Self Awareness

Soul Mates

/ James Browning / 3 Comments

If one goes looking for a definition of ‘soul mate’ you’ll find something like: two persons compatible with each other in disposition, point of view and sensitivity. Someone for whom you have a deep affinity, similarity, and compatibility and they for you.   

In his Plato’s dialogue “The Symposium”, Aristophanes presents a story about soul mates.  In it humans originally had four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces, but Zeus feared their power and split them all in half, condemning them to spend their lives searching for the other half to complete them.  It is from just such a lovely story that the concept of “split-aparts” and “soul mates” likely grew. 

Years and years are frequently spent by many searching for that one “soul mate”.  A deep yearning drives those for a near perfect match.  The common assumption is, if and when, that ideal counterpart is found; “happily-ever-after” comes true until parted by death. 

Over time my beliefs about soul mates has evolved and changed.  For years I labored under the concept there was one, and only one woman in the world that was meant just for me and I for them.  My belief in soul mates is still strong, but now it is clear to me some people may have several soul mates in a lifetime. 

My perfect fit in my 20’s ended up being quite different from the soul mate that fit me in my 40’s.  While the basic underpinnings of whom I am remained relatively constant, true needs and wants evolved and morphed over time.  It is that changing and growing, sometimes in different directions that can make what was once a union of soul mates into a union of two near strangers that ends a relationship.   A person may come into my life as a mutually perfect fit for a time and then not be later. 

Hindsight has a certain clarity that a short-term view does do not.  In retrospect I can see that my first wife was my soul mate at the time we met.  She brought to my life stability, compassion and my first real experience with adult love.  In many ways I flourished with her and that stability helped me to build a successful career and some degree of contentment.  There was seven years of a good marriage.  Things change, people evolve and relationships drift.  We did just that.  Habit and comfort replaced the originally shared intimacy and joy until there was no glue to hold us together anymore. 

My second marriage was also to a soul mate.  She brought to my life a sweetness of love with a sort of innocent and beautiful naïveté.  With her I learned to have good old-fashioned fun which I had mostly denied myself previously.  It was in this relationship I was able to let go and love with all my heart and soul, something I had been unable to do before.  The roller coaster manner of the relationship came from dysfunctions that were conditioned into us as children.  In some ways we never really had a long-term chance, but for a time joy reigned between us.  It is ironic that the destruction of the relationship ended up being the motivator to get the help I needed and to get into recovery from my childhood junk.  Life and love are both highly mysterious journeys.

For times more brief I believe there may have been others that I can look back on and honestly say we were for a time soul mates.  Some were not lovers and instead the truest of friends.  It is the concept of having more than one soul mate during a lifetime I have come around to seeing.  That brings me great encouragement as it opens the door to believe yet another soul mate is out there waiting for our mutual discovery of each other. 

Maybe if we humans were only spiritual beings, two could find each other and spend a blissful eternity together.  We are flesh and blood though, with our imperfections, quirks, accumulated pain and narrow perceptions.   We change, grow up and grow old.  We mature and evolve.  We find wisdom through the trial and error of experience and those lessons transform us.    

This morning I have a happy heart with bright hope in my soul.  For those who have walked my path with me on a soul level, I am deeply grateful.  I thank you for your love, kindness, support, caring and all the good we shared.  I will never forget it.  For the future, I have hope that another that moves my soul will once again find me.  I am grateful to be the most ready for such a gift I have ever been.

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants.  But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.  A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.  A soul mate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so out of control that you have to transform your life…  Elizabeth Gilbert

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

“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

Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

There’s an old song most often credited to Bing Crosby and other crooner’s a bit before my time titled “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep”.  I prefer to hear Diana Krall sing it and my favorite of her versions is just her playing piano and singing:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeftvZPsXeY 

The lyrics of the song are: 

When I’m worried and I can’t sleep
I count my blessings instead of sheep
And I fall asleep, counting my blessings

When my bankroll is gettin’ small
I think of when I had none at all
And I fall asleep, counting my blessings

I think about a nursery
And I picture curly heads
And one by one I count them
As they slumber in their beds

If you’re worried and you can’t sleep
Just count your blessings instead of sheep
And you’ll fall asleep counting your blessings.

