Thresholds

Once I stood at the threshold of life
all opportunity and experience
spread before me in aweful newness
in my hand, beating strongly
my unique young heart
new and scarless
in its naive impatience.

Each holding
a different treasure
we walked down into experience
like swimmers into a vast lake
walking to the drumbeat of our individual rhythms
clutching at different comforts
as we were submerged into vividness…

…until out of the kaleidoscope we return
tired but triumphant
ready to lay down
the burdens that have ripened
through a lifetime
of days

and even if noone ever reads it
still my heart’s story will be eloquent
in the scars and knots and fissures
of the tireless walls as they tire at last.
the song of those days of ripening will be heard
in the voice of its last faint beats
as I stand at the other threshold of life.

Another poem for another of Rick Mobbs’ eloquent pictures. Just can’t resist….

I’m not sure if the objects in the hands are meant to be hearts, but that was the way they struck me. And I liked the idea of each starting off on a similar journey, but with very different hearts. Hence the poem.

Inspiring…

Olives

What is it about growing up and liking bitter things? The olive is perhaps the classic example of this… the sort of thing a child would immediately turn up her nose at and start making “yuck” noises. And yet adults politely nibble and derive genuine pleasure. I wonder if our tastebuds change, or whether it’s a shift towards more complex pleasures? A recognition of the sour that goes alongside the sweet in life, and often makes it taste better.

I love olives. I am immediately drawn back in my mind to a sunny day in a market in a small French town, to a stall where wooden tubs and wooden scoops proudly present their wares. From the deepest black olives (wrinkled, tart and intense), to the springlike green set off by flashes of red pepper. Going via the slightly unreal purples of my favourite Kalamata olives, sweet and piquant at once. Even tiny ones, bright as jewels – just a thin covering of flesh over the stone but such an intense flash of flavour. Not to mention the green-gold nectar of virgin olive oils gleaming in the sunlight. Such a pleasure to select a mix of all these different types, run them home, spill out the glistening nuggets on a plate or just munch them from the bag. Nibbling the flesh off the seed, then finding a place to spit it out. Not the politest of food, when properly enjoyed, but all the better for that!

Strange how olives are often quite a social food – in any pizzeria the chances are someone will have olives on their pizza that they don’t want – and the olive vultures at the table circle and pounce to be allowed their taste of the salty goodness.

Beautiful trees, too. So gnarled, and yet with such delicate silvery leaves.

I heard once that the fruit of the olive tree is actually virtually inedible… until it has been pickled and salted and generally run through a complicated process that results in the fruit we enjoy. I wonder how anyone came across the idea of doing that… if you taste a fruit and it is initially vile, it takes persistence, or serious hunger, to devote so much effort to finding a way to make it edible.

Maybe that’s another dimension of adulthood… finding a way to take things that are initially unpalatable and turn them into something rewarding. A determination. A willingness to push through the difficult times and the bad flavours. To make something happen, because you believe that it can. There are sweeter, lower-hanging fruit. But there’s something satisfying in making a bitter fruit into something which is, perhaps not yet sweet, but still profoundly satisfying. Our lives need their olives.

Though I sometimes wonder whether the times we live in are not conducive to creating olives. We’re not hungry enough to need to make the offered fruit into something edible. There is so much low hanging sweet fruit around us that it is easy to become lazy. The opposite of Tantalus, the grapes fall so close to our lips that we become too lazy to reach for different fruit. The routines of contact with the world around us in its most basic form, to draw water, to cultivate the food we eat, to be physically part of the ecosystem… for most of us, this is so far away. And so perhaps it is too easy to stay in a perpetual childhood, eating sherbet lemons rather than real ones. Yet life would be very dull without the piquancy of a fruit as complex and as well-earnt through labour as an olive.

This is a 15 minute writing practice inspired by Red Ravine – to write for 15 minutes about olives, without censoring or correcting.

Photo credit – Olives, originally uploaded to flickr by steve green.

Mess (10 minute writing practice)

I often think life’s too busy to be tidy. Sometimes the accumulated clutter of my daily life does begin to get on my nerves. I like clear space around me. But the moment I get things tidied up I’m off to do something, normally in a rush, and somehow within a day things have started to accumulate.

A cup of tea. A toothbrush I’ve been meaning to take back to the bathroom. Paper. A pencil. A jumper. A drawing pin (need to be careful there!)

