growing-up

Edge of Discomfort

/ James Browning

k-bigpicWe are born helpless and completely dependent on others to stay alive. From a lack of love and nurturing many never overcome this need to be taken care of. Such people grow up with a fear of being alone that can be crippling.

For those of us with childhoods spent in dysfunction homes, by adulthood the belief was we had a decent handle on what we wanted and didn’t want; what we liked and don’t liked. But the unacknowledged under-pining was a feeling of incompleteness especially when we’re alone. Life can feel barely worth living by one’s self. We needed someone to “complete us”, if you will.

The problem is that we don’t talk about being alone. We avoid the conversation as if aloneness were vaguely shameful and – hopefully – a temporary state of affairs before we can be subsumed into relationships again. Rather than applaud other people for their ability to be alone, we feel sorry for them. We assure them that – sooner or later – relationships will come.

A baby with an attuned, attentive a parent gradually internalizes the presence of that parent, no longer needing him or her to be physically present for the baby to know that it’s not forgotten and, in that sense, not alone (Winnicott 1958). The theory goes that with enough of this early experience, a child is likely to grow up to be comfortable with his or her own company. Nick Luxmoore, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/young-people-close/201305/daring-be-alone

There lies the root of many of our adult problems with love and relationships. We don’t recognize the conditioning that began as a baby’s unfulfilled need to be loved, to be cared for, to be liked, to be admired and so on is the root of our incompleteness and inability to be alone. This merry-go-round is one of the reasons for so much wide-spread discontent in under loved children.

Success is only significant when compared to failure and without knowledge of both neither is particularly meaningful. If a person does not have the confidence of finding their way when lost, they will never truly know how to find their way. Each polar opposite experienced widens a person and makes him or her more able to handle both. If a person is unhappy alone, he or she will be just as discontented in the company of another.

Slowly learning to be by myself felt as if it was going to kill me at first. How well I remember my first “Thanksgiving for one” and the martyred feelings I had at the time. Now I am grateful to be able to look back and see I learned a lot from that experience and others like it that taught me to be content in my own company (at least most of the time!).

It’s on the edge of discomfort
where the magic happens.
panic turns to a pleasant,
high and you know you
can tackle the world.
Kirsten Stubbs

When God Created Mothers

/ James Browning

mother-and-childWhen the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was into his sixth day of “overtime” when an angel appeared and said, “You’re doing a lot of fiddling around on this one.”

And the Lord said, “Have you read the specs on this order? She has to be completely washable, but not plastic; Have 180 movable parts… all replaceable; Run on black coffee and leftovers; Have a lap that disappears when she stands up; A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair; And six pairs of hands.”

The angel shook her head slowly and said, “Six pairs of hands… no way.”

“It’s not the hands that are causing me problems,” said the Lord. “It’s the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have.”

“That’s on the standard model?” asked the angel.

The Lord nodded. “One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, ’What are you kids doing in there?’ when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn’t but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say, ’I understand and I love you’ without so much as uttering a word.”

“Lord,” said the angel, touching His sleeve gently, “Go to bed. Tomorrow…”

“I can’t,” said the Lord, “I’m so close to creating something so close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick… can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger… and can get a nine-year-old to stand under a shower.”

The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly. “It’s too soft,” she sighed.

“But she’s tough!” said the Lord excitedly. “You cannot imagine what this mother can do or endure.”

“Can it think?”

“Not only can it think, but it can reason and compromise,” said the Creator.

Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek. “There’s a leak,” she pronounced. “I told You, You were trying to push too much into this model.”

“It’s not a leak,” said the Lord. “It’s a tear.”

“What’s it for?”

“It’s for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, and pride.”

“You are a genius,” said the angel.

The Lord looked somber. “I didn’t put it there,” He said.
“When God Created Mothers” by Erma Bombeck

Although my Mother and I are far from close and will never be, I have no hesitance wishing her a Happy Mother’s Day through the distance that separates us. Without her I would not have been born, nor would I have survived being a small child. Today it is important to be grateful for what she did do. What she didn’t do or mistakes she made belong to the other days of the year. Thanks for bringing me into the world, Mom.

