Knowledge

A Substance of Great Value

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

While searching for something completely unrelated on the net this morning I came across a short piece about alchemists of myth and legend.  Among other points in the article was this definition of alchemy:  any magical power or process of transmuting a common substance, usually of little value, into a substance of great value. 

Reading the definition of alchemy reminded me of a story I had read, but could not remember its source off the top of my head.  After flipping through my books for a while I eventually found the fable where I had originally seen it in Melody Beattie’s book “The Lessons of Love”: 

In a mysterious land, not so far away, and in a time not that long ago, word spread of a man called the Alchemist.  In his presence, things transformed.  He could, some said, turn a single dry bone of a deer into a green forest, alive with rushing water, wind, sunshine, grass and a gentle doe nuzzling her fawn.  He could turn pain, tragedy, agony – spiritual voids and the angst of the worst kind – into laughter, healing, and a joy so gentle yet deep that it rocked the soul.  And hope the purest, sweetest gift of all.   He could turn the basest metal into gold. 

One day, having heard of his magic, an angry young man pounded on the Alchemist’s door, demanding that his ore be turned into gold.  “Why?” asked the Alchemist.  “I need money to pay bills.  Now hurry!” the young man huffed.  The Alchemist turned him away.

 A second time the young man returned, again demanding gold.  Asked why, he sputtered, “Why must you even ask?”  Again his request was denied. 

On this third visit, the young man knocked more gently.  “Please don’t turn me away,” he said, “I need gold to but a ring, a gift for my beloved.”  This time, his wish was granted. 

The message I get from the teaching tale is: any change I desire within myself can come only when my heart is humble and my mind is aligned with it in truth and honesty.  Certainly that speaks volumes about my life and why it was one way for so long.  Then in a matter of months living began to earnestly change to be now be so very different and much improved.  

“When the pain to stay the same, exceeds the pain to change, we change” is a saying dear to me found on a bulletin board about four years ago.  About that time, with lots of help and support, I was able to practice my own kind of “alchemy”.  Within I began to be changed from being driven by the baser of my desires to a man who more closely paralleled all, not just most of, the ideals I held true.

The point expressed more simply is, in regard to relationships, I began to not be so much of who I had been and started instead to be more of person I wanted to be.  My actions began to match my beliefs, not just some of the time but nearly all of the time.  I became an alchemist of my own desires and needs by applying potions of understanding, knowledge and help from others.  My “lead” became “gold”. 

With most any part of  my life I can apply a sort of ‘alchemy’ that can transmute what “is” into a substance of greater value.  Whether it is health, weight, spiritual lack, knowledge shortfall, emotional state, engrained habit or strong tendency, I have the power to change “is” into something of greater value.  The great weakness of my the past was not believing the power was inside to change my life.  

Much of my life was spent thinking I needed something outside of me, like an Alchemist of the fable, to make real changes my life.  In vain I tried many external things that did not work:  moving to different places, changing significant others, making new friends, new jobs, taking on demanding hobbies, consuming interests and even anesthetizing myself with money and what it can buy.  None worked.  Only when I was truly ready to face myself, ask for assistance and do the work inside could the “base metal” of dysfunction begin to be turned to gold.  

I am grateful to know the art of personal alchemy today.  All it took was a beginning and a first step which centered on “if it is to be, it is up to me”.   No matter how much help was offered and available, my new start had to originate internally.  From the pain that was, a joy to be alive has grown.  I am abundantly thankful. 

We would rather be ruined than changed,
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
W. H. Auden

Conformist or Rebel?

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

Be neither a conformist nor a rebel, for they are really the same thing. 
Find your own path, and stay on it.  (Paul Vixie)

When those two lines crossed my path yesterday it gave rise to me it began a line of thinking about my tendency to rebel.  Whatever the norm has been I seem to always have to find a few ways to go against the grain.  Is it because I am uniquely original?  In at least a few ways how I act and what I do falls within the unique realm.  It is also clear to me that my nonconformist approach is actually a manner of conforming to some ideal I have set for myself that clouds a self-view of who and what I actually am.

There is within me a paradox of wanting to fit in and a desire to be different from every one else.  Those two forces pull me in opposing directions and stretch the center of my being where the “who and what” I truly am exists.  This pulling in opposite tracks has gone on for so long, it is frequently unclear where the boundaries of my own truth actually are.

To illustrate that point, I am uncertain if my lack of interest in sports is because I was never particularly good at them or I was never good at sports because I was never interested.  That began so long ago in childhood I have no idea what the clear answer is.  Whatever the root of behavior, my disinterest today in sports is real although I have no idea where it is rooted.

