feelings

My Close Relationship with Melody and Rhythm

/ James Browning

-------------------040ede0eFrom the time I can remember, music has been around me. My young parents were music fans who had a radio on most of the time. My youngest formative years were spent with Elvis, Hank Sr. and Patsy Cline.

By grammar school it was “Top 40” of the 60’s that was a soundtrack for my life. Today to sort out roughly what year a song came out all I have to do is think about what memories the tune brings up. From what I recall I can tell you where I lived and what was going on with me around the time the song was a big hit.

Lacking good examples of healthy emotions from my family of origin, many of my deepest feelings were developed through music. Every meaningful relationship I have ever had is associated musically in my memory.

During my brooding late teens/early twenties of the 70’s, lyrics like James Taylor’s influenced me (I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end. I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend…).

Early memories of falling in love are associated with songs like Chicago’s “Beginnings” (When I’m with you, it doesn’t matter where we are, or what we’re doing. I’m with you, that’s all that matters…)

By the 80’s such feelings were better described by George Michael (If you are the desert, I’ll be the sea, If you ever hunger, hunger for me, whatever you ask for that’s what I’ll be…)

REM spoke about the type confusion I felt in the 90’s when success turned out to be mostly an empty achievement (That’s me in the corner, That’s me in the spotlight, Losing my religion…). Collective Soul’s “Shine” was another song for my quandaries then (Teach me how to speak, Teach me how to share, Teach me where to go, Tell me love will be there…).

In more recent times lyrics like Ha ha ha, bless your soul, You really think you’re in control? Well, I think you’re crazy… from Knarles Barkley or Confusion never stops, Closing walls and ticking clocks from Coldplay suggested change. Forgiveness and renewal had begun within me when Linkin Park’s words hit home (For what I’ve done, I start again, And whatever pain may come, Today this ends, I’m forgiving what I’ve done…).

Music exists in every culture, and infants have excellent musical abilities that cannot be explained by learning. Mothers everywhere sing to their infants because babies understand it. …certain cells in the right hemisphere respond more to melody than to language. Evidence suggests that long-term musical involvement reaps cognitive rewards–in language skills, reasoning and creativity–and boosts social adjustment. Music exercises the brain. Norman M. Weinberger

There is equipment that plays music in just about every room in my home. I can’t imagine life without it. Music has been companion, solace, teacher, compatriot, consoler and more. Whether they bring up a happy thought, a sad memory, a painful recollection or a delightful remembrance I am profoundly grateful for my close relationship with melody and rhythm. Music has been a friend that has never forsaken me.

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words
and that which cannot remain silent.
Victor Hugo

Living Too Long With a Single Dream

/ James Browning

the-great-gaatsby edit

A lot can be packed into forty-four years. F. Scott Fitzgerald proved it. In more than one or two ways his life paralleled those of one of his characters, James Gatz or Jay Gatsby. Both suffered from the ill effects of wealth and a decadent lifestyle, their own ego and overt self-confidence, and alcoholism.

Take away the drinking and I too, have a little in common with Fitzgerald, but to a greater degree with his Gatsby character. Money things corrupted me as it did him. Growing up poor I too wrongly thought material wealth was the key to happiness. I have loved women who were not good for me just as Gatsby’s “Daisy” was for him. Just as she did to him, more than once my heart was given wholly and completely to one who professed love for me, only to be ultimately left behind.

Having never read “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald nor having seen the movie version made in my time I did not know what to expect when I headed out to take in the movie yesterday. It was a film I was determined to see on the big screen but almost missed out. My last chance was at a nearby “cheapie movie” theater. It is the writer’s use of language and ability to pant vivid images in my mind I will long remember. Here are a few quotes particularly memorable to me.

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promise of life… it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.

His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him.

It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four of five times in life. It faced – or seemed to face – the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on YOU with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in 1896 and died of a heart attack in 1940. He is generally thought of as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th Century and specifically remembered for his vivid descriptions of the “Jazz Age”, a name he coined. “Gatsby” has been frequently referred to as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream. In spite of how Fitzgerald is viewed today, he died believing himself to be a failure and his work forgotten.

Seeing “The Great Gatsby” yesterday opened my awareness up to F. Scott Fitzgerald and his work. Now I have several novels to read and three old movies to see; one from 1949, another from 1974 and a TV movie from 2000. There was a silent version from 1926 made in Fitzgerald’s time I would dearly enjoy seeing but sadly it is a famous example of a lost film. A trailer is all that is known to exist.

For a man who loves skillfully written books, good stories and well done movies, I am delighted to have something new come on to my path. I am grateful to have discovered Fitzgerald and Gatsby.