But there’s a story behind everything.
How a picture got on a wall.
How a scar got on your face.
Sometimes the stories are simple,
sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking.
But behind all your stories is always your mother’s story,
because hers is where yours begin.
Mitch Albom

Inspiring His Father

/ James Browning

530916_10101173850880323_104345909_nIf a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn . . .
If a child lives with hostility, he learns to fight . . .
If a child lives with fear, he learns to be apprehensive . . .
If a child lives with pity, he learns to feel sorry for himself . . .
If a child lives with ridicule, he learns to be shy . . .
If a child lives with jealousy, he learns to feel envy . . .
If a child lives with shame, he learns to feel guilty . . .
BUT
If a child lives with tolerance, he learns to be patient . . .
If a child lives with encouragement, he learns to be confident . . .
If a child lives with praise, he learns to be appreciative . . .
If a child lives with acceptance, he learns to love . . .
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves. . .
If a child lives with honesty, he learns what truth is . . .
If a child lives with fairness, he learns justice . . .
If children live with recognition, they learn to have a goal. . .
If children live with sharing, they learn to be generous. . .
If a child lives with security, he learns to have faith in himself and those about him . . .
If a child lives with friendliness, he learns the world is a nice place in which to live . . .
From “Children Learn What They Live: Parenting to Inspire Values” by Dorothy Law Nolte

My son will turn thirty-one years old a little later this year, and while I can see his imperfections, none of them keep this Father from seeing the perfection in him. Watching the joy in his discoveries and successes enrich my life. While the bright newness of life wore off for me a good while ago, seeing my son experience it awakens those old feelings within. Through observing his young adult life, old yearnings come alive and dreams from way back drift frequently into thought.

The son is now inspiring his father as he and I more closely connect as adults making the full circle of what we share more complete. There is no love greater than a parent can feel for a child. I am humbly grateful my life journey includes such a wonderful gift as my ‘boy’.

Your children are not your children.
They are sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
Kahlil Gibran

The Bad Seems So Much Smaller Now

/ James Browning

poverty-is-1 filteredWhile the resolution of the image above is weak, the message it carries is strong. Many children not having enough to eat is a common reality. And it’s not only in some foreign country. Statistics say around 1 in 5 kids in the United States don’t get enough to eat each day. I hate to see adults suffer, but little children doing without food tears at all my emotions from sadness to anger. Have we accepted children going hungry as a fact of life? I can’t and I won’t!

Every day, children in every county in the United States wake up hungry. They go to school hungry. They turn out the lights at night hungry. In high school, Katherine Foronda trained herself not to feel hungry until after the school day had ended. She wasn’t watching her weight or worrying about boys seeing her eat. She just didn’t have any food to eat or any money to buy it. “I thought, if I wasn’t hungry during class I’d be able to actually focus on what we were learning,” said Foronda, now 19.

Early on in high school, with her hunger distracting her from her studies, she failed an English class. Rather than repeating the class, she was given the option of taking an afterschool life skills course, which offered meals to attendees each day and sent them home with food supplies each weekend. She also gained new insight into the possibilities for her own future, learning from a mentor that college was within her reach, despite her family’s economic circumstances.

With food to eat and not just a little bit of hope, she started performing better in classes, and founded a program that offered food support to the student body in her high school. She won a scholarship to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she is now a sophomore. http://abcnews.go.com/US/hunger_at_home/hunger-home-american-children-malnourished/story?id=14367230

That’s one of the unfortunate beginnings that now appears to be headed toward a good life story. For many that is not the tale their life will write.

Growing up was not an easy time for my brother and me. Yet comparing our experience to what some go through, we were lucky. The poverty and mental, physical and emotional abuse we grew up in left its scars on us. However, we never lacked for clean clothes to wear, even if unfashionable and ill-fitting; a dry and safe place to sleep, no matter how humble it was; and enough food to eat, even if just basic and cheap sustenance. We were encouraged, even threatened sometimes, to do well in school. All in all the childhood my brother and I experienced made us far ‘richer’ than what many children are going through today.

This will sound a little strange to some, but I am grateful for my childhood. I am mature enough now to see the negative parts and not let them over-shadow the benefits I had. My start may have been rough by some standards, but the essentials for life were there that enabled me to grow into a functional adult who contributes positively to society. The bad seems so much smaller now and the good so much larger.

Hunger of choice is a painful luxury;
hunger of necessity is terrifying torture.
Mike Mullin

Pay Attention In Class

/ James Browning

3005147-poster-1960-caught-stress-spiral-innovate-your-day-8-minutes-ready-set-pauseYou can’t stop the future
You can’t rewind the past
The only way to learn the secret
…is to press play.
From “Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Clearly I recall being in fourth grade dreading the possibility of being in Miss Pittman’s fifth grade class the following year. She was said to be mean, quick tempered and fast to punish students. Knowing she was going to my teacher the next year set me to start playing the anxiety game a half year early.

