Beyond the obvious

Who Am I?

/ James Browning

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Please don’t be fooled by me. Don’t be fooled by the face I wear, for I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks, masks that I’m afraid to take off and none of them are me. Pretending is an art that is second nature to me, but don’t be fooled, for God’s sake don’t be fooled.

I give you the impression I’m secure and that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without, that confidence is my name, coolness my game, that water is calm and I’m in command and that I need no one, but don’t believe me, please don’t believe me.

My surface may be smooth, but my surface is a mask–my every varying and ever concealing mask. Beneath it dwells the real confusion, fear and aloneness. Beneath lies my smugness, my complacently, but I hide this–I don’t want anyone to know it.

I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear being exposed. That’s why I frantically created a mask to hide behind– nonchalant sophisticated facades to help me pretend– to shield me from the glance that knows– but such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only salvation and I know it. That is if it’s followed by acceptance. If it’s followed by love, it’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself, from my own self built prison walls and from the barriers that I so painstakingly erect. It’s the only thing that will assure me of what I cannot assure myself, that I’m really worth while, but I don’t tell you this, I don’t dare–I’m afraid to.

I’m afraid that your glance will not be followed by acceptance and love. I’m afraid you’ll think less of me and you’ll laugh and your laugh will kill me. I’m afraid that deep down, I’m nothing and that I’m just no good and that you’ll see this and reject me.

So I play my game; my desperate pretending; with the facade of assurance without and a trembling child within. And so begins the parade of masks, the glittering, but empty parade of masks and my life becomes a front. I idle chatter to you in suave tones of surface talk. I tell you everything that’s really nothing and nothing of what’s everything and what’s crying within me.

So when I’m through going through my routine, do not be fooled by what I’m saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I’m not saying–what I’d like to be able to say, but for survival I need to say, but what I can’t say.

I dislike hiding, honestly, I dislike the superficial game I’m playing, the superficial phony game. I’d really like to be genuine, spontaneous and me, but you’ve got to help me, you’ve got to hold out your hand, even when it’s the last thing I seem to want or need.

You can help wipe away from my eyes–the blank stare of grieving dead. You can help call me into aliveness each time you’re kind, gentle and encouraging. Each time you try to understand because you really care, my heart begins to grow wings, very small wings, very feeble wings, but wings.

If you choose to, please choose to. You can help break down the wall behind which I tremble. You can encourage me to remove my mask. You can help release me from my shadowed world of panic and uncertainty. From my lonely prison.

So do not pass me by– please don’t pass me by. It will not be easy for you. A lone conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls. The nearer you approach me, the blinder I may strike back.

It’s irrational, but despite what books say about man, I am irrational, I fight against the very things that I cry out for, but I am told love is stronger than strong walls. In this lies my hope, my only hope, please help beat down those walls with firm hands, but with gentle hands–for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone you know very well. For I am every man you meet and I am every women you meet. “Don’t Be Fooled By Me” by Charles C. Finn

Once in a while I find something to share that brings me to a loss for words. I have no comments or thoughts that can embellish what is above. So I won’t try. Instead I will just say thank you Mr. Finn. I am grateful to you for writing this piece that speaks to me so clearly and deeply.

Never miss a good chance to shut up.
Will Rogers

Heard, Understood and Touched

/ James Browning

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I have no idea who “K.” was but Virginia Satir was an influential 20th century psychotherapist and notable author. She described her work as helping others in “Becoming More Fully Human”. What is below Ms. Satir wrote for a twelve-year old patient who said “What is life about anyway. Life makes no sense. What is the meaning of it all?”

I am Me.
In all the world,
there is no one else exactly like me.
Everything that comes out of me
is authentically mine, because I alone chose it.
I own everything about me:
my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice,
all my actions, whether they be to others or myself.
I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears.
I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes.
Because I own all of me,
I can become intimately acquainted with me.
By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts.
I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me,
and other aspects that I do not know,
but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself,
I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions
to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me.
However I look and sound, whatever I say and do,
and whatever I think and feel at a given moment
in time is authentically me.
If later some parts of how I looked, sounded,
thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting,
I can discard that which is unfitting,
keep the rest, and invent something new
for that which I discarded.
I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do.
I have the tools to survive, to be close to others,
to be productive, and to make sense
and order out of the world of people
and things outside of me.
I own me, and therefore,
I can engineer me.
I am me,
and I am Okay.

