This post isn’t for you. You know who are, favorite DNA person. 🙂
Most of us live in our private nests.
Pretty much everyone feels like they need to clean more, reduce more, and spend more time in the bureaucracy of keeping their nest aligned with an arbitrary level of cleanliness. That’s okay, too. Each minute spent to do so should not be at the expense of your moments, your friends, your family – but more so, at the cost of your mental well-being. Time spent concerned about how your nest looks is time not spent being creative or enjoying even simple pleasures. You become too focused on the “ought to and obligation” of keeping your nest perfect.
Stacks of mail in the kitchen, dust everywhere it can be. Clothes to be washed, clothes to be put away, clothes that don’t fit inside the closet, dressers, and on the floor. Books to be read, magazines you will never read. You don’t have a crazy drawer, you have an entire crazy room, garage, or storage space filled with miscellaneous everything. Most of us do. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there! People keep their nests largely unhidden, so we wrongly assume they don’t have the same problem as we do.
You can’t triage the physical space. Look around. For the most part, whatever condition your house is in right now, it’s probably the default. That might bother you to accept. It shouldn’t. You can fight an agonizing fight to spend a lot of time and energy temporarily fixing your space, or you can yield and do the best you can and let it go at that. Homes and nests are meant to be lived in, and you will always have to make choices to keep it pristine or lived in. You can’t have both without wasting a lot of your now moments.
The same is true about your job, your diet, your vices, and your mind.
Each person’s best is variable, fluid, and often contradictory. And that is okay.
If you have precious things, keep those that are tied to defining moments and memories in your life. The rest? Sell what you can to have the things that add value to your life.
Donate, discard, disown.
We hoard and clutter partly because it makes us feel like our place is a home, a nest, and our place to be. But we also do it because we don’t see the arc of time getting shorter and shorter.
For a later day, I might need it, it’s valuable; these are all valid reasons to keep things. But it is not things that matter. Not if you don’t use them regularly, not if they don’t light you up, or if they fail to make your life fuller and more satisfying.
“Treasures that aren’t treasured, admired, or used aren’t treasures at all. They are anchors, ones that keep up from enjoying the here and now and the people in our orbit.” – X
Out of sound, out of mind, trinkets, and treasures stored for no witness or participant.
Things are to be used or admired. Everything else? It not only clutters your nest, it clutters your mind.
Simplicity is the toughest goal. It requires herculean effort to overcome the urge to keep, to store, to accumulate.
As someone smart once told me, “Ain’t nothing you got that can’t be taken except for your peace of mind. This world honors nothing with permanence.”
There are a lot of bad men out in the world, whether they physically dominate or mentally degrade their wives and children. The smart ones are fiendishly clever in concealment; their masks in public are often adorned with a suit and tie, a quick smile, or an engaging personality. Growing up, I had to endure abuse. A lot of people knew it was happening. Few ever attempted to intervene. I understand the complicated issues at play for their failure. That kind of abuse, however, leaves most people with a shaky faith in their parents, their god, and of their ability to leave such trauma behind.
With that in mind, even though I am a liberal, I have always been drawn to the concept of southern justice. When someone does the right thing, even when the right thing is also terrible. It’s not revenge. It’s taking the light back from someone who isn’t worthy of its possession.
I’m not advocating violence.
I’m advocating action.
Sometimes action yields a terrible consequence yet remains the lesser evil.
Someone I know whose life suffered due to the presence of a human monster sent me this song.
I’ve learned that people who isolate invariably have an addiction or a trauma. Quite often, it’s one they bury; like the ghosts of a cemetery, they emerge and travel capriciously in that person’s mind. Loop after endless loop. No one else bears witness. And because angst or depth wildly varies between different people, no one really understands the profundity of what afflicts them. Some people relentlessly look ahead, leaving behind the most heinous offenses. Others get trapped in the vortex over things we judge as minor. Though the loop may be nascent and small in circumference, each cycle takes the person closer and closer to calamity. We all see it coming and are mostly powerless to stall its progress.
Cognition seldom helps. You’re not rationalizing with the individual. You’re attempting to overpower something that is both tenuous and tentacled inside someone’s kidnapped mind.
You can try to get close out of love or concern. They often rebuff you. Isolation becomes its own self-fulfilling reward. The phantom loop constantly whispers to the person trapped in a behavior; its voice is not only proximal but deafening.