But I’m not writing about what really comes up when I think of mess. Which is emotional mess. The tear-streaked puffy-eyed tousle-haired mess of my miserable self this autumn, sometimes barely able to take two steps away from distraction without bursting into tears again. A hormonal mess of emotions. For a week every month. Far more humiliating than letting someone see the chaotic bedroom even at its untidiest.

I’ve emerged from that time with the triumph of new strength (and a much-more-stable hormonal balance), but looking back, its messiness is poignant and painful.

The books accumulating on the side of the bed where there was an ex-sized gap. Nobody would need to sleep there, so let the books pile up. I like sleeping with books. Messy, but companionable. (I’m keeping it tidy now… you never know…!)

I hate mess of the emotional kind. I like to see things clear and rational. And while I’m mostly on good terms with my emotions, I wish they’d not go oozing all over the place and getting me into trouble and tears. Still, they’re part of me, and life would be very dull without them.

Mess. Well, life is, mostly – the plans we laid ganging aft agley, our dreams that seemed like a guiding star which suddenly, as we approach them, reveal themselves as a whole galazy of confusing and tempting possibilities. But mess is interesting too. I don’t want my life to have the sterility of a magazine photoshoot house kept in arctic perfection.

My skin is a bit of a mess – old acne scars, chicken pox scars, that strange blodge the doctor told me was nothing to worry about. All fairly faint– I’m sure I notice them more than others do. The odd freckle. But then who’s to say that these are imperfections – or rather, who is to say that the airbrush perfection of cover photos is better than my face whose messiness tells a story.

A story I’m generally happy with, though not one that worked out quite to plan. With many messy loose ends and bits of emotional detritus. A lot of untold stories. But that sort of mess makes a life – and a face – and a story more interesting.

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This is a 10 minute writing practice inspired by the regular topic posted at red ravine – this week’s topic was “mess”. The idea is to write without stopping or going back to edit your writing, and see what comes out.

(Images from an article called celebrities before and after photoshop at www. hemmy.net.)

Self esteem, blame and flexibility

Something strange happened in my singing lesson today. My teacher was trying to get me to do something that I just couldn’t seem to manage, no matter how hard I tried to do what she said. And I noticed she was getting really frustrated with me – not that she was nasty, just sounding frustrated.

I knew that, in the past, I’d have felt that her frustration was justified, and that I was to blame for not being able to do what she was asking. Maybe because I wasn’t trying hard enough, or going about it the wrong way – either way because I wasn’t doing the right thing.

But after all that I’ve been through in recent months, I took a very different approach. I dared to contemplate the possibility that it wasn’t my fault that I couldn’t do it. I reflected that I’m a quick learner, intelligent and motivated, an experienced singer, well-coordinated physically and genuinely trying to do my best. So if I couldn’t do something, perhaps it was because she wasn’t explaining it in the right way for me. I decided that it was inappropriate for her to get frustrated with me.

This led to a brief but intense confrontation, which revealed a fascinating misunderstanding. My teacher felt that I kept having ideas of my own in a way that resisted what she was teaching. So she felt frustrated that every lesson I seemed to be doing something different from the previous one. It seemed to her that I was ignoring what she was saying. Whereas from my side, I was working really hard to do exactly what she told me, and was confused that she seemed to be giving me different ideas to work on from week to week.

(Part of the problem is that singing is such a difficult thing to teach – singing teachers generally use all sorts of ideas and metaphors to try to get their students to internalise a particular physical sensation or activity – my teacher was aiming at the same sensation every week, but using different images to get me closer to it.)

We eventually worked out that the problem was that I was overreacting to her suggestions. I was trying so hard to do exactly what she asked that I was abandoning everything I’d learnt up to that point. And so she was finding me as difficult to guide as it would be to steer a car with a steering wheel so sensitive that the tiniest finger movement triggered a dramatic change of direction! The more I hit obstacles (I think the problem today was simple physical tension in my shoulders and neck!), the more I’d try to find ways to do what she asked, and the more it would appear to her that I was following my own ideas and completely ignoring what she was saying.

Once we reached this point, the hostility and frustration all vanished and it suddenly made sense. Almost two years of putting up with occasional moments of frustration (her) and confusion (me) were resolved in ten minutes of tense but honest confrontation.

