If You Are A Grown Up. . . Post 1

A friend of mind, now dead to this life, used to talk about being a grown-up.  She didn't use fancy words like "mature" or "wise".  She wanted to be a grown-up and wanted her family to become grown-up people.  I've been wondering about what a grownup person looks like, especially in terms of relationships.

Here are some of my suspicions.  I'll share more as we go along.

I think a grown-up has imagination.  Uses imagination.  Cultivates imagination.

Dean Koontz suggests a quality when he writes:
  “Daily I walk a high wire, always in danger of losing my balance.  The essence of my life is supernatural, which I must respect if I am to make the best use of my gift.  Yet I live in the rational world and am subject to its laws,  The temptation is to be guided entirely by impulses of an otherworldly origin—but in this world a long fall will always end in a hard impact.”  p. 75, FOREVER ODD

I would summarize this way:  a grownup constantly walks valuing the unseen (humility, hope, love, freedom, for instance, as well as the spiritual) and the seen (laws of physics, snotty noses, the need to use the bathroom, job-termination).

A grown up then values parts of relationships he/she cannot see -- loyalty, caring, honesty and trustworthiness come to mind.  This same grownup also values parts of relationships he/she can see -- shows up on time, shovels the snow off my walk when I am ill, takes turns buying lunch or coffee.

Above all a grown-up values humility in herself/himself and in others.  The TV nonsense shows that purport to honor aggressive pride, put-downs and demeaning of others make her or him want to puke.  Well, at least want to turn to another channel.

What do you think?  Do you value grown-up people?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Losing and Gaining

I had good friends in high school.  Young men I cared about who who, I believed, cared about me.  One died in a construction accident.  Another got a good job selling cars, married, and I have never seen him since his wedding.  Another apprenticed, became a journeyman, married and had a child.  I saw him two or three times after high school and never since.

"That was what life did to you, he supposed.  Wiped out important things and replaced them with other important things."
  David Baldacci, "The Forgotten", p. 39

One of the characters in Baldacci's novel reflects the reality of relationships.  While I am, by nature, loyal to a fault, few others are.  I move, they move, one changes jobs and it's too much effort to stay connected.  After awhile (a few days, weeks, or years, they find it too much trouble to stay connected.  Important relationships are wiped out, and (one hopes) are replaced by new important relationships.

Or not.  After awhile it doesn't seem as worth the effort as it once did.

I find it helps to change my expectations.  I don't expect today's friend to be there for me tomorrow.  Cynical?  Realistic?  Certainly sad, from one point of view.  We lose.  We gain.  We die.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Forgetting What Is Important

When I was a little boy, what was important to me?  Really important?  it was keeping my little sister safe and helping her find food.

Later, that need and priority faded and what was important was protecting and growing my own children.  Teaching them, helping them become resilient, helping them master skills like climbing, riding a bicycle safely in traffic, and facing their fears.

Later, those things were not as important to me, and protecting and helping my grandchildren took on a massive priority to which I devoted attention, time, and resources.

David Baldacci has one of his characters in "The Forgotten" say, "That was what life did to you", he supposed.  "Wiped out important things and replaced them with other important things."  [p. 39]

As I reflect I wonder about the in-between times, when the former important things have lost their priority and nothing new has taken their place.  What skills in relationships, what truth-telling and communicating, what purposefulness can a person muster "in between"?

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Getting Down

When they were young I built my daughters a "climbing toy".  It went up about four feet, and had "rungs" they could climb up.  As they began to climb they found it pretty easy to get to the top.  They they wanted me to help them down.
  "You have to learn to climb down", I said, "if you are going to climb up."  As you may know, it feels lots more scary to come down than to go up.  dfBut whether on a climbing toy, a ladder or mountain climbing, if you want to go up you have to come down, preferably with grace and safety.