Actually there were lots of variables that never occurred to a ten year-old boy. The teacher might retire; she might be replaced; she might change jobs; she might start teaching a different grade or maybe she was different that student gossip portrayed. But no other possibility occurred to me except I was going to be in Miss Pittman’s class and she was going to be mean to me. Looking back I can see how my fear seemed to give the future clarity because I thought I knew exactly what was going to happen.

Today I realize taking my fears with a ‘grain of salt’ is always prudent. If the dismal scenarios I frequently think up actually came true it would mean I could predict the future, which of course I can’t (otherwise I would have already won the lottery many times!).

People were always getting ready for tomorrow.
I didn’t believe in that.
Tomorrow wasn’t getting ready for them.
It didn’t even know they were there.
From “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy

I ended up in Miss Pittman’s class just like I dreaded I would, but my experience was NOT what I thought it would be. She was stern and allowed no cutting up in class, but she was a good teacher. Her tendency was to favor the “good students”, which I was one of. Consequently, I ended up doing well, learned a lot and still have respect her to this day. She encouraged my love of reading and the sciences; both of which are very much alive even today. Having Miss Pittman as a 5th grade teacher is one of my earliest lessons about my proven inability to predict the future.

I still try to play fortune teller at times, but the future so rarely turns out the way I predict you’d think I would have completely learned better by now. What is different these days is usually I catch my “future tripping” early on before it ‘snowballs’. I am grateful for insights learned the hard way that improve my life. All I have to do is “pay attention in class”.

It’s being here now that’s important.
There’s no past and there’s no future.
Time is a very misleading thing.
All there is ever, is the now.
We can gain experience from the past,
but we can’t relive it;
and we can hope for the future,
but we don’t know if there is one.
George Harrison

A Greater Amount of Peace

/ James Browning

Colorful_Peace_by_darksideofthebluesGetting to know myself more intimately and growing wiser with years has helped me see the greatest barrier to knowing “peace” has been ‘me’ all along. Being focused on everything and everyone external as the cause for a lack of tranquility hid the real culprit. But no longer. Awareness I am the key to my peacefulness has been mine for several years now. Yet the newness of this knowledge is still striking when I practice patience and understanding and don’t allow someone to disturb my inner harmony.

Modern technology invades every part of most life today with mobile phones being the primary offender. I feel somewhat incomplete without mine on my hip, but I can live without it for an hour or two. Sadly some people cannot. I have been frequently aghast to notice how inconsiderate some are in use of their cell phone.

This past week I went to the movies. During the prelude of coming attractions were several mentions to set phones to silence and not use them for calls or texting while the movie is going on. So the movie begins and in the row in front of me is mom, dad and two middle school aged kids. One of them proceeds to read texts a half-dozen times during the film.

If you’re like those I have verbally told the story to, the first assumption is one of the children was texting. However, you’d be wrong. It was mom! Of course she is teaching her young teenagers that is it okay to disturb others in a theatre this way. So it’s just a matter of time before her lack of consideration spreads through her kids.

Stepping off my soapbox, I want to stop my little gripe session and move to why writing about someone texting in a theatre is appearing in a gratitude blog. It’s plain and simple: I did not let the mother’s actions upset me. In my past it would have. I would have tapped her on the shoulder and told her to quit, saying I’d tell management if she did not stop. But I looked away and ignored her. There is still a limit where I would have spoken up, but am glad she did not text continually and disturb me enough to take me there.

It’s obvious to no one but me the growth I exhibited in the theatre. That does not matter. I know. While I am not always successful at ignoring what others do and say, the majority of the time I am able to. Instead now I feel a little sorry for the person being disruptive or inconsiderate. I am slightly embarrassed for him or her knowing most others see them as I do; selfish and insensitive. Further, I wonder what sort of life they must have or be having that causes the person to be thoughtless. Such thinking helps me to usually remain peacefully centered and compassionate for others.

Today I am proud of myself and how I took things in stride at the theater. I am proud of ‘me’ and grateful for a greater amount of peace in my life than ever before.

Nobody can hurt me
without my permission.
Mahatma Gandhi

What A Child Sees

/ James Browning

cd54c7a9782e7f71540ec11044a71de5No one is ever quite ready; everyone is always caught off guard. Parenthood chooses you. And you open your eyes, look at what you’ve got, say “Oh, my gosh,” and recognize that of all the balls there ever were, this is the one you should not drop. It’s not a question of choice. Marisa de los Santos

It was a long week and still fighting off the remnants of a cold, I knew once arriving home going anywhere wouldn’t happen. So an obligatory visit to the land of craziness, Wal-Mart World, was made after work. My fatigue caused me to walk back and forth unable to find things a good bit. By the time I got near the registers I was shuffling through exhaustion. Then came the wake up call.

