Posts tagged with "growth"

learning to surf

The last few days have been rough to say the least, and I’m still try­ing to sur­vive moments of cri­sis while bat­tling hunger and exhaus­tion. Times like this are a les­son on how strong the pri­mal will to sur­vive is, when the mind shuts out every­thing except doing what needs to be done, cause there isn’t room for pan­ic or sur­ren­der.

I’m learn­ing to accept these spells as a sim­ple fact of life. There’s nev­er going to be a sin­gle defin­ing moment from when I’ll for­ev­er be okay, when I can say they won’t hap­pen any more. Being well takes as much effort as patience, hap­pi­ness, and for­give­ness. It’s both the work and adven­ture of a life­time to become a bet­ter per­son in so many ways.

Sometimes Heather G sends me a quote or teach­ing, and relates to me how it’s help­ing her with her reac­tions or trig­gers. With her unflinch­ing­ly calm demeanour, I could­n’t imag­ine her hav­ing any of these kinds of issues, but it’s a reminder that every­one can use a lit­tle bit of work. I used to think she was sim­ply a nice per­son; now I under­stand her kind­ness has been con­scious­ly and con­sis­tent­ly cul­ti­vat­ed over many years1.

As a per­son with­out a dark past, she has no under­stand­ing of what I go through in these times, no idea how to han­dle me, but it does­n’t stop her from car­ing so much. Sometimes that means stop­ping by for a talk even if she’s not sure I’m home, or drop­ping off a meal from one of my favourite restau­rants, or giv­ing me a small but mean­ing­ful gift. It’s a tru­ly self­less empa­thy, one that does­n’t need a rea­son. She cares sim­ply because I suf­fer, not because she agrees with why. I don’t know many peo­ple who show any­one that kind of com­pas­sion (not even them­selves). And yet she con­sid­ers her­self a begin­ner on the path of awak­en­ing, when there’s so much I already have to learn from her.

For now, I’m fig­ur­ing out how to embrace the wounds, and let the anger, fear, and hurt flow through me when my cop­ing mech­a­nisms aren’t enough. I know I can’t change the world, but I have the pow­er to change myself and how I han­dle things. Or as Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf”.

  1. She once went on a silent med­i­ta­tion retreat in Tibet, where 20 peo­ple live togeth­er but don’t talk for three days. “Little eye con­tact through­out and silent, mind­ful eat­ing”, she tells me. Like a mind­ful­ness boot­camp, that sounds as intim­i­dat­ing as any mil­i­tary one. [↩]

not ready to stop

I take care of this moment by tak­ing care of myself. That means nour­ish­ing my sense of well-being by spend­ing time with peo­ple who:

  • con­nect with me on an inti­mate lev­el
  • give me their full atten­tion and com­mand mine at the same time
  • under­stand and val­i­date what I’m going through

Normally, the goal is to use the pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences from these rela­tion­ships to buffer my emo­tion­al resilience when things get rough, but right now I’m just try­ing to get to the point most peo­ple con­sid­er nor­mal.

It helps when peo­ple make me things like this. I had a Google search box as my brows­er start page for as long as I can remem­ber, until pre­sent­ed with this board full of hap­pi­ness, where every update is rel­e­vant to my inter­ests. Tiana and Genevieve secret­ly col­lect­ed cats for months before giv­ing it to me just because, and some­how there were 91 fol­low­ers before I even made a Pinterest account to fol­low this name­sake board. These are peo­ple who tru­ly under­stand me, and make me feel con­nect­ed even when I’m not with them. This is what I need more of in my life.

sitting in a cafe

We’ll get there some­day, cuz.

I’ve also been reach­ing into my past and search­ing for clo­sure, whether that means giv­ing or receiv­ing for­give­ness. It’s hum­bling to own up to my role in some­one’s pain with­out mak­ing excus­es or lay­ing blame to pro­tect my pride, but being able to do so has giv­en me more amour de soi. Mistakes will be made on my jour­ney, but it does­n’t mean I’m a bad per­son, and it won’t stop me from becom­ing bet­ter.

Seeking res­o­lu­tion does­n’t always end well though. I’m try­ing to under­stand each response as a mes­sage about the true nature of some­one’s role in my life, with­out being caught up in anger. It’s so much eas­i­er to for­give or accept some­one when I start to under­stand their real­i­ty, even if they’ve hurt me rather unde­serv­ing­ly. I final­ly feel like I’m get­ting a han­dle on my inter­ac­tions with peo­ple, instead of con­stant­ly being at the whim of their behav­iour.

dog by the door

It’s been a peri­od of such tremen­dous growth in myself and devel­op­ment in my rela­tion­ships that it feels like I’ve been giv­en a reprieve. I’ve been work­ing on all the lit­tle things I said I’d take care of when I was bet­ter, one day at a time. Just know­ing that I’m improv­ing in some small way is often enough to keep me going by itself.