What stopped us resolving this before? I have to admit that it was my tendency to blame myself, rather than consider that others might be at fault.

I’m not quite sure where this comes from. To some extent it’s a conflict-avoidance measure. I don’t have much experience of having productive personal confrontations – ones that resolve issues rather than making them worse (generally because I use confrontation as the very last resort!). But I’m not afraid of conflict in situations that don’t relate to blame (e.g. political or philosophical debates). I suppose there’s also an element of “if I criticise them, they won’t like me” It feels like a mental habit – once I realise I’m doing it, it’s quite easy to stop myself – the trick is to notice something so ingrained!

I’m also not quite sure how I’ve survived up to this point in my life without undergoing terminal self-esteem failure. I’ve had several bad moments, but up until the break-up last autumn, it was never really a problem. I suppose it’s a combination of being good at doing lots of things and having had the luck to avoid encountering a lot of people who were unfairly critical. (Several times today I’ve been surprised to find myself feeling an utterly genuine gratitude to my ex – he said so many things about me that were glaringly wrong that he taught me to recognise it and say so!)

It’s fascinating to me just how much difference it makes when I dare to challenge the idea that I’m to blame for any problem I encounter! For one thing, it means I have to work a lot less hard to maintain my self-esteem – and I’m much less vulnerable to criticism from others. But it also gives me a much more balanced view of a situation, and thus a much greater ability to take appropriate action. And I think I’m going to learn a lot more this way, too.

The willow tree that bends to the wind may have good reason to be proud of her flexibility, but she probably doesn’t learn as much about the wind as she would if she stood up for herself a little more!

Diminishing returns and blog stats

Every now and then my blog has an unusually busy day, and the scale of the y axis on which the traffic stats are displayed suddenly changes. What used to be normal traffic suddenly looks smaller on a graph that has expanded to deal with that one busy day.

It’s always disappointing to see the traffic dip the next day after a spike – even if it’s only returning to figures I used to be quite pleased with. I remember in my first few days of blogging how delighted I was when anyone stopped by…. things have changed!

Just like life - after good times and good relationships, the scale of our graph of satisfaction changes, and we’re less easily pleased next time! But hopefully we’ve also learnt something useful about how to go and find even better times…

Masks and fears – part 3

A strange thing happened the other day. A very close friend, who knew that I was planning some blog posts on masks, sent me a poem, which she’d sent me years ago and which had meant a lot to us at the time. And she suggested that it would be worth sharing on the blog. Here’s the link – Please hear what I’m not saying.But the poem didn’t have any resonance for me any more. A few years ago I’d not have said anything to her, but thanked her without telling her what I thought, because I don’t like criticising things that mean a lot to other people. But I’ve made some progress in my own removal of masks, so I told her honestly that the poem didn’t mean much to me any more.

I quoted this passage:

But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope, and I know it.
That is, if it’s followed by acceptance, if it’s followed by love.
It’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself,
from my own self-built prison walls,
from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.
It’s the only thing that will assure me
of what I can’t assure myself, that I’m really worth something

And I said:

“In a way, what has happened to me has been the very opposite – I opened myself to a glance that I thought was knowing and received neither acceptance nor love. And although it hurt me terribly, at the same time it has set me free in a way I never dreamed possible. Because it forced me to assure myself of what I’m worth, to be my own salvation, and my own strength. It’s quite an amazing feeling.”

Far from being bothered by the fact that I didn’t like the poem she’d sent, my friend replied:

“To tell you the truth, it had been ages since I’d last read it too… In fact, I didn’t even read it again before sending it to you. So your comments on the passage you selected rang far truer to me than what was said in the poem. You are perfectly right: no point us waiting around for someone else to give us an approving glance. In fact, that is often enough the root of many of our problems. We have to convince ourselves of our own worth and certainly NOT be dependent on anyone else’s approval – or it becomes hell!”

It struck me that this was a rather powerful illustration that it is possible to remove masks, and that if we have courage to be open to what life brings, we will learn what we need to learn, without hurting ourselves and others through unfortunate short-cuts, or being dependent on the approval of others.

And each day seems to bring me more examples of how this can be a beneficial process for me and those around me.

