Life

Written Companions of My Life

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

This morning I sit here at my desk at home on a Monday morning; a time I would normally be in my office at work.  I am enjoying the first day of a week off for a stay at home vacation.  Of course there are things I need to do, but I plan on sleeping late, reading, listening to music and taking life a bit easier than usual.  (I smile from just writing that!). 

In the spirit of my first day off, my offering today is shorter than usual and consists of the borrowed words of others.  It is my hope that the lesser quantity of words will allow the meaning to be larger and easier to see.  The thoughts expressed have great meaning to me.  I am grateful for these favorite written companions of my life and the pronounced significance they have to me.  I hope you find them meaningful too.

Relationships – of all kinds – are like sand held in your hand. Held loosely, with an open hand, the sand remains where it is. The minute you close your hand and squeeze tightly to hold on, the sand trickles through your fingers. You may hold onto it, but most will be spilled. A relationship is like that. Held loosely, with respect and freedom for the other person, it is likely to remain intact. But hold too tightly, too possessively, and the relationship slips away and is lost. Kaleel Jamison, The Nibble Theory and the Kernel of Power 

 

Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time – when pursued like a bandit – will behave like one, always remaining one county or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you’re banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you. At some point you have to stop because it won’t. You have to admit that you can’t catch it. That you’re not supposed to catch it. At some point, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you.”  Elizabeth Gilbert  

 

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary. Sir Cecil Beaton 

 

 I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.  Maya Angelou

 

Every day’s a good day.  Some are just better than others!  I hope yours is a rewarding one.

Morning Letter to a Friend

/ James Browning / 2 Comments

Dear_________,

In many ways you and I are a mirror reflection of each other. What echoes between us is a near exact matching likeness of manner, attitude and beliefs, yet we are very different.  Each of us reflects to the other as a carnival mirror might reproduce an image.  What is emulated back is fully recognizable, yet the likeness is changed and does not match our own self-view.  That is the beauty of being close friends.  We can see one another clearly and are each able to give one another a different perspective of our self.

Often I assume since we are so close you know exactly how I feel about you.  There is much hope you do, but to make sure I am writing you this letter.  You are dear to me in a manner I can not put fully into words, but will try by making a list of how you matter to me:

  • You help keep me honest with myself. When I start fabricating crap you save me from my own BS.
  • You care enough to tell me the truth even when I am hiding from it.
  • You encourage me to go further than I think I can and to do things I am uncertain I can do.
  •  Whenever I need you, regardless of day or night, where I am or what the circumstances, you are there for me.
  • You make me laugh and you can touch me to tears in your own unique way.
  • You encourage me not to settle for less than I deserve even when I am ready to.
  •  I feel ageless with you. We can act like school kids one moment, be serious the next and never miss a beat.
  • When my courage is lacking, you give me some of yours.
  •  When I am ready to give up, you are always ready to give me a “jump start”.
  • You seem always to call or show up when I need you most. I don’t know how you do that.
  • You know my flaws and imperfections yet see value and worth in me that transcends them.
  • When we disagree or occasionally hurt each other, you apologize even when it was not your fault.
  • You openly express to me and others how you feel about me.
  • With you as my friend I know will never go hungry nor lack a place to sleep (nor will you!).
  •  We don’t always agree, but we always hear each other out and respect each other’s point of view.

There’s a saying that goes something like “friendship isn’t a big thing; it’s a million little things”.  That’s why even after writing my list I feel it is sorely inadequate.  There is so much more.  Much of what I know about the friendship we share is beyond my ability to express, yet I know the truth of it at the soul level.  I know it best when we can just sit silently and enjoy time together.  My life is so much richer because you are my friend and I will live this life always with gratitude for your presence.

And when we die and float away
Into the night, the Milky Way
You’ll hear me call, as we ascend
I’ll see you there, then once again
Thank you for being a friend
Lyrics to “Thank you for being a friend” by Andrew Gold

My BIG Wake Up Call

/ James Browning / 3 Comments

 As I walked from the secure area of the airport, there was a man holding a sign with my name on it like a limo driver might do.  It made no sense to me.  I was arriving home and expecting my wife to pick me up.  Having texted her after I made my connecting flight to let her know I would be arriving on time she had responded “OK”.  

