WHAT IS THE PAST FOR YOU?

Here is a question I came across:  

Is the past an asset or a liability for you?

This definitely got me thinking.  Why?  Because our past never leaves us.  It informs our present more than anything else.  How we were raised, whether we felt loved, what experiences we survived, of what we are proud and of what ashamed.  A long list.  Our past lasts all the way up to this morning.   

And another reason:  we are part of the past of others.  Is our contribution to their life an asset or liability?  I've never exactly thought of it that way before. 

In general, I'd say my childhood is a plus.  We were truly last-century middle class.  Went to public schools, owned a falling-down-well-loved house, lived payday to payday--all the cliches.  My dad started college the year I did; he worked all day and went to class at night.  My mom taught school.  They both loved me till the day they died.

I could have begun differently, however.  I could admit that for a time my dad drank too much and all that entails; that as a newlywed with two babies, not realizing what my mom was dealing with, I was too hard on her.  A different picture, including my own insensitivity. But I seldom think of it that way.  It's all in how we construe things, isn't it?  

A colleague was mistreated as a child.  Then she became a professor and a feminist and a help to many.  Would she have achieved so much without the drive to overcome her past?  If someone grew up without enough to eat and became an advocate for the poor because of that, was their impoverished past an asset? Someone else I know was raised in a loving home with nothing lacking.  This person has now overcome an addiction that began early on.  Might a life of privilege have fostered a sense of entitlement that contributed to these failures?  Or are they unrelated?  Is the past asset or liability?  I think this person would say asset, that the past provided the character to overcome the addiction. 

Or perhaps most of us would say both, times that lead to despair and times that produce strength.  We know that traumatic pasts can give rise to post-traumatic growth--positive psychological changes that result from highly challenging situations. The most dreaded losses, for example, can inform an appreciation for life.  Personal growth is in fact common after overcoming hard situations. People who have been tested are wonderful people.    

An asset is something valuable, not necessarily a synonym for good.  A liability is a disadvantage, not necessarily a synonym for something bad. A moneyed past, for instance, can be an asset or a liability.  Combine these thoughts with the gift of forgiveness for great wrongs as a path toward peace.  Not condonation, but a decision to forego revenge.  There's no eye-for-an-eye in forgiveness.  Certainly, my mother forgave my father the years he drank.  He lived to 94 and was sober the last 45 years of his life.   We should forgive sins (even our own).  I have, and I hope to have been forgiven in return.  

Each of us is a part of many people's pasts.  Children, neighbors, friends, even strangers.  I would like to bring value to each life that I touch, although I am certain that I have not. A smile or kind world or compliment, simple eye contact, can make a morning better.  A harsh word or ignoring someone can affect their mood and even self-esteem.  In a parking lot incident, an angry driver called me a name.  It took a deep breath to remind myself that the driver had the problem, not me.  But for that moment I felt diminished.  This ugly event is now part of my past.  Can I make it an asset somehow?  

These are observations.  I don't have a moral or conclusion or advice.  Often our thoughts, like life, cannot be tied into a bow.  Nothing wrong with that.  

                                                                   Nina Naomi

   

 

SOME VERSE FOR TODAY

 

In a City Apartment

Outside the door the hedgerow grows

By rusty links of chain along the walk.

A lonely chipmunk skitters over litter, lawn and leaves

While honeysuckle vines entwine

Around the fence, white petals overshine,

Tendrils reaching, straining, fragrant, sure.

Not thwarted by old boundaries torn.

I should be so bold amongst the litter of my years. 

 

 

Where Lies My Heart?

Where lay my heart on Bonfire Day? 

Did I forget how I must pray?

Mistake my need to verify?

Or am I freed from all that made me cry? 

 

I shall not now repeat what once I kept.

Those thoughts unbidden nor will I regret

My choice to save the future from the past.

I've sent my sad words into flames at last. 

 

"IF YOU CANNOT ACCEPT THE PAST AT LEAST ACCEPT THE PRESENT"

The wind blows over our days and scatters them like scruff.

If you cannot accept the past at least accept the present.

Go outdoors where the heat is now,

Where the brush is now,

The bending is now.

There are so many things that shutter what haunts--

A chipmunk we named Doug,

A cardinal who courtship feeds his lady,  

Some feathers (left by a fox?),

The hawks that sit on the fence,

Dragonflies over the water . . . .

                                      by nina naomi

YOUR CALMER SIDE

Illustration by Lori Roberts, Quote by Eckhart Tolle

You know I'm a newcomer to mindfulness, just two and a half years.  But ever since I started the practice I've looked for helps.  They're abundant.  One of the helps I found got me thinking about our calmer sides.  We all have one.  I guess it's the accessibility that differs, from person-to-person, from day-to-day.  We know when we're calm we feel differently.  Our breath, our heart rate, our minds are all sending signals of patience and kindness, with ourselves and with others.  

As part of this month's culmination in Thanksgiving I've decided to make gratitude and thankfulness an intention.  The science on this tells me my calmer side will rejoice.  With a little help from the pros, here's the plan:  First, let go of the desire for my life to be different than it is.  Sure it would be nice to feel younger, to have all the family closer, to have all my prayers answered. If wishes were horses . . . .  But that's not real, is it? The idea is to accept today, as it is.  And when I weigh everything, today just as it is, is good.  I can be thankful for that.


