No Excuses

As a continually evolving spiritually-connected (most of the time) person on this revolving door planet, I look for ways to mark my personal growth, my progression (most of the time) to a higher level of being. Meaning, trying to BE. Not Buy. Not Better. But Be. As I once read--we are human Be-ings, not human Do-ings, and if you've never pondered the difference, believe me, there is one.

Which brings me to my latest challenge. The Vision Board.
Last year, it was the gratitude list, which, painfully shy-ly, I created and posted on this very blog. Now, this year, I do the same with my vision board. I offer it to you, as a learning tool, as a thought-provocation, all the things this blog does. (those 2 things pretty well sum it up).

In the last three posts, I referenced honouring the past, and then breaking a pattern, and now I give a nod to The Future. In the words of my hero-rock-star lyricist, Simon LeBon, the future to me, is 'like an old friend--ever expected but never knocking'. We intellectually know it's coming, but we often pretend that planning for it, asking for things, dreaming as an adult, is sure to send the evil eye swivelling our way, sure to doom us.

I don't assume the future--I ask for it, pray for it, the same way every one else does, by living each day.
Here is my Vision Board, in all its naive, glossy glory, in all its fonted, type-bite format.

The first thing I noticed was that for all its vision, my board was very
text-based, odd for a pastime associated with envisioning the future; instead, I seem to have created a set of instructions to follow.
My lists of reasons not to not exercise can apply to anything in life really; ' I don't have the time' (yep); 'I can't afford it' (ditto);
'It's too far' (again, right); 'I have to ask my husband' (many women struggle with this part of their lives); and 'I have to think about it'.
Wow. This list of excuses sums up my whole vision board. I'm trying to remind myself, with these images, this text, to stop overthinking it all and just jump into it.
The seascape, the green-blue water, the green-blue book spines, these are images I relate to, that feed my curiosity for what lies...ahead...beyond.
The bright yellow raincoat, the bright yellow watch, the bright green bag--all hopeful colours. Necessary items, but the necessary in life can also be inventive.
The Eiffel towers remind me there are lots of places I have yet to visit. The books again remind me I still have lots left to read, to learn. The images, iconic, if you will, of some of the women on my board, seem a bit stereotypical, type-cast. But then, although I identify myself as a modern woman, I am also, and I don't often admit this--VERY traditional. In ways that I think about the world--the value of my privacy, the strength of a well-guarded secret, the power of the unknown. The images of women in traditional dress hold enduring power for me. If the women of the past could do all that they did with what tools they had, then, when it comes right down to it then....

There are no excuses.

Today

I read today
I thought today
I thought of you
and what today means to you.

I saw the sun come up this morning
Saw the old girl.
That's what you called her.
One of many mornings.

You
told me so many things
a lifetime of things.

I told you things too
No one else could ever know.
But you knew
Because you were you.

I once watched
an interview with Elizabeth Taylor
they asked her about Richard Burton
She said, my memories of Richard are mine
And they're private.
And then she levelled the interviewer with her eyes.

My eyes used to level you.
Your eyes could have levelled me
But your eyes didn't.
You knew
Long before I did
The power in your eyes
In your voice
Always, one note away from a laugh.
I will hear your voice
Your voice threaded with laughter
The rest of my life.

When I write about you now
I change the present tense to the past
I have to check that I do this
Because somewhere
Somehow
I think you are reading this and
you might be offended
That I refer to you as past tense
But then
You didn't offend easily.

Once, you told me I never had to apologize
to you
No one, ever, had said that to me before.
I didn't know how to react
So I looked away from you
I looked at the floor.
When I looked, back up again
You were still looking at me with your kind eyes.
You would never level me
Not on purpose, anyway.

I didn't need to tell you
How to understand me.
You just knew.

You said to me,
You have more insight now.

I have it, because of you
Because you lived and were part of my life
and now you are gone
But I won't forget

Happy Birthday my friend
I won't do that again.

