Assumptions Are A Dangerous Habit

I'm a little ticked off today because of something that someone posted on a social networking site.  It's not that I think she really meant to jump to assumptions and belittle people; she's not the type to be offensive on purpose, but she hadn't seen the changes for herself and still blasted people for not liking something that they have every right not to like. It may be a free service, but we don't have to like what they've done to it...we don't have to whine either, but that's another subject for another day. It made me think about other assumptions in life that we make every day and wonder how many of us end up hurting the feelings of someone we love, like, respect because we failed to think it through or look into the matter ourselves.

There is a fabulous acronym in Al-Anon called “T.H.I.N.K.”, that I have been trying to use more and more. It stopped me today from blasting the person out of the water. I'm mean and really good at using my words to cut people down to size when I'm mad, but what would that have accomplished? A lot of hurt feelings and a GIANT step backward in a relationship with someone that I need to keep healthy. So I chose, instead, to take the time to stop and T.H.I.N.K.:  Am I being Thoughtful? Yes, in the respect that I at least took a moment before responding. Honest? Oh, it would've been honest. Intelligent? Most definitely...I am my mother's daughter after all. Necessary? Well, gee...no, probably not. Kind? Not in the least bit! Hmmmm...then it's probably a good idea to get that darned edit button working QUICK! There really are so many things in this world that are just better left unsaid because they don't fall under this simple guideline.

That's the dangerous thing about assumptions, they not only don't follow under that guideline, but they can lead to other people making assumptions which can cause a HUGE snowball effect. Politics and religion are two of the best examples of how that can happen and, for that reason, I don't discuss them with very many people. My views are my own and I respect the people around me enough to know that they have every right to their opinions. Now there are times when I may think that they are truly being mislead about a situation, so I will speak up...But again, am I being intelligent about it? Do I really have all the facts about the situation so that I truly know what I'm talking about? Not just what Cousin Billy said...did I look up the source of the issue and read it for myself? If I haven't, then I don't believe I have any right to speak on the subject. When I regurgitate the information that has been regurgitated to me, I am making assumptions not based on facts and I have definitely not taken the time to T.H.I.N.K.

So today I chose to write out my frustrations in a more productive way...I may not always succeed in T.H.I.N.K.ing before I act, but that's the great thing about life (as another Al-Anon saying goes) it's about PROGRESS not perfection. Because life is not perfect and I'm sure glad it isn't...how boring would THAT be?!

A Lesson From Loss

It's been a few months since our family lost one of the greatest women I have ever been privileged to know, Sheila the Great. Her loss was not something any of us could have foreseen and there are times when we each are still feeling the void that is present in our lives with out this amazing woman. Tonight I felt it in the form of a forwarded email.

It was one of those uplifting ones that people send around when they're thinking of you, but don't have much to say. I've never been big about sending them on, but I appreciate most of the messages and take them for what they're meant to be. This was definitely one of the better ones and it compelled me to send it on to a couple of people because I'm a sucker for the uplifting wishes of joy, love and peace...this one encompassed all of those:

"May today there be peace within. May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and others. May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content with yourself just the way you are. Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us."

As I started checking off the people that I wanted to send it to, I saw her name. My breath caught and I couldn't move for a moment. She's been gone since before Easter this year and I can't take her out of my address list, I haven't removed her from my phone contacts and every time I use ancestry.com or do something crafty, I see her face. I only knew her for 13 years of my 34 and yet the void that she has left in my life is real...painful.  That one little moment was enough to start a cascade of other thoughts...

Those that we meet and grow close to in our young lives usually aren't there as we get older, change, grow emotionally (other than the one or two that we cling to or our family). The ones that are there "for keeps" are the ones that mean the most to us and their loss is never easy.  However, in this age of social media, that is changing, being redefined a bit because we're better able to track down the people that flit through our minds from time to time...you know the ones that we would have thought about and wondered whatever happened to, but would've only seen at the next reunion, if we all showed up.  This is not necessarily a good or bad thing, in my opinion, but it does have the power to alter how we change as we age. Where we would usually grow beyond certain people in our lives, we would gradually be drawn to others...because to stagnate in our growth, to be stuck in a paradigm, is to fall into a place where we can easily regress...become less than our potential. The people that we meet in our adult lives have the power to help us grow or regress...we choose which by who we keep and who we let go.

