Filtered Focus

Across the length of our living room spreads an oriental carpet. Its intricate design would be dizzying except that it coalesces and, to the casual eye, presents itself as a whole.
My eyes cannot appreciate detail unless they first comprehend the whole. Some people cannot see the whole until their eyes have taken in all the details of which it is comprised.
Sometimes intricate and involved pieces come across busy or noisy, and consequently annoy or distract instead of unify. Alternately, a complicated background can quite effectively set off and help focus the eyes on what deserves attention in the foreground.
It's all a matter of where the eye is drawn. Sometimes it can be as important to intentionally trigger people's filters as it is to direct their focus. What do you notice first when you enter a room?

Ebb and Flow

I'm taken with how life changes even while it stays the same. Like the ever changing, always constant river.
This morning I'm thinking the ebb and flow of relationships. New friends that I'm excited about. Old friends who are moving away. I think I'm getting better at going with the flow. Accepting the reality of periodic loss and making the internal adjustments necessary to thrive going forward.
I think for a season there, I believed the alternatives were connection or isolation. But, the facts seem to evidence a coming and going of various sorts of connections. Some merely social brushes past each other. Some task-based collaborations. A few more intimate friendships. Some where we share only words. Some where we share only work. Some where we share life.
And this variety is good. I need neither to keep everyone at arm's length nor become everyone's best friend. Ebb and flow. Ever changing. Always the same.

Who's Exams?

It's finals week. Not for me, per se, but yes, for me. Could the school simply rearrange a normal day's schedule to accommodate the exams? No. An entirely new schedule needs to be developed, with different start and end times, who's improvement over the regular schedule—around which an entire community's carpooling and work schedules have been structured—is unclear at best.
I'm not bitter. Really. In a way, we're all being tested.

Wrinkles, Sigh

A wrinkle is seldom celebrated. Whether it be a new line under your eye or a crease in the sharp button-down you just pressed, wrinkles are, more often than not, spoilers. We ultimately have to accept them… come to terms with their presence… and learn to move on. But the fact is, their advent doesn't make anyone smile.
A wrinkle in the plans means not that they have been changed, but only that they have been impacted. How the impact plays itself out in altered arrangements remains to be worked through. Hence the ambivalence and unease when encountering a wrinkle. Far from a disaster, but if a blessing, quite disguised. Her mother-in-law's unannounced visit put a wrinkle in her weekend plans.
We build our dreams. We prioritize our goals. We organize our days. With wrinkles we cope.

Reinforcing New Patterns

Decisions need to be backed with action. Resolve needs to be reinforced with actions.
The best are small steps that serve as a form of practice. A learning process in which we approximate our ultimate goal by supporting, sustaining, and trying it over and over again.
Big shifts rarely happen all at once. We are too unfamiliar with the experience of life in this new realm to excel within it from the beginning. It's like moving to a new country with a radically different culture. We can move physically all at once, but the learning how to live and how to live fully in a fundamentally different world takes time. We not only have to learn how to function within the new structures, but how to think, feel and thrive out of a different framework of being.
And so it is with change on any scale. Making the decision to change is the crucial first step. But finding ways to learn, practice and reinforce that decision are the steps crucial to its ultimate success.

When Words Don't Suffice

There comes a point when words no longer suffice. When the language of relationship must find some other form in order to express itself adequately.
Sometimes I can't find words that articulate the depth and complexity of what I'm trying to communicate. While possibly a poverty of vocabulary, I suspect it's more likely the nature of uncharted territory. Such a challenge requires an explorer's courage.
Other times I'm not sure what's worth saying. No topic comes to mind or all topics seem pointless. In order to mean the most, it is vital to say the least. Maybe simply enjoy each others' presence.
Words can lose their power when the become disconnected from action. There is a time when one needs to stop talking and start doing, or risk losing credibility. Words don't always suffice.
Enough words for now.

Unexpected Gifts

Gifts can be wildly fun to receive. Especially unexpected ones. The best are when someone has been listening and acts on some insight they received in the process. The unsolicited initiative expended on one's behalf fills one's sails with wind.
Gifts can be awkward. Especially because I am not as giving. In that case, though, my attention has shifted off the gift giver and onto myself. Gifts and giving get misconstrued when the focus is misplaced.
I'm learning to enjoy receiving gifts as much as I do giving them.