A young couple with two children was over one lane and the late 20-something guy was griping at the woman telling her stupid she was. Everyone within twenty feet could hear him. Never will I forget the look on the woman’s face: one of absolute unhappiness and shame. She appeared hopelessness as if she had no choice except to endure her choice, the man she was with. Her head was bent downward which suggested she had known this treatment time and time again. The bruise beside her left eye made me think she likely faced worse later. Knowing that tugs strongly at my heart, but there is nothing I can do except tell about her here.

As bad as I felt for the young woman, I felt worse for the children. A boy around five and a girl around three stared straight at their parents taking in every thing that was being said. They were learning how a husband treats a wife and that a woman must accept what comes. How awful. I doubt if that relationship will ever improve. I hope the wife gets away from the her as#h*le husband some day.

So how does such a dark scene end up in a gratitude blog? Simple this: I am deeply thankful for parents who raise their children with respect and understand far more is taught by what a child sees than what they are told.

There is nothing more pathetically sad
than a parent who teaches a child not to hit
by spanking them. Well, that, and adults
who think hitting someone will solve a problem.
Anitra Lynn McLeod

Only Time Will Tell

/ James Browning

2 real selfHaving grown up in 1960’s Alabama, it seemed everyday I witnessed the distance between people; the void between have’s and have not’s and between races. I was blessed to grow up poor in a family that believed all people should be treated with kindness and respect. Trials and difficulty is a great equalizer of people.

By sixteen I had long hair and the south generally did not like “my kind”. I learned first hand what it is like to be refused service in a restaurant and repeatedly heard “is it a boy or girl?”. While tame compared to what many went thought, it was one of the early great lessons of my life. At eighteen I left the deep south to finish my growing up in Colorado with a vow never again make my “down there” and I haven’t (yet, anyway).

Leaving Alabama and Mississippi (where I graduated high school) behind was the first major permanent detour in the life planned as a teenager. I left behind the dream of a scholarship and advanced education at the University of Alabama and of even finishing a college degree. I left behind the first true love of my life, the first girl/woman I cried over. And ever since life has been ever leading me where it does; not necessarily in the direction I imagine.

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us” (credited to both E.M. Forster and Joseph Campbell) sums up what living has shown me over and over: have a general idea of where I’d like life to take me, but be flexible knowing most of it will turn out differently than I imagine. Aging has helped me become more readily adaptable. Now in middle age and having swallowed scores of “never’s” from my teens, gads of “not me’s” from my 20s and baskets of “won’t happen’s” from my 30’s, my view of life is pliable and malleable, and becoming more so.

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could. From “The Painted Drum” LP by Louise Erdrich

There have been times I could not see forward. All ahead looked black and bleak. There was little imagination for the future. I’ve lost people I couldn’t for a time live without, but learned to anyway. Professionally I have been blessed with more success than I would have ever dared imagine when younger, but my work has broken my heart far more than romance ever did.

These days there is more hope within me than I previously have ever known. The storm of youth has subsided and I am enjoying the beauty of the late fall of life. The cold of winter is a page or two back on my life calendar, but I am hopeful to live it well. Within love penetrates me as never before with a depth of joy I could not have appreciated when I was younger. I am grateful for the steadfast belief that the best of my life is ahead and that the greatest period of personal development lies there. My instinct tells me not to worry; those good things will be mine, but only time will tell.

How terribly sad it is
that people are made in such a way
that they get used to something
as extraordinary as living.
Jostein Gaardner

Innocence Leaves Us Free

/ James Browning

2709A friend posted this photo on Facebook last night. I was mesmerized by it. My curiosity to know what the two little girls are looking at is akin to what they must have been feeling when the photograph was made. Apparently they are in a museum’s modern art gallery, but it’s not what’s hanging on the walls that is fascinating the young ones. It’s in solving the mystery of what’s behind the grate.

Unadulterated awe about the mystery of simple things is weak by the time adulthood arrives. Grownups know all too well about what works and what doesn’t, with “too well” being the operative words. In “being big” most forget how to try the impossible and how to absolutely believe in things based only on faith like the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. We lose the majority of our curiosity and forget how to effectively waste time playing.