There is been a mustache, goatee or beard on my face for 31 years except for a few days here and there when I would cleanly shave everything off.  Immediately I would dislike seeing myself clean shave in the mirror and allow the whisker re-growth to begin.  Am I giving in to habit or personal taste?  I really don’t know as I began wearing facial hair so I did not look so much like my father who I strongly resemble except he was always clean shaven.

The clothing I wear today is mostly conventional and traditional.  Yet, I always have to have a few accents I think of as just being myself.  I wear my wrist watch upside down, a habit that began in 6th grade as a tribute of a beloved teacher who did the same.  I wear a short stand of mala beads on my right wrist and say it is to remind me of what I believe it.  Yet, I know part of wearing them is to make a statement about being different.  How much of each I am frankly uncertain.

The longer I thought about what I perceived as my rebellion, the more I have gotten in touch with how I had given in to conformity.  I remember well still wearing jeans to work in my late 20’s and not being taken seriously by upper management.  That was when I decided to cut my hair shorter and start wearing dress pants, blazers and ties.  Over time that played a part in changing the perception of others, but dressing up was not something I ever really cared for.  I was promoted, but I wonder how much was due to my self imposed dress code and how much was due to my change of outlook.  Today you will be hard pressed to ever find me in a tie unless circumstance dictates I have not other choice.  Does that mean I have at least in this instance found a little of my true self?

Realizing I am dating myself, I will readily admit I protested against the Vietnam War in the early 70’s and was a sign-carrying proud hippie at the time.  However, looking back I am hard pressed to sort how much was based on my true political beliefs and how much was to fit in and be a part of a group I identified with.  Even at this distance of years, I believe there was a measure of both in my behavior.

Certainly there are burdens that come with age, but for me there is also a benefit of a slow clearing of the fog that hides my self from “me”.   The “who am I” question was one I often asked in my younger years, but lacking long term experience of living an answer never echoed back in response.  With five decades plus of life knowledge, today when I ask myself “who am I” bits and pieces of answers actually do come if I am patient.  Slowly but surely I am discovering which parts of me that come from rebellion, which ones come from conformity and which parts has always been true and real to my nature.  While my view of self will always be incomplete and not completely in focus, I am grateful for the understanding as it comes.  Often this period of my life is the most unsettling and uncertain, but it is also the most rewarding as I find the peace of truly coming to know my self.  I am thankful for this bit of personal evolution!

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.  Anatole France

Why Your Life Sucks…

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

Late last week someone asked me to recommend one book that could help them learn how to be happier and more content.  What seemed like an easy question at first glance became a challenging one for me to narrow down to one single book.  I ended up saying let me think about it for a few days.

Over the weekend I spent a couple of hours in my library looking through my favorite self-help books.  The heavily underlined “one book” I ended up chosing is a great one with a not so great title, which could be a reason it is not better known:  “Why Your Life Sucks and What You Can Do About It”  by Alan H. Cohen.  I admire his non-nonsense and direct manner of writing that pushes a reader forward who is ready to grow and change.  What follows are twenty random points I pulled from my underlining in the book.

1.  If the same things keep happening to you over and over again, with different people in different places, the only thing in common is you.

2.  The reason you are not where you want to be is that you are doing things you do not want to do.  If that sounds simple, it is.

3.  Attention is energy.  Whatever you feed to it, will grow.  Attention is intention.  Whatever you think and talk about paves the runway for what you will create.  When you pay attention to things you want to happen, you increase the chances of them happening; the same dynamic applies for the things you do not want to happen.

4.  Problems are not bad at all; they are just the beginnings of solutions.

5.  Something is bubbling inside you that would bring you rich rewards to express.  Your mission is to get in touch with it and do it.  Until you do, you will sense that you are missing out on something big.

6.  The last thought you think before you go to sleep is the one that ruminates in your subconscious through the night and emerges as the first thought you think when you wake up – so make it a good one.

7.  Your real enemies are the self-defeating thoughts, paltry expectations, and beliefs that you must live at less than full throttle.  You will experience as much pain as you are willing to accept.  You do have control over how much you hurt.  Pain happens, suffering is optional.  You can choose thoughts that bring you relief rather than imprisonment.

8.  A healthy belief will stand in the face of challenge.  Illusions will evaporate.  If you do not test your beliefs, they will be come your ruler and you their hostage.

