Tag: reflection

Balance

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Despite the fact that I started out July thinking I would “be bold” and post more frequently, I have gotten caught up in the crazy of summer life. I have gotten caught up in my work, reading the books necessary to complete that work, preparing for college, cleaning up and throwing out. All this amid the daily routine of household chores necessary to maintain a functioning home. Sometimes, I begin to feel I am losing my grasp on what is real and necessary and beautiful.

It seems out of necessity, I have been cramming too much into the summers. Actually… into life. I spend my days cramming too much into life. Too many jobs, too many chores, too many errands, too many appointments. These things take a toll, but as I prepare to pay tuition bills, I am hit broadside with the reasons why I constantly push, always taking on more. But cramming in so much is not always a good thing. Quality, simplicity, and reflection would be good things. These things would give me the ability to shift my perspective, breathe, and re-evaluate the crazy that dominates my days. Maybe find a better balance.

Each time I think I am almost to the end of my crazy, a new string of commitments and appointments makes non-crazy an un-truth. Once again, the crazy continues, off-kilter and out of balance, but next week looks promising….

Kinda funny about next week. There’s always next week, isn’t there? And next week always brings new hope for just a bit more balance.

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Metaphors

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Recently, I had the opportunity to try my hand at making pottery—wheel-throwing, to be exact. In truth, I think I did this once or twice as a kid, but it was long ago. I remembered only the feeling of wet clay slipping between my fingers, the gentle prodding of the clay to create the desired shape, and the uneven feeling of lopsidedness on the wheel.

This time, I had the benefit of a patient and experienced instructor, who led me—step by step—through the process. I threw the clay onto the wheel, missing the center by more than I’d like to admit. The instructor adjusted the clay, pushing it closer to the center, and started the wheel. He demonstrated how I should hold my hands to gently push or pull the lump of clay into the center, shaping it and rounding it out. The clay resisted. I pushed harder, using some muscle to move it beyond its resistance. I was a bit surprised at the muscle necessary to move this inanimate, shapeless lump.

I smoothed the edges into a disk, and I pulled up toward the center, raising the height of the nameless object on the wheel. I used the side of my hand to flatten the clay and push it into the center. I repeated this process of centering until I had a flat disk resembling a hockey puck.

I began to work the center, slowly and gently pressing my thumb into the clay to create a hole from which I would begin to sculpt the vessel. From here, the process became one of gentle pressure—make an indent and watch it slowly become deeper and wider. The next steps would take an increasingly gentler touch as I steadied one hand against the other to work the sides upward and outward. The farther out and up I went, the more I could feel a slight off-centeredness of the piece. While I wanted to pull it back in, I didn’t want to exert too much force.

In the moments before I declared my piece “done,” and the wheel was turned off, the metaphor of potter and clay was not lost on me. The fact is, it’s not easy to mold a shapeless lump of clay into something both beautiful and useful. The clay resists. It won’t stay centered, and if it’s off center, it will become increasingly lopsided until it ultimately spins out of control and falls apart. Sometimes, it takes greater force from the potter to coax a piece back to the center. Perhaps sometimes, when we get too caught up in our lives, we are particularly unyielding and need to allow ourselves to be pulled back to center.

Ultimately, I added a spout to my piece. I not only wanted a vessel that could be filled up, but I also wanted one that could be poured out. One that would easily contain and distribute ingredients. It will take some time for my bowl to be dried and fired, glazed and re-fired. At the end of this month, it will arrive, beautiful and useful. I can’t wait to see the finished product and recognize the steps—and the patience—necessary as the potter molds the clay.

Be Bold!

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Each year, as I head toward January, I buy myself an inspirational calendar because… well, because it will be inspirational! And believe me when I tell you that I don’t flip through the calendar when I first get it to see what is waiting to inspire me each month. No. I wait. I am a delayed gratification kind of girl.

When I turned my calendar to July, I was met with a quote from Goethe: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it.” What a great thought to start the month!

And so for this month, I will be bold. For this month, I will write more blog posts. I will take more steps, set more goals, and implement more action plans. For this month, I will take more risks.

Because boldness has genius. And power. And magic. And for me, it’s all about the magic! Come on and join me. Just for this month, be bold!

Firefly Season

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It’s firefly season in New Hampshire, a magical time that awakens the memories of long summer days and playful nights from my childhood. Each year, I discover firefly season quite by accident, and it always takes me by surprise—as if I had forgotten that fireflies exist.

This year, I was walking along a path through the woods with my children. I saw a tiny yellow-green flash against the darkness of the woods. And then another. “Fireflies!” I exclaimed, though my children had already seen them. Each evening since, I have taken a walk just before dusk darkens to night, so I might once again experience their fleeting magic before they slip away until next year.

Fireflies bring me back to childhood summers. Bedtimes were extended to accommodate early July activities—picnics and fireworks and ice cream. We would venture out into the darkness with jars to catch as many of these magical insects as we could. Bugs that light up! We would follow them with our eyes, attempting to predict their path in the darkness, hoping their bright tails would reappear where we were expecting them. As we opened our jars to catch the next firefly, one or two might escape, and the chase would begin anew. At the end of our hunt, when it was way past time to go to bed, we would open our jars and set them all free.

Firefly season always brings me back to those magical nights of childhood. I can feel the warm summer air and soft breezes. I can smell the scent of grass and dew. I can hear the muffled voices of my parents by the open window and the squeals and giggles of childhood.

When I spot the first firefly,  I am right there, surrounded by all the richness of life.

{Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash}

Grow your Good

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On Friday evening, I was driving to my daughter’s dance rehearsal. The sun was low and the traffic was heavy with summer weekend tourists. I was alone in the car, and my mind was flipping through the pages of the day, churning through a brutal narrative of destructive self-talk. I am not enough of this, and I am too much of that. It was the typical inner focus on my flaws and deficiencies.

As the weight of the evening’s inner monologue grew clear to me, I stopped myself and worked to redirect the narrative. You’re not stupid, I tried to convince myself. But that wasn’t much of a redirection. The statement needed to be positive rather than negative. You are much smarter than you give yourself credit for, I ventured. You have good ideas and you follow through. Better. A good deal better! You are enough, I told myself.

As I pondered my self-talk, I reminded myself that I’m not the only one who’s killing it in the self-bullying department. While so many people seem to believe in themselves without a problem (or they’re faking it), other people struggle as they navigate their daily lives. Our inner critics are not kind. But most people couldn’t possibly be as brutal in their inner monologue as I am. Or could they?

What if… just for today, we stop comparing ourselves to others? Everybody is unique, and everybody has their own talents that they bring to the world. We all have positive aspects and negative aspects, and most of the people I know spend inordinate amounts of time focused on fixing the negative when they should instead focus on growing their good. Despite what social media might suggest, nobody’s life is perfect. Accept what you have and work with it. Grow your good.

What if… we began to tell ourselves the truth rather than some warped version of the truth we use to make ourselves feel bad? We could focus on the child we made smile while we were standing in the grocery line. We might consider how well we handle the demands of our job. Or we might look at how a great sense of humor helps us through the day.

What if… just for today, we stop keeping a laundry list of all the things we have done wrong. Better yet, what if we rip up that laundry list and throw it in the trash? Or maybe we could bring it with us the next time we go camping. Then we could throw it in a campfire and watch it slowly melt away into ashes.

What if… just for today, we were to celebrate our successes rather than dwelling on our failures? We might recognize that we have raised good children, or that we handled the latest two-year-old temper tantrum with a patience we didn’t have yesterday. We might see that we walked half a mile more than we intended, or we beat our personal best in our most recent marathon.

What if… just for today, we rewrite our inner monologue? What if we focus on all the things we are rather than all the things we are not? What if every time we heard ourselves engage in negative self-talk, we changed it to a positive statement? By doing so, we might give ourselves an opportunity to see the good in ourselves and the possibility for our future.

And what if… tomorrow, we were to do the same thing?

Wonder

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The other day, I was on my way out to the car for work when I noticed that the azalea bush at the bottom of my front steps had little pink buds on it.

Let me backtrack for a moment. When I say “azalea bush,” I am exaggerating just a bit. When I first moved here in 2004, there was an azalea bush there. Over the years, it was overtaken by some unexplained rot/mold/disease, and each spring, it appeared to be closer and closer to the doom of nonexistence. One year, when the condo association landscapers came to prune the bushes, I asked them if there was anything they could do to save it. The manager surveyed the sad little bush, shook his head, and told me that he would cut off the dead parts, but the bush would probably need to be removed. He worked away at it for a bit and when he was done, there was little left. “I don’t think that’ll help, but we’ll see,” he told me.

And for the past several years, my struggling azalea bush has been little more than a bundle of sawed off stumps with some dried twigs sticking up. Every now and then, a leaf appears, but nothing more.

So imagine my surprise when I walked out the door on a beautiful spring morning, and the beginnings of an azalea bush were growing from one side of the bundle of old rotten bush-parts. Tiny shoots flaunted bright pink buds that caught my eye. It wasn’t just one twig with a bud or two. It was a forest of shoots, each with multiple leaves and buds.

That afternoon when I returned from work, I gave the little bush some TLC. I carefully removed all of the rotten pieces, one by one. I pulled them out and created a pile of refuse next to my walkway. Now, there is more room for the shoots to grow and flourish.

I had almost given up hope on this little bush, but somehow I knew the life would return and the azalea would see spring again. And I was right—there was just enough life left in the roots connected to those old, dry twigs to send up shoots that will someday be a whole new bush.

“Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”     – E. B. White

Apps

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“There’s an app for that.”

It seems there’s an app for everything these days. I have this growing list of apps that I’m supposed to check out because they are all the rage and using them will be life changing. Today, as I was cleaning off my desk at work, I came across a post-it note that had just one word: “Wunderlist.” So I spent a few minutes Googling Wunderlist and wondering what it was about this app that was so compelling. Like so many other apps that have been recommended to me, this one will help me organize my life. I can make lists, set reminders, create folders, share my lists, collaborate with friends….

It seems that these days, apps are designed to do everything for me except the actual tasks that need to be done. Like shopping for groceries, for example. And cooking dinner. Or finding a recipe or cleaning the house. An app that schedules these things, lists all my tasks, and reminds me to do them is not really what I need. After all, wouldn’t I have to spend the time to input the list into the app in the first place? That requires time spent not doing the actual tasks….

While I’m sure these apps are notable—as someone has recommended them to me in the first place—they are not what I need.

I don’t want to organize my life. I want to simplify my life. And by simplify, I mean I want to stop relying on technology to make my life easier. I want to interact with the people around me. I want to enjoy nature, climb a mountain, play in the tide. I want to be present as I live my life. I want to be mindful enough to observe what is going on around me. And I want to be reflective about who I am, what I’m doing, and who I am becoming.

Apparently, “There’s an app for that.”

Nope. I don’t think so.