I am grateful for my favorite used bookstore (Gardner’s) where I found Virginia Satir’s simple book filled with the insightful words above. Her thoughts give me sharpened insight here at the start of a new month.

I believe the greatest gift I can conceive
of having from anyone is to be seen by them,
heard by them, to be understood and touched by them.
Virginia Satir

Photo credit: Pol Ubeda Hervas
(“I am not there” series)

Into the Void

/ James Browning

voids DARK

If life is so short,

why do we do so many things

we don’t like

and like so many things we don’t do?

I looked into the image and let my mind, heart and soul rest while the unguided remainder of me went into the void. There a response came without my intentional help and amazingly it was clearer than thought, emotion or feeling.

My answers to the BIG question are personal and matter primarily to me, so I won’t list them. What matters is I am becoming able to put my ‘self control mechanism’ into neutral at times and allow solutions to come from the outside in. Like a randomly caught virus that can bring healing, more often than I thought possible I find a remedy floating outside me.

Or maybe it’s from a Higher Power… Or maybe it’s the power of allowing solutions to manifest them self… Or maybe it’s my subconscious… Or maybe it doesn’t matter how.

I am grateful to realize that sorting out where needed answers outside me come from is irrelevant. What does matter is an awareness that guidance can come from beyond me if I humble myself and realize I don’t have control of everything. For a person used to controlling everything and everyone, the realization that I am not my own God is a break through.

A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe’,
a part limited in time and space.
He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings,
as something separate from the rest –
a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desires
and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison
by widening our circle of compassion
to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein

Knowledge, Wisdom, and Insight

/ James Browning

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Knowledge is really about facts and ideas that we acquire through study, research, investigation, observation, or experience.

Wisdom is the ability to discern and judge which aspects of that knowledge are true, right, lasting, and applicable to your life. It’s the ability to apply that knowledge to the greater scheme of life. It’s also deeper; knowing the meaning or reason; about knowing why something is, and what it means to your life.

Insight is the deepest level of knowing and the most meaningful to your life. Insight is a deeper and clearer perception of life, of knowledge, of wisdom. It’s grasping the underlying nature of knowledge, and the essence of wisdom. Insight is a truer understanding of your life and the bigger picture of how things intertwine.

In a nutshell: If knowledge is information, wisdom is the understanding and application of that knowledge and insight is the awareness of the underlying essence of a truth. Sadly we can gain a lifetime of knowledge, yet never see the wisdom in it. We can be wise, but still miss the deeper meaning.

Knowledge is knowing how to manage your money, budgeting, spending, saving.
Wisdom is understanding how money impacts the quality of your life and your future.
Insight is realizing that money is simply a tool to be used, that it has no inherent meaning beyond its usefulness.

Knowledge is learning how to paint and using that skill to cultivate a livelihood.
Wisdom is expressing your passion through painting and understanding that art is a form of communication that touches the lives of others.
Insight is perceiving that all things can be art and that creating your art contributes to the understanding and the expression of the essence of the world around you.

Knowledge is knowing which things, practices, people, and pleasures make you happy.
Wisdom is knowing that while those things may bring you pleasure, happiness is not derived from things or situations or people. It’s understanding that happiness comes from within, and that it’s a temporary state of mind.

Insight is knowing that happiness is not the purpose of life, that it’s not the marker of the quality of life—it’s merely one of the many fleeting states of mind in the spectrum of full emotions. Those emotions don’t make up our lives; they are merely experiences.