Comfort Zone

Recently I described someone close to me as having a very narrow 'comfort zone'. I guess what I meant is that for this person to feel any sense of security in life, she needs to have things a certain way, all the time, and when things are not that way, she reacts. Not always in a constructive way.
I started thinking about the phrase 'comfort zone'. It can mean many different things from person to person. Aiming for prosperity, a fulfilling job, a certain level of financial security, all of these money matters are very much part of a comfort zone for a lot of people, and our consumer-driven, hyped-up world certainly reflects that. Love, happy relationships, friends, and a family buffer a comfort zone for many too. These are the more basic human desires in seeking comfort--acceptance, a feeling of belonging, being understood.
In an effort to understand myself, I have been examining my own comfort zone. Not just the positive sides of it either.
For me, my comfort zone begins within the walls of my home. The high ceilings, tall windows, light colours, and a collection of possessions I attach value to all provide a sense of serenity to me. This, in turn, fosters a sense of comfort, one that I can't really re-create anywhere else. Despite the sometimes obvious stresses that owning a home (in my case a refurbished loft) can bring, it also, for me, brings a feeling of calm, of being rooted, something I value very much for my own comfort zone. It relates, deep down, to a feeling of needing security, something that as I keep looking at comfort zones, I continue to explore. On the flip side of this, do I value my home too much? Do I personify it to a level where it can replace people? No, but it's a danger I try to be cognizant of. So many good stories feature a protagonist who ends up falling into the very trap they tried so desperately to avoid.
I use the example of my home because I've noticed that many people define comfort zone with a place--be it the actual physical reality of their home, a certain area of a city, a certain city or town itself, and the thought of moving, or breaking a certain 'barrier' for lack of a better word, is terrifying in itself. And people can't be pushed out of these notions they have. They have them for reasons they might not even be aware of themselves.
Another comfort zone involves my parents. They are living their lives as empty nesters, as grandparents, now, although it often seems impossible to me as I can't quite marry up this concept in my head as it forces me to consider their advancing age, and this panics me.
I tried, for so many years, to make them conform to what I felt they should be doing--be it
with their health, their spare time, you name it. Only recently did I recognize that all of my efforts, misguided though they were, invaded their comfort zone, which exists between the two of them, in their own home, and their own thought processes, as alien as they may be to me sometimes. I have no right to question them, really I don't.
I don't have the right to question ANYONE's definition of comfort zone. It is, as I described before, personal, private, and they will usually be very protective of it. Not in ways you can always recognize immediately, but in more subconscious ways, I've realized.
People who are nervous about their comfort zone limits may talk too much, repeat the same story over and over, trying to find their way back in somehow. People who are concerned about how much happiness they are currently not experiencing within a comfort zone that used to work for them may need to lay blame when none can really be shifted.

Perhaps in laying the foundation of my own comfort zone, I have often stepped on the boundaries of others. It helps me to remember to keep this in perspective.

I am breaking an old pattern.

Memory

I haven't been writing.
I've been reading, absorbing, taking things in, sometimes observing, partaking, but mostly just being, accepting, and, for lack of a better word, living. Living, as I described in my last post, my average life. I reflect alot. I regret alot too. But I am very much forward-moving. Not in the way that I can never stay still and be comfortable, but more in the way that I can't keep a strangle-hold on the past too long, that my way of making it through life seems to be dependent on me having alot to think about, juggling, but always paying close attention.
My thirties, thus far, have allowed me to continue to develop without the constant strife that seemed to shadow my twenties. Mental acuity. Inner strength. A shrewd but gentle view of the world. A feeling of luck to have a boring life. Boring can be just that, but when nothing catastrophic is happening from day-to-day, boring can bring such relief, such comfort.

I didn't always have, during my young adulthood, a full, layered life, with people who could give so much to me, to whom I could bestow much back onto. In my twenties, as I've laboured on describing in the past few posts, I didn't really know what it would take to make me happy. I didn't know that one day, I would actually be happy. Not dancing-in-the-street-happy, but 'me-happy'. Which means fragments of inner peace. Of acceptance. Accepting myself, with all my leftover neuroses and heartaches, and the bumps along the road that somehow find me, at 36, extremely blessed and grateful for every single blemish in the pavement I have tread upon.

This post is titled memory, so I guess I should give a nod to that.

I've been remembering, and forgiving, my younger self. For her very neuroses that brought me to today. For her very passionately made mistakes. I, for better or for worse, own those mistakes, those decisions, no matter how agonizing they were at the time, no matter how bitterly I can reflect on them now, they are mine, mine only.
I've visited the past in a number of ways in this new year, 2010, both psychologically and physically. I had dinner recently with an old friend, whom I hadn't seen or spoken to in a long time. We had alot to talk about. I had alot to be sorry for. So, in some respects, did she, but this was not a dinner about 're-living' the past--it was about honouring it, and allowing it some breathing room. Sometimes you don't get the opportunity to say you're sorry. I guess now, where I am, I have been given the lesson of saying it whenever I can.
I have another old friend, whom is always on my mind despite our geographical distance, as we seem to have been so much in synch over the past year or so. We have long, intellectual discussions on the phone, and never once do I ever leave a conversation with her that I don't learn something new-not just about her-but about myself. About beliefs, about ways of thinking.