I think the same thing applies in relationships.  Every once in awhile someone will "get up on her high horse" (or his high horse).  A person will make judgments, pontificate, announce sweeping pronouncements or diagnostic determinations that don't work.  Often they are wrong.
  At such a time a person needs to come down off her high horse, find a safe and graceful way to say, "I was wrong" or "I'm sorry."
If a person cannot learn to climb off her high horse comfortably enduring relationships will be hard to come by.  I wonder, in fact, how many divorces are caused by people who don't have (and maybe don't want) the skill of getting down.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Smoothing Through the Rough Spots

I have had the privilege of being in relationships, observing relationships, watching relationships fail, and feeling my way through relationships.  In spite of the "do what you feel" push of the late sixties and seventies, I have observed a consistent thread running through relationships that last.
That thread is:  courtesy.  Politeness.  Unfailing commitment to what some folks call "social lubrication".
Courtesy includes thanking a spouse for cooking a meal, thanking a child for making his bed, using the word "please" when asking for something (even something like "Please pass the potatoes") and asking, "May I interrupt for a moment?"
What if you don't feel grateful.  Say "Thank you" anyway.  What if you think the potatoes are your 'right'?  Say "Please" anyway.  Develop these habits.  Stick  to these habits.
Include these habits at work.  At the bar.  In a restaurant.  Playing ball.  I'll tell you why this is important.
Wherever there are two or more people, friction arises.  Tedium, irritability, coolness where once there was warmth, a sense of desperation, and inevitably, impatience.  When people continue being courteous, they smooth the way through these frictions and the good feelings, the sense of possibilities, the camaraderie and teamwork reassert themselves.  In marriage, family and friendships warm feelings, even love, rears up and you remember why these people are so important in your life.

"A Scout is courteous" is one of the Scout laws.  I believe courtesy is also a useful law for all of us to live by.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Winners and Losers? Or. . .

As I reflect on the Bronco's game yesterday, and March Madness last spring, and the rivalry between Apple and Microsoft, and neighbors who don't get along and neighbors who do get along, I question the essential value of "win-lose" in relationships.  Actually, I question it in many areas of life.

I saw a Broncos team member and an Eagles team member exchange a friendly pat on the back before getting their heads back into the game.  At that point, win-lose was just the game -- relationally they were about win-win, and it felt good.

How many husbands and wives, I wonder, compete with one another.  If they do, mostly it's subtle.  Subtle or not, it destroys the intimacy and hope of their relationship.  He makes so much money.  She must make as much or a bit more.  He has so many friends.  She must have a few more friends.  She spends time with the kids.  He must be more important to the kids than she is.

You get the idea.

In relationships, open and friendly competition may be fun.  A win-lose approach to the relationship leads to disaster, even if only one party embraces it.

What do you think?

Leave a comment and let us know.

Guilt, Shame and Living, Part Two

Shame rules most of the world.  Not guilt.  Not the absence of guilt.  Shame.

Even here in the United States children often hear, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself."  Shame is used to goad, prod, punish, immolate and destroy.  Probably because the upper classes in England did so much to destroy and damage each other and the classes 'below' them, we Americans have done a lot to abandon motivation by shame.

Sadly, we still have shame.  We have few ways of helping people move past it.

In some cultures they have rituals for dealing with shame.  A year wearing black, perhaps.  Saying, "I'm sorry."  Laying prostrate at the door of the person you besmirched, or the door of a temple, or in front of a ruler are some means of ritually cleansing oneself of the stigma of shame.  When I was first exploring this I learned that one Asian country had 28 formal methods for dealing with shame.  I thought we Americans had no such rituals.

I was wrong.  My friend, Ted, noted:  "We move away."

Americans change locations, take jobs across the country, go to the big city, or leave to live in a secluded retreat.  But we cannot all do that.

The wild West is pretty much settled.  Where will you go when you are deeply shamed, or ashamed?

Just knowing the difference between shame and guilt could help a person deal with whichever is crushing her or him.  It could help us rebuild relationships, including the relationship to one's self.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Guilt, Shame and Living

Many years ago I learned an important distinction.  I learned that we often confuse two quite different experiences.  We confuse guilt with shame, and shame with guilt.  They feel like first cousins, if not identical, when we are hurting.  Making the distinction, however, permits us to deal with each of them with some success.

In one sense, guilt is the easy one.  We are guilty when we break a rule, social convention, law, or commandment.  This is a legal concept.  There are two choices:  guilty or not guilty.  Shading comes in the statement of the crime, not whether one is guilty or not guilty.  Simple, really.  It might be murder, second-degree murder, or killing in service of one's government.  Did you?  Did you not?  Guilty?  or, not guilty?