My body language gave me away as I neared the man with the sign.  He looked directly at me and asked me “are you him” while pointing to my name.   I was bewildered as to what might be going on and my first thought was that something bad had happened to my wife.  I answered “yes, I’m him”.  He handed a large manila envelope to me and simply said “I’m sorry” and walked away. 

Quickly putting my bags down and opening the large envelope I started to read the note on top of a stack of legal looking papers.  It said:

The Aviator (car) is at Airport Parking under James Browning.  They have your keys.  I’ve moved your meds, closet belongings, stuff from your drawers, etc to the warehouse – right inside the door.   

Good-bye.  I do love you but am not able to trust you again after knowing what you have done.  I just can’t get over it.  I will hopefully be able to forgive you someday, but I will never be able to forget.  Good luck with your recovery, A.

Lifting the note underneath I saw “Petition for the Dissolution of Marriage”.  

The relationship preceding the marriage was troubled and the first year of the marriage was difficult as well.  The time ranged from near euphoric good moments to long days and nights filled with great anguish and pain.  We truly loved each other but our dysfunctions made coexistence arduously challenging.

Although I was faithful for five years while we dated and lived together, during a period of extreme pain and frustration I lost my direction completely and began an affair that I later partially admitted in marriage counseling.  My wife found that behavior unforgivable and I don’t blame her for feeling that way.  Had our roles been switched I would likely have felt the same.  

Looking back there is no complete explanation within of why the sex focused affair began and  the growing darkness surrounded me except through counseling I came to know I was sexually compulsive.  I learned that under duress an alcoholic drinks, an addict takes drugs and one sexually compulsive medicates with sex.  To each one the substance of choice is used to numb pain and alter reality, even if just for a short while.  Sharing that here is not intended as an excuse.  There are none for my actions. Rather, by public admission I am shining light into a dark corner of my life.  It is my hope by sharing my missteps I can find further relief for pain I still carry inside for the agony caused to my now ex-wife.  

The date I was legally served at the airport was Saturday, May 27, 2006 and I honestly don’t remember much specifically about the day.  Everything was surreal and felt if I was drifting within a very bad dream.  My recollection is that I went home to find the locks changed and no response to my knocks on the door.  After numerous tries I sat on the porch step for a good long while and eventually left.  The only place I could think to go was my office at work.  Thankfully it was a Saturday and no one saw me arrive.  I locked myself in my office without turning on the lights.  The next six hours were spent staring at the walls and changing passwords on-line with a good deal of crying interspersed.  

Somewhere near sundown the realization hit I had no place to spend the night and checked into a budget motel near my work which became my refuge for the next two weeks.  I slept little that night and those following with rest only coming when exhaustion overtook me.  

Since that time five years ago I have been deeply involved in counseling and recovery including five weeks at a wonderfully healing place in Arizona called “The Meadows”.  My time there was life changing beyond my ability to explain it.  Just before leaving my primary counselor there said to me “you came here to change your life.  Everyone can see it”.  She was correct and I am proud that growth continues today. 

The longest I have ever lived alone has been the last five years.  In a local recovery group I am active and attend two Codependence Anonymous meetings per week ( www.coda-tulsa.org ).  Today I am well, growing and happy and have healed a lot from the trauma of my difficult childhood where my dysfunctions are rooted.  I see my therapist only rarely.  She tells me I don’t need to see her anymore but I continue to check in with her a couple of times per year.  There is much gratitude for the great help she has been to me. 

Thinking about the day I was served divorce papers at the airport still conjures a hurt that is yet not completely healed.  Sharing here is a way of  letting go of “secrets” that are “poison” to my soul.  I thank you for being my witness.  There is much gratitude for the healing that has come into my life in recent years.  While I can find no specific thankfulness for the day I came home to find I had no home anymore, there will always be vast gratitude for the healing it served as a catalyst for.  

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.  Kenji Miyazawa

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

Pursuit of Fun

/ James Browning / 2 Comments

Early this week I ran across the quote just below that has deep meaning, especially considering it comes from a TV show (Sex and the City). 

When you’re young, your whole life is about the pursuit of fun. Then you grow up and learn to be cautious, you could break a bone or a heart. You look before you leap and sometimes don’t leap at all because there’s not always someone there to catch you and in life there’s no safety net. When did it stop being fun and start being scary? 