…he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world,
paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.
He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky…
A new world, material without being real,
where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air,
drifted fortuitously about…
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Because a Friend Asked

/ James Browning

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This morning a person I attend a ‘Codependents Anonymous” group with asked me a question that inferred that codependence was never a good thing. Her questioning made me step back and think a little before I responded. What came were a few thoughts that reminded me mutual codependency can be very healthy, and often is.

It’s true the word “codependent” has been batted around and over-used to the point it has a mostly negative connotation. This is especially notable in relationships where at least one member is in recovery. However, that is not what the word really means in its full context.

When added to a word “co” means “together, jointly, mutually, to the same extent or degree”. “Dependent” means “the state or quality of being influenced another, relying on another”. Put the two together and you get something like “mutually relying on each other at about same extent or degree”.

The last of that stated meaning is the most important part. The relationship should be roughly “equal” and not one-sided. Otherwise a person gives more that he or she gets back resulting in an unbalanced and unhealthy relationship.

Codependence is not always a negative thing. It becomes so when the relationship with a person, place or thing controls the giver to the point of damaging their life. A loving relationship with a true friend is a good example of a positive codependent relationship. A good marriage, boss/worker relationship, mother/child relationship and so on are examples of relationships that can be balanced and healthy. It’s when they get one-sided that dysfunction rears its ugly head. Taken from http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/features/signs-of-a-codependent-relationship

Looping back and tying this all together my intent was to take some of the negative light off the word “codependent”. For every example of how negative a one-sided codependent relationship is there is likely a reverse example of a healthy relationship based on mutual codependency.

The importance of writing down these few paragraphs is to remind myself that being codependent with another person is not necessarily a bad thing. It is what each of us do in the relationship that determines if it is healthy or not. I am grateful for the insight that came simply because a friend asked a question. Thank you K.!

It is probably not love
that makes the world go around,
but rather those mutually supportive alliances
through which partners recognize their dependence
on each other for the achievement of shared and private goals.
Fred Allen

image credit: shutterstock.com

My ‘Family’

/ James Browning

quality-friends

You may meet a person and instantly know that you will be best friends forever.

Other friendships develop over an extended period of time.

In some friendships you may feel a sense of equality, while in others there may be a clear sense that one is giving more to the friendship then the other.

There are no rules about how a friendship has to be.

If you are able to share your life with another human being, by all means go right ahead. All friendships are unique and special in their own way.

Each one is valuable.
http://www.familyfriendpoems.com

My heart is still glowing from my birthday experience yesterday. The phone rang all day with friends calling to wish me well. Others txt’ed or emailed their love. In the last ten years my life experience has become far richer. In mellowing and opening up to people, the number of those I love and am loved by has grown beyond what it once was or I ever dared imagine it could be. The quantity of souls who care if I live or die is humbling. For every friend I am grateful for the richness he or she brings to my life. Thank you for being my ‘family’.

A friend is like a flower,
a rose to be exact,
Or maybe like a brand new gate
that never comes unlatched.
A friend is like an owl,
both beautiful and wise.
Or perhaps a friend is like a ghost,
whose spirit never dies.
A friend is like a heart
that goes strong until the end.
Where would we be in this world
if we didn’t have a friend.
“Friends” by ‘Kira’

In a Thousand Ways and More

/ James Browning

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To be so strong that nothing
can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness, and prosperity
to every person you meet.

To make all your friends feel
that there is something in them.
To look at the sunny side of everything
and make your optimism come true.

To think only the best, to work only for the best,
and to expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others
as you are about your own.

To forget the mistakes of the past
and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful countenance at all times
and give every living creature you meet a smile.

To give so much time to the improvement of yourself
that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear,
and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world,
not in loud words but great deeds.
To live in faith that the whole world is on your side
so long as you are true to the best that is in you.
“Promise Yourself” by Christian D. Larson

Such are the birthday wishes to myself; my hopes told to the world to commit myself further to them. My sixth decade concluded yesterday and today I strike out on the first day of the seventh. In a thousand ways and more I am a blessed man. As the days of my life tick away, I become a little more grateful with each one’s passing.

With mirth and laughter
let old wrinkles come.
William Shakespeare

Musings After A Storm

/ James Browning

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

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

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

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

Life In Our Own Image

/ James Browning

hammer_computer edit

I have not understood computers since the days of Windows 3.11 in the early 90’s. Honestly, I did not understand them then, but they were simple enough that I could work around, fix, repair or replace the source of most problems. Then came the Windows versions named after years they were supposed to be, but weren’t always, released within their name sake year: Windows 95, windows 98 and Windows 2000.