Lots of big thoughts. Life. Death. Denial. Regret.

I continue to read through my old journals as a way of getting to know her (me)---who would ever think you would end up depending on a series of prettily-covered spiral-bound, lined notebooks to get to know yourself, the self of eight, nine, ten, eleven years ago?
I don't live in the past, but there are times, if you are living a good life, it can be a sweet place to visit. Not to dwell on.

To remember.

My Average Life

There was a show on in the early 90s called "My So-Called Life", a funny, inventive show detailing the life of a female protagonist, played by Claire Danes. She was insecure but daring, timid but creative, shy but forthcoming, and she narrated the show in a 'here-is-my-diary" kind of way that was very appealing for the age group that worshipped her.
At that time, in the early nineties, I belonged to my first-ever writing group, which was run by a very talented professor of mine from the Creative Writing division of York U.
It was called the Toronto School of Writing, and I was a novice among a group of very talented people, the majority of whom were ten to fifteen years older than myself. However, they took me seriously and I very much appreciated their feedback. Back then, much like I do now, I had a very "journalistic" style of writing, almost writing literal accounts of my daily life, my inner thoughts, my discoveries of early adulthood, my confusions, my (many) mistakes, experiments, and my laundry list of suppressed fears. One woman in the writing group felt that I reminded her of this teenager in My So-Called Life, and she explained that she meant this in the way that I laid it all bare when I wrote a piece, be it a short story or a poem. I was sincerely flattered at the time, as I idolized the show and its cast and I could acutely feel the parallels of my own life as I watched the show, despite the fact that I was in university.
Years have passed since that lively, diverse writing group. My talented, lovely professor lost her life to cancer at far too young an age. I have amassed a series of journals, approximately eight years' worth, from ages 22 to 30. As I detailed late last year I stopped journalling in 2004, for a variety of reasons. One being that I could no longer bring myself to write (or read) the blisteringly descriptive entries about how depressed I truly was at the time.
I was thinking about 2004 recently. One being that it was the year I saved myself. It was the year I spent, for the most part, in my apartment, with the exceptions of getting myself to work and to the places necessary for me to continue to live my independent life as I needed to.
Distinct to 2004 is the fact that I cannot remember ONE special or amazing thing that happened that year, other than my sister's announcement in November that she was pregnant with her first child. Other than that, I truly can't think of another good, or nice thing, that happened.
So much for my memory.
I realized why this is as I connect the dots between the journal entries stopping, my special friend moving away, and my decison to make a clean, albeit very difficult break from what had become some extremely destructive behaviours and, for lack of a better word, addictions. I am not referring to substances, per se, but rather addictions to thought patterns that always, without fail, led me down the wrong path.
I saved myself and started to heal, and in 2005, I started to thrive.
Back to the start of this post, with my So-Called Life reference. I have been toying with the idea of writing a memoir but I have lacked the real commitment to begin.
'How to begin it there's nothing in it' swirls through my head, an old quote from a favourite writer. Truly, there is so much I don't need to dredge up. But those Journal years call to me. Me in my unfinished, unvarnished state. Dark, scary, flawed, open--as I've mentioned before--without a veneer.
Maybe that is my beginning.

Plan B

(thanks to Susie A. for this posting idea…)

Does anyone really have a Plan B for their life? Based on my own day-to-day existence, it’s a wonder that I can make one life happen, let alone an alternate.

There’s an ad airing on tv right now that shows a woman, probably around thirty, getting up in the morning, then the frame is chopped to her eating breakfast (in a gorgeous, modern kitchen), then riding the escalator on her way to work, then at work, at her desk, then after work, in gym clothes, heading to a yoga studio, then back home, to her living room, on a couch, then back to her bedroom at night, and turning off the light. There are no other people in the ad, (I think it’s for yogurt but I can’t be certain) and her large double bed is empty when she goes there in the final night scene, but I thought to myself, as I saw the ad the first, second, and third time, oh my God, that is my life, or has been my life, for approximately twelve years of my adulthood, give or take some minor details. (Despite my profession, I have not yet attained a ‘gorgeous’ kitchen. The shoemaker’s children..)

