Feeling Outside

My post yesterday on circles sparked a host of other thoughts.  Since I tend to see circles throughout life and relationships, I sometimes find myself feeling left outside the circle.

I'm fifty-five and a half years old (I never outgrew that half year thing), and I was north of fifty by the time I got comfortable in my own skin.

Up until then, the life choices that I made that put me outside the mainstream of my peer group frequently left me feeling outside.

I'll try to explain.   As I have shared before on this blog, I got pregnant at fifteen, in the tenth grade.  I dropped out of school and got married at the end of that school year.  I got my GED, got divorced, and attended college at night while working during the day.  I remarried, and got it right the second time.  I also studied for and obtained professional certification in Occupational Safety and Health, my chosen career.   I was fortunate to achieve remarkable career success.

But as my career advanced, I often felt more and more outside.  My peers all seemed to fit the same mold.  High school, followed by college, followed by employment, followed by marriage, followed by children.   Most people never get too old to tell prom stories, or high school glory days stories, or college dorm stories or fraternity or sorority stories.  Then there are the wedding and honeymoon stories, happy pregnancy stories, and baby showers, nannies and au pairs or stay-at-home partner stories.

My somewhat gritty, hard-knock stories of survival felt embarrassing.  My life choices had made my path more difficult, and my daughter's life path more difficult as well, through no fault of her own.

At times, the weight of trying to fit into their circles was crushing, and there were multiple times after a team meeting or work event that I cried buckets of tears from feeling so isolated in a group of people.  It was as if they all spoke a language I didn't understand.

I don't know exactly what point in time I got over it.  Yes, I took a path less traveled.  Yes, I made some really bad mistakes along the way.  Yes, I made my child's life more difficult than her peers because of my choices.

But I survived, and thrived, and so did my daughter.  At a point I realized I will always be outside the circle of people who never deviated from the prescribed path.  But that puts me inside the circle of people who pick themselves up after a life altering event and keep trying.

And once I embraced myself fully, and stopped feeling embarrassed and ashamed, I stopped feeling so outside.  And started to see that many of the people that had never deviated from the prescribed path felt outside too.

So, I got more comfortable sharing my stories.  I got more comfortable listening to other people's stories.  I got better at seeing the body language that indicates a person feels the need to hide, the body language that says I feel excluded.

Everyone is carrying burdens we can't see. But we can train ourselves to see more clearly when someone is feeling left out and invite them in.

Because I think everyone knows how it feels to be outside.  And most of us like to be invited in.

Circles

Most people have heard the axiom, "What comes around, goes around."

I tend to like neatness and order, so I am always looking to complete the circle.

It might be because I look for it, but all around me throughout my life, I have seen circles closing.

I see life as a circle.  The circle begins at birth, and ends at death.  That is not to say that I don't believe in life after death, because I do, that is simply the beginning of a new circle.

As we create the circle that is our life, we allow what we choose to allow inside our circle.  We pick the people that stay in our circle, we pick the hobbies, the passions, the employment, the education we put in our circle.  We choose the world view.  We can live in a very big, inclusive circle, or we can live in a very small, exclusive circle.

The bigger and more inclusive the circle you create, the noisier it will be.   There will be discord and disharmony in your circle if it is big enough to include people who don't look like you, or think like you.  If your circle is big and inclusive, there will be people in your circle that actively dislike each other, and can't help being vocal about that dislike, and that will hurt you, and tire your heart and your spirit.

But you will have an incredible richness of life with a big, inclusive circle.  And the bigger and more inclusive your circle is, the more overlap you will have with other people's circles.   And where the circles overlap, where the Venn Diagram union exists, will be more people that touch people outside your circle, so your boundaries can expand, to include more richness, more ideas, more diversity.

When the noise in your circle is hostile, it can be very tempting to redraw your circle to be small and exclusive and only include those most like you.  Some people get so hurt by the noise they shrink their circle to include only them.

I choose to keep my circle big and inclusive.  I choose to love people that I share little common ground with, because I share something with them, and I choose to see people's value as more than their opinions, or viewpoints.  I choose to allow the people in my circle to be who they are, even if I am uncomfortable with some of who they are.   I don't allow the people in my circle to be unkind to other people in my circle with my knowledge, but in my heart, I know they sometimes are when I'm not looking or listening.

I choose to keep them in my circle anyway.  Because if I don't talk to you, if I don't listen to you, if I don't try to understand you, I can't expect you to talk to, or listen to, or try to understand me.  And that conversation is what makes the world better and more inclusive.