Do It

Life always comes down to one's choices as they manifest themselves on the ground. For all the benefits of being able to talk about life, life is not lived until it is enacted.

Death by Suffocation

The worst part of suffocation is remaining conscious. The awareness that you can't get the air you need and the ensuing panic and powerlessness are terrifying.
The point—which is not merely to be morbid for a change of pace—is that suffocation can take many forms. A needy relationship can be suffocating. A job going nowhere can be suffocating. And the consciousness... the awareness that the life is being sucked right out of you can be worse than the controlling relationship or the boring work.
The advantage, if you can call it that, is also the consciousness. That you can see it happening. Maybe see it happening in time to do something about it. Suffocation always ends in death. It is imperative that we do something about it.

Always Learning

For learning to happen, one's capacity to change must be flexible if not expanding. Strength not being the issue so much as stretching. Life is not something we perfect and get right, but something we learn and grow into gradually. Nor is life an ideal concept we experience imperfectly, but an imperfect experience we can talk about conceptually.
Interestingly enough, life on the ground is a stretching enterprise. (Unless, of course, you are one of those for whom life is a pretty straight-forward matter; which would then bring the total number up to ONE!) Could there be something in the design intentionally structured around learning?

Peace from Elsewhere

For some life seems so ordered, stable and grounded. Some variation of the opposite for the rest of us. I have to wonder to what extent that ordered community is the exception or the rule. I suspect the former. That inner turbulence is normative and outer turbulence is difficult to avoid, is the western soul/life. Hence the need for help; for assistance from outside this system; for rescue by one better and stronger and who cares enough to act.

Adjusting to Distance

In less than a hour I head off to the airport to pick up my eldest who has been away with a church group in India. Recently of age by legal standards, she has long been an adult by maturity standards. I miss this former child of mine who has so successfully been blossoming into one of the most attractive adults in my life. I need to get used to her being away. What is now the exception will soon be the rule. I'm sure we will always be able to pick up right where we leave off, as though time and distance were illusions that distill rather than erase the bonds of the past years together. I don't know who will have more adjusting to do, her or me.

Babying My Will

The steaming mug convinces a bare majority of the fingers gripping it for dear life that worse things have happened than icy mornings. A slow, childishly slow, release of the ceramic vestige of warmth and the mock tears of grief for the parting of ways takes place as part of a winter ritual cursing dawn's impotence.
There are needs and shoulds and wants and musts that drive a harder bargain or threaten with a bigger stick than body comforts, and so I muster my will to force that final push out of the door.
I usually feel stronger after an act of will, however significant or mundane. It's nice to have a few less than momentous decisions with which to experience the power rush of willing myself to something wise but not necessarily gratifying. My will needs to get all the strokes it can to build its courage for the decisions where more is at stake than shivering fingers.

Relative Reflections

The value of an occasional look into the mirror depends on our capacity to accept what is revealed. I know there are days when I come to the mirror looking for certain things and not wanting to see other things. Either extreme can cause me to see what is not really there and to miss what is staring me in the face.
There are two ways to have a poor self-image. One is to hold deep negative beliefs about yourself. These deep beliefs provide our filter for interpreting reality and guess what? "Reality," as we have misconstructed it, keeps confirming our negative ideas.
The other is to fear that something negative might be true of you. Consequently all your energy goes into maintaining a strong public persona. In this scenario "reality" always gets interpreted positively, and you always come out looking good. Except that you have just cut yourself off from any chance to learn from mistakes, enlist the help of others, relax and be human (read be imperfect).
So on the one hand, it can be a wise reality check to take an occasional look in the mirror. Unless, that is, you have found other ways to adjust what you see.

Sharp Corners

When our kids were small we attached plastic cushions to the corners of our coffee table. Inevitably their toddling would become tumbling, and those sharp corners would inflict serious damage. It was ours to foresee what they were too young and inexperienced to foresee for themselves.
As adults we can see many of life's sharp corners before we stumble into them, and adjust accordingly. But what about when we spot someone running head long into a fire or tottering dangerously close to the edge of the cliff? If we see something that someone else does not yet see—for whatever reason—is it not our responsibility to do something beneficial with that knowledge? To withhold it and then announce after the disaster, "I could see that coming," seems negligent. To then blame them for their lack of foresight, however foolish, seems cruel.
Friendship has always called for some form of having each others' backs. Not all eyes are clear enough to see all life's sharp corners.