With social media flourishing all around us, we now have a wider audience and a harder time choosing who we let influence us. Do we hold to our pasts? Allow people who we would've let go because of their negative influence on us to stay on and continue that negative flow or do we move forward and purge them from our lives? Is there a third choice of just allowing them to be who they are and not letting it impact us? Maybe it's a little of all of those. To understand and accept that people are free to feel however they want to feel, that I don't have to agree or disagree and I have a choice as to whether I let it upset me or not, is all in my power. What they said is not right or wrong...it's their opinion. How I choose to react to what they say, now THAT is what is right or wrong....THAT is what I can control. Do I react badly and continue the negativity or do I send them thoughts of the very love, peace and joy that I wish for those that I hold closest to my heart? With all of that in mind, the question then becomes: does it really matter who we keep or who we let go as long as we are the best version of ourselves?

Sheila the Great gave me more love, more wishes of peace and joy at a time in my life that I was very hard to love because she understood the choice that we have: continue the negativity or let love reign supreme. So, yes, there will be some people that I will let fall out of my life...it happens--I can't stay positive for long if there's a constant barrage of negativity around me...there will be others that I will keep because I care, but throughout it all I will take with me the lessons that Al-Anon has taught me and that Sheila the Great lived so fully of detachment with love and how to live and let live.  So I think I'll continue to keep her in my contacts for a while as a reminder of those things...and maybe next time I'll smile instead of holding a shaky breath.

Awesomeness Revealed

A beautiful friend posted something on her facebook wall not too long ago and I skipped past it thinking, “I'll look at it some other time.” Then she posted it again, tagging someone else, and I thought, “It looks interesting, but if I'm meant to read it, I'll remember to come back to it when I have time.” The third time she posted it, tagging yet another person, I decided to take the hint and read it. I'm very glad I did.

The smile says it all, "I'm
AWESOME
and I KNOW it!

Waking Up Full of Awesome talks about the awesomeness that we KNOW we have when we're young and posed the questions:

“Do you still have it?

The awesome.

Did someone take it from you?

Did you let them?

Did you hand it over, because someone told you weren’t beautiful enough, thin enough, smart enough, good enough?

Why the hell would you listen to them?

Did you consider they might be full of shit?”

Wow! I mean, how could it be put any better than that?! We come into this world with the innate ability to “ROCK IT!” and somewhere along the line we either learn to keep it or have it beaten out of us by the world. Are the people who have it beaten out of them any less awesome? NO! They simply have stopped having the ability to SEE it.

As I read through the comments on the blog post (yep, I'm a comment addict...I love finding out what others thought about the post and hearing their brand of awesome. I tend to skip over the trolls, though) I saw one from a teacher who talked about an assignment that they give their students every year that they “borrowed” from a grad student. So Google and I had a chat and I found a couple of different exercises, but they were pretty much the same thing: Write a list of 50 things that you're awesome at or are awesome about you.

"To be happy, we must not be too concerned
with others."
--Albert Camus

What an amazing concept! Something so simple to remind us of that (sometimes hidden) bit of greatness that we possess! And the wonderful thing is that you don't have to believe there are 50 things about yourself that are worth rating as awesome or even liking; you can start the list without even numbering it and just write a few things to see where it goes. I bet you'd be surprised by some of your own answers.

So that's my challenge to YOU today: FIND YOUR AWESOMENESS! Re-claim it if it's been hidden, taken or squashed! Remember that little person who pretended you could fly while you rode your bike down the steepest hill you could find in your neighborhood or finally completed that cartwheel without falling down...remember the little kid feeling that life has to offer when you live in the day and stop worrying about tomorrow. And every time you start slipping out of today, take out that list and re-read it.