Having slept long and rested well last night, my mind is bright and fresh today so probing into the past is clearer than most days.  The past of the quote that has simmered in my mind this week is the opening line “When you’re young, your whole life is about the pursuit of fun”.  It has been rewarding to think back about what I thought was fun when I was a kid, before the uncertain clouds of my teen years moved in followed by adulthood.  Since most over 40 can probably remember a time before computers, cell phones, movie rentals and video games, I don’t feel like a fossil making a little list of a few things that come from my growing up years. 

If you never got to play ‘kick the can’, you missed out.  It seemed the time we played it usually was late afternoon and the game usually ended with being called in for dinner.  All that running and laughing sure created an appetite. 

“Red Rover, Red Rover…” was a game the teachers had us play in elementary school.  I suppose it has been mostly outlawed now because it was a physical game.  Once in a while someone got a little banged up in a minor way.  It was one of the few playground games where being big or wide or both was an advantage. 

Does dodge ball still get played in schools?  I wonder.  While it was not my favorite game by far, I do remember it well.  In this activity being big or wide or both was a definite disadvantage.  

What happened to merry go rounds on the playgrounds?  I bet insurance companies and school liability concerns did away with the kind I remember.

It was considered normal where I went to school for a boy to carry a pocket knife.  No one ever got stabbed or cut.  It was just a handy tool to have and was essential to play a game called Mumblety-peg.  The game had a series of knife trick moves one had to practice to be good.  The loser had to pull a peg out of the ground with his teeth.  We played it at recess, but the activity would get you suspended or arrested today.

While I was always terrible at it I remember kids playing jump rope of the kind where two people swing a rope at each end.   Then a third person (or more) popped in the middle and jumped the rope as it came around.  It’s been decades since I have seen kids doing it.  I hope somewhere this kind of jump rope is still alive!

Having seen some in a store not too long ago, I know “pickup sticks” are still around.  Do any kids today still play that game or is it available for those with grandkids to buy?  What about chinese checkers? Or just plain old checkers?

I had an electric race track set, my brother had Lincoln logs and we shared an Erector set.  We burned our fingers making creepy crawlers in our Mattel “Thing Maker” but we don’t think we are any worse for it today.   Our time was when GI Joe was new and the girls started getting Barbie’s.  Just about every one wanted or had a Slinky and Etch-a-Sketch.  Hula Hoop and Twister competitions were not uncommon.  There were “Dammit dolls” and stroking their long hair was supposed to give good luck (they were not named for a curse word and instead got their moniker from their inventor, Thomas Dam).  Skateboards were new and so were three speed bicycles from Schwinn.

What a pleasant little journey down memory lane it is to sit here, write and remember those times long ago.  The simpler years of childhood contain some fond memories where some the biggest issues were the girl or boy you “liked” (if you admitted liking the opposite sex at all!) or if one had done their homework.  Those years occupy a much broader stripe in my memory than the quantity of the time they cover.  While not all was good in my childhood, there are many wonderful experiences I will treasure and will have much gratitude for all my days. 

Now where is my old BB gun?

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders. Unknown

“To Forgive Is Give Up All Hope for a Better Past”

/ James Browning / 3 Comments

Definition for forgive: to grant free pardon and to give up all claim on account of an offense or debt.  To excuse for a fault; to pardon; to renounce anger or resentment against.

There’s a wonderful definition of forgiveness: that to forgive is to give up all hope for a better past. If you are locked in regret over the past, you have less available to your life now.  Forgiveness allows you a fresh start… It’s like a rain coming to a polluted environment. It clears things.  Dr. Fred Luskin

From time to time I find myself figuratively “kicking myself in the butt” repeatedly for something I have done in the past or a fresh misstep.  That’s how I process mentally before being able to let go and forgive myself.  I know the tendency goes back to childhood where punishment was a regular part of life even for the smallest offense.  I learned early on to be very hard on myself.  Even today a bit of emotional self-flogging is a penalty often self-prescribed for my misdeeds, although little by little I am slowly learning to not be so tough on myself. 