There is an antidote for guilt.  A solution, really.

A person can never be un-guilty, but he or she can be. . . forgiven.

Forgiven by the person I hurt, or his surviving family.  Forgiven by society.  And, hardest of all, forgiven by one's self.

In our law-oriented society we are basically about determining guilt.  Less so, we work with forgiveness.  Resources are in place to help us.

Guilty?  Not Guilty?  What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.

"I Want To Fit In!"

I have been acquainted with many people who want to fit in.  Pop psychologists make diagnoses -- abandonment issues, a parent liked someone else in the family more than this person, they were bullied as a child, . . . The list goes on and on.  Bottom line, however, is that my acquaintances want to belong so intensely each would give up his/her authentic self in order to fit in.

At some level, of course, we each need to fit in.  We need to fit in to the department where we work, to the church where we worship, to the class we are taking.  Some of our rough edges need polishing off.  You understand that, and so do I.

I believe, however, that our relationships deteriorate badly when we try to hard to fit in that we give up more than the rough edges.  We give up that authentic inner being.  We commit relational suicide in the name of having just the relationships we lust after.

The shy person keeps going to parties to please the person she thinks she needs to please.  The competent guy chooses to make mistakes in order to fit in with the less competent he believe he needs to be part of.  It works. . . for awhile.

Something of a person's phoniness begins showing through, however.  People begin whispering, "I really don't like being around ______.  Something is just nor right."

The inner disconnect between the deepest values and beliefs of a person and the veneer of behavior she or he has adopted begins to chafe.  Her or his relationship with the herself or himself causes pain, or a sense of deadness, or even resentment of the people once chosen as the "adopted family".

Let me quickly add one footnote:  I am not speaking of appropriate changes each of us must make to grow into our best selves.  The complaining habits can be broken, the judgmental attitudes can be toned down, the chronic sarcasm can be modified.  It is best done by attending to the insecurities and pain within and mending from the inside out.  The motivation is to be the better person, however, not to fit in with this "better" crowd, clique or club.

I received this quote from Thoughtful Mind:      “Don't change so people will like you. Be yourself & the right people will love the real you.” 

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Internal Verbal Abuse -- Not Acceptable

Jill Bolte Taylor, "My Stroke of Insight", p. 161, wrote:

"I'm a devout believer that paying attention to our self-talk is vitally important for our mental health.  In my opinion, making the decision that internal verbal abuse is not acceptable behavior is the first step toward finding deep inner peace.  It has been extremely empowering for me to realize that the negative storyteller portion of my brain is only about the size of a peanut!"  

When any person get abuse heaped upon the self, that person tends to change.  

• . . . from  loving to hating
• . . . from sweet to bitter
• . . . from accepting to rejecting
• . . . from at peace to in conflict
• . . . from healthy to unhealthy

When the person I trust most (me) heaps verbal abuse on my self, I really set myself up for failure in relationships, business, sports, music -- whatever it is that I hope to be successful at.

Oh, wait.  I accepted the abuse so much I no longer expect to succeed at much of anything.  

My friend, Virginia Tozer once remarked that she hated the phrase, "such a worm as I" in a well known hymn.  "I am not a worm!" she explained.  

She was correct.  

If you find yourself abusing yourself verbally, seek help and stop.  In a few months you will either be a different person, with better relationships, or you will (if you dare look) be very defensive about how you deserve the abuse.  

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.  

Aging Well

As we age our relationships change.

I suppose that seems obvious, but it comes as a surprise to most of my acquaintances.  I want to begin exploring this reality, and I invite you along in this exploration.  Please leave your comments, your insights, and your disagreements in the comment box.

I had warm relationships with people I worked with.  Then I retired.  Only two of these folks were willing to maintain a friendly contact, and it was all up to me.  That was a somewhat surprising change, but not unexpected.  When I changed jobs as a younger man much the same thing happened.  People with whom I shared life, values,. experiences, successes were suddenly "moving on" and for me not to recognize it was to be horribly out of touch with reality.

Retirement is an adventure I am experiencing along with aging.  I am only semi-retirement, but I serve more retired folks than not-yet-retired folks so I get a feel for the changes.