When Windows XP arrived things seem to settle down for while. And I had less computing issues. Then I met Windows 7 which is what is on the computer at work I am tying this on.  It’s okay but wants to do everything for me, often not in the way I want it to. Now my home computer with “7” is down, for a reason I am still trying to sort out. Drat! It’s less than a year old.

Now my rant. Sometimes like today, I hate my computer. Something is wrong. Is it a virus? A hard drive failure? Corrupt registry? I think the issue is a VIRUS, but could it be human error on my part? Some website I visited may have messed me up. All in all I take this in stride. It’s not my first computer problem and certainly won’t be my last. It’s does give me a slightly altered perspective today.

Sitting in front of a computer screen for five hours a day can dramatically increase the risk of depression and insomnia, new research suggests. Previous studies have focused on how too much screen time can cause physical afflictions, such as headaches, eye strain, and backache. Now one of the biggest ever investigations into the hazards of computers in the workplace has concluded that they can also damage mental health.

In a three-year survey of 25,000 workers, many complained of feeling depressed, anxious and reluctant to get up for work in the mornings. They were also plagued by broken sleep and reported problems getting along with fellow employees. The study by researchers at Chiba University in Japan, concluded that bosses should limit the time their staff spend on computers.

Lead researcher Dr Tetsuya Nakazawa said: ‘ This result suggests the prevention of mental disorders and sleep disorders requires the restriction of computer use to less than five hours a day.’ The results, published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, showed one in four staff spent at least five hours a day at their terminal. Once they crossed that threshold, the dangers of psychological disorders setting in appeared to increase dramatically. By Olinka Koster, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-153281/Why-using-cause-depression.html

It’s just a machine and is repairable or replaceable. My computer does not care if it causes me problems or if I am upset at it. Just writing that makes me realize I spend too much time online when I could have my nose in a book or be hanging out with friends. Living a life of gratitude allows me to find a silver lining in most anything, including a @&$#&^ computer problem! I am grateful for the hint that too much of anything is not good. (And a friend is coming over tonight instead of me fretting with my computer problem. It can wait until tomorrow).

I think computer viruses should count as life.
I think it says something about human nature
that the only form of life we have created
so far is purely destructive.
We’ve created life in our own image.
Stephen Hawking

Reminiscence Bump

/ James Browning

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I remember days when I was fifteen or sixteen years old that occupy more memory space than some entire years of my adult life. There are teenage first experiences that I recall as vividly as if they happened two days ago, especially those I cherish most or regret a lot. I remember clearly my unaccompanied first airplane flight, making out with a girl all night long with our clothes on, the initial time I had my heart-broken and the earliest heart I hurt. The interior of my first car is memorized even today.

As we grow older, we tend to feel like the previous decade elapsed more rapidly, while the earlier decades of our lives seem to have lasted longer. Similarly, we tend to think of events that took place in the past 10 years as having happened more recently than they actually did.

… curiously, we are most likely to vividly remember experiences we had between the ages of 15 and 25. What the social sciences might simply call “nostalgia” psychologists have termed the “reminiscence bump”… The reminiscence bump involves not only the recall of incidents; we even remember more scenes from the films we saw and the books we read in our late teens and early twenties. … The bump can be broken down even further — the big news events that we remember best tend to have happened earlier in the bump, while our most memorable personal experiences are in the second half.

The key to the reminiscence bump is novelty. The reason we remember our youth so well is that it is a period where we have more new experiences than in our thirties or forties. It’s a time for firsts — first sexual relationships, first jobs, first travel without parents, first experience of living away from home, the first time we get much real choice over the way we spend our days. Novelty has such a strong impact on memory that even within the bump we remember more from the start of each new experience.

Most fascinating of all, however, is the reason the “reminiscence bump” happens in the first place: Hammond argues that because memory and identity are so closely intertwined, it is in those formative years, when we’re constructing our identity and finding our place in the world, that our memory latches onto particularly vivid details in order to use them later in reinforcing that identity. Interestingly, Hammond points out, people who undergo a major transformation of identity later in life — say, changing careers or coming out — tend to experience a second identity bump, which helps them reconcile and consolidate their new identity. From “Why Time Slows Down When We’re Afraid, Speeds Up as We Age, and Gets Warped on Vacation” by Maria Popova http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/15/time-warped-claudia-hammond/

Memory is a tricky thing. I have realized over time I tend to unconsciously make adjustments to what I recall. Memories that come to mind most become the most indelibly stamped on my brain. My greatest joys are made grander and the most painful memories are mentally sculpted to be more distressing. The primitive part of my mind dedicated to survival makes an over-sized issue of the latter. I am grateful to be reminded that pain tries to remembered far more than joy. In making my way forward it’s important tto reverse that tendency as much as I can; focus on the joyful memories and think less about the painful ones.