I have forgiven the women who broke my heart and the people who stole from me.  I have forgiven the ones who have stabbed me in the back and the one who ran into my car and irreversibly changed my life and my health.    I have forgiven the company that fired me after 18 years and the friends who turned out not to be friends at all.  I have forgiven the adults who abused me as a child and an ex-wife who verbally abused me.  I have become proficient at forgiving everyone but one person:  ME!  

Some of the knowledge I have gained about forgiving others is well described in a book called “Heart Match Solution”: You’re not forgiving them for their sake. You’re doing it for yourself. For your own health and well-being, forgiveness is simply the most energy-efficient option. It frees you from the incredibly toxic, debilitating drain of holding a grudge. Don’t let these people live rent free in your head. If they hurt you before, why let them keep doing it year after year in your mind? It’s not worth it but it takes heart effort to stop it. You can muster that heart power to forgive them as a way of looking out for yourself. It’s one thing you can be totally selfish about. Now if only I could broaden that perspective to include myself! 

My tendency is to be harder on me and hold myself more accountable than I do others.  At times forgiving my self is not even a consideration because my thinking is I must hold myself in a state of constant remembrance, lest I forget.  There is this nagging deep down there is some price to be extracted from me, some form of long penance I have to pay.  I know better, but the practice of that knowing is inconsistent and irregularly applied.    

I once read that if you do not forgive yourself of past sins, it is a form of pride. The thinking goes, whenever I enact a different set of rules, a higher set of standards for my self over others that is pride. When I can find it within my self to forgive others, but not my own self, I am saying I am less capable of making a poor decision than others. Attempting to hold myself to some higher standard than others means I think somehow I should be more intuitive, wiser, more insightful, more careful than others, and therefore, I am without an excuse and should not forgive myself.  When viewed in that sort of light it is so easy to see how an over developed sense of pride can greatly hinder self forgiveness.

My ability to forgive me is improving.  I know forgiving my self is essential to growth and happiness.  No amount of stirring my pot of memories will make the past make more sense.  I have to “give up all hope for a better past” and just let things be so I can have a better today and tomorrow.  The unchangeable reality is that I cannot alter what happened in the past. I cannot restore lives to where they were before a particular event. For each indiscretion or mistake all I can do is forgive myself and let the healing begin. 

There is not love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love.
Bryant H. McGill

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

What Do Men and Women Want?

/ James Browning / 3 Comments

I ran across some information a couple of days ago that sheds a little light on the question:  “What do men and women want?” Researchers at the University of Iowa have conducted a study every decade since 1939 that asks participants to rank a list of 18 characteristics they would want in a partner on a scale ranging from “irrelevant” to “essential”. The data increasingly shows men and women are mostly interested in same things:  attraction, love, character, stability, intelligence and ambition. 

Discernible differences between the sexes in the research last done in 2009 are:  1) women’s desire for men who care about home and children, 2) men’s hope for financially competent women and 3) men’s importance placed on looks.  However in the latter, male preference about a woman’s looks was rated only marginally higher than the importance women place on men’s looks.  For both sexes over the 70 years of this research, looks have come to matter less and less. 

It’s important to note that ‘mutual attraction and love’ was an overwhelming top choice for both sexes in the data.  In 1939 when this research began it was not even in the top three.  Also, worth noting, chastity is unimportant to men and women.  Today’s adults are not particularly looking for virgins or angels.  Political beliefs don’t matter either.

For more than four years previous to this last March I lived on a street of nothing but duplex’s owned almost exclusively by old people who lived in one side and rented the other for income.  Living around and getting to know some of my mostly 70 and 80-something neighbors was enlightening. 

Clear in memory is a conversation at an informal Christmas gathering when I talked to an 80-something untraditional ‘couple’.  I knew each had their own place catty-cornered across the street from each other and they spent a lot of time together.  Bill and Evelyn told me they were what they called a “committed couple” and loved each other.  I learned both had been married to other people twice in their long lives, but had no intention of getting married to each other.  It was just too complicated they explained because of their families and the separate long lives each had lived.      

Each time Bill and Evelyn looked at each other their smiles and sparkly eyes told easily how much they cared for the other.  Before our conversation broke up, they told me they spent a few overnight’s together each week,  much to the disdain of some of their family members.   There is no cloudiness in my memory of Evelyn’s comment “I’m old enough to do whatever the hell I want to do.  Bill and I love each other and that is all that matters”.  Even writing those words today they sound like something young lovers might say.  In the love department I think that’s exactly what this couple is in their hearts.