Knowledge, wisdom and insight all are valuable and all have a place in our lives. The difficulty lies in the fact that many of us are unclear as to their differences, often perceiving the terms and their application to be interchangeable. Being clear and consciously aware of how our minds are engaged may be important to getting the most out of all three. While acquiring and applying information is valuable in and of itself, we also need to distill and judge that information, and ultimately find the deeper meaning and relevance to the whole of our lives. Perhaps the truest form of knowing is in acquiring all three, and understanding how they each enhance the quality and experience of life. Taken from an article by Royale Scuderi, http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/what-are-the-differences-between-knowledge-wisdom-and-insight.html

Ever read something that was stunning in its clarity? Did every word seem like it was written for you? Did the message alter your way of seeing things? For the better? The words above did just that. The writer is Royale Scuderi who specializes in cultivating human potential for happiness, health and fulfillment. I am grateful to have come in contact with her thoughts. They truly widened my perspective and sharpened it at the same time.

I am strong, because I’ve been weak.
I am beautiful, because I know my flaws.
I am a lover, because I’ve been a fighter.
I am fearless, because I’ve been afraid.
I am wise, because I’ve been foolish.
And I can laugh, because I’ve known sadness.
Anonymous

When You Look Back

/ James Browning

C_-S_-Lewis-Desk-and-StudyThis morning browsing for a quotes something C.S. Lewis wrote came into my view: When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. Those words started me thinking how absurd a good bit of what society defines adulthood is.

Long ago I grew tired of being young although our society holds youth as it’s holy grail. The 20s and 30s were exhausting as I tried to fit in, succeed and act like I knew what I was doing when I really didn’t. Somewhere in it all, I started to become ‘me’. In some ways mature for my years and in others quite childish for my age. That was the start of becoming a man. Lesson: Don’t be in too big a rush to lose everything behind related to childhood. Innocence is often a clear scope for looking at things accurately.

To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. C.S. Lewis

The changes from twenty-one to thirty years of age exceed all my combined changes of all other years. What level of maturity I did  attain came mostly from painful experience and no other place. Lesson: The only real ‘truth’ anyone can ever know for certain comes from their own experiences, especially the painful ones.

Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. C.S. Lewis

Most of my life I have been afraid of love; fearful of being hurt. What life taught is love always bring suffering to balance its joy. Without that certainty, the love I have come to know would have far less meaning. Lesson: The greatest and deepest love will in time bring the greatest pain. To fear the latter is to deny one’s self the former.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. C.S. Lewis

My heart and mind are buzzing now with the lines of thinking C.S. Lewis put me on today. I was only ten years old when he passed away, but his legacy lives on for me as a favored writer, teacher and adviser. I owe a debt of gratitude to C.S. Lewis’ best friend, JRR Tolkien, for introducing me to Lewis in an article I read about the two men when I was at a young, impressionable age. Within the fantasies they spun I found wisdom I will always be grateful for.

Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes,
but when you look back, everything is different…
C.S. Lewis

Any Family With More than One

/ James Browning

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In late 1925, a newspaper in London published a story by A.A. Milne titled “The Wrong Sort of Bees”. The tale introduced a bear named Winnie the Pooh who would become the lead character of one of the most successful children’s stories of all time. Inspiration came to A.A. Milne’s from his son’s meeting at the London Zoo of a black bear from the wilderness of the Canada. The son was named Christopher Robin Milne and the bear was called “Winnipeg” or “Winnie”.

In his stories Milne endeavored to make his character’s less than perfect with the belief it made them more loveable. Most of us have been familiar since childhood with Pooh’s forgetfulness, Tigger’s mood changes and Piglet’s fear of just about everything. Here in plain terms is a list of the dysfunctions I believe A.A. Milne’s gave his characters of Hundred Acre Wood to make them have human likeness.

Pooh Bear – suffers from an eating disorder and food (honey) addiction, episodes of dementia and exhibitionist tendencies (reluctance to wear pants).

Tigger – mood swings from irrational exuberance to despair combined with narcissistic behaviors and A.D.H.D. evidenced by his inability to ever be still.

Piglet – General Anxiety Disorder with a variety of phobias including creaking branches, small streams, gusting wind, his own shadow and other irrational and delusional fears.

Eeyore – clinical depression and feelings of inadequacy driven by his lack of a tail and his need to overcompensate by wearing a fake one made from fabric and a nail.

Owl – narcissistic personality approaching delusions of grandeur fed by anti-social tendencies and an over inflated ego with an irrational need to always be correct.

Rabbit – obsessive-compulsive personality with a side helping of neurosis exhibited by his incessant, exacting attention to his gardening, cooking and keeping things orderly.