Second, let go of expectations. I can tell just by writing this, that leaving expectations behind brings peace.  My breath has deepened.  We can still believe in ourselves, work hard, change anything toxic that we can.  But be more flexible in accepting the results.  

Third, to let go of expectations and limitations means also to let go of the illusion of perfection.  Ah, something easy for me. I couldn't enjoy my life at all if it were tied to perfection.  My yoga poses, my pottery class, the sweater I'm knitting, the poetry I write, the meals I cook, this blog, my body, my whole personality, all are so far from perfect . . . .  And yet, I still trust myself first, my intuitions and my decisions. Where are you on this path?  At a good place I hope. 


Fourth, let go of comparisons.  We've all seen this maxim in one form or another.

"Comparison is the Thief of Joy"

            Theodore Roosevelt

That's what's wrong with social media isn't it?  For all the fun and good it does and the connections it builds, no one ever says "When I'm on Facebook I feel so fulfilled" or "What I like best about my life is the time I spend on Facebook."  Instead it makes us feel itchy, vaguely dissatisfied, morose even--like when we've watched too much TV or sat at the computer or been indoors too long.  I am working to be content with what I have.  That means no comparisons. No comparing houses, cars, jobs, children, spouses, vacations, abilities, achievements . . . no comparing lives!  Experts say letting go of comparisons creates space to appreciate where we are today and how far we've come. 

Fifth, let go of the past.  Not the good things.  Not the memory of my mother's love or how our babies felt when they were little, not the house I grew up in with my brother or the first date with my husband.  But the past that breeds resentment.  The traumatic past, the tough and terrible past that is triggered so unexpectedly.  The past of which we would be rid. This is a hard one; it may require professional help.  Sometimes when I am going somewhere I say, "I'm not going to take __X__ with me."  Some baggage, some thought, some memory.  I can't change the past but maybe, just maybe, I can leave it where it belongs. 

Lastly, let go of "someday."  I know I'm too old to put things off.  But perhaps we all are.  If it's important find a way.  Don't wait until we're out of school or married or the kids are older or we have more money or we're retired.  The expiration date of life is uncertain.  Less uncertain as we age, but still . . . .  If we've let go of expectations and comparisons and limitations then there's no reason to put off what is important to us.  After all, it doesn't have to be perfect!  We've let go of that!

So with help from others this is my November's recipe for calm.  A new season, a new month, a new plan.  And if it goes awry, not as I expect, or not as well as someone else's plan, I'll take it calmly and be grateful for what is.  Trusting myself. 

THANKS, ROBERT FROST

Do you have hope for the future?

someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.

Yes, and even for the past, he replied,

that it will turn out to have been all right

for what it was, something we can accept,

mistakes made by the selves we had to be,

not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,

or what looking back half the time it seems 

we could so easily have been, or ought. . . 

The future, yes, and even for the past,

that it will become something we can bear.

And I too, and my children, so I hope,

will recall as not too heavy the tug

of those albatrosses I sadly placed

upon their tender necks.  Hope for the past,

yes, old Frost, your words provide that courage,

and it brings strange peace that itself passes

into past, easier to bear because

you said it, rather casually, as snow

went on falling in Vermont years ago.  

by David Ray (b. 1932)

On August 19, 2017 I posted "We Can Never Change the Past; It Changes Us."  But I'm also going to trust Frost as much as I am able.  This is too hopeful not to embrace.  Part of the dimming of hurts.  So important. 

 

SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE BY SHEDDING WORRIES

I was in a church recently where a prayer card was handed out.  The prayer was by Thomas Merton (1915-1968)--American Catholic, mystic, Trappist monk.  Merton's prayer begins,

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.   

I do not see the road ahead of me.  

I cannot know for certain where it will end. 

Do we not all feel like this sometimes?  No idea where we're going.  No idea where our path will end.  What can we do when we feel like this?  Each of us may have a different answer.  Merton was a Christian so turned to God.  He says to his God,

"I know. . . you will lead me by the right road 

though I may know nothing about it.  

Therefore I will trust you always 

though I may seem to be lost. . . ."

This prayer helps me.  Some problems seem insurmountable don't they? We all have them.  Toxic people.  Deception or disloyalty.  Illness, aging, death.  Loss or fear of loss.  Even the young can fear growing older without the accomplishments they expected. A job, a spouse, a house, children, financial independence--each can seem out of reach.  Life has never been easy.

Would our lives be simpler, better, if we shed our worries about what we cannot change?  Experts seem to think so.  First to tackle is the PAST.  William Faulkner says "The Past is not Dead.  It's not even Past."

He is not talking about good things in our past, that is clear. But those things we wish had never happened.  

Because the past is immutable, we cannot wish actions or words away, hurt we either caused or endured.  Trauma fades, but something that devastates us fades imperfectly and not on our timetable.  We can only try to understand and fashion a narrative we can move forward with.  And as always, keep close company with those who understand and value us, whether one or many. A person, a pet, or even a memory. 

My own prayer is shorter than Merton's.  I simply ask God to help and guide me.  Or, the anonymous prayer "God be in my heart, and in my thinking."  That's it. No specifics.  No hamstringing God.  I don't have to define the problem, or fashion the solution. All I have to know is that I need help.

Of course this isn't foolproof.  Sometimes I ask too late, or with a hidden agenda.  But the gain from shedding worries about things we cannot change is immeasurable. We might call it the Peace of God.