortable for more than a few minutes in an extended embrace, but knowing to reach out and relax into contact... to give myself permission to let those seconds take me fully into that single touch and forget the world around me has been really helpful for me.
In many ways, it's crystallized what things really matter most to me. I've noticed that my "right things" are usually in these categories:
- Mornings drinking coffee, chatting, and staring out my window with Mr. (W)right.
- Being able to help or provide support for my friends and family.
- Banter, joking and involved conversations with friends
- Writing projects of any kind and having my writing be received well by others.
- Researching/organizing/summarizing complicated information.
- Dance lessons. Either the really tough ones with just me and Nate or the really fun silly ones with my Dad. The struggle of the former always dissolves into euphoria and the hysteria and shared experience with my father equally elates me.
- My down time - doing crosswords, getting the house back into order, updating my calendar.
- Long spells of uninterrupted reading
- Discovering new music, basking in old favorites, and making perfect playlists to share with others.
- Eating food - usually seasonal fruits and veggies that totally surprise me.
That helps me not only get a sense of who I am and what my sense of identity is, but also helps me figure out what I really want to make effort to do in a day.
I posted this list on G+ and a lot of other folks chimed in with some great experiences of their own, a few of which I might have stolen through vagaries of memory ("oh yeah, me too!"). One of my definite me-toos was walking through nature, particularly when I'm really focusing on my surroundings through a single sense. For instance, I like to just try to pick out every sound and noise. Or other times every smell... amazing the things that blend into the background usually. And surprising people with little gifts that are uniquely them.
A few were not really things that would have worked for me - like gardening, which for me is a dirty-fingernailed plant holocaust - but it was really cool to get glimpses into the inner essences of so many people I've known more peripherally.
2. Taking Agency for the Energy I Send Into the World: This specifically applies to public areas, since inevitably I have to pass through them on a regular basis. I've noticed over the years that if I'm out in public and in a so-so mood, a stranger's scowl can bring me right into snarling peevishness. If I scowl back, it feels oh-so-good like scratching a rash, but that little burn intensifies until I'm blissfully irate and projecting hostility through my body and movement. If the same so-so mood encounters a stranger's smile, the opposite happens. I think as human beings we're prone to mirroring the gestures and attitudes of those around us, and this has an internal impact that easily magnifies in larger groups (mob indifference isn't quite a riot, but it's the same source I think). I don't take responsibility for changing the mob, but I don't have to let it hook me in and make me a carrier.
My second reresolution is not to feed back that negative energy and continue its escalating ricochet. Concinnous with that is focusing on my energy and acquiring habits of language and speech that reaffirm a neutral to positive energy. A short half-smile and eye contact, or a "sorry" if we happen to cross each other's way, will suffice. I'm still an introvert and any interaction with strangers can be a little exhausting, of course. I will never be one of those happy sunny faces that strikes up conversations with strangers in the powder aisle, although just being softer and willing to smile may open me up to being involved in some of those from time to time.
My particular field of practice is Fred Meyer's, a madhouse of disoriented people criss-crossing each other's paths and increasingly projecting their frustrations onto each other that not even Thomas Mann could have conceived. I am not always successful when my sunny "excuse me!" is met with a blank or ornery stare. More often, I'm able to keep my own energy and sometimes even elicit a smile or laugh from others. The smile in turn takes a practice of habit and spins it into a genuinely positive mood forged by a fleeting connection. The moment where two strangers are both reminded that they are encountering other human beings is a surprisingly powerful, brief, and rare moment in a world of personal gadgets that allow us to depersonalize the tangible world. While doing this, I'm really trying, adjust my filter to focus on those positive moments where I encounter considerate people and shrug my shoulders at the ones who aren't in the head space to respond positively.
I'm trying to transfer this to the other lunacy of public life: driving. I used to take it personally when another car drove dangerously close. My instinct still is to engage, either by blocking the way to passing me or intentionally antagonizing unsafe drivers by slowing down, etc. I've kind of tried this year to just say "it's about me and what I can do to stay safe and mentally together... why make it about them?" With all my might, I've managed to pull over to the right if somebody's coming up on my car too quickly. I know it sounds small, but it really was a paradigm shift for me, and with all the driving I do back and forth to Seattle, a safer pleasanter driving experience does improve my quality of life.