I don’t want to repeat my innocence.
I want the pleasure of losing it again.
From “This Side of Paradise”
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Slow Down… Stop… See…

/ James Browning

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Everything has beauty,  but not everyone sees it.
Confucius

Beauty can be found everywhere. In a plant, a smile or quite differently.. in someone’s tears. Yet we tend to look away from it, for most of the time it does not represent our current state of mind. Beauty is not something which you can lay your hands on, so for our mostly materialistically orientated minds it is easier to dismiss than to investigate beauty. It is something intangible to our mind, yet it is very tangible to our heart and being. If we allow ourselves to look beyond our mind, we can see that there is so much more to explore. It is like eternity is knocking at the door, but you are always refusing to open the door. And yet we always know when we are touched by beauty. Funny to notice that everyone has this feeling and thus everyone knows what is meant by beauty.

But it takes courage to open yourself up to beauty completely, because it means you have to be vulnerable. You need to open yourself completely; there can be no defense mechanism left in place – only a true and open state of mind and body will allow you to open yourself to beauty. It is like meditating. No longer paying attention to your thoughts the way you normally do – you respond or react to them in any of infinite ways – you begin to feel the person behind the thoughts. You can now see yourself behind your thoughts and emotion and make the conscious realization that you are not your thoughts. You are aware of the thoughts, so this means you can not be your thoughts.

If we can realize this on any level, it will bring considerable change to your life, because you are conscious of a bigger part of you. …we as human beings are by our very nature very vulnerable which allows us to be very curious, sensitive and conscious when it comes to using our senses in the best way. Beauty can guide us along the way to a better understanding of our true selves. Since beauty is an essential building block for life, it holds deeper meaning to what it means to be a human being. Animals can not feel or respond to beauty the way we do, for they are not aware of the concept of beauty – they only embody it. As a human you have the possibility to touch and feel the beauty in your own being. When you start learning new things at first it will seem overwhelming and unbearable to cope with, but eventually you will pick up with the pace and learn to integrate this new way of being into your daily life.

With beauty come various other features of being, such as compassion and love. Each aspect has something to offer, every aspect contains a valuable lesson on how to be more authentic and learn to live life in the simplest of ways yet discovering a way of being beyond our wildest imagination. It is there waiting for us, if we can just let go of our old way of living, in which we are controlled by our past and are never really capable of living in the present moment. Beauty can only be found in the present moment, for it needs us to be active as aware observers. It wants to play with us and enjoy life in the simple way of doing. From “What is Beauty?” by Peter Navis  http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/04/15/what-is-beauty/#_

Living in a society that reveres man-made beauty, even fakes, can make it difficult to see natural splendor. Most of the time we’re near blind about the present where all things real exist. We’re just so darn busy running away from one thing and racing toward another; rarely centered in the ‘now’. While I am no exception, willful intention has helped me, at least at times, to see bits of true beauty around me. Sometimes it is so obvious that anyone looking could observe it. At others, it is far more subtle and at a deeper level that magnificence shows itself. “The real story is inside a book on its pages and not to be found on its cover.’

Beauty is a feeling, not an image. When I look, it is not so much what I see that moves me but instead what emotions the sight awakens. Being able to look past first impressions and initial glances with increasing frequency has added much to my life to be grateful for. All I have to do is slow down… stop… see.

People often say that
“beauty is in the eye of the beholder,”
and I say that the most liberating thing
about beauty is realizing that you
are the beholder. This empowers us
to find beauty in places where
others have not dared to look
including inside ourselves.
Slama Hayek

Fewer Words

/ James Browning

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Fewer words often say far more than quantity, hence, three sincere thoughts this morning about the art of being grateful.

As the years pass, I am coming more and more to understand that it is the common, everyday blessings of our common everyday lives for which we should be particularly grateful. They are the things that fill our lives with comfort and our hearts with gladness — just the pure air to breathe and the strength to breathe it; just warmth and shelter and home folks; just plain food that gives us strength; the bright sunshine on a cold day; and a cool breeze when the day is warm. Laura Ingalls Wilder

Embracing an attitude of gratitude is nourishing to the soul. When we allow ourselves to be engulfed in gratitude, this abundant soul nourishment overflows to your relationships, careers, and day-to-day lives. Act in gratitude today… If you are grateful to those you love, show them. If you are grateful to those who have helped you, show them. If you are grateful to your creator, to your family, to your friends, and you want it to be known, let it be shown! Steve Maraboli

Woke up today feeling appreciative of being alive and the comfort I live within. I spent time with a friend last night that made hours evaporate quickly. Special people add bright colors and flair to living. I am grateful for every caring soul that has been and is a part of my life.

The invariable mark of wisdom
is to see the miraculous in the common.
Ralph Waldo Emerson