Even the Christopher Robin character, patterned after A.A. Milne’s son, could be said to have “issues”. Some have surmised that in the story his playing in the woods all the time while talking to stuffed animals could be looked upon as either just a kid’s story or a form of psychotic hallucination.

You may or may not choose to think it is fairly apparent the benign messaging of story shapes the consciousness of children in a healthful way. I choose to think the characters are not just entertainment, but art in the way the writer poured emotion into their creation.

Having been in depression recovery for years now I can readily think of people I know in self-help groups that match each of the Pooh characters. I am grateful A.A. Milner created such deep characters and meaningful stories that have more significance today than when they were written. To smile, be entertained and be touched, all at the same time, is truly the mark of great work.

You know the definition
of a dysfunctional family,
don’t you?
It’s any family with more
than one member in it.
Sarah Pekkenen

Based on articles found at:
http://thedailyretort.com/on-the-psychiatric-couch-winnie-the-pooh/
http://top4eva.tumblr.com/post/13572677292/acronyms-the-dysfunctional-psychology-of-winnie

Beyond Ideas of Wrong-Doing and Right-Doing

/ James Browning

flock of migrating canada geese birds flying at sunset

Almost a year ago I saved a poem by American poet Mary Oliver titled “Wild Geese”. From the first reading the words touched me with their directness and clarity.

I felt certain the poem would be a good item to include in a future G.M.G. installment. Going back to it several times there was never a morning when it seemed to fit exactly into my thoughts. Today Mary Oliver’s poem surfaced again from my hard drive and I gave in to my desire to include it here. Instead of continuing to wait for it to fit into my writing, I have chosen to include it in place of my thoughts.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I long suffered with “trying to be perfect”. My future was held hostage by holding my past to my head and firing it into my brain over and over again. Mary Oliver’s poem tells me I don’t always have to be good, nor do I have to repeatedly repent until it hurts me. She goes on to assure me that it is okay to love who and what I love. Her words about a changing landscape are a reminder how quickly things change and how fast life passes by.

Then there are the Mary Oliver’s words that ring with the most comfort: “Whoever you are, not matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination…announcing your place in the family of things”. With an emotional uprising in my chest each time I read those words, there is assurance I belong to this world and it to me. I am grateful for the peace that promise brings.

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing
and right-doing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
Rumi

Living From the Inside Out

/ James Browning

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Once in a while I find myself wishing to be in a time before now. I have imagined living in Victorian times when history tells us manners and romantic love were in vogue. On other occasions, my fantasy has been living in the age of honor and chivalry written about the Knights of the Roundtable. Both are pure make believe and in truth both times were actually really tough for average folks.

It’s more productive to come back to my life experience. Many people wish for earlier times in their life and I am not immune. The late 60s and early 70s have long seemed like a cool time to visit as long as I could have a different life back there than I actually had.

Most people, from the age of about 16 to about 30 have dreams, expectations, zest and energy. They are still young and the future is before them. Often, there is a certain feeling of euphoria and great expectations. This is the time when people are at the start of their life, still able to think big, before settling down, getting a job, getting married, and entering the hustle and bustle of life.

When you think about the past, the feelings of joy, happiness and expectation associated with it awaken, and you feel good. Then you associate those feelings with the past, and get the impression that the past was a better time. Actually, what you are yearning to is to the feelings of euphoria that you experienced when young, to the dreams and expectations, which are gone now.

My advice to you is to awaken those feelings and thoughts intentionally, and to associate them with the present. No matter how old or young you are, where you live, and under what circumstances you are living, you can use these thoughts and feelings to motivate you. ou can again experience the euphoria and great expectations you had when young, but use them constructively to make them come true. Remez Sasson http://www.successconsciousness.com/blog/motivation/past-better-than-present/

A fairly recent discovery of mine has been changing the direction of my life has brought back some of the good feelings enjoyed in my teens and 20s The reason is not complicated. I am embracing the possibilities of being alive in ways like I did when young. And it’s not just the feel-good neurochemicals that my waxing nostalgic brings. Back in my younger days there were many “things I thought I could be” and lots I was “going to do”. Life seems filled with such possibility again.

