Day 45 Reflection: Loneliness

Society treats loneliness like a character flaw: “You’re lonely? What are you doing sitting around? Go out and meet people.” As if a birding club will remedy the ache in one’s heart.

Ironically, loneliness is inevitable in today’s society. Our jobs take us far from our families, and often cause us to move before we’ve settled us into a place. Unless we buy a home, and often we can’t afford buying a home, we live in apartments where our neighbors move in and out. We spend our free time online, where we measure our friendships by “likes” and seldom have deep conversations. We meet our potential partners by swiping right, judging them by a picture and a blurb.

We spend our quiet times nursing the ache in our hearts.

In our solitude, we attribute our loneliness to personal flaws. We come up with erroneous reasons for our loneliness, isolating us further: We are too much this, not enough that. We are strange. We are not worthy. Our isolation increases.

We can ease our loneliness, perhaps even with the facile “go out and meet people” that society offers, but it will be hard work because we are swimming against the isolating currents of our society:

Sit in public places, even if you sit alone. Turn your attention outward, again and again. Say hi to people who notice you. Ask to pet people’s dogs.

When the sting of loneliness eases a bit, find reasons to be around people. Volunteer. Find a group that’s exploring something you’re interested in. You will not like everyone you meet in these opportunities, and that’s okay. The object is not to find one person who will keep you from being lonely, but to help you see that you are part of humanity. Friendship will come later as you find yourself in proximity with people you click with.

We were meant to be with people, even if our society makes that harder, even if our beliefs about ourselves and our loneliness make that harder.

Day 44 Reflection: Pain

Pain has a way of blinding us to everything else. It screams at us to stop everything and tend to us. As it should; pain exists to alert us to damage. The damage can be physical, such as torn muscle or damaged cartilage or advanced cancer, or it can be emotional such as the death of a loved one or the predations of an abuser.

Sometimes pain lasts beyond the original insult. Chronic physical pain such as arthritis lasts beyond the wear and tear that caused it. Chronic emotional pain in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder lasts far beyond the instigating factors. The time elapsed doesn’t lessen the pain in these instances.

We are taught to be stoic about our pain. We are told nobody wants to hear about our problems. We are told to tough it out, that no pain equals no gain. We ignore that very valuable alarm until we’ve lost sleep, damaged our bodies, break down, find ourselves with a gun in our hands pointed at ourselves.

Pain is an alarm. We must heed it for our own survival.

Day 43: Ally

Who are the people around you who want to help you evolve your most authentic self rather than mold you into their image of you?

Who are the people who offer comfort, wise counsel, and effective challenges when needed?

Who are the people who will help you transform a piece of the world into health?

These are your allies. Find them, connect with them, love them — for they need allies too.

Day 42 Reflection: Truth

Truth sets us free, but often in a way that feels like a wrecking ball. Or the silence just before the tornado hits, with its gut-crawling suspense. The silence after the crash, after the storm, shelters the whisper of two words: “What now?”

My truth: I have been struggling for seven years, ever since my diagnosis with bipolar and the loss of my original department. I have struggled with depression when my medications fail and when I face major setbacks. The tricks I’ve learned (cognitive journaling and meditation) bring me to zero but not above. Some days, I cycle through contradicting my negative talk and affirmations almost constantly. I believe that, because I make mistakes, that I am worthless.

My truth: I need to go back to counseling for a spell.

The silence left by the wrecking ball. I, a shell of a building, waiting for the materials to rebuild.

Day 41 Reflection: Travel

I don’t do tourism well.

Sightseeing overloads me with buildings, paintings, terrain with no context. A whirlwind of “I have to see the Mona Lisa” and “You haven’t visited here until you’ve seen the mountains.” I see things without understanding their context, and I drift along from thing to thing.

When I travel, I want to engage with my destination. I want to learn, to make sense. I want to experience the destination with all my senses and make sense of it in my mind.

I want my tour guide to take me to the mountains and point out the flora there, explaining to me what plants make good tea and honey. I want them to show me the restaurants where the locals eat so I can get a feel for their lives, to set me up in an artsy coffeehouse so I can observe people. Tour guides aren’t equipped to do that, so I have to do it myself. Travel becomes a research project, but that’s okay.

My biggest preparation as a traveler, however, is internal. I prepare myself for the cultural differences and adopt humility, because I am the outsider and will make mistakes. I open myself up to gratitude for the experience.

Travel without gratitude, in my opinion, is hardly worth the time spent.

Day 40: Sanctuary

According to Abraham Maslow, psychologist, humans have a hierarchy of needs. The model (which everyone who has ever taken a psychology class will recognize) looks like this:

The hierarchy starts at the bottom, with physiological needs at the bedrock. Without food, clothing, and shelter, nothing in the upper levels matter.

Notice where safety is — right above physiological needs like food, clothing, and shelter. Safety is that fundamental, that we need it before we need love and esteem, and even when we having love and esteem, if that safety erodes at any time, we revert to needing that more than anything at any level above it.

To feel safe, we need spaces where harm cannot enter. We need a physical space secure from intrusion and hazard. We need a workspace free from threat and abuse. We need playspaces for children free from guns and bullying. We need a society free from scapegoating, discrimination, and hatred.