As long as I live I will remember one more thing that came up in my conversation with Bill and Evelyn near Christmas in 2009.  Their blunt explanation about sex embarrassed me a little at the time. I learned age and infirmity kept them from sharing sexually, but was told they had found something both thought was even better.  Evelyn said something like “we just lay down, kiss a little and then hold each other very close for a long time”.   What a beautifully sweet thought and one I am grateful to have logged away in memory. 

Do I love you because you’re beautiful,
Or are you beautiful because I love you?
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Cinderella

When the Spirit Moves You to Love

/ James Browning / 3 Comments

Over the last six months or so a rewarding pen-pal relationship has developed with a woman down in Texas.  Our communication is on an irregular and infrequent schedule, but when we write there is openness and sharing like you’d expect between two who have long known each other.  Seems a bit odd to say about someone I have never met, but we’ve become trusted confidants and probably good friends.  Maybe it’s the safety in distance that allows us to openly share of ourselves as we do.  However defined, I do know the connection is good.    

Today I received an email from my Texas friend after not hearing from her for several weeks.   She seemed a bit sad and a little troubled, but on the move forward and focused inward to reposition herself in a better place.  She wrote of desiring less of what blurs life and more simplicity in living as she progresses past a near-miss love relationship.  

Like me, she hopes one day to love and be loved again deeply and profoundly.  My friend wrote:   It should be an exciting peeling of layers. Instead flags of red loom in the distance…  I have tried the life of love 3 ways:   heart and mind lead, heart leads, and forget both, just let them lead… In summary, it seems to me I have failed to listen, absorb, apply and discern. But it also seems I will not settle… the challenge remains to never hurt another’s heart. It is impossible… 

I relate to what she wrote.  Being single in middle age with the weight of experience, previous marriage(s), children, protective barriers, responsibility and the like, it can feel impossible that the magic of love will ever sparkle again.  The hapless romantic in me, says it can, but I still get lost and disbelieve a good bit of the time.  Finding this passage by Erika Harris helped:   It is good to feel lost… because it proves you have a navigational sense of where “Home” is.  You know that a place that feels like being found exists.  And maybe your current location isn’t that place but, Hallelujah, that unsettled, uneasy feeling of lost-ness just brought you closer to it.    

In my life there have been times when I have been lost and I have been found.  There have been times I have proven my courage and other moments when I have shown my cowardly side.  With courage I have helped others and myself, but overcoming cowardice has been the greater teacher.  Today I am a coward about opening myself up to fall in love once more.  One day though I have faith a woman will again move me to my spiritual core and the courage to love will return.   But how will I know? 

There is no logical answer I can give to how I will know when she arrives in my life except to say my spirit will know.  The cue will be my fear of pain and heartache will be overcome by courage that will compel my heart open again without thought to how things will turn out.  Spiritually I will just know.  My spirit is the only force that can bring harmony and balance between my heart and my mind. It is then when falling in love becomes “can’t not do”. 

Often I get lost in my thinking and allow my ego to convince me that I am what I think.  It is impossible to stop my whirring mind, but it is possible to relax my attention to it.  When I am able to do take a few steps away from my constant storm of thoughts through meditation, prayer or stillness, I find there is a softer and quieter awareness within me that has nothing to do with my mind.  There I find a certain knowing without conscious thought that comes from the depths of my being where my soul resides.  My spirit always answers true if I am in tune enough to hear its soft and gentle voice.  

So the advice I give to my distant friend is there exists a fourth way to experience the “life of love”.  It is to spiritually be on the lookout for someone who moves you; one you can willingly and easily risk your heart for.  Let it be when you can hardly stop yourself and when logic makes no sense. When the spirit brings harmony between mind and heart the miracle of true love is possible. Like a magnet to iron, two are pulled together by the magnetism of their spirits through an knowing beyond unconsciousness.  The key is to be aware enough to notice when the spirit is trying to move us. Sometimes a chance for love knocks so softly if our “spiritual radar is down” we can miss it entirely with no second chance. 