One thing that I am conscious I need to guard against is the tendency of our circles to shrink as we age.  If we don't keep expanding and adding to our circles, we can see other's circles on this earth close, and ours can shrink through attrition.  I actively add to my circle.  I love the different perspective new people bring, especially younger people.  My friends who are thirty years younger than me bring an entirely new vibe than my friends who are thirty years older than me.  They help me grow my perspective, and they energize me.

If you have chosen a small, exclusive circle, I love you too.  For some, a big, inclusive circle is too uncomfortable or noisy or scary, so small is better for them.  The world needs small circle people too.

At the end of my time on earth, when my circle closes, I hope the people in my circle look at my life as fulfilled, well-lived, and full of love and hope.  And I hope they smile when they remember.

And that for me, will be a perfect circle.

Choices

I am blessed with an abundance of friends who try daily to bring more good into the world.  They lift me up, and I am very grateful for their presence in my life.

Because they are so committed to doing good, and bringing good, and restoring hope, sometimes they get tired.  So this is my thank you letter to all the good people out there, trying as hard as they can to make the world a better place.

Dear Friend -

Thank you so much for being you.  When I wake up in the morning and listen to the news, I hear stories of heartbreak, of violence, of exclusion, of terror.   Sometimes, I want to pull the covers over my head, and just take a day off from the world.

But then I see you, or a post you put on social media, or you give me a call, and you remind me that there are amazing, generous, hopeful people all around me, committed to making the world a better place.

Words don't mean much, I know that, so today, here are the things I will do to thank you for being you.

1. Today, I will respond to anger and hate with love, and a sincere desire to understand the place that the anger and hate is coming from.   I will pray for the heart of the angry and hurting person to be healed.
2. Today, I will worship creation.   I will notice the sky, and the earth, and the amazing creatures we share the planet with.   I will spend time in nature and leave nothing but my footprints to sully the land.  I will celebrate this wonderful planet we share.
3. Today, I will read at least one thought provoking article, or blog post, or book that challenges me and my personal world view.   I will consider all the worlds I know nothing about, and appreciate the value of diversity.
4. Today, I will tell my people I love them.  I will do this through word and deed.  I will do my best to be kind and helpful to everyone whose path crosses mine.
5. Today, I will perform one random act of kindness.  I will deliberately go out of my way to make someone's day better.

This is just a small token of my appreciation for you, and insignificant in a way, because you do these things every day.

But, I'm still in the process of becoming, and I hope by having you in my life, I am becoming more like you.

Love,

Anne Marie

Perspective

It is funny how memory works - it can be years and years before a special memory surfaces for one reason or another.

That happened to me yesterday.   I remembered an incident that happened in the late 1990's that changed me forever.

My dad was in the intermediate stages of Alzheimer's Disease at the time.  He still had plenty of good days, but my mom was very careful about where he went and how far afield they went alone.

A colleague of my father's was retiring after a forty year career.  Dad had retired in 1989 after thirty-eight years, so there had been significant overlap in their career timelines.  Dad really wanted to go to the retirement party, but it was in Lower Manhattan, and Mom was nervous about taking Dad into New York City on her own.

My husband and I had been planning to go up to New Jersey to visit, so I timed the visit so that we could take Mom and Dad into the city, drop them off at the party, and then pick them up and bring them home.

We decided the easiest way to go would be to drive over to Staten Island, take the ferry to New York City, walk to the event venue, and then reverse the order to get back home.

We made it over to Manhattan with very few bobbles, only having to ask one policeman for directions to ferry parking.  It was when we got in the car to go home that things went awry.

It started to snow almost as soon as we got in the car.   My night vision was way better back then, but not that good, and with the snow, you can just call me Mr. Magoo.  Consequently, I got lost on Staten Island, trying to find Route 440.

Staten Island is really pretty nice, but it does have some sketchy neighborhoods, and of course, those are the ones you always get lost in.  It took us almost an hour of wandering before I found our way onto the highway.

Dad was a nervous wreck in the backseat, and I was a nervous wreck driving.  As soon as we got home, I poured me and Mom a glass of wine each, and my husband opened a beer.  Dad settled for a cup of tea.

My sister and brother-in-law were living in the Pocono's in Pennsylvania at the time, and my brother-in-law had worked very late.  When this happened, he would just stay at Mom and Dad's.  So at about 11 pm, the front door opened and my brother-in-law came in.