You get up in the morning, focus on getting out the door to work, or caring for children in the home in some cases, and you zoom through the days, zoning in and out of the places you have to be, of what you have to get done, and what you are crossing off your list, and then one day, it happens. It being something completely unplanned, completely unexpected, and I do not mean something wonderful like winning the lottery. Your life changes in a way that you did not expect. You feel differently towards something that always made you happy or fulfilled you. A choice you made ends up costing you a huge amount of emotional energy. You’re the victim of a crime, or a divorce, or you realize you’re not in love anymore. With your career, your home, your self. And you don’t know what to do about it.

A favourite expression of someone who was once very dear to me, someone very wise, was this:
“It’s not What IF, it’s What IS”.
So now this unexpected thing has removed you from what is, because what is no longer applies in this transitional state, and you focus all your energy on what if, because it’s easier than dealing with how you have to make the journey back to what is.
The expression is trickier than it sounds.
What IS are the people in your life right now, today, sharing your struggles, your ambitions, your day-to-day glories right there with your day-to-day grind. What IS is the mortgage, the paycheque, the new couch, the due dates, the milestones, the birthdays, the vacations, the commitments, the substance.
What IF can be the past, your longing for someone who is never coming back, a set of circumstances you once found yourself in that you can’t revisit.
What IF can also be an outcome you want for a situation that has already been decided, that you can’t accept. It can be a wish, a dream, a desire, and it tends to lurk more in the realm of then, or later.
So how does one reconcile these two polar states?
Well, they don’t necessarily have to be polar. I think that What is can co-exist in a strange twosome with What if. You can deal with your day-to-day existence while planning your next move, like a chess game. Your next move may take much maneuvering, but it will play out eventually.

Your next move is your Plan B, whether or not you realize it at the time.

New Year....New Post

I promised in my last post that it was "to be continued". I guess I have to now live up to that.
Not that I don't want to, or can't, but lately (as you can see by my blogging), I've had a lot of thoughts that I need to put down.
I went to church on Saturday. Oddly, the mass was centered around the concept of Faith, which I found strangely coincidental, based on my last blog post. The priest, at one point, quoted a line from a biography about the former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, summing up his views on faith;
"There is no final answer...Faith is a continual search".
I thought (I think) that these are prophetic words. And also very truthful. There IS no final answer. Perhaps that's the trouble modern humanity has with faith--we all desperately want answers, despite the fact that said answers may not be sure, true, real, or worthy. Just give us something to go on.
Something to go on is often, if you work at it, something you can create from within yourself.

I'm sitting at my sister's kitchen table, on New Year's Day, talking with my sister, exchanging thoughts, ideas, things that sisters do, conversations that sisters have. My four-year-old niece has finagled a chair at the table, quietly, wearing a party dress and a tiara in the middle of winter, her current idea of what it means to be female. She is picking at a muffin, her head turning back from my sister, to me, to my sister, back to me, as the conversation progresses like a tennis match, each person getting a chance to speak, to communicate. I catch her watching and she looks at me, returning my gaze with a slow smile.
I ask her, "Do you like listening to girl talk?"
She nods, sagely, shyly, seriously.
I touch her cheek, affectionately.
"One day you'll do your own girl talk".
Big smiles. This must be the part of girlhood, and future, eventual womanhood, she looks forward to, the way all girls do, the make up, the hair-care, the dresses, the tights.
Isn't that part of faith? The faith in the future, the faith OF the future, that it will come along, whether we want it to or not, life running along, with or without us, mostly with us, and even then, when it's without us, we're somewhere around, observing, listening, sending signs when we can, letting people know where we are.

I left an event today, and I headed back out into a snow-covered city, icy-cold, wind blowing from every direction. In the Spadina subway, a determined (cold!) busker was singing along to his guitar, a beautiful rendition of "Imagine" a song I always associate with death and sadness. (I had just left the viewing for a friend's father moments before). He sang the line, the tiles in the subway station wall reverberating the sound;
"Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky.... Imagine all the people...living for today..." It was as haunting as it is when I always hear that song and stubbornly respond to that line in my head---No; I can't imagine, and really, to me, that has nothing to do with living for today.

Because, as a favourite journalist of mine once wrote: "Living's the thing".