Don’t fault yourself if you’ve tried to pierce that bubble and can’t. It does not mean you shouldn’t try, even if it’s futile. Because the uncaring alternative is much worse. Even if the story ends badly. Most of us will return to that wall and vainly attempt to chisel away at it, even though we fluctuate between helplessness, anger, or realization.
This is the thesis of my Bystander’s Prayer.
And despite our varying cynicism, our hope for a dramatic change sometimes happens. The alchemy of why or how is beyond calculation. If this were never the case, our behavior would automatically adjust to just accept the unacceptable before we even tried. When it does come, the change, it brings joy. Everyone loves an underdog or someone who has overcome.
If it does end badly, we promise to try something different the next time. Likely, we won’t. There will always be a next time, as this world is full of trauma and unseen damage. Most of us believe that love or some fruitful variation will be enough to convince someone that it’s time to pull up into the high clouds instead of plummeting.
When one person plummets, we all do because that person carries a piece of us with them, even if they are blind to it. It’s how friends, family, and tribe work.
If you can, keep your hammer in hand, your chisel sharp, and your optimism high. If life gets you down, you might be in the hotseat. You’ll need us to pull up, just as we need you when we’re in the loop. The horseshoe finds its way onto every hoof, no matter who you are.
This isn’t another one of those, “Look at me!” posts. It’s about how surprised by the visceral reaction I had.
As I stood near the creek earlier today, I wanted to stick my feet in there and just sit, my thoughts and my time merging – and let the day drift away. Work was busy and not at all a burden. Don’t tell my bosses, please. Enjoying work is tantamount to stealing. (That’s supposed to be funny.) The moments I had in the creek very early in the morning were still on my mind.
I walked back to the street where the bridge overtakes it. Across the way, I saw a man rifling through the pantry box by the parking lot. He pulled a couple of things out of it. It was then I noticed his old car parked temporarily perpendicularly behind the others. That car had seen some tough miles. He walked back toward it and got inside. I knew I had cash, money set aside for the quarter-eating washing machines at my apartment. I paced across the street and walked around the side of his vehicle. The driver’s window had been taped multiple times. He was leaning over away from me, leaning toward his girlfriend or wife, distracted. She motioned that someone was at the window. He popped the door open, immediately giving an apology and attempting to explain why he was there for only a short respite.
I shook my head and handed him the bill. His face underwent a transformation. First surprise, then shock. “Oh lord, thank you so much.” It seemed like he was about to cry in relief. I’m sure of it.
Completely to my surprise and spontaneously, tears welled into my eyes. I felt a sob start. I walked quickly away, waving backward as I walked, not saying a word.
Life is so effing hard for so many people.
Even people with resources and money, as foreign as that may be. Even for smiling people who pass us during the day. I get so caught up in my life’s drama that I hate to admit sometimes I gloss over people’s humanity. It’s an uncomfortable realization that you’ve been selfish when a word wouldn’t have cost you anything. All of us careen around and foolishly make assumptions about other people’s lives. Most people have facades that they put on in the morning, thinking the facade protects them. It doesn’t – the arrows will get through. Eventually.
This anecdote isn’t about me giving a stranger money. Anyone can do that and a lot of good people I know help in ways that they will never admit to. This story is about how raw I was, unbeknownst to me. I had two such moments today, one in which I transformed a prank into an opportunity to remind someone how important his great sense of humor is and how much he is valued. Even when no one seems to take the time to show it. I busted his balls a little too because that is how a lot of us show our affection.
I’m not even sure how to close this post, other than to say that today had its moments, both happy and spotted with tragic limerick.
The black cat was back this morning, though I didn’t realize it until I saw TWO black cats down the landing – one of them being my cat Güino. Luckily, the old scruffy and long-haired black cat was friendly. It sat and meowed at Güino, somehow knowing that he was the equivalent to the Gump of cats. The scruffy black cat had on an ornate collar and looked well-fed. I don’t know why it recently started coming up to the landing to lay and watch the activity below. It’s no bird hunter. If Danny DeVito were a cat, this would be him. I walked down and had a conversation with both cats before picking up Güino and cradling him. The black cat was being social; my cat was fussing and pissy because he wasn’t ready to leave his new would-be friend.
The morning was hot, even at 3 a.m. But the breeze was brisk and lovely.