He immediately asked how the retirement party was.  My dad told him what a great party it was, and how much he had enjoyed seeing everyone, and then told the story of the drive home.

Only, when the story got told, it wasn't a scary anxious event, it was a comedy.   I had tears rolling down my face from laughter as Dad told the ride home story.  And I learned something important about my Dad, and it changed me too.

I had grown up listening to my father's stories.  And they were always heartwarming, and usually funny.  This was the first time I experienced a story first hand that was so very different in the retelling.  And I realized something important.  We have the power to tell our stories any way we want to.  And if we retell the story in a way that makes it better than it was, the memory of the event changes tone as well.

I'm not so naive as to believe that all stories can be retold into comedies.  Bad things happen that can't be fixed in the retelling.  But so much of what we call bad experiences are just things that didn't go as well as they could, with no lasting negative implications.

So I started to practice retelling my stories.  I learned that if an event would be funny in a movie or on TV, it was funny if it happened to me too.  I got better and better at seeing the light in life, and while the dark is always there, I can choose the light when I tell my stories.

I have become a happier person from changing my perspective.   And all because my Dad taught me how to tell my stories from a brighter point of view.

Soup

As the string of grey and blustery days continued, my husband requested that I make a pot of  minestrone soup, using my dad's recipe.

Well, for anyone that has ever made a pot of soup from the raw ingredients, you know that it it important that you blend the right flavors.   Too much of any one thing can ruin the soup.

Your ingredients need to complement each other, some flavors fight with other flavors for dominance, and some flavors enhance each other.  Your soup needs to only contain flavors that will not cause a discordant taste that is displeasing to the palette.

The key to a really good soup is where the individual flavors stand out, but blend with and complement the other flavors in the soup.  And the whole is always greater than the parts.

Bingo!  Soup as a metaphor for a work group, a team, and a happy family.

Every work group, every team, every family, is a blend of personalities, of talents, of idiosyncrasies, of challenges, of needs, of flavors if you will.

The teams and families that work, that are productive, that are enriching, that are a joy to experience, are those where each individual is allowed to be who they are, and bring to the group the unique qualities that make them special.

Because being a human is more complex than being a carrot, it can be more difficult to get the ingredients right for success.

Let's start with a team or work group.  As a team or work group leader, you have the ability to pick people for your team and work group based on the skills and talents needed for the work that needs to be done.  While having the right skills and talents is very important, so is team and work group chemistry.

Back to the soup - sometimes really strong individuals do not do their best work as part of a team.  Some people really prefer to work alone.  Just like certain flavors may overpower your soup, certain personalities may overpower and cripple your team.

If you have an individual on your team or in your work group who is not very good at collaboration, you need to figure out how to maximize that individual's potential without hurting the rest of the team.

Sometimes, you can do this by making that individual a sub-team leader.  There may be data analysis that is needed that they can do as an individual. There may be a need for editing, or research that is in their skill set.

It is important to not minimize the contribution of those on your team who are not good at teamwork, but to not allow them to damage the team either.

Sometimes, it may be appropriate to help the individual learn to be a better team player.  Over the course of my career, I had the great privilege to see many people grow in their ability to work well with others.

It is more difficult in family life, because, as a rule, we don't get to pick our families.  The soup of family life is harder to get right, because we get the ingredients we get, and have to find a way to make them work.

It still all starts with valuing each individual as an individual.  If you are in a family situation where you are not valued for the individual you are, that doesn't diminish your value.  In those cases, it may be necessary to separate from the people you share genetics with, and create a family who shares your values.

So let's stick with basically healthy families, who value each other.  Even those families have their conflicts.  In the soup of family harmony, what are the topics that spoil the soup for your family?

There is no need to dwell on the differences you have with your family.  It is an amazing and complex universe, with simply thousands of things to talk about and think about and discuss and discover.  Find and celebrate those things.

It can be hobbies or history or science or words and word games or animals or movies or music or theater or food or a multitude of other things.

You don't need to bring the whole pantry to the soup of a family get together.  Just bring the ingredients that will create a warm and satisfying experience.

The other great thing for me about soup is the memories it evokes.  As my husband and I ate our minestrone soup last night, all the nights with my mom and dad at the table eating the soup and enjoying each others company became part of the enjoyment of the experience.

The warmth of good memories brought as much comfort as the warmth and flavor of the soup.

I hope the soup of your life is flavorful, and warm and comforting.  And that you can always find a way to make a pot on the dark days.