Random Imagining

The peppermint candy cane melts into the steaming chocolate, to which I surrender an almost sensual moan of pleasure. As if the chocolate weren't sweet enough. I step out onto the veranda and take in the morning buzz of a city crawling out of bed. My mind methodically working through the alternatives. Restless dreams suggest a light about to break through the clouds. Or are the clouds about to smother the light? The risks mount even while I stand watching the candy dissolve into swirls of molten allure. The sound of a fist hammering at the door breaks my reverie and my comforting mug shatters at my feet. They are here. I know exactly what I need to do.

Restored Routines

Normally I would associate myself with those who eschew routines of any sort. I like things new and different. I bore easily of patterns. But in this season where I have no patterns or schedules, I welcome the return to the school routine this morning. Up early. Trying to finish my shower before the hot water runs out. A too-quick breakfast. Shuttling the kids to two different schools. Settling down over a hot cup of coffee with my blog. Nothing like the absence of structure to help one appreciate the value of structure.

Symbol Pause

Today we packed up the Christmas decorations. A dried out tree lies in the backyard awaiting its final dismemberment. All the color, every aroma, the rich symbols of advent and incarnation and hope are now cardboard boxes, dust, and fodder for the recycling bin. The glory of the season remains a glory because it does not remain the season. The power of the symbols will revive next year precisely because they were wrapped in newspaper and stashed in the garage this year. We cannot do Advent all year long. Nor Christmas nor Lent nor Easter. All truths all of the time quickly blurs into no truths any of the time. We simply cannot attend to everything always.
As difficult as cleaning up after Christmas is, I smile knowingly when the last ribbon is swept away.

Long Odds

We don't pursue our dreams because we like the odds. Neither do we achieve them by igoring the odds. When few share our visions, it becomes all the more important that we bring to the world what has been given (possibly uniquely) to us to see. When few understand what we are trying to accomplish, the odds mount against us. The critique of doubters and cynics acts as quenching poison for which we must find our antidote. The benevolent, albeit blank stares of most require we offer a new vocabulary with which to introduce our new world. To turn a blind eye to the reasons underlying the long odds will be as fatal as it is negligent.

Connecting vs. Networking

The thing about connections, interestingly enough, is the connecting. I think about the people with whom I feel a personal connection and I get happy. When I think about business networking, I think about getting strangers to like or respect me and get stressed. I need to think about networking the way I experience connecting. Simply, that I'm out and about looking for those with whom I might have a connection. Translated... enjoy a relationship. Instead of a negative, stressful duty, networking might become an attractive, interesting highlight.
Thanks to my associates with whom I enjoy connecting so much!

Slap on the Face

Some lessons in life repeatedly receive the polite nod of assent and the subsequent dismissal into distracted forgetfulness. Not until reality stings us with a jarring slap on the face do we take pause and consider change.
While related, mental assent and life change are two different animals. The health and capabilities of the heart and will are as important as the health and capabilities of one's mind. It seems to me we have lost access to much of what might strengthen our wills and hearts. So many of us wandering from mistake to mistake. Until by consequence or grace we receive a jarring slap on the face.

Stretch

Stretching is both a form of physical exercise and a description of the effort necessary to accomplish what seems out of reach. Which, of course, begs the question: what sorts of exercises exist for the training of the psyche to achieve above and beyond what one's circumstances would suggest possible?

Bias Toward Action

Act. Do. Live.
I'm far more reflective than I am active. Life has a reflective component, but only insofar as it enhances the choices we make. We need to realize our dreams as much, if not more, than we need to have them.
I need to realize my dreams. I need to enact my life. I need to throw the weight over to making the next decision. I need to operate with a bias toward action.

Fun with Friends

The fun factor ramps up considerably when the pile of chips in front of one is growing. Enjoying friends, while comprising an unconditional element, is a highly relative experience. Gloating during games of chance can transform the most attractive comrade into a hideous monstrosity.
Among friends we rely on the freedom to lower our guards; be ourselves; risk the occasional misfires of acerbic enthusiasm. And so we hold the bitterness of loss in check, subdue the celebrations of our stunning victory, and pretend to be okay straddling the middle ground.
But among friends there is no hiding the moping or the grins. Nor should there be. The highs and lows of competitive play are the perfect complement to this wonderful foundation of acceptance.