In a “Huffington Post” article I found suggestions of “10 Ways to Be a Kid Again”
1. Make a silly face at a stranger. Everyone likes a silly face. I bet you’ll crack someone up.
2. Eat ice cream for dinner. The fun part about being an adult is you can do what you want when you want. We are already aware of our immense responsibilities so for one night let it go.
3. Go to bed early. Some kids hate bedtime, but once they’re down they sleep like rocks. Give yourself a ridiculously early bedtime one night this week.
4. Hang out with your friends. Kids have play dates. Call a pal and actually get together and do something fun like go to the park and play Frisbee.
5. Color or draw something. Coloring brings back memories for most of us. Dig up some of your old coloring books if you can.
6. Try to say the alphabet backwards. Kids are great at crazy tasks. They try with all their might. See how fast you can say it.
7. Have a race. The next time you are walking with a friend race them to the corner. It’s fun to see other adults reacting to spontaneous racing.
8. Skip down the hallways at work. Mid-day sluggish getting to you? Skip to your meeting and you’ll probably brighten up the whole office.
9. Wear what you want. Kids come up with interesting outfits when they’re allowed by their parents to dress themselves. Come up with your own interesting outfit one day this week.
10. Try a handstand. Kids do yoga poses naturally, just for fun. Try a handstand and don’t worry about falling over.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tara-stiles/10-ways-to-be-a-kid-again_b_203831.html

Yes, some of the ten things are not that practical, but who cares. No grades will be given on how well done each one is. I wonder if I’ll break something trying the tenth one; a hand stand! Yet, the child in me wants to attempt it and is already badgering me “Come on Dad, can we try? Please, can we try? Please! Please! You can do it. I’ll show you how.”

I am grateful that voice of the seven-year old boy in me is no longer silent. He spent many years unnoticed and unwanted, but in my recovery, he is recovering too. I love my rediscovered whimsical childish side. Writing that makes me want to buy some finger paint. I don’t think I’ve done that since I was eight!

When we are children we seldom think of the future.
This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves
as few adults can. The day we fret about the future
is the day we leave our childhood behind.
Patrick Rothfuss

One Step at a Time

/ James Browning

rear-view-mirrorIn a backwards look it is relatively easy to see how my life moved from one point to another even thought back then forward momentum seemed to be straight into fog. Everything ahead was obscured and I gave little thought to what I was doing or how my actions were shaping my future life. In a way I was like the fish who did not know he lived in water, except my pond was a lake of dysfunctional behavior.

I was dripping in pain, loneliness and self-induced delusion when I wrote “Alone”. It’s interesting that a man wrote it but the feelings are those of a child begging to be loved echoing within.

“ALONE”
I am alone now,
No one to talk to but myself.
All others have gone,
or else forsaken me long ago.
I look inward,
But only a hallow do I find,
Love inside,
But no one who wants it.
Why am I never good enough,
Why don’t I get loved more?
Why do those who say they care
Hurt me so much?
I cry alone…..

Over twenty years ago “Mistakes” was an partial and incomplete list of the mistakes I believed I had made to date.

I choose the wrong parents or else they choose me.
I grew up wanting love and getting little.
I give too much in my desire to be wanted and loved.
I married the wrong person.
I should have stayed single till much older.
I am too troubled to have a relationship with most people.
I am too good at my work and capable at little else.
I choose the wrong career.
I live in the wrong place.
I have driven away the love of my life.
I am sick because I did not take care of myself.
I managed money badly and had a car repossessed when young.
I was deceitful with women.
I have long loved someone outside marriage.
I have lied to have time with the one I love.
I have denied relations to my marriage partner because I love another.
I have stayed married.
I have a job I am good at but don’t like much.
I like more money than is healthy.
I am weak and need others for strength.
I need the one I love too much.
I express my love too openly to the one I love.
I should be stronger and more silent with love.
I stole a camera when I was 17.
I have not made a difference in this life.
I have been too self-centered.
I have expected too much of others.
I have been too selfish.
I have hurt others In business and messed up lives.
I failed the one I love.
I destroyed what the love of my life once felt for me.
I feel sorry for myself too much.
… Mistakes…
only a few of thousands…
oh, to have time to do it over again and right the wrongs…

These days I find myself wishing I had journaled or kept better notes of my thoughts and feelings of my 20s and 30s. However, am grateful for the random files I have found in the last few days that I wrote back in the early to mid 90’s. Seeing flashes of my old self mirrored through time illustrates how well recovery can work. “It works if you work it” is the saying often spoken at the end of 12 step meetings. As flimsy as that might initially sound to many, it’s true beyond what an uninvolved person can grasp. One step at a time, one day at a time: it works.

Happy trails to you,
until we meet again.
Some trails are happy ones,
Others are blue.
It’s the way you ride
the trail that counts,
Here’s a happy one for you.
From the song “Happy Trails” by Dale Evans