Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?

Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?

One of the amazing things about being a human is that we care. We care about a lot of stuff, we care about each other. We care so much that we will give things up in our own life to support the wellbeing of our loved ones. We will give away our stuff to support the wellbeing of strangers. We will bend over backwards for animals, plants, and planet.

Isn’t that lovely? Why do I care? What makes me feel involved? How do I know that I matter?

We will even sacrifice stuff, ourselves, our very lives, to support intangibles like ideas, values, even vaguely formed notions.

And, of course, like so many other things, it’s a two-sided coin, or multi-faceted gaming die, depending on how, um, interesting your life has been.

For examples.

Giving my dear ol’ dad three Saturdays out of the month is a big gift. I thoroughly enjoy it, he enjoys it. I have a couple meals with him, I read aloud for a few hours, we have a singalong with friends. It’s worth having to spread a whole day’s worth of errands, tasks and so on over the the week to spend time with him. Worth it.

Letting my friends drop away, giving up my activities, and releasing my self-respect drop by drop for someone I really cared about who was handsome, charming as heck, negatively manipulative, and mean, choosing subconsciously to sacrifice my well being for his need to feel in control was a useful experience, but not worth it. Not worth it.

Sometimes we think we don’t care, that we are indifferent, when we are really just Pissed. Off. One good clue is if what comes out from your mouth sounds like, “I don’t flippin’ care!” Indifference tends not to be impassioned.

How do I know what I feel?

As I have grown up, I have sorted out what is good, useful, and supportive for me to care about, and what is damaging, unsupportive, and hurtful.

I put way less energy into crappy caring, and a lot more into the good caring.

Caring feels wonderful. That wonderful feeling makes it easier for us to do it. Making a difference is a nice feature of our overall sense of well being.

You are out there, caring every day. I know that, because I know you. Some days your caring makes you crazy, and you wish you didn’t care so much. Some days, you do what you do, and have no idea that your caring totally made someone’s day. That happens more that you think, too.

When we relax into our natural lives, we accept that we make a difference, we accept that our nature is caring, and we are easy and comfortable in that.

We also come to see that we have to make choices, we can’t actively care about everything. It’s like coming to terms with the fact that we will always be missing something, even if we never sleep.

It’s a marvelous paradox: The more I recognize certain limitations, the more freedom I have.

How have I changed from discounting my contribution, to knowing I make a difference?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 11152013

Meh

Meh.

Whatever.

I don’t care.

Except that I do.

It seemed like the more I meh-ed, the more I hurt way deep down, and the awful-er I felt. I pushed myself to volunteer because I was supposed to, I was kind because I was supposed to be, I tried to be there for everyone because that’s what good people do, and I felt beat and beaten, and wondered what was wrong with me.

The thing is that I was in so much denial, I was in so much avoidance, I was pretending so hard that everything was okay that I hardly had any juice left over for anything else.

It’s challenging to care when I feel exhausted, when everything is effortful, when it seems like some horrible thing is happening every time I turn around. So I stop turning, and then I get stagnant, and then my life really starts to stink.

It was my choice. It’s also your choice.

Ow ow ow! Stop throwing stuff at me!

It’s also our choice. Sometimes I have to hit bottom before I choose to stop acting like I’m living a life, and really start living. Sometimes, it has to get so bad that, looking back, I can hardly believe it. Why do I choose to live?

When I choose denial, avoidance, and pretending, I make my life harder. I have to remember on some level that I’m lying about how I feel, so I don’t mess up, but I also have to forget, and forget I forgot. I often choose denial because I am scared that my life will fall apart if I look at how stuff really is, or really was.

I gotta say that, once the dust settled, my life falling apart was truly a wonderful thing.

When I gave up denial and avoidance and pretending, my fake life did crumble, but it was replaced with a real life. This real life, my real life. I have so much more energy to spend on having fun, addressing stuff as it happens, enjoying all sorts of stuff I couldn’t even notice in the before time because I had to remember to smile, I had to remember to say cheerful things, I had to remember to act positive. . Why am I happy from my core?

When I began to choose to live my real life, I found lovely people to help me. And I found that I cared again, for real,  from my core. I didn’t feel like I was just going through the motions, I wanted to help. Being kind became automatic, and I no longer felt like I had to be there for everyone.

