How do you feel when you read the following proverb.
For want of
a nail, a shoe
was lost.
For want of
a shoe a horse
was lost.
For want of
a horse a rider
was lost.
For want of
a rider a battle
was lost.
For want of
a battle a kingdom
was lost.
All for the want of
a horseshoe nail!
What’s your particular “horseshoe nail”? What is your “kingdom”?
Write about this. This proverb doesn’t have to be sad. It holds the mystery of possibility.
GETTING IN A SWIVET
Have you ever been in a swivet? If you’re saying, “In a what?” you live where swivets are called by another name.
Yesterday, I got into a swivet. Busy with other concerns and projects, I’d let my fridge and freezer become caves sparsely furnished with two trays of ice cubes and one neglected carton of orange juice. I needed groceries, and all my usual support personnel — friend, daughter, volunteer — were away.
I could walk to Trader Joe’s or Safeway, but then I’d need help from the store employees. Would the store be too crowded? Should I only get a few things so I wouldn’t take too much of their time? What should I buy? Salad fixings? Convenience meals?
I could take a taxi home, thus being able to buy a lot more food, but what was on sale? What would be the most economical items to choose?
I wanted to do a “perfect” grocery trip.
And what in the world was I thinking? Why hadn’t I planned better, gone to the grocery store earlier in the week when someone was available to shop with me?
“Why weren’t you more organized?” my Inner Critic stood ready for the attack. “Make a decision and get on with it!”
Now you know what a swivet is: a total loss of perspective on some small or big situation of your own making, someone else’s making or no one’s making in an imperfect world peopled by imperfect human beings
A swivet is a kind of vortex, like being whirled, spun and jiggled on an amusement park ride. Only it’s your brain that’s in the vortex, not your body.
“Come on now,” the voice of Calm Love finally got a word in edgewise through the Inner Critic’s din. “Try sitting down and start writing what you want to eat.” By the time I’d written apples, popcorn, eggs, chicken and frozen yogurt, the swivet ended, and I could feel the world righting itself. Whew!
“You see,” Calm Love said, “all you have to do is take one action, and you’ll begin to sort yourself out.”
Of course, some situations aren’t nearly as easily resolved, but one conscious, forward-moving, positive action can make all the difference.
So, next time you lose perspective, whirling in a swivet of your own … stop. … sit down. Take a breath. Come up with one forward action step. You might even pick up a piece of paper and a pen and try my favorite: writing anything just to clear your head and slow you down. It really works!
This morning as I slid out of bed and headed for the shower, mentally previewing my day, I suddenly remembered hearing Dr. Daniel Amen talk on PBS about how we can create and deepen grooves in our brain by changing our thoughts.
(Please excuse me, Dr. A., if I’m not saying this in a particularly accurate way. People can read your book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, for the scientific description.)
What struck me as the water ran down my back is that I want to make deeper — let’s call them “positive” — grooves, and that so often, I, and maybe you, are just deepening the less positive or downright negative grooves … over and over … deeper and deeper.
“Ye gads! I’m not going to live forever,” I said aloud. And a little voice inside me whispered, “No duh, Becky, this isn’t new info, so where have you been?”
“I know, I know,” I responded inside my head to that inner critic who thinks she’s such a Smarty Pants, “
Spiritual masters (both feminine and masculine)advise one should always live as if death were standing at one’s shoulder. That idea and image certainly makes every moment yet to be lived seem even more precious.
The idea is that I want that little stylus point of “new thinking,” “positive” approaches to living, focusing on solutions rather than problems … to keep sliding along in my brain, making more and more and deeper and deeper positive tracks.
Right there, wrapped in the delicious folds of my blue towel, I stood perfectly still, imagining the progress of the little stylus moving along inside my head. Focusing on that image, even trying to feel the tickle and steady movement of the point, I felt somehow more peaceful and positive.
“How cool is this?” For once the Smarty Pants had something good to say! “Wouldn’t it be a great idea to make a habit of doing this sort of imagining whenever you feel yourself sliding into the whineys?”
I hasten to add, for the sake of anyone who gags on the idea of Polly Anna positive, that I gag on that also. This kind of positive is different; it’s realistic, aware of the pain life also contains. Yet, life-giving, not life-yucking.
So, will you try it too? Every time we notice ourselves sliding into the “poor me,” “ain’t it awful” or “what’s the world coming to” place, let’s bring out that mental stylus, and start groovin’.”
I’d love for you to leave a comment to tell me how it’s going.
Today I want to tell you about an organization that, through its mission, and on a daily basis, gives a special meaning to living a hands-on life.
This organization is Guide Dogs for the Blind, Inc., located in San Rafael, CA, about twenty miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Each year blind adults of all ages from the United States and Canada come to San Rafael to train with their first or subsequent Guide Dog.