I still occa­sion­al­ly get caught up on the idea that I need to be per­fect before start­ing down a new path, but Lisa always reminds me that the per­son I am already isn’t so bad. Growing is a grad­ual and life­long process. I can do the best with the per­son I am, and that’ll always be good enough.

the edge of a waterfall

There’s so much hap­pen­ing at once that it makes my head spin. Sometimes I won­der what it’d be like to be the one writ­ten about, to be on the oth­er side of that lens. What would anoth­er per­son say about me? Would it be dif­fer­ent from what I think of myself? And would I like what was said?

I haven’t been able to write, not from a lack of time or desire, but because I can’t keep a straight thought for long enough to get it on a page. Even when I can get myself to sit down for an hour, I just end up in an end­less cycle of inspired writ­ing and crit­i­cal revi­sions. I’ve been ques­tion­ing every­thing. I don’t know what I’m work­ing towards, where I’m going to end up, or even what I want any­more. It’s easy to get over­whelmed by it all, so I have to remind myself to take every­thing one day at a time.

It’s no longer about resolv­ing strug­gles and learn­ing to grow, it’s about fun­da­men­tal changes in the per­son I am and the way I define myself. When you’re unsure of who you are, noth­ing in the world seems sta­ble. Maybe that’s why the good doc­tor asked me if I was scared of chang­ing. I told him yes, but only because I don’t know if the per­son I am now would like the per­son I’ll be lat­er.

a short break in adolescence

I’ve been feel­ing like an adult.

This isn’t due to my fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ties or my tidy home or any oth­er things I used to use as a mea­sure for matu­ri­ty, but from feel­ing like every­thing makes sense. Like I have all the answers the way adults seem to do, because I can see the big pic­ture, I under­stand what tru­ly mat­ters, and I don’t sweat the small things any­more.

It’s only now that I’m at a point where I feel like a grown up. Like this is final­ly who I’ll be for the rest of my life.

That’s not to say I’ve fin­ished grow­ing, that I’m not human or infal­li­ble, but there aren’t the same strug­gles or changes that I used to have, so my emo­tions and atti­tudes have evened out.

For a while I won­dered if I’d just become anoth­er turn­ing-30 cliché, but I real­ized it was nev­er about age. Various things have brought me to this matu­ri­ty, from con­ver­sa­tions to rela­tion­ships to trips far away. It all hap­pened to be around the begin­ning of a new decade in my life.

Maybe I’ve been feel­ing this way only because things are going so well. It’ll take some hard­ship to test how far I’ve tru­ly come as an adult, but until then I’ll try to live like a child, cause too often youth is wast­ed on the young.

warm divinity

Music sounds so good. It’s like every­thing has a beat I can dance to.

Sometimes I start writ­ing an entry based on notes from a few weeks ago, but I end up dis­card­ing most of them cause I don’t feel the same way any­more. It’s like I’m con­stant­ly shed­ding skin in the words I delete.

I tend not to over-think things now. My deci­sions are based on what I want at any spe­cif­ic moment, instead on the future, or the con­se­quences, or what may hap­pen as a result. This regres­sion has been one of the most impor­tant (and dif­fi­cult) things I’ve learned to do. It feels like I’ve been going in the wrong direc­tion for 30 years, but at least I was able to fig­ure that out before much longer. Now I under­stand Picasso when he said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a life­time to paint like a child.”

Pat grilling

Pat on his new grill. He’s still fig­ur­ing out the hot spots.

I don’t even prac­tice gui­tar any­more, but I’ll put on a song I’m addict­ed to and pre­tend I’m play­ing with my favourite singers for hours. It’s not help­ing me improve (which is usu­al­ly what I enjoy), but by god is it fun.

The weeks lead­ing up to my trip were full-tilt cause I could­n’t stand being by myself. It was nev­er that bad before. I even bought an iPad app that lets me watch ran­dom web­cams from around the world, just so I could have some­thing hap­pen­ing live next to me, even if it was two-thir­ty in the morn­ing. Usually it was a buf­fa­lo chips restau­rant in Florida with mus­tard table­cloths, a beach resort by the sea in Italy, or an over­head cam of a sushi chef in Tokyo1.

Nowadays, I don’t mind the soli­tude or the com­pa­ny. I’m feel­ing unwound and have set­tled into old habits; not get­ting enough sleep, eat­ing at the wrong times, nev­er going out. The main dif­fer­ence is that I get so much less of ____ nowa­days, which means I feel so much more alone, but I’m strong enough to be okay with that now.

The days are bright. Like a boy, I find it hard to con­cen­trate on work when the sun fills the house with warm light.

  1. This is how I learn that sushi chefs puree wasabi using only a chef’s knife and a great deal of patience. [↩]