The Day the Writing Stopped

I've been away from writing for too long. The catharsis of the process has been missing in my life and I find that my mind is having problems shutting down at night without it's “brain dump”. Yet, I still hadn't gone back to it. Like a rebellious child, I stayed away and tortured myself by not allowing the good, bad and ugly things to be purged, “talked” through and let go. Then I got a lesson on listening to the messages put in front of me the first time my Higher Power does so.

After thinking about it, wondering what I'd write about (which has never been a problem for this loud mouth before), and just general procrastination, Sunday, September 11, 2011 dawned bright and beautiful. 10 years after a day that I remembered with dread. The week previously had gathered in a fever pitch to this day until it erupted in a moment of horrible anxiety. I still didn't write. (By the way, have I mentioned that I can be hardheaded from time to time?) I didn't even go to the one place that could have offered me solace for the horrible memories of that day because I neglected to set my alarm so that I'd get up in time!

Yesterday started like any other school day and it was a great day full of laughter with my older sister, the Toddler Troll, Duckie, Jfer, and Nubbets. I had absolutely no reason to feel hardhearted in any way and joyfully accompanied Duckie to his meeting where we had a little more silliness before the meeting...and then a strange thing occurred. In all my joy, something that had never happened to me before started taking root. In over a year of going to his meetings on a regular basis I have NEVER gotten judgmental or angry in his meeting...my own is something else to discuss at another time, but never his meeting. I think it's always been easier to listen to the people in there with an open mind because I know I came to learn about the disease from their perspective. I have no views on it other than what I've heard from them...my brain doesn't work like theirs does...so it's easier to accept what they say as their truth. Yet, last night I found that listening to a beginner share got me critical and angry faster than even Duckie had been able to do for a long time. As the next person began to share and the anger kept increasing, I knew this was MY problem, not theirs and I grabbed my phone and headed out to call my own sponsor. (Al-anon has sponsor's, too...it's a wonderful way to keep on a steady course in the program.) When she didn't answer, I kept calling around until I got someone.

This was also a first for me. That darned phone is such a heavy, horrible thing that I usually will rather sit in anger than keep calling for someone to calm me down, but I finally didn't want to be angry last night. I finally understood what everyone has been saying around me in the meetings for the last almost year and a half: “If I'm angry, there is something wrong with ME.” And I needed someone to tell me what the heck my problem was because I couldn't rationalize it out on my own. Thank goodness for my grand-sponsor (my sponsor's sponsor) who gave me the wisdom that I needed. She plucked me out of my loony moment and got me back on track. I was able to walk back into Duckie's meeting with a clear heart and an open mind.

This morning gave me one final lesson that did the ultimate trick of sending me back to the keyboard. The Phillies Phan Reverend posted her sermon from Sunday. The one that I missed hearing. She's not done that before, to my knowledge, being that she can be a “bit of Ludite” (her words, not mine). As I read the message of forgiveness of not only those who hurt us, but of ourselves, I started to let go even more of the burdens that had been weighing me down. The summation at the end of the homily that she wrote was done exceptionally well and one line stuck out because it brought me back to last night:

“Forgiveness does not mean forgetting, and reconciliation is not always possible. Forgiveness means trusting judgment to God, and this is only possible by the grace that comes from God alone.”

So here I am writing about the things I learned about myself and what happens to me when I'm NOT writing...what does it all mean? We all have our moments of self doubt, worry, obsession, judgment and fear where we don't let it out positively; why did this bother me so much? Because when I don't like me, how can I expect anyone else to do so?! If my life feels like chaos and I'm blaming the entire world around me...then it's time to look at myself and think about my part of it all. Writing is the easiest way for me to do this; forgetting that means losing a piece of me that is growing stronger and to forget that piece means I lose peace.

So think about what makes you feel better when your world is turned upside down. Now think of the last time you actually did that thing. If it's been awhile, you might want to start trying to get back to it...it's amazing how great it feels.