9.  If you settle for less than what you really want, you will get exactly that.  If you expect your life to suck, it will.

10.  To really live, let go of any idea that anything outside you determines your destiny.  The force that determines your destiny is you.

11. When you finally trust yourself, you will know how to live.

12. If you do not value who and what you are, you will seek to borrow worth from the outer world.  You will look for validation from people whom you believe know or have more than you.  But since everything you need is inside you and no one can know more about your path and purpose than you do, any power you ascribe to external authorities must eventually explode in your face and leave you feeling worst than when you started.

13.  An experience that leaves you feeling empty, less-than, or needy does so for only one reason:  You entered into it feeling empty, less-than, or needy.

14.  The illusion is that relationships will take away the pain that keeps you feeling small; the reality is that relationships magnify the pain that keeps you feeling small.

15.  Those who go searching for love only find their own lovelessness.  But the loveless never find love; only the loving find love and they never have to search for it.

16.  Analyzing the past evicts you from your heart and imprisons you in your brain. Retrospect is a good teacher, but a mean spirited roadhouse; visit it occasionally, but don’t check in.

17.  If you need to learn lessons from your past deeds, they will emerge.  Don’t sweat trying to find them; if they are significant, they will find you.  When you are able to give thanks for everything that has happened, you are free.

18.  The reasoning mind is never satisfied; it will keep seeking for things to dwell on like a car radio scanning for stations but never stopping on one.

19.  Looking good doesn’t always lead to feeling good.  Feeling good always leads to looking good.

20.  The purpose of life is not to arrive safely at death.  It is to live so well that death or the fear of it cannot remove joy.

Thank you Mr. Cohen!  Your book helped to change my life for the better since I discovered it about five years ago in a used book store.  I am grateful for what you shared and pick up the book often to read a few of my underlining’s done during two cover-to-cover reading’s so far.  I am about to begin doing so a third time!

Change yourself and fortune will change with you.
Portuguese Proverb

The Point is… They Lived

/ James Browning / 2 Comments

Generally speaking, most of us work about eight hours per day, commute for an average of an hour each day, eat for about two hours, watch television for about five hours and about two hours goes to the computer for leisure such as online games, research or social media according to 2010 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.  All total that’s about seventeen hours and does not include sleep. 

How important is my time?  A simple illustration is a modern fable that has floated around the internet for years: 

With a soft voice and loving eyes, a little boy greeted his father as he returned from work, “Daddy, how much do you make an hour?”  Greatly surprised, but giving his boy a displeased look, the father said, “Look, son, I don’t tell anyone how much I make, so don’t bother me now, I’m tired.”

“But Daddy please tell me! How much do you get paid for an hour,” the boy insisted.  The father, finally giving up, replied: “Twenty dollars per hour.”  “Thank you, Daddy? Could you loan me ten dollars?” the boy asked.  Showing his displeasure, the father sternly said, “So that’s why you asked how much I make.  It’s your bedtime.  Go to bed and go to sleep.  I’m too tired for this right now.”  It was already dark when the father arrived home.

A short while later the Dad was thinking about how he had reacted and was feeling a bit guilty? He felt bad he had responded to his son the way he did.  Trying to relieve a little of his guilt, the father went to his son’s room and asked “are you asleep, son?”  “No, Daddy. Why?” said the sleepy boy.  “Here’s the ten bucks you asked me for when I got home,” the father said.

“Thanks, Daddy!”  joyfully said the son, while putting his hand under his pillow and removing a sandwich bag full of change he had stashed there. “Now I have the whole twenty dollars!  I finally have enough” the little boy said to his Dad, who was now looking down at his son with a confused expression.   It was then the little boy made it clear why he wanted the money “Daddy, could you sell me an hour of your time?”

Sometimes it occurs to me I have been so busy trying to move forward in some aspect of my life I forgot to live the life I had at the present moment.  That is absolutely true in my 20’s, 30’s and 40’s.  There certainly were times I was guilty of being too busy for my son like the fable above illustrates.  The same can be said about me for friends, family and even time for myself. 

Always I was aiming toward something, headed somewhere and my efforts were in majority for would or could be.  Other time was wasted looking over my shoulder trying to solve some riddle about my past.  There was a big deficiency in the amount of time I spent on the present moment at any given point.  I am not bitter or beating myself up over it (well not  much), because that realization now in my 50’s has brought me a whole new perspective.  I am much more “present” in my life than ever before.