Yesterday, I went to the new discount store in the old Toys Я Us building. The prices change depending on the day. It was fun sorting through the messy bins. Most of the things are of course overpriced. There’s a section where you can buy a $50 mystery box, too. The store will do well at first, given that it’s new. For me, anything of interest I found tended to make me want to find it on Amazon (where most of the stock originates) and buy it there. The best find was a red frilly unitard-looking article of clothing! Can you imagine me wearing that? Yes, you can. I apologize in advance for the mental image.
Someone left me an ornate surprise/offering on my doorstep last night. He or she scattered a handful of decorative stars around the door, too, an added flourish that made me laugh. Yes, that’s one of those eyeballs that floats in the liquid inside a clear orb. There’s also a cat silhouette pin and two crosses on beads. It almost looks as if the person gifting me the little plate of surprises left an offering to my fairy/sprite Larkma, who presumably still uses the fairy door in the picture. It’s almost certainly a female who left me the surprise; my logic isn’t necessarily solid though because something like this is exactly what I might do and according to my birth certificate, I’m allegedly male. My inability to listen when it’s in my best interest is all the proof I really need, though.
A friend posted a picture and tribute of someone she loved who passed away a few years ago. I went into the rabbit hole of using my research skills to find her footprints in life. She lived one month short of 100 years. Though I never knew her, I imagined the tapestry of her life through the years. Millions of stories. Can you imagine how many she had in one hundred years?
In the last few days, even though my powerful laptop isn’t supported for Windows 11, I did the workaround and installed it anyway. (It’s ridiculous that an I-7 processor and 16GB of RAM might not be enough.) I keep my important stuff backed up locally and in the cloud, so the worst-case scenario was going to be a pain in the ass reverting if it didn’t work. I’m not afraid to try anything, a lesson I learned from a friend named Jason years ago. I’m still aghast at how many people don’t scan and keep their precious photos safe, whether they are on their phones or in albums that human eyes never adore. My main computer is named “backupeverything” as a constant reminder that if you’re not vigilant, you will lose everything at some point. It’s inevitable, like snagging your pocket or sleeve on a drawer when you shut it.
Ann Landers said this: “If you want your children to listen, try talking softly to someone else.”
I’d add a corollary I wrote: “If you want people to talk about you, do anything interesting or different – or be happy.”
I’m out walking and exploring a foreign neighborhood. It started from an unplanned walk, one I would never experience inside my little world of the apartment. I’m certainly not killing time. Time can’t be killed, only experienced or passively ignored. It’s racing past. No matter how much you think you know about how fleeting life is, there is an undeniable recognition of it when you get older. Your spirit wants a bite of all of it, but the creature comforts in our residences and the magnetic pull of routine keep us in place.
I was able to pet a friendly duck, one who waddled up to me unexpectedly in a place I would not have expected to see it. I stopped and exchanged pleasantries with an older man in a wheelchair, his faithful little dog and companion begging me for attention. I of course kneeled down and hugged and petted him. The older man laughed in delight. I saw rabbits and birds galore. At one place in a small meadow, the proper word for which is glen, the multitude of birds chirping and singing drowned out the traffic.
When I started, I was surrounded by commerce and restaurants and diners outside drinking and talking loudly. The same occurred upon my return. They too are enjoying the world outside of their homes. It’s nice to see that covid didn’t eradicate our social nature. People are supposed to be surrounded by people. So much of the toxicity in our own heads is the result of our not practicing this truth.
I hope each of you had a lemon moment this afternoon.
Whether you did or not, I am reminded why it’s not wise to take a really long walk wearing flip-flop sandals. I would do it again though.
The exception is when you care for them, and you can see that the arc they are on ends in self-destruction or living a lesser life. By way of admission, I have ignored advice that was spot on in my life. My favorite cousin gave me the best advice of my life at one point. Because of my arrogance, I thought I could somehow overcome the looming consequences of my ignorance. Of course, I was wrong. If I had suffered from addiction, I probably would have still ignored the advice. People often ask me how I avoided the tendency to addiction. My answer is a combination of sheer luck and avoidance. It’s what helped me finally understand my parents a little more and stop being judgmental to the extreme I once did about my sister. They were completely wrong for their choices but were also equally trapped. Once I recognized the congruency to my own life, it managed to humble me slightly.
