Striving to Be Better – Page 4

Stop Apologizing for Your Age

December 22, 2021December 22, 2021by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl17 Comments

I’ve noticed something that really bugs me, wonderfully accomplished humans are introduced as the feature guest on a podcast and they inevitably say they feel old after the host recounts several decades of achievement.

Is this the sorry outcome after years of doing exactly what you hoped to do when you were young?

Imagine a young person thinking to themself, I want to write books, I want to fall in love and raise children, I want to have a multi-million-dollar business, I want to garden, I want to walk in the woods many times, I want to have a few cool outfits, I want to laugh with my friends. Through a combination of good luck and intention this young person lives two or three decades and gets some of that stuff done. Then they feel bad they aren’t young anymore.

So, at the beginning we feel insecure and anxious about what we have not yet been able to experience and accomplish and at the end we feel insecure and anxious about how much we have experienced and accomplished.

This is just stupid.

We are all getting older. It’s not a choice for anybody. There is no shame in it. Let’s never apologize for it again.

It’s better for everyone, sets a positive example, if we can appreciate where we are on the wheel. I am proud of all the walks around the block, the hundreds of thousands of hours of musical reverie I’ve indulged in, the millions of pages I’ve turned in books and in life. You can’t buy it at a store, you pay for it with time.

Relationships, Striving to Be Better

I Don’t Like This But It Seems Like It’s My Fault

December 9, 2021by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl8 Comments

My husband just told me that if we are on a plane together and something starts to go wrong, he is going to sit with someone else because I get too upset.*

I don’t like this at all, but it’s kind of on me, right? I need to calm down.

I am not good at being calm when a lot of unpleasant unknowns are coming at me.

My first reaction is to short circuit and yell. I start making it all about me. How dare reality impinge on my wellbeing like this?! Neither admirable nor attractive, I too would skitter away if possible.

On the positive side, I usually get my shit back together reasonably fast. I don’t stay in that state for hours on end. I burn bright and quick. Since I really want to be a source of strength and pleasure for those in my company, I try to tidy up the emotional mess soon after it appears. But I just can’t seem to figure out how to nip it in the bud.

I hate sharing this because all I seem to hear is meditation mediation meditation. I know! And I do! My goodness. That’s how I am able to right the ship. I am very mindful. Mindful enough to know I am an animal and when I get scared, that’s not the time to try and pet me. I have to have my little moment of pure shock.

Life is quite challenging. It’s very hard to be perfect. If you’re stoic, which is awesome on bumpy airplanes, you might not be the most fun. If you’re emotional, which is taxing, you might give the best hugs. If you’re resourceful and effective, you might seem too competent to empathize. If you’re a wreck, you might be exciting but unreliable. You just can’t do it all and be it all. I would like to, to be everything to everybody. But I can’t and I don’t and I’m not. Oh well.

But I think I will try to be one iota more contained. An iota a day keeps the husband not away.

*Just in case you are new here, my husband said this in jest, and it was well deserved. He would not actually abandon me on a plane or anywhere. He is a very nice man. I am glad he said it because it’s important to know when you’re at the boundary of too annoying to put up with. If someone cares enough to give you a signal, you can retreat a few steps back and just be moderately annoying.

Relationships, Striving to Be Better

Our Internal Pronouns Are We/Us

November 5, 2021by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl17 Comments

My public pronouns are she/her. My kid’s pronouns are they/them. I like that we now have gender neutral pronouns. As I’ve gotten used to using them, I find I’ve started to use them as the default choice. For example, I might inquire about a new pet I am meeting for the first time, What’s their name? Or if a friend tells me about someone new in their life I might say, Cool, what’s their deal? What are they like?

Because I have been involved in a lot of pronoun talk over the last few years, I just noticed a few days ago that I often refer to myself as we. My friend and I were driving to Runyon Canyon for a hike. Excited to get back into shape now that the weather is cooling down, we were conversing on the state of our at home work outs. She hadn’t done any yoga that week. I said: We haven’t either. One of us really wanted to this morning but another one didn’t. Guess who won?

I do this a lot but only became conscious of it in that moment. Unlike the larger pronoun conversation the world is having, this is not about my identity and I don’t wish for other people to refer to me this way. But it does make me reflect on why I do this.

Don’t we all contain contradictions? Thinking of myself as a we is a way of unifying a bunch of unruly and disparate impulses, desires, and actions. Some of us want to eat Pringles. Others of us want less belly fat. Some of us want to read books all day, others of us want to get stuff done. I don’t know if they are the same people. They don’t feel like the same people. They make too much noise for one person. Some of them I like more than others, but we are a gang and it’s definitely an all for one and one for all internal situation.

Does anyone out there also use an inner we when talking to themselves?

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