Every day I do my best to live well centered in the “now” and I succeed quite a bit at it.  When I forget I am acutely reminded frequently that our days are limited by the loss of friends, family, favorite musicians, movie stars and people, famous and not famous, I look up to.  Each of us has no idea when the “off” switch will be thrown on our life.  

A method I use to center myself and gain perspective when I need to, is to think of each day as being a deposit of 86,400 made to my account.   It’s up to me how I withdraw from that balance, how much of it I actually use and how I spend it.  The bad news is that any unused or leftover part of the deposit is taken away every midnight.  The good news is another 86,400 seconds are deposited in my account with the beginning of a new day.  It is with much gratitude I realize whether my daily deposit is used well or how much is left “unlived” at the end of the day is largely up to me.   

…And while Cinderella and her prince did live happily ever after, the point is, gentlemen that they lived.  Grand Dame in the movie “Ever After”

Seeing Past Myself on a Beautiful Morning

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

What a beautiful morning, one like we have not seen here in a long time.  When I woke I was excited to walk outside on my patio and feel the cool air, something Oklahoma has not known since last May when the recycled blog post below was originally written.  How wonderful the temperature feels and knowing the high is only around eighty degrees just adds to my joy this morning.  How immensely grateful I am to have relief from the 60 days or so of 100+ temperatures this year (normal is 11 days!).

It is a holiday morning.  Happy Labor Day.  And in the spirit of not extending too much labor here today, I am including a “reprint” of an early Good Morning Gratitude blog and taking the morning off for a convertible ride in the country.  Enjoy every hour of today!  I will with great gratitude!  

__________________________________________________

Originally posted on May, 25, 2011 
 https://goodmorninggratitude.com/2011/05/25/seeing-beyond-just-looking/

I have no certainty where exactly I got the idea.  It may have been from something I read or several things I came across blended together.  It may have even been a spontaneous realization.  But in the last 10 years I have learned to “see beyond just looking”.  I can’t do it all the time.  Actually that is probably impossible for a human being.  If I could I suspect I’d end up over dosed in goodness like Woody Allen was with the “orb” in the movie Sleeper.  Seeing beyond looking does happen for me frequently and the more I intentionally try the more frequent the activity comes without thought or effort.

My discovery was I mostly only acknowledged what came into view.  I would mostly just walked without really noting  what was right before me.  Mine was a bad habit of hardly ever really “truly seeing” much of anything.  My mind seemed to always be racing forward thinking about where I was going, what I had to do and what issues I needed to deal with.  Or else, I was looking backwards trying to solve some past emotional riddle or find some meaning in an episode of life I wanted an explanation for.

What I began to do, inconsistently at first, was to just stop and really take in visually what I was looking at.  There was amazement the first intentional time I took 30 seconds to study a beautiful tulip, to see its unique form and texture and to take in its vibrant red color.  I was stunned to look and see so much always detail missed before.  It was during the early times of intentionally having these experiences when I noticed how beautifully blue the sky really is (which is still one of my favorites to marvel at).

How touched I became when I locked my vision on an elderly couple watching the man help the fragile woman out of the car and attending to her to get into a restaurant.  Eating at the same place as they were I watched the smiles they exchanged while eating and from a distance the conversation they were having.  I saw a couple deeply in love just moving in slow motion;  true romance at half speed.  Without looking closely I would have dismissed them mentally as “old people” and hardly noticed them at all.

I found delight in watching a toddler in a park giggling wildly while chasing a grasshopper like it was the greatest find of the year.  Truly sitting and watching birds through a window enjoy a feast of crumbled bread I put out for them on top of a big snow allowed me to notice the quirky uniqueness of each breed and what appeared to be joy in the abundance they had found.  And then there is nature!  A walk in the woods or a park became a sensory banquet.

When was the last time you sat and watched a sunset or sunrise?  When was the last time you actually “saw” a person instead of just looking at them.  How long since you gazed in a mirror and actually saw yourself instead of just acknowledging your reflection?  How long has it been since you focused on something to the point to where you found sheer delight in what you were looking at?  For me I am glad to say “no long ago”.   I am grateful to have stumbled across this activity and to have cultivated the habit.  As time passes with consistent effort I find I am able to more truly see with greater depth and frequency.  If life is a feast, then this is the seasoning for the meal.