One of the benefits of “old days” was the amount of times I spent with people. Today with all the possibilities to entertain myself it’s easy to fall into a hole and not spend much time with others. I’ve found adding more time with friends and making new ones is one of the best uses of my time. Making new “good old times” with others has become my best remedy for yearning for times past.

As a society we do live in challenging times with monstrously huge problems. However the overall quality of my life really does not have much to do with them. I can be socially aware and even active without internalizing the issues. Living from the inside out is a lot healthful than life being shaped from the outside where I have no control.

The chief beauty about time
is that you cannot waste it in advance.
The next year, the next day,
the next hour are lying ready for you,
as perfect, as unspoiled,
as if you had never wasted or misapplied
a single moment in all your life.
Arnold Bennett

A Tiny, Miniscule Ripple

/ James Browning

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Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
Solitude” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

One hundred twenty-eight years ago “Solitude” by Ella Wheeler was first published. The inspiration for the poem came as the then single Ms. Wheeler was traveling. She encountered a young woman dressed in black sitting across the aisle from her, crying. Miss Wheeler sat next to her and sought to comfort her for the rest of the journey. When they arrived, the poet was so depressed that she could barely attend the scheduled festivities she had traveled to attend. That evening as she looked at her own radiant face in a mirror, she suddenly recalled the sorrowful widow. It was at that moment she wrote the opening lines of “Solitude”.

What good fodder for thoughts of gratitude Mrs. Wilcox’s poetry above and below are for me this morning. Her words are nothing earth shattering, but then the most valuable wisdom rarely is. The commonality of many profound insights can easily be missed because long knowing the words can cause one to never fully accept or grasp their meaning.

Today I will be a little more understanding and forgiving of those who act differently than I think they should. Having no idea of pain the and grief someone may be bearing inside, unseen, I endeavor to show kindness more and appreciate it better when it is shown to me. That will, at best, send a tiny, miniscule ripple into the world. However, even in its smallness the little wave will make a positive difference. Every tiny motion for good always does and comes back multiplied to its sender.

It is easy enough to be pleasant
When life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while is the one who will smile
When everything goes dead wrong.
For the test of the heart is trouble,
And it always comes with the years,
And the smile that is worth the praises of earth
Is the smile that shines through tears.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Musings After A Storm

/ James Browning

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Musings after a storm,
mostly restated thoughts I have picked up along the way
and some I borrowed for the morning.

  • I like storms. They let me know that even the sky screams sometimes too.
  • Sometimes it takes a terrific storm to remind a person how small and vulnerable he/she is, yet not forget how many times they have recovered from stormy weather before.
  • Without wind, even storms, trees and plants would fall over at the hint of a breeze. It is the force of wind that moves them and causes deeper roots to grow.
  • When opposing forces fight a great storm is brewed. Bad weather is usually caused by two opposing forces each trying to dominate the other. Bad human relationships are most often the same.
  • A person who survives a great storm, but loses everything becomes more grateful and less materialistic unless he or she is simply dim-witted in the first place.
  • The night can be a hard time to be alive, but an after midnight storm keeps my secrets well and me from being alone.
  • The ability to bend in a storm enables giant oaks to survive even most extreme storms without great damage. And so it is with humans; the greater one’s ability to twist and sway within gale-force adversity, the less the damage.
  • And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked into it.
  • There is someone out there who loves snake and sharks and someone who loves spiders. There is someone, somewhere that loves the dark, and heights and someone who loves storms. Because even the most terrible things have someone to love them.
  • Darkness makes the light important. Good is meaningful because there is evil. In contrast lies much of life’s richness, much like a storm makes morning calm loved and appreciated.

Reminders of how to live life well are all around me. When I can redirect my usual focus on myself, my thoughts, troubles, worries, hopes and aspirations and look outward is when I better see how to live well. Storms that scare me are good reminders that life is not very much like I imagine it is. Rather It is like it is and always has been. I am grateful for the midnight storm last night that left me with bits of renewed perspective, if only for a short while.

Birds sing after a storm;
why shouldn’t people feel as free
to delight in whatever remains to them?
Rose Kennedy