3. Take advantage of Thank You cards for my own benefit. So, I feel like every time a ritual or holiday comes up, lots of people shrug contemptuously at the scheduled and prescriptive nature of the thing, saying "we should really be _ every day of the year." I get that, although I do think it's pretty silly to "live every day like it was your last," since I tend to think that long term planning, anticipation of future events, and the occasional deferment of pleasure on the gamble that we might make it through the last actually add quite a lot of joy to those every days. And, while I really enjoy sitting down and reflecting on how much my loved ones mean to me, and telling them just that, if every conversation we had were about this, it might get drearily trite and we'd be so busy telling each other these things that we wouldn't have time to be the amazing gifts that we are to each other. And of course, I prefer expressing complicated feelings - and once I'm done with my little mental nuances and flourishes, they all are - in writing.
Since I was a child, our family has embraced the Thank You note, which certainly can be painfully artificial I admit first off. Dear X, thank u for the toy. I played with itand thought it wuz cool. love A is not exactly on par with your average work of Horace, for sure. But the magic of the cards, the fun of remembering every little gift, and the official something of real cards that go to a real post office and really get mailed, still made it feel more fun than chore. And over time the effort and intent has evolved for me, at least. I don't write cards to many people, as I've blessedly weaned down my 'unnecessary gift giver' list. The ones I do write are to people who really make an impact on my life. I take some time to explain why the gift or gesture in particular was a great fit for me, how it reflects our relationship in some way, and how I am enjoying it, but I also like to add something broader about the giver him/herself and who they are to me. I'll admit sometimes I can't get through a card without tearing up a little with awe at how lucky I am. Not that I didn't know this to be the case in abstract, but articulating the specifics really overwhelms me at moments. I do like that others get to see these and know how I feel about them, although I would be almost as satisfied just for having written them. That it maybe gets spread into the world and reminds them how awesome they are and what unintentional gifts they bring to the world every day, is an added bonus.
4. Tell My Story Well - We hear that we chose our own stories etc. etc. I think when that discussion is had, it often centers around the actions we take and which page we turn to in the choose your own adventure book of life (where a pre-written story chunk awaits to happen to us before leaving us with the next great choice of where to flip). But there's another side to it that is equally powerful, perhaps more so from my perspective. Hundreds have expressed this concept with more eloquence and better credentials that I could claim, so I'll paint lightly: our brains are primed to make connections and narratives from the inundation of quotidian data points we perceive. We neurologically somersault about to find faces in clouds, meaning in experience, and intentions in the actions of others (and ourselves) that satiate our craving for causality. We smooth over our protean "identities" with stories about ourselves, and edit appropriately to maintain consistency belied by raw data. We steadfastly confirm our biases by applying the filters of expectations and hypotheses. We don't see the friggin' gorilla wandering through the basketball court.
This isn't a bad thing. There's too much data to ever process, and one of our strengths is being able to prioritize information and make connections. But it's worth recognizing the flexibility it gives us in experiencing the world. There are things I like to think of myself as being - and anyone threatening my conception of these things as applying to me will be attacked by a cornered chinchilla of ego-threatened psyche. When I act in a way that is dissonant with that, it can be distressing do naturally my brain will fill in the holes and justify why somebody which such qualities as I would act in such a way. I may not give others the benefit of that post-hoc rationalization. I still want meaning, but my brain may be more comfortable leaping to some more nefarious realm of intent or flaw. If an event happens to me, my brain will want to know why. This is the template for my story: I will do things, things will happen to me, people will affect me. How I weave these together into a single narrative is my choice.