I’ve written about the dangers of trying to take a shortcuts to masklessness. But in some ways I suppose what happened to me was in effect a short cut. Several of my worst interpersonal fears came true at once, but I survived, and suddenly those fears no longer have any power to trouble me.  It’s not a journey that I’d wish on anyone, but it has helped me immeasurably.

I’m not all the way there yet, and there are still many fears and masks that I haven’t yet dealt with. But looking back I can see just how far I’ve come, and how much easier and more interesting life becomes!

Unfortunately that poem still speaks for the experience of so many people. And despite his claims I’m sadly fairly sure that my ex is still one of them.

I hope that he, and they, find a sustainable and authentic way to take off their masks and heal their fears.

Masks and fears – part 2

There is an art to being authentically ourselves without disregarding the needs of others.

The “express route” to being maskless that my ex was taking (see my earlier post masks and fears) seemed to be about two principles. Firstly being spontaneous and selfish about doing what he wanted – on the grounds that much of our kindness to others comes from fear of what they will do/say if we are not kind. (I think the idea was that once you got over your fear you’d start being genuinely kind, but it was never very clear to me how this was supposed to happen). And secondly, saying the first thing that came into his mind – presumably on the grounds that not saying it would reflect some form of self-censorship.

Writing about this makes me realise just how bizarre an approach to authenticity and masklessness this was!

It’s certainly important to be aware of your wants and your initial reactions. But we’re complicated creatures, and what comes out first isn’t necessarily the reaction that is most true to us. And if we’re not careful about how we express ourselves, there’s huge scope for misunderstanding. There’s also a huge difference between honesty and bluntness. We’re social creatures, and some degree of filtering and consideration for others is vital for oiling social wheels.

(Of course there are times when we need to take care of ourselves, and sometimes that means gently telling others that we can’t help them. But there are ways of setting boundaries in a compassionate and sensitive way – explaining why we can’t do something without blaming the other person for wanting it.)

I can’t be sure that these were the approaches he was taking – but going by some of the comments he made about my behaviour or his, I’m fairly confident that they at least featured in his thinking. I also don’t know whether these approaches to masklessness came directly from the course or were his interpretation of what they were teaching.

Either way, his approach to being maskless seems to have been painful for both of us.

From his side, he was putting huge effort into being “maskless”, and was probably genuinely hurt by my reaction to what he thought was his real self. But what I was hearing from him was unfiltered fear, defensiveness and later annoyance, and I had almost no time to get used to the transition from masked to “maskless”.

I never rejected him, but I would not and could not hide my distress (which was probably more difficult for him to cope with than rejection would have been!) And I didn’t, until it was too late, challenge the idea that what he was showing was genuinely his maskless higher self.

His approach to honesty caused other problems too. When he asked me a serious question, I dug down deep into myself to work out what I was really thinking and feeling, and then took more time to find the right words to communicate my thoughts with minimum scope for misunderstanding. Unfortunately he seemed to interpret the time it took me to reply as me being dishonest and defensive, editing my reactions and words to manipulate or please him! I eventually realised that there was nothing I could do that could restart communication between us.

In the end he cut off from seeing me and his other friends, apparently only able to be “authentic” with other people from the same course. (in itself a very disturbing sign).

So I don’t know whether his attempts at being maskless became more successful. I rather doubt it, given the weird and counterproductive way he was going about it.

What is the point of taking your masks off so quickly that you are unable to cope with interacting with people? Or, put another way, what does honesty mean if you’re not communicating?

I still think that it’s good to try to remove the masks and fears that stop you interacting openly and honestly with others – but shortcuts like these are dangerous. If you deal with the fear, the mask will fall away on its own; but if you just try to take off the mask without dealing with the fear, your “authentic” reactions will be defensive and fearful. And, as I have learnt to my cost, very hurtful to those close to you.

(continues in masks and fears part 3, here)

Masks and fears

(Photo by Serrator at flickr)

My ex claimed, on returning from his “personal development” course, that he had removed his “masks” and was now behaving authentically. He criticised me for not removing my masks. And he blamed me for clinging onto the unreal version of him which he had initially presented to me, and in doing so rejecting who he really was.

As I understand it, the idea of masks is that we all hide our inner selves because we are afraid how people will react if we reveal who we truly are. I think it’s fair to say that we all wear masks – to some extent it’s part of our adaptation to being in the world. And I think it’s also true that as we grow as people we can learn to show more of ourselves, to be honest about who we are and what we want.