I had a living reminder over the weekend of the blessings I have to count.  It can be sobering observing another person’s difficulty but also a solid reminder of one’s own good fortune. 

A friend and I were visiting an antique shop in a small town outside the city where we live.  There was a print from the 1920’s I took a fancy to and decided to buy if I could improve the asking amount a little.  I asked the man behind the register what the best price was and he said I would need to talk to the proprietor who he went to get.  

The owner was summoned out of the back of the store and very, very slowly he made his way to the front leaning heavily on a cane.  The sluggish pace of his movement gave me time to study him.  What I saw was an old man probably near 70 years-old who looked older than his years.  He did not look healthy.  It was distressing for me to watch him grimace with pain with each step.  There is a gray-ish color that comes upon the face of someone seriously ill and he was painted with it.  

The owner made me a fair deal on the print and in conversation I learned knee replacement surgery had not gone well and he was in a great deal of pain along with some other unnamed health issues.  He sensed my taste might be similar to his based on the print I purchased.  We were invited to the back of the store to see some “really good stuff that was not for sale”.  

I expected we’d end up in a storeroom and instead found myself walking through a door and into the man’s bedroom.  Through the bedroom we continued and entered into a combination living room and kitchen, all dimly lit.  The place was well lived in but was not a mess.  The bed was unmade and there were things lying about.  Yet there seemed to be some general organization to the clutter.  

Once in his “living room” with some difficulty he plopped down on a Queen Anne type love seat.  Our host started to point out several art deco pieces I had noticed as soon as we entered the room.  He was correct about me loving that type art from the 1920’s and 30’s.  

It is my strong suspicion the shop owner has few personal visitors.  I think he is lonely.  While he was in obvious pain, he seemed to enjoy greatly the half hour he spent with us.  His face would light up when he pointed to another deco piece as he began to tell us about its story and pedigree.  His collection contained several quite valuable pieces of types I have never seen up close before.  I enjoyed hearing about each one.  I think he would have preferred to visit with us longer but it was clear the moving around had brought increased pain which he acknowledged to us.  He said he needed to rest.  

As I emerged back into the main store, I was struck with a sadness that matched the murky light in owners two room home in the back of the store.  Thoughts rushed in asking:  Why did he live alone?  How did he come to be here? Why was there not someone to take care of him?  Was there no better place else where he could recuperate?  Was he as depressed as he appeared?  And so on….

As we began the drive home I thought of the shop owner hobbling along.  Over his gray pallor I clearly saw an expressionless sadness that seemed to keep him from making much eye contact.  I sensed he was fearful that someone who looked directly into his eyes could see the source of the pain he preferred to keep hidden.  Even this morning I feel sad for him. 

I have no idea what the shop owner’s story is, but meeting him reminded me how blessed I am with good health, a caring son, friends to take care of me, more than two rooms to live in and so much more.  I am very grateful.  From the weekend experience I gained a renewed perspective of gratefulness and a soft spot for the “old man” who owns the store.  I know I will visit again soon.  

The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle.  Simone Weil

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 


I Could Not Do It Alone

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

Writing in a journal has never been an activity I could find consistency with.  I must have a dozen journals with the early pages filled and then nothing afterward.  My entries are haphazard.  Sometimes I would write fairly consistently and at others skip months, and even years without writing.  At random I picked one of those journals up this morning and began to read.   

February 4, 2001 Ritz Carlton Hotel, Atlanta,  Beginning or Ending? 
Ending – the way I have lived and the thoughts I have…. Have not gotten me to the place I seek.  I have been blessed with the fortune to not have to work and soon, within 2 years or so (age 50) I will leave my profession to seek the life… the peace I need.

Beginning – I am only now realizing the illusion I have chased.  Peace must come from within me.  Nothing material on Earth nor anyone can give me what I seek: the balance, the peace, the strength of wisdom and knowing. 