Grey and blustery days

A cold front came in last night, and today is a grey and blustery day.  There is no sun, and I can hear the wind howling outside my window.  I'm very grateful to be in my warm house with a cup of coffee.

It can be easy on the grey days to let the greyness on the outside turn to a darkness of thought or spirit.  There are ways to combat that though.

Here are my top ten ways to combat the bleakness of a grey day:

1. Call a friend who always makes you laugh
2. Cook something warm and nourishing
3. Read a heartwarming story
4. Binge watch a favorite TV show
5. Work on a craft
6. Play with your pets
7. Plan an event - as small as a movie or as big as a vacation
8. Count your blessings
9. Put on your favorite cold weather clothes
10. Color

I strongly believe we can learn to control our thoughts, and the more we turn our minds towards positive thoughts, the more likely we are to feel positive emotions.

Learning to self-comfort is an important developmental skill, and the need for that skill never goes away.   Self-comforting rituals can be a very beneficial tool during times when the greyness is overwhelming.

Because, unfortunately, grey days are not the only provokers of bleakness of spirit.

Grief, loss, loneliness, isolation, depression, illness, and many other negative things can make life seem bleak.

As I've said before in this blog, clinical depression needs professional help - please never underestimate the severity of that disease.  Please never try to self-manage a condition that needs professional intervention.

I'm talking about the more manageable sadness and bleakness that are part of life.

Practicing self-comfort, and having a "go-to" list of activities to lighten my own spirit have proved invaluable to me on the grey days.

So, I'm going to work on a scarf for my sister.  I'm going to sit with my dogs while I do.   I'm going to think about my sister with every stitch - about how wonderful it is to have a sister like her.   I will remember how much fun it was to grow up with her, and how much I appreciate her as an adult.   I will think of the amazing gift she has given me and the world through her children.

And the day feels less grey already.................

It happens to all of us

You know how some mornings you just wake up, for want of a better word, cranky? It may be that you didn't sleep well, or had a bad dream, or are coming down with a cold, or are worried about something, or maybe you have no idea at all, but you wake up out of sorts.

One of worst things we can do when we wake up out of sorts is create problems in our relationships.   I woke up out of sorts this morning, and as is my usual routine, after brushing my teeth and getting dressed, went to the kitchen to make coffee and breakfast.

I tend to run the dishwasher at night after dinner, and sometimes don't turn it on until going to bed, so I typically unload the dishwasher while I'm making my husband's coffee, and then finish before making my coffee and breakfast.

But, this morning was one of those cranky, out-of-sorts mornings. As I was unloading the dishwasher, I started to get aggravated.  "Why can't I just sit and do a puzzle while someone brings me coffee and does chores?" my internal voice asked angrily.

WHOA!  In the family division of labor in our house, this is my chore.   We each have our things.  We help each other when needed, but mostly, we have divided and conquered and that is how our house runs.

Before I went too far down a bad road with my thoughts, I asked myself,"Who would be doing this if you lived alone?".  Ouch.  It would still be me, and I would have a lot of additional chores too.

If I really want a swap of responsibilities, or a different division of chores, all I need to do is say so at a time when I'm not cranky and out-of-sorts.

I'm embarrassed to think about how many times in my life to date I have started an argument, or been mean-spirited with someone for no other reason than I was in a bad mood.  For no other reason than I allowed myself to be unreasonable in my thoughts, and let that manifest itself in my actions.

I think we all do that.  On the journey through life, if there is one thing you can work on, it is self-awareness.   There is no reason to visit your bad moods or bad days on anyone else.

Everyone has bad days.  Everyone gets aggravated.   As you grow in self-awareness, it is a good thing to question the angry and unkind thoughts that pop into your head.   Are you suppressing emotions? Is there something out of balance in your life or your relationship that needs to be addressed?  When you analyze why you are suddenly aggravated with normal, you can get answers to what needs to be done, and a lot of the time, it is nothing.

I wake up at night, and can't fall back to sleep, thinking about the times I have failed to be kind, to behave in a loving way with those I love.  I try to forgive myself, and I commit to doing better, but the times I have hurt people through my action or inaction are acts I have to own for my eternity.  I don't need more.

We never know how much time we have on earth, or how much time we have with any of the special and important people who share our lives.  Try as hard as you can to remember how much you treasure people and your relationships with them, and let those thoughts guide your words and actions.

Everyone has bad days.   Not everyone contaminates other people's days with their bad karma.

Try to practice self-awareness every day.   Then maybe on your next bad day you can re-direct before causing any harm.