I am no trained author, but I still take pride in the idea that my stories are interesting, funny, and nuanced. Why expect anything less from the story of my life? Why make myself a wooden character, or the motives of those around me bullheadedly simplistic? This applies in times of great turmoil, but more frequently in the day-to-day. When somebody cuts me off in traffic, I have three default choices for the story to tell: (1) that guy's an inconsiderate asshole, (2) that guy's in the middle of the worst day of his life - his wife just called to tell him that his favorite pet parrot (the one his father gave him after he moved to the retirement home and which still repeats some of his father's most idiosyncratic adages slurred in the language of the "old country" and mixing horses and rum and some kernel of deep truth no doubt) has swallowed a fish filter and is in the veterinary ER foaming aqua at the beak with its time running out.... (3) that guy's out to get me, because he hates silver kias and maybe something about my face reminds him of his ex wife who killed his pet parrot and then took the cat and the kids while he was rushing to the ER. Number one is kind of boring. Number two has infinite variations and lets me choose between going down the route to empathy or farce. Number three is interesting too, but maybe a paranoid way to shorten my life with additional stress.
I don't think that story telling means deluding myself. If somebody's actions are repeatedly impacting me, then I do think it's in line with my story about myself that I'd communicate that to them and walk away if the impact continues to be a net-negative. It also doesn't forestall self-reflection, necessarily, as I think I have a duty to constantly develop and improve my own character. What I hope it does is remind me of the part of my life where I do have control - the telling of it - and admonishes me from choosing a bad or boring narrative without recognizing that I have necessarily done so.
5. Stay in touch... literally - So, I may have just possibly mentioned before that I am quite sensitive to external stimuli in the sort of way certain kinds of introverts really are. This includes being easily overwhelmed by smell, noise, visuals, motion, etc., particularly in combination (hence my proclivity for ear plugs in public spaces and why air fresheners make me jittery). This unsurprisingly can make me particularly aware and protective of my physical space - my hamster ball as +Patricia Nordeen has inspired me to think of it. It's also why I tend to speak quietly (because oh I wish every one else would lower their decibels a few) and can be reticent about physical contact. Each fleeting contact is a deluge of new sensory input - smells, textures, muscular twitches, vascular surges both felt and heard, respiration changing the terrain of the contacted spot, and every visual just a little bit more vivid in propinquity. This is to say nothing of the myriad triggers of chemicals that surge through our own bodies in reaction to these stimuli. Certainly a high potential for "overwhelming" - particularly in the wrong context.
I was a very reserved child and teenager. Hugs were awkward and few between. Romantic niceties like holding hands felt constricting and often caused me to remove a bit from my body into my head space. Amorous contact, of course, was at the beck and whim of hormones that overwhelmed such reservations (and possibly a drink or two to dull the sensitivity in the first place), but beyond that, there was often a disconnect. Coming back into dance was an amazing lesson in the power of touch in a safe and contextualized arena. In dance, that intense focus on your partner's every breath, motion, sensation is facilitated and highlighted. It's how a dance becomes more than an exercise and breaks through into that mediator of spiritual and sensual life. The freedom to focus on that and only that may have been part aversion therapy or may have been a new insight into the beauty that such a focus can hold, but it certainly reframed my understanding of the power contact holds.
Sometimes just a simple palp of an elbow or a traced finger across the back can bring me back to the heady rush of first kisses and all the taken-for-granteds and you-nevers and other potentially toxic relationship pollutants will flush from my system and the first trace of a finger. The same is true with my friends and family. A hug can reconnect lines that would require a thousand words. A hand on the shoulder from a trusted friend can deflate my lizard brain's surging attack when my gut boils with bile. A chance brush of hands with a cashier can instantly pull us both into a sphere of mutually recognized humanity. Even the memory of that warm scent of Andrew's neck can calm me down when I am feeling stressed. I read now that affectionate touch can be the difference between staying connected in a marriage and drifting apart. I could believe that given my experiences. There's so much communicated without a word in a single moment of contact.
I'll never be the sort to join cuddle clubs (yes there was one at my first college), or be comfortable for more than a few minutes in an extended embrace, but knowing to reach out and relax into contact... to give myself permission to let those seconds take me fully into that single touch and forget the world around me has been really helpful for me.
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