I am grateful to whatever force drew my Texas pen-pal and I to share with each other as we do.  She is a good friend.  I am grateful for our connection and the insight writing here today has given me.  And, oh, by the way… I just checked.  My “radar” in “ON”… 

Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more, and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life.
(Merle Shan). 

The Flame in My Heart

/ James Browning / 6 Comments

What a range of emotion this past weekend contained.  Friday evening through Sunday morning contained an abundance of good times including three delicious meals and other quality time with a total of six friends.  How very richly blessed my days are to have such caring people in my life and I am exceedingly grateful. 

Being positively charged from the comradery in the first 2/3’s of my weekend, Sunday afternoon I felt poised with equilibrium mentally and spiritually.  Feeling strength and balance I decided to spend the afternoon doing a serious introspective meditation of the sort that digs down deep into the underpinnings of my emotional self.  While these journeys are always good, getting this real and close with one’s self can be painful.  Rarely have they hurt as much as what I encountered yesterday and into the night. 

The subject of my contemplative hours yesterday revolved around a central theme including questions such as:  why don’t I date, why won’t I allow any woman to reach my heart romantically, what holds me back, what am I afraid of, will I ever fall in love again and so on.  An answer came, but it took a good while to peel back the layers to get at it. 

For close to three hours I floated along in meditation without much consciousness of time.  In the opening up to my deeper self came realization of how much I value my friends.  They are my modern-day family.  Digging deeper I contemplated past romantic relationships until I arrived at realization that stunned me.  I came to know that even after much pain and sorrow and the passing of several years, the love for my 2nd wife still burns brightly in my heart.  Yes, I knew I still cared about her but discovering the depth of what remains astonished and humbled me.  

The answer to my self inquiry of “why” is simply in my heart I am still married to A., my second wife; nothing more, nothing less.  There is enormous irony in realizing that is probably truer at this moment than we actually were a wedded couple.  

There is a line that comes to mind which I included three weeks ago in a blog here titled “Unclouded Wisdom” https://goodmorninggratitude.com/2011/08/05/the-unclouded-wisdom-of-youth/ 

Never stop loving someone because you never know when they might start loving you back. But if that person won’t change, wait until your heart voluntarily quits. 

Now I realize I had feelings stuffed down deep within me and had ceased to recognize them.  Of course, that did not mean they were gone.  I had hidden my feelings away in a sort of misguided self-protection.  What was in my heart was waiting to show itself if I ever cared to look.  Now I will continue on with the knowledge that given time the point will come when my “heart voluntarily quits” or resolution will come in whatever form it arrives in. 

So I openly acknowledge what I now know to be true.  The first step with moving forward with anything is to accept what is.  In spite of the pain acceptance brings me this morning, I know it is a big step toward healing in a way I did not realize I was still wounded. 

What poured salt on an exposed wound yesterday was when I went to my jewelry box to find my wedding band from my second marriage only to find it gone.  Somewhere in my recent move and with workers in and out of my home the ring, along with a few others things, was stolen.  I have no idea when or by whom and can only guess.  There are several possibilities.  There would be no purpose to filing a police report and I care not to go though an insurance claim.  Just too painful.  Maybe it is life’s way of starting me on the break that I need to make to heal my heart.  That at least is how I find a silver lining in a dark cloud. 

Yesterday was a time of tears and the release of great pain.  While it was all healthy for me, this morning I am exhausted and running on the fumes of a few hours sleep.  I know I will be better for the experience but also that it will take a little while for that goodness to come over me completely.  

Of course, you can guess who I reached out to at the peak of my misery yesterday.  Yep, my ex-wife.  In spite of her having moved on with her life, she was exceptionally kind to me.  It had been well over a year since we had spoken and we talked for a long while.  It seemed neither of us wanted to get off the phone. I am grateful to her. 

Life goes on.  People change.  Things don’t work out.  Life is full of disappointment.  But living is filled with enormous goodness as well.  As long as I shall live, life is full of possibility.  I accept fully and openly whatever life has in store for me.  Always I will do my best to live my days well with deep grateful for the joys I am blessed with and thankfulness for the lessons I am taught.  

Change is never easy, you fight to hold on, and you fight to let go. 
from the TV program “The Wonder Years”