People move on, as in, move to other parts of town, move to other states, even move to other countries.  It's harder to maintain a relationship with folks you can't have coffee with every week.  In any event, the relationship changes.

I wonder, sometimes, when people no longer return calls inviting them to dinner or coffee or seeing a film together if they were "using" me for some end and my retirement means I have nothing to offer anymore.  Probably I'm paranoid, but relationships change.

It seems harder to make new friends.  People already have their social circles, and often have no room for new folks in those circles.  I don't feel like standing just outside the circle waiting for someone to die or move away. . .

What have been your experiences?  Leave a comment.  I'll continue this next week.

Win or Lose - 1

I have acquaintances who speak and think with contempt about 'relationships'.  For them the world is about winning and losing, making it or failing, dominating or being dominated.  No, they really aren't friends.  Their idea of friends, if they have such an idea, is that of someone they control or have power over.

I have come to think that being human includes winning or losing, because we humans seem dominated by these realities.  But professional sports requires me to think wa-a-a-y past winning and losing.

What! you exclaim.  That's all professional sport is about.

Wrong, in my opinion.  That's all many sportscasters and the professional gamblers that run professional sports think about, but the men and women who make a living as sports figures and team members change teams, they go free-agent, they can work as hard for that team as they did for this team.  In many cases they retain strong friendships with people they once played with and now play against.  Finally, what gives life lasting meaning are the warm relationships we build, not whether we "win" or "lose".

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Shame, Sorry, or Set In Cement

As I ponder the problems people have in relationships, including the person writing this blog, I ponder silence and I ponder time.  Here's how my thinking goes:

Two people have a falling out.  One is angry, and cuts off communication.  Totally.
The other tries a few times, and gets reamed out for trying to reconcile.  She/he does not know what the problem is, but comes willing to 'own' her/his behavior that came between them.  The angry person pushed away even more.

Time goes by.

The enraged person begins to feel that maybe it wasn't such a big deal after all.  But she/he is ashamed. Too ashamed to reach out.

Meanwhile, the person pushed away wants to try again, but doesn't want to make the gap into a chasm.

The relationship, or lack of relationship, does not change.  The long the silence continues, the harder it will be to restore or reconcile.  What to do?

I mean that question:  what to do?

What do you think?  Have you had such an experience and a successful resolution?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Fumble

Do you ever get telemarketing calls?  We are on the do-not-call list and get several per day.  We got one about 2 minutes ago from a young man who kept silent when my wife said, "Hello."  After 8-10 seconds he said, "hello".  Then more silence.  My wife said, "Do you have anything to say?"  

  He was silent about 3 seconds, and then started his canned spiel.  She hung up.

Was he sucking on a marijuana pipe?  So used to rejection he couldn't speak?  Shy?  

Hard to say, but I would not want him making calls for my product.

I don't want him calling me again, ever. He wasted my time and violates my privacy. He erodes my trust (I am on he do not call list, remember?). I don't wish him ill, much, but I don't like his telephone persona. Maybe in person I would enjoy him.

Probably not.

He got one chance to jump our defenses and present himself. He blew it.

How many times have I fumbled like he did, but in different contexts? I wonder. Maybe I would not like myself at such times.

What do you think? Leave a comment and let us know.

We Come Without A Manual

"For me, it's really easy to be kind to others when I remember than none of us came into this world with a manual about how to get it all right.  We are ultimately a product of our biology and environment."  

  Jill Bolte Taylor, "My Stroke of Insight", p. 155.   

Our parents, teachers, friends, Scout troops and the adults with whom we interact as we grow up provide the manual.  Sometimes the manual is clear, with helpful tips and tricks that we absorb.  More often than not, however, no one adds to our manual ways we can keep ourselves healthy while caring for others.  So we hurt one another, disrespect others, and do damage because we are trying to keep ourselves healthy.  Or, some of us damage ourselves in order to "love one another".  

Dr. Taylor, quoted above, suggest that if we remember that none of the folks we interact with "came with a manual" we can find a better balance, ways to care without failing to care for ourselves.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.  