I believe in authenticity and this kind of personal growth. So I was very happy to support my ex in his journey of development, to be more himself, to be more honest and more at ease with me and others.

Unfortunately, from my side, what actually happened looked rather different. When I first saw him after returning from the course, he seemed brittle and closed off, unaffectionate, and talked mainly about trivial things. When I forced more serious conversation, he kept telling me that it was only my fears that were causing me to see his behaviour as distressing, and that it was not his role to deal with my fears for me.

Although he claimed to have taken off his masks, to be authentic and present, it felt at the time as if he had never been further away from me. I tried to identify any fears on my side that might be causing me to see him this way. But with hindsight I think my contribution to the difficulties was very small.

The real problem was that, although he claimed to have removed his masks, he had replaced them with thick defensive armour.

He may have come back from the course keen to be open and authentic, but his defences quickly slammed into place in response to a very mild bit of scepticism on my part. He himself later admitted that he was projecting his fears onto me. But unfortunately his fear provoked exactly what he feared – I was confused and scared by the way he had changed, and could not hide my distress. And my reaction to his defensiveness made him close down further. A vicious circle that neither of us seemed able to stop.

I fought to control my fears, and when I was away from him, generally succeeded in convincing myself that I had nothing to fear but fear itself. But the problems weren’t just due to me being unreasonably afraid, so inevitably I couldn’t solve them alone. The moment I was confronted with his defensiveness and coldness, the fears resurfaced all over again.

Now, looking back, I am utterly convinced that removing your masks is not something that you can learn to do in a week or even a month. I think it’s something you can only learn gradually, slowly peeling off the individual layers of mask as you come to accept yourself for who you are.

To put it another way, we wear masks because we are afraid, and you can’t remove the mask without first dealing with the fear that makes you want to wear it. I don’t think there’s a short cut.

And I certainly don’t think it’s ever fair to blame other people for not removing their masks. It’s a matter of trust, and trust cannot be demanded, just earned. You can encourage them to be open, and you can create a space where they feel safe to do so. But if someone genuinely opens up to you, as I did to him, they become incredibly vulnerable to being rejected, as he did to me.

My ex demanded honesty from me, at a time when his behaviour made me feel very unsafe. And although I was afraid, because I loved him and wanted to keep our relationship alive, I threw caution to the winds and was as honest as I knew how to be. In particular, I was honest about what I was feeling. Admitting to the powerful, painful emotions cascading through me – the fear, the jealousy, the confusion, the self-doubt. Not blaming him or asking him to respond to my pain with anything more than understanding. But at the same time, not hiding what I was feeling, even if I was ashamed to admit it.

He told me that my distress was overdramatic and was traumatising him. He ended our relationship and has not willingly spoken to me since.

It’s hard to put into words just how much that hurt.

Removing masks is a very dangerous thing, if approached the wrong way… and blaming someone else for not removing their masks is always the wrong way.

(continues in masks and fears part 2…)

Hello to my visitors…

Well, I’ve now been blogging for just over 2 weeks – in which time I’ve put up 30 posts and had nearly 50 comments.And I’m really enjoying it. I’ve started some very promising blog-friendships, and really appreciated my visitors’ thoughtful comments. It’s amazingly satisfying to watch the red dots appear on the little world map (thanks Clustrmaps) to show where my visitors have come from… and I’m trying not to get too addicted to checking out my blog stats!

I’ve also learnt some new things in the process – not least finding out more about other people interested in a spiritual journey that is founded on a naturalistic approach to the world. And I’m starting to investigate new possibilities for collaborative writing which seems very interesting.

I’ve expressed also some of my thoughts on issues that have been in my mind, and in doing so I feel I’ve moved forward myself. I’ve definitely moved on to a new phase in recovering from the break-up, and in planning what I want to do next. I hope I’ve also said some things that will be useful or interesting to people interested in similar ideas or on similar journeys.

I’ve still got plenty of ideas for other things to talk about – including the masks we wear, how much time pressure is healthy, how our image of a person we love(d) changes. And I’m sure there are lots of other things that will come up – for me this is a time of reflection and experiment, so I don’t think I’m going to run out of ideas for things to say any time soon!

I’d love to know who’s out there reading what I’m writing – so if you’ve not done so yet, please introduce yourself and let me know what you think, or what you’d like to ask me.