We can’t change the spaces out of our control, so we need ourselves or others to create protective spaces for us. We call these spaces our sanctuaries, our hideaways from the hazards of the outside, where we can be ourselves without danger.

Sanctuary cities have been in the news lately, with President Trump threatening to drop busloads of migrants off to these cities. The mayors of these cities do not see this as a threat, but an opportunity to provide sanctuary as a concrete action rather than as an ideal. These cities do sacred work in providing sanctuary to those who face an unsafe and insecure life.

Who is unsafe in our society? Name them, and then find a way to provide sanctuary. Eliminate white nationalism in your corner. Question the number of black males who get killed by the cops; question why whites get the benefit of the doubt. Stand up to bullies, including those in the administration of school districts. In Maslow’s hierarchy, people cannot thrive unless they’re safe. Help people to thrive.

Day 39 Reflection: Love

My best lesson on love (and massage) I learned from a man named Patch Adams.

Patch, a doctor, clown, and force for delightful subversion, used to visit the university I attended, University of Illinois, where he would lead workshops as an Artist-in-Residence. I didn’t know who Patch was at the time, although all my juggler friends did, so I didn’t know what to expect when I ended up at a massage workshop led by him.

I remember being one of many students sprawled around a dimly lit community room in Allen Hall, where Patch had not arrived yet. All of a sudden, this tall, wiry guy with baggy pants and high-top shoes and a handlebar mustache bounds in ranting “You’re not touching! How can you give a massage when you’re not even touching!”

As you can tell, I was about to go through a transformative experience.

In this workshop, we did not learn technique. We learned love, with instructions like this:

“Don’t give massage if you want to get into someone’s pants. If you want to get into someone’s pants, say to them, ‘I want to get into your pants.'”

“People need touch, and you need practice. Offer to rub someone’s back. Or even their hand.”

And the most important message: “Whenever you massage someone, think ‘I love you.'”

This workshop happened some thirty years ago, and I still remember these things vividly. When I’m not too preoccupied with my own woes, I walk down the street thinking “I love you” to the world around me.

This is what I remember when I think about love.

Day 38 Reflection: Art

Art marks us as human. Its purposes hark back to human needs.

Art engages. It pulls us out of our reverie and asks us to pay attention to it. Sometimes it asks subtly; sometimes it demands. We study the piece, its angles and contours, its shading and hues. We ponder the meaning. We decide we like it or we don’t, and we find ways to describe why or why not.

Art speaks. Art expresses emotions, emotions we feel uncomfortable talking about, and evokes emotions in the viewer. We feel emotions we may have buried or forgotten. We identify with a work of art because of its ability to evoke emotions.

Art transcends. Art comes to mean more than the idea, the skill, the sweat that goes into creation. It becomes an ideal, an inspiration, a door into the unexplainable. It puts us in touch with something bigger than us, if only for a moment, before our minds ground us on earth again.

Art expresses both the creativity and desires of our humanness and our inexplicable tie with divinity.

(Note: I just discovered that Lent has more than 40 days, or else I don’t know how to count. Easter Sunday is on the 21st, and today’s the 12th, and I’m on day 38. Apparently, this is because the Sundays are not counted. Who knew?)

Day 37 Reflection: Recovery

Life passes peacefully, and then something bad happens. A town floods, a loved one dies, one’s dignity is violated. We feel lost, betrayed, angry that we have suffered this loss.

Then comes the slow process of recovery. Recovery doesn’t come quickly; we must go through the feelings that come with loss, the anger and the sadness and the fear. There’s no going through this quickly. We can’t recover from someone else’s timetable.

When we recover from a catastrophic event, we do not return to normal. That place is gone, destroyed by the event. We journey to a new normal, a normal where the event fades into memory and its changes to our lives are reconciled with the past.

2nd Blogiversary — 4/10

Today marks the second anniversary of this blog. I named it “Words Like Me” because of the ambiguity of WORDS like me (words like silly, loud, awkward, intelligent) and words LIKE me (as in they delight in my company, which is a comforting visual with the words much like a clowder of cats.)

I have written in this blog almost every day, sometimes twice in a day, discussing a variety of topics from personal struggles to writing mechanics to current topics to coffee and cats. My favorites are the silly ones (see this post), followed by my angsty crush poetry (I think I’m finally over my crush; haven’t written one of those in a while.)

If there’s any common tie among the topics in this blog, perhaps it’s this: Words are Important. My developmental editor would point out that I need a less passive verb for this, so how would I do this? Words Possess Importance? Maybe.

I have about 20 regular readers and a good number of irregular readers. Most regular readers are from the US, a few from Germany, one each from India, Portugal, Poland, Ukraine, Spain, France, United Arab Emirates, and UK. Russia sends a bot which leaves as its link address various porn sites. My irregular readers originate everywhere from Sweden to Vietnam. I have never seen readers from most African countries or from China.

This blog has become a part of my life. Sometimes I turn to this blog when I feel introspective, and I write to reflect. Sometimes I feel lonely, and I check to see if anyone has come by to visit. Sometimes I feel very discouraged by the process of getting recognized, whether online or in print, and I vent here. Sometimes I celebrate, like today.

I would like more readers, of course. I would like people to write comments. But the Internet is a very passive place where we consume words without thinking of the live person on the other end. That’s okay; I will keep writing for the people who read me and all the people who haven’t yet.

Here’s to another year of Words Like Me!