Focus

Jill Bolte Taylor, "My Stroke of Insight", p. 183, wrote:

     "In an atempt to diminish the power of my fear/anger response, I intentionally choose not to watch scary movies or hang out with people whose anger circuitry is easily set off.  I consciously make choices that directly impact my circuitry.  Since I like being joyful, I hang out with people who value  my joy." 

I wonder how you understand her words.  When I think about the multi-colored tapestry of my relationships through the years, I realize that during a few periods I was one of those people who are easily angered.  I am grateful for the wise and positive folks who spent some time with me while I grew beyond my issues.

I am also aware of certain consistently negative people who impacted me.  Unconciously, usually, I moved away from them.  I spent less time with them.  I did not exclude them totally -- just maintained a healthy reserve while they were working through their stuff.  

I appreciate the notion that we can monitor our internal circuitry and make wise decisions about how often and how intensely we relate to others, as well as how much time we invest in scary movies, drugging, having affairs, and other behaviors that inhibit our inner well being.  Not only do I appreciate it, I believe it to be true.  Not only do I believe it to be true, I believe the only person who can do this well for me is . . . me.  For you . . . you.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us now.  

Ashamed

I have two daughters.  One is creative, sparkles, and loves life.  She includes others, makes and keeps friends, and brings joy wherever she goes.

The other wants to be like that, but has settled for artificiality, an unexamined life (especially in the area of feelings) and while she wants to be liked by everyone (especially on the Web) is quickly mistrusted and avoided by those who get too close.

I wondered this morning if I am ashamed of the girl who has settled.  I don't think I am.  Embarrassed in some ways, but still believing that one day she will grow and find the values within herself she once embraced.  In other words, not shame but hope is what I bring to our relationship, or lack thereof.

What about you?  Do you wonder about yourself in relation to others who are, or have been, in your life?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Can We Relate to the Aging? - 1

Seems like a silly question, doesn't it.  We begin "aging" the moment we are born, if not before.  But for most of us "aging" means "getting old".  Maybe it would be better to ask, "Can we relate to 'getting old'?  If I ask the question that way, I am sure to get a "not really" response from a lot of readers.

"Old" is a personal definition, of course.  In the 1960's the "young" said, "You cannot trust anyone over 30."  So, was age 30 the watershed, and anyone over 30 was "old"?

For others, retirement age is "old".  Generally we think of age 65 as retirement age, although in 2013 when I write this most people in the United States who are age 65 can plan on living another twenty or thirty years.

For me, at age 75, old is when I began having physical impairments -- needing a new knee, back issues, etc.  But that's not totally true.  I had retina detachments in my fifties and did not define myself as "old".  This defining of "old" is a pretty subjective concept.

When I was in my thirties I used to visit nursing homes, and my oldest daughter never wanted to go visit "old" people.  She was somewhat scared of them.  Maybe she still is.  She has embraced the "forever a teen beauty" concept for herself with fearsome passion.  I wonder, "When is a person old for her?"

What is it about people who are "old" that makes relating to them difficult?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Rewriting History 3-13-13

A couple we know, middle aged, with their own children, have strong needs to be victims.  Each was raised with some joy, some pain, but with supportive families and friends.  In other words, they were raised like many of us.  Both were required to move once or twice during their childhood, and did so with grace and confidence.

For some reason, however, each became a person who has to be a star in his/her own drama.  To be the "victim star", however, they have to be victims.  Thus, after pondering their plight, each has chosen to rewrite history.  In spite of support from parents, they have "abandonment issues".  In spite of parent participating in their lives, they grew up oh-so-lonely.  Well, you get the picture.

Being victims, abandoned, and so forth, they now can choose crappy ways of relating, or not relating, to their families.  They feel justified.  And they relate badly.

Any one who wants an excuse for self-centered choices rather than positive  relational choices, can find such an excuse.  Maybe you have chosen to be the victim in your own drama.  What kind of choices are you making?  Are you accepting of reasonably OK relationships with a variety of imperfect people?  

Have you encountered folks who have to be the stars of their own drama?  Have you been hurt by such people?  Have you resisted the urge to rewrite your own history and found genuine self-acceptance whatever your history?

Leave a comment and let us know what you think, or something of your experience. 