I had an ongoing battle with my brother Mike with his addiction. It ruined his life and ultimately ended it years ahead of what might have been. Even if he had survived, he was not himself or living the life at his fingertips. It cost him a truncated career and the loving embrace of people around him. It contaminated my relationship with him, and I didn’t realize how bad it was until the demon he suffered from became inconquerable. His death had more of an effect on me than I thought. More vanity of my part to believe otherwise.
I’m sure each of you has a friend or family member who equally suffers. Those who suffer often possess fantastic intelligence and artfully or brutally hide their secrets. It’s why I wrote the Bystanders Prayer a few months ago. Those in the grips of these issues don’t see the life that could be. That’s how addiction works. Or choices we don’t want to face. It doesn’t have to be an addiction; any unhealthy pattern of behavior will suffice. I have a few of my own, so I’m not casting stones without getting a few bounced off my own face.
Those who are capable enough or lucky enough to achieve escape velocity from their past decisions are among the most fortunate people in the world.
Those who escape find that other people were waiting for them to be someone else, the person they could be absent from the internal turmoil, often self-imposed.
It means they have access to a full life. A life full of people and friends. The world is meant to be experienced fully. If you have a friend or family member who needs to hear the screaming gong of change, ring it with a hammer of sufficient size. Doing nothing will undoubtedly end the way you think it will. Hammering the gong might cause a lot of temporary pain, and it might even cost you your relationship with those you care for. They’ll be gone one day anyway if that is their choice.
Only the spoon knows what stirs in the pot – as with any situation. Because of the private nature of most struggles, a lot of what is hidden fails to see the light of day. Personally, I couldn’t begin to explain the craziness I’ve witnessed in life or faithfully explain my irrational reaction to it. No matter what happens, I’m supposed to be in control of my response. That definitely hasn’t been true.
Emotion clouds cognition.
I have asked people to change. Whether it’s to stop drinking, being angry, or even accepting affection reciprocally. I’ve had both failure and success.
I want everyone to have a clear mind and the opportunity to be happy or satisfied.
If they are in my life, I’ve realized that there is a weird undefinable line between boundaries and asking someone to change.
Boundaries require you to hold fast to your expectations no matter what happens. That is tough, especially when you need love and attention.
When I was younger, I had to detach from some of my family because I couldn’t keep my sanity otherwise. Literally. They wouldn’t change. With the exception of my sister, everyone who suffered addiction in my immediate family met their demise still suffering with it. That’s a terrible track record.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve also found myself seeing that not everyone experiences love and togetherness the same way. Asking for someone to mirror me might be too much for some. Is it wrong for me to ask? No. There is no obligation to conform to my idea of a good life.
Me asking someone to give me what I want or need isn’t a demand to change. It reflects me communicating that I’m not getting what I want. That’s how it is supposed to work. It flames out quite often, too, though, because people are complicated and come with a suitcase rack of luggage that has nothing to do with you. People praise communication as if it is the cure. It’s not. It’s necessary, though, no matter the consequences. All you can do is speak your truth and surrender to the idea that other people will respond however their life makes them.
I can’t imagine a life without enthusiasm and without someone who wants one hand on their shoulder – and hopefully one wrapped around their back, too. It’s something that many don’t openly discuss. Most of us want a warm heart to greet us and hands that magnetize us. Don’t we seem to wander through a mile of weeds to get there?
Because I’ve gone to therapy, I know all the jargon for my attachment style. It’s helped me recognize some of the stupid sh!t I do as stupid sh!t. It’s not translated well into rational behavior, though.
But I did see the folly of chasing what I wanted. When you’re running and chasing, you don’t see the scenery. As you come to a stop, you look around and wonder how you got there. The fight in you evaporates.
If you’re not getting what you want out of life, at some point you have to decide to face the certainty of more of the same or the possibility of something different. That uncertainty comprises a lot of our lives and keeps us running in place. There will be pain on either side of your choice.
Choose your hard, right?
By surrendering and chasing no more? The thing I wanted?
It rang my doorbell. Metaphorically, of course.
And I answered.
There are no guarantees. Only instinct and experience. Optimism is a rare commodity that must be actively replenished. I’m capable. As I quoted last week, the person in the selfie you take is most often your own worst enemy. What are the things or people that make you most likely to be happy? What is holding you back from reaching toward that life?
I’ll need another hammer or two alongside my head to keep me on course. I feel like I have a cousin who is already searching Amazon to buy the perfect hammer.
Meanwhile, I have to answer the door.
I definitely hear the doorbell calling me. There’s a smile and hands on the other side.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 