Taken from “Seeing Past Myself” – Don Iannone

Sometimes I have trouble
Seeing past myself
Blindsided by who I think I am
…oblivious
To the vast world of possibilities…
I clean my glasses twice a day
Unfortunately it’s to see what I want to see
And not beyond that
I guess I’m no different –
Than you, or anyone else.
My self-image directs my eyes.
There’s a solution you know
It’s not as hard as we think
Open our hearts to unknown possibilities
Accept that our version of reality
Is but one of many out there.

The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.  Marcel Proust 


Children See, Children Do

/ James Browning / 3 Comments

Even though I remember feeling emotions deeply as a child, no grownup nearby was interested in what I felt.  If I did express myself it usually got me into trouble of the sort that included a belt or willow switch.  In the house I grew up in no adult cared much about what a kid felt or thought.   So I learned to hide my feelings and emotions by stuffing them deeply down inside.  

Where I grew up to need medical attention brought grumbling about how much it cost the adults responsible for me.  Seeing a doctor or dentist was considered unnecessary unless something very serious was going on like when I broke my arm. Even then I was reminded repeatedly about the charges at the town clinic.  

When I was in 6th grade I got some sort of infection down inside my left hand.  My fingers and palm to my wrist turned deep red and blew up like a balloon to be at twice their normal size.  I was scared about it but did not dare tell anyone.  Hiding my infected hand in my jacket pocket kept others from noticing.  It hurt badly.  Paying attention and sitting still in class was very difficult during the worst of it.  I was afraid for the teacher to find out what was going on because there was no doubt she would tell my parents.  I was lucky and my hand started healing on its own in less than a week. 

Growing up in the country, there was no fluoride in the water and I don’t recall being taught oral hygiene.  Brushing was an inconsistent practice and at twelve years-old I ended up with a huge hole in one of my back bottom teeth that resulted in a massive tooth ache.  I begged to go to the dentist for several weeks but the adults around basically ignored me.  

Every day after school and all day long in the summer my brother and I were made to work at my stepfather’s store.  We were free labor and made to stock shelves, run the register, pump gas, sweep floors, clean windows, sack coal and a hundred other tasks we were responsible for.  We rarely got to play, never got visit friends or have them over and our only time off was Sunday afternoon after church.   

My brother and I were literally worked like beasts of burden six days a week from the time I was ten until I was sixteen.  To our stepfather we were unnecessary baggage that came with our Mother when he married her.  There is no purpose to me writing about the punishment we often endured as his hand, often for very minor infractions, except to say adults go to prison today for such treatment of kids.  My evil stepfather threw me into the street the day before my 17th birthday.  With no other place to go, I called my Father who I hardly knew that lived several hundred miles away.  He took me in.      

I remember vividly while I had the bad tooth when an old woman I was hand pumping some kerosene for noticed I had a toothache.  She said “boy, get you some cotton and put a drop or two of this kerosene on it.  Then stuff that cotton down in the hole in your tooth.  It will stop the pain”.  I’m sure it was toxic, but she was correct about it stopping the pain.  Every day for a couple of weeks I carried a little bottle of kerosene to school with some cotton in my pocket and became accustomed to the taste.  Eventually the tooth abscessed and my jaw became swollen.  Only then did I get to go to the dentist to have the tooth extracted.  I was 12 years old.  

None of what I have shared is a plea for pity or sympathy.  Rather I wrote it to openly express why for decades I could not let anyone know what I was truly feeling most of the time, especially any sort of pain or emotional hurt.  

Having worked my way past the majority of the uncaring nature of my upbringing, I now find I am ultra sensitive emotionally.  Mostly this is a blessing and I find richness in the abundance of my feelings.  Joy is greatly enhanced, but so is pain.  This is especially true of anything having to do with children.  I can become inwardly very emotional when I see kids not being cared for or being mistreated.  I feel what I imagine they are feeling.  The most difficult part at such times is remembering the hopeless fear I felt as a child and the aching desire inside to be loved and wanted.  

I have written this sordid and sad tale to be able to point a reader toward two videos on YouTube.com that move me deeply when I watch them.  The first video reminds me how inseparable my little brother and I were growing up and the care I took of him.  Things were bad, but at least we did not have to beg on the street.  The location and narration are foreign, but I doubt you will have any trouble understanding it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHt0NkZT6LM

The second video is presented here as a reminder of how children emulate what they see.  There is much regret for me in knowing in some ways I did end up just like my parents, but thankfully I dearly love my son and never abused him.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d4gmdl3zNQ 

I am grateful for so much this morning!  For my recovery and growth the last five years, I am very thankful.  For my younger brother and my son, whom I love dearly, and to my dear friends who have been there when I needed them, I have bountiful grateful.  And up near the top of my gratitude list is my ability to feel and express my emotions openly.  It took about 50 years, but emotionally I am almost grown up now. 

Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.  Robert Fulghum

Codependence and Interdependence: What is Normal?

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

Choice is the exploration of desire and then the selection of action.  In every moment, you are choosing either to align yourself with your own true path or to veer away from it.  There are no neutral actions.  Even the smallest gesture has a direction to it, leading you closer to your path or farther away from it, whether you realize it or not.*   

While that paragraph feels true it has not been factual in all of what appear on the surface to have been my choices made in free will.  In relationships I have been compulsive and driven, often by a force I did not understand if I was even able to notice it. The force has been with me for so long I do not remember life without it.  Learning and acknowledging that my compulsions even existed was the biggest step yet in understanding my self.   

There is a certain flavor to a codependent relationship that might be described as ‘driven’ or ‘intense.’ There is a compulsive nature to it. The members are tied to each other almost as with an invisible rope. The slightest move in one causes a reaction in the other. The positions are rigid. Every word or thought is guarded, weighed against the other’s imagined response.** 

And there it is; that word codependent.  I have come to know it well as my primary dysfunction has come into focus in recent years.  In a broad sense, a codependent can be defined as one having an addiction to people, behaviors, or things. My codependency has been an unconscious fallacy that caused me to attempt to manage my interior feelings by maintaining power over people, things, and events on the outside, sometimes through control and at others through compliance.  By its very definition, being a codependent means I have a tendency to make relationships more important to me than I am to myself.  

In codependency, control or lack of it is central to every aspect of life. There is emptiness within that originates in childhood from parental neglect, abandonment and abuse. Emotionally a child does not mature and exhibits child-like and immature emotional behavior when grown up, but can not see it themselves.  As an adult each codependent struggles relentlessly to fill a great emotional vacuum within themselves.

While a full list of codependent tendencies is quite long, here is a short list:  
1.  Lacking appropriate levels of self-esteem.
2.  Inability to set realistic, functioning, boundaries.
3.  Difficulty knowing who you are.
4.  Having trouble defining needs and wants and meeting them.
5.  Difficulty in expressing ourselves moderately and knowing what “normal” is.

What about healthy relationships?   How different is the closeness of an interdependent relationship! The desire is there but not the intense need. Love, whether for a spouse, a child, a parent, or a friend, is a matter of choice. **

People in healthy, interdependent relationships do whatever is best for both partners.  They make sincere, reliable agreements with each other, based on their separate wants and needs, and they generally stick to them.  There is no happily-ever-after on this plane of existence.  I may find a princess but she will have issues to deal with.  We all do.  Relationships are something that needs to be worked on – not some magic wand that makes everybody happy.

Codependence and interdependence are two very different dynamics.   Codependence is about giving away power over my self-esteem.  Interdependence is about making allies, forming partnerships.  It is about forming connections with other beings.  Interdependence means that I give someone else some power over our welfare and our feelings.

It is impossible to love without giving away some power.  When I choose to love someone (or thing – a pet, a car, anything) I am giving them the power to make me happy.  However, I cannot do that without also giving them the power to hurt me or cause me to feel angry or scared.  That is “normal”.

Much progress has been made, but there is much yet to make. Writing here today is a sort of ‘homework’ assignment that helps me maintain clarity and growth and one I hope may help others.  I am grateful to have knowledge now about my part in past relationship problems and to have new hope future relations will be far improved by what I have learned and am learning.  Class dismissed…..

Oh, the comfort – the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person – having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.  Dinah Craik 1859

 * From “If Life is a Game, These Are the Rules” by Cherie Carter-Scott, Ph.D.
**Love is a Choice” byHemfelt, Minirth, and Meier

Yesterday, Tomorrow and the Power of Now

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

From one of my favorite books “The Power of Now” by Ekhart Tolle: 
A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. “Spare some change?” mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap. “I have nothing to give you,” said the stranger. Then he asked: “What’s that you are sitting on?” “Nothing,” replied the beggar. “Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember.” “Ever looked inside?” asked the stranger. “No,” said the beggar. “What’s the point? There’s nothing in there.” “Have a look inside,” insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold.  

I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer: inside yourself.  

The “gift inside the box” is my own life and it can not be found in the past for what I recall of it is only partial fact spun with delusional memory of what happened.  My life is not in the future for nothing there has yet happened and that time will materialize far differently than any way I imagine.  My life is here and now in this very instant and no other place.  The more I am able to experience each moment of my life as it happens the sweeter the taste will be and the grander the outcome will seem. 

YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW

There are two days in every week about which we should not worry.
            Two days which should be kept free from fear and apprehension.

One of these days is yesterday with its mistakes and cares,
            Its faults and blunders, Its aches and pains.
            Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control.
            All the money in the world cannot bring back yesterday.
            We cannot undo a single act we performed.
            We cannot erase a single word we said. Yesterday is gone.

The other day we should not worry about is tomorrow.
            With its possible adversities, Its burdens, 
            Its large promise and poor performance.
            Tomorrow is also beyond our immediate control.
            Tomorrow’s Sun will rise, either in splendor or behind a mask of clouds, 
            but it will rise.

Until it does, we have no stake in tomorrow, for it is yet unborn.
            This just leaves only one day . . . Today.
            Any person can fight the battles of just one day.
            It is only when you and I add the burdens of those two awful eternity’s –
            yesterday and tomorrow that we break down.
            It is not the experience of today that drives people mad.
            It is the remorse or bitterness for something which happened yesterday 
            and the dread of what tomorrow may bring.

Let us therefore live but one day at a time.
Author Unknown

An abstract way of looking at my life story is thinking of “today” as a comma.  Grammatically a “period” denotes an end, but a “comma” indicates a transition.  So each of my “today’s” is a transition and not an ending.  Today is the only place where my life happens. 

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside of you wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Today has little to do with the yesterday I keep in distorted view over my shoulder nor does today have a lot in common with what I anticipate about the tomorrow on my foggy and distant horizon.  My life is all about today and today is found between my ears and in my heart.  It is happening  “Now” and I am grateful!

Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.  Eckhart Tolle

Five Biggest Regrets Before Dying

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

Life became more difficult to bear as I aged due to collecting an ever growing quantity of regrets.  Over time qualms collected were thrown on my conscience pile.  Little by little that burden became heavier and heavier.  Eventually it was a single huge regret that broke the back of my resistance less than five years ago.  Then all my smaller regrets began to surface buoyed by the repentance I was attempting to make for what I considered the great wrong I had done.  As the smaller misgivings have been taken out, examined and some sort of peace attempted with them I made a discovery that many were not that small at all.  In hurting others, ultimately I hurt myself as much or more. 

Some of my regrets at random:
– A friend and I got 200 bait crickets and let them lose in our basketball coach’s new car when we were 16.  We were upset at him because he got mad at our team and made us practice way too hard late one night after a game.
– Telling my eight or nine year-old son who was behaving badly that he was not acting like a human being and taking him outside saying he could come back into the house until he decided to act human.
– Not making car payments when I was eighteen and my car getting repossessed.  I caught up payments and got the car back.  A year later the same thing happened again and I lost the car for good.
– Sleeping with a woman when I was 19.  Then the next morning hurting her when let her know I was engaged.
– Not staying in better touch with my three half sisters and completely losing track and now having no idea where my sister Kelly is.
– Throwing a sandwich in a guy’s face that I worked with, even though he lost his temper and spit on me.
– Not going to more of my son’s hockey games when he was growing up.
– Refusing to accept that I suffered from depression for so many years and the damage to me and those around me that self-chosen blindness caused.
– Getting into a verbal tiff with my ex-mother-in-law in the car and her getting out and walking when we all were in Lake Tahoe.
– Not being truthful when my 2nd ex-wife told me she would stand by me no matter what if I would just tell her the truth.
– Losing track of a good friend and former roommate/co-worker fromJackson,Mississippi named Bruce Owen.
– Stealing a camera from K-Mart on a dare when I was 17.
– Not flying home for my favorite Uncle Jimmy’s funeral.
– Hurting a woman whose initials are RW so badly she will not even speak to me. 
– Not showing more appreciation for my first wife who always took such good care of me.
– Letting my personal life affect me to the point that I got fired from a company I was employed by for 18 years.
– Realizing what I felt about Desi Kershaw long after I had lost track of her.
– When home visiting, driving by the nursing home where my grandfather was living and not going to see him before he died two months later.
– For falling out of touch with my half sister Lisa and not finding out she even had cancer until after her funeral.
– For telling my Father off about his drinking and drugging then not speaking to him at all for the year and a half before he died at an AA meeting.
– Allowing sexual compulsiveness to take me into darker behaviors and today having that  knowledge even thought the behavior is long behind me now.
– Having no idea where my 1st cousin Vickie is now for over 20 years even though we were best friends growing up.