Revenge (and relationships) - 1

TV shows and films in 2012 and 2013 (so far) include a preponderance of emphases on the value and virtue of revenge.  Although mostly male actors express their commitment to revenge, some "hard-ass" women actors are just as determined.  It's a message our culture has often embraced, but it became a sort of unholy mantra after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

It feels so right.  Revenge results, however, are so wrong.

Revenge was used to create a war on and in Iraq that had nothing based in reality for it's creation.  No Weapons of Mass Destruction.  No Osama.  No connection to Osama.  But once our war machine began operating, we unleashed Sunni, Shiite and Kurd expressions of revenge.  In fact, about the only thing came comes close to uniting the people of Iraq is a desire to exact revenge on the United States.  (Wrong:  they are also pretty united in hatred for Israel.)

Much the same thing can be said for our war in Afghanistan except that Osama seems to have used that nation as a springboard, and the Taliban as an expression of his fanaticism.  But ten years later, most of the citizens hate being occupied by the USA.  Revenge has not done us any good, and it has cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

On the personal level, there is consistent testimony that once a person has been able to exact a personal revenge on someone who may have "deserved it", a hole is left and the emptiness just doesn't go away.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know. 

The Privilege of Avoidance

Many of us live in a fast-paced urban setting, or, a fast-paced suburban setting.  In many cases we work for ourselves, we work as writers, artists, or small businesspeople.  We have many burdens and many privileges.  One of our privileges lets us avoid the people we don't want to interact with.  I call this the "Privilege of Avoidance".  It's pathetic.

John annoys me.  I don't need John to sculpt, so I cut John out of my life.
Monica calls me a hypocrite.  I don't think about what she means.  I just won't be in the same room as Monica. 
Helen makes my life miserable with her so-called humor.  It's OK.  I can avoid Helen for months, maybe for years. 
Alexander is toxic to me.  I get so sad around Alexander I begin to hate myself.  Hey!  I don't need Alexander.  I will relate only to people I like who make me feel good about myself.  And I will NOT look at myself and ask if there are reasons not to feel good about myself.

How do you handle the privilege of avoidance?  Or didn't know know you could grab it for yourself?  Leave a comment and let us know. 

Toxic People 3

I ended part one of this musing like this:  What shall we do with toxic people?  Cut them out of our lives?  Learn to ignore their foolishness and appreciate their good points?  Lock them up?  

I am not wondering what society should do with toxic people.  I am wondering what thinking people, people like you and like me, should do?  I even wonder if there is one answer that fits all situations, or it this requires pondering, puzzling over, and serious thinking. 

I have to wonder how our government would work if all the toxic people who are elected, and who influence elections, were locked away where they could not speak to other and  could not spread their poisons.

But who decides?  To many Abraham Lincoln was a toxic person who advocated for a larger role of the Federal government, for war, and for emancipation of slaves.  To many others Abraham Lincoln was not a toxic person, but a man who cautiously embraced change for himself and for his country.  Who decides?  A committee?  An individual like John Wilkes Booth?  Voters?

I know individuals who are extremist right wing bigots who advocate being ready to overthrow our United States government by force.  Yet individually many are kind to dogs and children, and pleasant to be around.  Others are violent and scary.  I have to ask what makes a person a "toxic person"?

What do you think?  How would you define for yourself what a toxic person is?  Our next part in this musing will explore ways to interact positively with toxic people. 

Toxic People - Two

I have been in a number of toxic relationships.  Sometimes I knew it.  Other times I did not know what was happening.  Part of the difficulty with toxic people is that only a very few are toxic all the time.  Most people make us sick once in a while, and we learn to bend, adapt, take our relational medications, or whatever.  Sometimes we even believe we only deserve such people in our lives. 

In the modern, mostly urban setting in which we live, the easiest thing to do it to move away from toxic people.  Avoid them.  Cast them out.  Pretend they do not exist.  However. . .

Some toxic people work where we work.  Unless we change jobs every few weeks we cannot totally avoid them.  Some people who seem toxic to us go to the same school as we do.  Some are bullies, others are just drags down the classes we are in.  Many cling to us like barnacles to a ship's hull, dragging it slower and slower on it's journey through the sea.

What strategies have you figured out, or been taught, that permit you to remain in some sort of relationship with the toxic people in your life without being dragged in a direction you don't want to go?  How have you figured out ways to be the best person you can be while embracing many kinds of people including difficult people? 