Twenty-two years ago, I met my first Guide, Prancer, a sleek and savvy black lab who knew exactly what her job was to be. She’d trained for about five months with a group of trainers who then worked with me and the other new Guide Dog handlers. We learned how wonderful it was to “cruise” along the sidewalk, avoiding poles and other obstacles, find dorrways, elevators and stairways. Prancer and I learned to trust each other; I praised and directed, she guided. What a team!
Everyone connected with Guide Dogs for the blind believes strongly in their work of assisting blind people in living independent lives through traveling with a Guide Dog.
All of this takes time, patience, hard work, energy, and courage, from vets to puppy raisers, from administrative staff to instructors and students. But it’s worth it all.
So, check out the place where dogs go to work, a place where a hand meets a harness and paw pads meet the road.
www.guidedogs.com.
Several years ago, while visiting Fisherman’s Wharf, I touched a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge which was part of a small scene constructed and sold by an artist. As I fingered the delicate arch, I wished with all my heart for a fleeting moment, that I could actually see the “real” Golden Gate Bridge.
When I walk the G.G.B., my feet touch it; my hand trails the railing. I hear the rumble of traffic, feel its vibration in my whole body. The tang of the salt water tickles my nose; the wind pushes against me. .
It’s an awesome experience: the sense of space, depth, loftiness.
Sighted people see the bridge, its orange color, its graceful arch, its mighty towers. That sight brings, they tell me, a sense of awe and wonder, a realization of how a dream can become solid, an awareness of the great height, depth and distance a bridge spans.
Watch PBS and you can learn its history, — the vision required to imagine and draw it, the skill needed to engineer its construction, the courage and investment of time, money, emotion and lives, that went into its creation. Bringing that symbolic structure in to being required risk, with a capital R.
What brought all of this to mind was a friend’s describing “arching her back” to do a certain exercise. “Arch, …” I thought, “Arch. Bridge …” And it came to me: “How can I become a bridge?” And, for that matter, how can you?
Bridging a gap is a common enough metaphor. Sometimes though, I think we’re more focused on the “gap” part of the metaphor rather than the “bridging.” What is it about us humans that seeing lack or gaps is easier than seeing the way to connect the separate, distant, seemingly unrelated or unconnectable? I don’t know about you, but I certainly get gap-crazy sometimes.
Maybe it’s time for me, and you, to get “bridge-oriented”.
Inspired, wanting to make the bridging a body-memory, I stand up from my computer chair, arch my back, stretch from the tips of my toes to my hands as my arms reach toward the sky. what will I, what can I, bridge? What investment am I willing to make to imagine that bridge, describe that bridge, create that bridge? Maybe it’s the bridge between parts of my inner self that seem in conflict, or parts of my outer life that currently compete for my attention or seem to stretch me too far in ways I can’t manage.
Or, maybe the challenge is to be a bridge between two groups of people, blind people and sighted people, for example.
What can you, will you, bridge? What is needed to cross the empty space? Faith in the value of bringing together two whatevers: people, families, groups; imagination to see what elements of each are embodied in yourself, the bridge. And, oh yes, willingness to RISK, with a capital R.
I leave it to you to envision, imagine and explore all the kinds of bridges you can be.
Whether we bridge a creek, a small stream, a river, or the San Francisco Bay, it’s the spanning that counts, the flexibility, the staying strong, the commitment.
So go on now, and build yours!
Welcome to my blog!
This July Fourth holiday weekend is the perfect time to begin something new, lining up my hopes for my blog and business with the month when we celebrate the beginnings of the United States of America over two centuries ago. Those founding mothers and fathers held the dream, not knowing or being able to imagine what trials tragedies and triumphs they and so many millions of others throughout the Western hemisphere would live through in the process of birthing a new nation.
It’s probably a good thing that we begin with promise and possibility, aware of pitfalls and perils, but ignorant of precisely how they will unfold. Knowing what we can know, doing what we must, bouncing back, being flexible, — these are vital ingredients to birthing a nation, erecting a building, creating a life.
Let’s face it: we make huge mistakes and little ones. Hopefully we forgive one another and ourselves. Together we keep dreaming and listening in silence till we take the next step.
And we laugh.
Psychologists call this “resilience”.
I call it “living a hands-on life”.
This metaphor comes from my experience of living life as a blind person, a life in which touch is indispensible! No chance of standing back and observing from a distance. Touching, you get your hands dirty. You experience flower petals and soil. Someone teaches you to be careful around the stove and how to cook.
Living hands-on isn’t just for blind people. It’s for you, no matter who you are. Remember, it’s a metaphor for really getting in touch with all of life, being both a participant and an observer. That’s what this blog is for: discovering ways to live “hands-on”, reading how others have done it or do it, and finding tools, books, ideas, answers to questions, and examples of new ways we can live life “hands-on.”
I invite you to come back regularly, read my posts, and add your comments. As each of us lives out of intention and attention, listening, sharing, and trusting, we may help humanity, each of us in our unique way, to birth a better world.