Bronnie Ware is women who once lived on the street and went on to become a nurse for the dying.  She has written about the top five regrets that terminally ill patients express during the last three to twelve weeks of their life.   http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html

Here are the Top Five regrets she heard and has written about:

  1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.  This was the most common regret of all.
  2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.  This came from every male patient that I nursed.
  3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others.
  4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks.
  5. I wish that I had let myself be happier. Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice.

While all five points touch me, I am especially moved by the fifth. It is in that spirit that I come here each day to share of myself without walls and allow the world to see me as I am, warts, mistakes and all.  For the admission of my random regrets today I am a little healthier mentally and my psyche has been lightened.  Contained within me is much gratitude for each of you for sharing my path of learning to live life better and more happily. 

Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.  Bronnie Ware

The Pain to Stay the Same

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

(Continuing on the theme from yesterday about personal change)

More than usual this week I have been experiencing a feeling of gratitude for the quality of my life today.  In looking over my shoulder I can see what appears now to be a somewhat straight line path that brought me from where I was to where I am.  However, from where true change began to present day the path I walked was much different.  It actually zigzagged all over with a greatly varied pace containing many stops, starts, successes and failures.     

The beginning:  “When the pain to stay the same exceeds the pain to change, you change.” 

The first time I saw those fourteen words was on a bulletin board.  They have been burned into my psyche ever since.  The initial glimpse was at the time when realizing I could not read or learn myself into life changes through applying my intellect.   I had to do the emotional work and face what I had long avoided.  

Lobsters grow by molting, or shedding their shells.  When its shell has been shed the lobster spends time under a rock or in a crevice while growing a new shell.  During that time the lobster is vulnerable without the protection of its old hard shell.        

The process of “change” caused me to feel a lot like a lobster.  For a while it had been evident to me I was stuck inside a hard shell that resulted from childhood abandonment and abuse.  It was stifling me.  I needed to shed the old casing and grow a new one.  I had to be vulnerable in order to change. Yet, doing what I needed to do felt impossible at the time.  I could not muster the courage to “jump in and do it”, but knew not changing meant I would continue to suffocate in my old shell.  

Did I muster the courage to shed the safety of my old hard outer armor plate and jump into the sea of change?  No!  I wish I could say I became brave enough to do that.  Instead life events came along and left me only with drown or swim options.  My old shell was shattered and stripped away and then “the pain to stay the same exceeded the pain to change”.  

Pain and discontent was stage one of my growth and change.  Suddenly I saw myself more clearly and could view my past at least with some accurately.  As if being slugged, the force of it crushed my shell and  figuratively “knocked the wind out of me emotionally”.  Getting knocked down and broken open was step #1.   

Admitting I had problems was stage two of my growth and change.  There had to be an end to my running away.  I had no choice but to let the issues take me over.    Opening up and allowing myself to feel the full force of what I had so long avoided was what I needed.  Accepting my issues was step #2.  

Realizing I needed help was stage three of my growth and change.  One of the effects of childhood trauma can be to become an overly self-reliant and a seemingly needless adult.  I became quite good at denying my own needs.  Seeking outside aid was rarely an allowed possibility.    Accepting that I needed help was step #3. 

Doing the work was stage four of my growth and change.  Being one who wants to begin today and have everything accomplished tomorrow, this step was difficult.  Coming to grips with my dysfunction took lots of time.  Gaining the upper hand on it took much longer and now spans years.  Putting in the time and making a long-term effort was step #4. 

Realization I was getting better was stage five of my growth and change.  At first it seemed as if nothing was changing, but over time I began to feel a little different.  Life began to taste better.  The better I got, the more I wanted.  Working past setback and disappointment without completely losing my momentum became a key for me.  Realizing I could heal was step #5. 

Real change takes a long time.  Clinical perspective says real personal change takes at least three years to be fully implemented.  That is why small changes I made and continued to repeat over a long period of time have yielded a positive impact.  On my path there has been an abundance of stubbornness and hanging on to the past combined with emotional dread and frightful depression at times.  What began with “baby steps” and became one step at a time, one day at a time has now several years later brought me to much better mental and spiritual health.  There is joy for living I have not known before. 

I am not fixed and will never be completely.  The scars will always remain, but I am better and continuing to improve.  To even try to express the quantity of thankfulness I have for my life today would be completely futile.  I am grateful to a power greater than me for the inspiration and to every person who has helped me along the way.  

Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.
Richard Hooker