Leave a comment and let us know what's working for you (and what is not working). 

Toxic People -- One

I recall a neighbor who knew what everyone else should believe, should do, and imposed her views belligerently on all she met.  Often she was out there in wacko land, but Boy! did she come on strong.

She was active in her church, and took it upon herself to counsel young women.  She counseled one to leave her husband and break up the marriage of a professional sports player (who was also married) because she had had a vision or a dream.  She was toxic!

Ah!  The ying and the yang.  Some people loved her and found her wonderful.  Others found her as poisonous as as spitting, mature viper. 

What shall we do with toxic people?  Cut them out of our lives?  Learn to ignore their foolishness and appreciate their good points?  Lock them up?

What do you think?  I hope we can  converse about this.  Please leave a comment. 

Relate to a Rock?

I have heard people say they related to a rock.  Or, related to a mountain.  Or, relate to a tree.

OK.  I think I get it.

Think about it:  a person can "relate" to a thing, a situation, a feeling, a dilemma.  "I can related to that!" says your counselor or pastor or friend.  But no matter what you believe, you cannot have a relationship with a rock, a mountain, a tree or any other "lump".  It takes two or more who communicate back and forth  for a relationship to exist.

Perhaps you have enjoyed a relationship with someone.  You talked often, you shared back and forth about this, that and the other thing.  Then this other person moved, or quit speaking to you, or died.  End of relationship.

You can say, "I had a relationship with __________."  You can say, "________ and I used to have a relationship."  But without the two way communication functioning, you don't have one now.

What has been your experience?  Leave a comment and share with us. 

Failure in Relationships

The Broncos (Denver) lost the playoff game.  One player stepped up after the announcers, spectators, commentators, and other doofusii made their pronouncements about who was to blame.  This player took responsibility for losing the game.  Guts, no glory, no Ra... sorry, that's a commercial.  It took courage to blame himself and only himself.

But he is wrong.  A team and a game is about relationships.  No single action or lack of action destroys a game and no single action or lack of action destroys a relationship.  Losing a game is not losing a relationship, either.  Next season comes along with new hope and new possibilities. 

When a person says, "I can't stay in relationship with XXX" he or she is making a decision based on a history of decisions, actions, lack of actions, or . . . serious mental illness.  And the mental illness had been growing for some time. 

I don't mean simple psychosis, of course.  Our culture nurtures the feel-good-all-the-time mental illness, the "if it weren't for. . . " mental illness, the "instant gratification" mental illness.  When someone commits to some variant of these ideologies in some deep way, maybe not even knowing she or he is making that commitment, the person become mentally unstable, unable to relate well. 

Relationships involve give and take, acceptance and forgiveness, self-blame, other blame and reluctance to blame.  Energy, patience, and pacing are all involved in starting, developing and maintaining, even growing, relationships.  At least, that's how I see it. 

What has been your experience?  Leave a comment and let us know. 

Musing About Relationships - Beginnings

Relationships energize. 
Relationships suck. 
Relationships live.
Relationships give life meaning. 
Relationships take meaning away and flush it down the toilet.

All true.  All false.  I suppose you can say, "It depends."

Most of us (but not all of us) are born into relationships.  We have one or two parents.  We may have one or more siblings.  We may have grandparents, aunts, cousins, uncles, godparents and more.

Or not. 

A few people are born with the mother dying giving birth, no father on the scene, only distressed nurses and maybe a doctor in attendance.  Or maybe no other person in a shabby room or dirty alley, but someone finds us before we die. 

How many of us get so involved in our pain that we forget that somebody or some somebodies gave us shelter, food, and some sort of relationship even if it was less than wonderful? 

"Shut that kid up!" yelled the girl as she sat up in bed.  Her little sister stopped crying, and dumbfounded parents watched the older girl fall back asleep.

Relationships energize.
Relationships suck. 
Relationships live.
Relationships give life meaning. 
Relationships take meaning away and flush it down the toilet. 

I want to reflect on relationships in the next few months or years, and ask you for your experiences, your opinions, your comments.  Please avoid profanity, juvenile ranting, irrelevant posturing. 

Leave a comment now and let us know what you think.