February 7, 2001 7:25am
The ‘path’ makes such logical sense and speaks to my heart (Buddhist Eightfold Noble Path), yet it is difficult to follow.  Old habits and emotions are strong and I can only beat them back at times. 

February 8, 2001 8:05am
Finding it sometimes difficult to gain the determination to meditate each morning.  All old habits die hard.

March 2, 2001
Just spent two weeks in Europe… Netherlands and Poland.  Drifted back to smoking all the time.  Need to get back on track.  _____’s immaturity is a big problem for me and I am having great difficulty dealing with it.  Her child-like way is both appealing and repulsive.  Such a paradox.  Need to focus on me to find solution and let her focus on her.  Unsure of outcome.

Over two years later……

June 30, 2003 Monday 7:30am
And I begin again.  After several years of at times being focused on my practice alternating with times of loss of focus.  I begin again.  Quit smoking for 9 weeks last summer and started back.  But need to quit.  _____ and I continue the roller coaster.  Three weeks ago after returning from Europe she seems to have “got it” and opened her full heart.  I am skeptical, but hopeful.  Still feeling a longing, wishing to be happy, but yet lost and not knowing how to accomplish it. 

July 1, 2003 Tuesday
Work is sending me back to counseling.  I’m told I’m not open, approachable and react badly to others.  I’ve tried so hard to be liked and to be a good boss and leader.  Bad economic times seem to go on and on in the market.  Very tough.  Somehow I have to get through.  I can’t afford to get fired.  I wish I understood better.  I wish I knew why I have this gnawing feeling inside all the time.  Chronic discontent.

  • I was fired in late August, 2003 from a company I had been employed by for almost 20 years. 
  • October and November, 2006.  I finally dealt with my “stuff” by spending five weeks at a healing place called “The Meadows” in Wickenburg, Arizona.  Miracles happen there and at least two happened for me.  I came home a changed man

September 9, 2009
Interesting date.  9-9-9. Nine’s have always been a lucky number for me.  Raining and lightning now.  Hoping the hot Oklahoma weather is almost over for this year.  Life is good.

Sept 29, 2009
Played hooky from work.  Came home about 12:30pm.  Rested.  Went to bed at 8:45pm.  Slept 10 hours.  Feel great.

February 11, 2011 Tulsa
____ (son) visiting.  Having fun.  Proud of my son!  Went to see Ozzy Osbourne last night.  Very good.  Lots of snow still around.  Fourteen inches last week.  Six inches this week.  Lows of minus eleven!

Revisiting my old journal reminds me where I used to be and to appreciate where I find myself today.  There is much gratitude to not be stuck “back there” anymore.  For so long I knew something was wrong, but had no idea what to do.  My determination would swell to where I was convinced to be at a new beginning.  Then over and over within weeks I fell back into old habits and ways of being.  Each time failure only made the next attempt that much more difficult.

In the journal before I faced my demons in 2006 and then some years afterwards I am able to clearly discern a big different.   The three short entries written 2009 and 2011 are short, light and reflect a happier and more contented man. 

My life has not turned out the way I thought it would and it is far from perfect.   Divorce, injuries and recovery, financial challenges and life unfolding far differently than I once anticipated has me today still working fulltime.  I am quite a long way from being able to retire now.  That’s OK.   I have learned happiness is not about what is happening in my life.  It is all about my attitude toward what is happening.  That fact combined with the people I love and who love me sums up what I have come to know as at least three quarters of the recipe for a good life. 

The BIG lesson I learned along the way I will never forget:  I COULD NOT DO IT ALONE.  All those years I tried to fix myself ended up meaning little compared to what happened when I finally accepted help from others.  Thank you all for your love and assistance.

Its seems to be shallow and arrogant for any man in these times to claim he is completely self-made, that he owes all his success to his own unaided efforts.  Many hands and hearts and minds generally contribute to anyone’s notable achievements.  Walt Disney

 

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

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”