Now, my smile shows up spontaneously, I say how I feel without pretense, I am cheery from deep in my core most of the time, and I don’t have to act positive any more because I feel light. Stuff is mostly effortless. Stuff is mostly easy.I feel free most of the time.

How have I changed from pretending to care to knowing I make a difference?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 10162013

From Apathy to Sympathy

From Apathy to Sympathy

Meh.

Who cares?

I would hazard a guess that we all get here from time to time, for a thousand different reasons.

Perhaps I’ve agreed to do too much, ala Martyr Me, and so I’ve used up my caring. Perhaps I have been choosing the blues, and so my caring is all plugged up with apathy. Perhaps I am using all my care up on my own self, my problems, my victimhood, my disappointments.

Not caring isn’t a fun place. Apathy is kind of bleak. It’s also a wonderful indication that we’ve gotten off track somehow.

I’m not talking about caring about specific stuff, mind you. There are lots of things in the world I will most likely never care about. We all have those things. It’s a marvelous use of our judgment.

I am talking about that general kind of malaise that sets in, not quite depression, just, well, meh.

Why do I care? How do I know that it matters? What make me make a difference?

When I am feeling meh, I can often flip it around by helping someone else. This technique is really useful for busting up a pity party. In fact, it’s a cornerstone of 12-step groups, helping a new person find their way.

It is sometimes really useful to be around others who have more topics up than we do. (And I will own that when I was deep into my own pity-party, knowing others had it worse than I just pissed me off big time.)

When we relax into our natural lives, caring about each other comes naturally. Compassion is a fundamental component of our perfect selves, and when we let ourselves soften into our core, it is just how we are, it’s just what we do. We choose the places that matter the most to us, and we give of our time, our energy, our resources as a matter of course.

When we relax into our natural lives, we seek solutions rather than worrying our troubles to death. When we relax into our natural live, we are aware of life-enhancing resources and pay attention to those, we are aware of the members of our communities who can help each other, support each other.

When we relax into our natural lives, we see possibilities. We come up with creative ideas to help us all, we enjoy being present for each other, to lend a hand, an ear, or a raft of ideas.

And, weirdly, caring, and then helping, often generates feeling of gratitude for being able to be of service to others. And isn’t that nice!

How have I changed from apathy to making a difference?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09162013

Defying the Emo Zombies

Defying the Emo Zombies

Several of you have asked how I write these contemplations. It’s simple. I shuffle the Creative Questions card deck while I think about drawing the best card for us for today. Sometimes, a card or two just seem to hop out from the deck, and sometimes I pull one out. Then I think about it a bit, then I write to you on whatever the topic has brought to mind.

Today I pulled the “Why do I care?” card. I pulled it a few days ago, too. When I pull the same card repeatedly, I know there is an importance about it, and I wonder what that is.

I know a bunch of us are caregivers. We are diligent and loving in our gift of care, and, generally speaking, are happy to be helping. I know a bunch of us volunteer our time, or expertise, to help others. I know a bunch of us who work and take care of our families.

If I am feeling depressed, or grief-stricken, or otherwise self-absorbed, volunteering and caregiving are often very useful tools to help me shift away from those heart-sucking monsters.

Choosing to care is a powerful thing. It’s one of the many ways that I choose my experiences in life.

When I am stuck in worry, or anxiety, or grief, or depression, or fear, or anger, or denial, I have let that state of mind take me over, like alien mind-control, or maybe zombies. Here, I am choosing to abdicate responsibility for my own well-being in favor of letting something else run the show. Sometimes, it has seemed like a relief to me to let worry be in charge, or anger, or whatnot, but I really want to be a grownup.

Being a grownup means that I choose to take responsibility for myself. If I am being responsible for me, I am in charge of my experience, and so I will use Creative Questions, breathing, physical postures, or whatever, to shift away from the zombie me running the same horrible tapes over and over in my head about how awful things are.

Being a grownup means that I understand that if I think things are terrible, or I think things are great, I am right. The same way we all have 168 hours in a week, we all have stuff happen, circumstances change around on us, we experience terrible loss, or horrific illness or accidents. You know, stuff.

One of the analogies I like is the glass half empty or half full. I was a half empty gal for a long time, until I decided to be happy. Then I was a half full gal. Now I rejoice in having a glass. Sometimes my glass is full of cold, crisp water, refreshing, and hydrating and wonderful. Sometimes it’s full of lime-flavored Diet Coke, and it’s delicious, but maybe not much else good. Sometimes it’s full of pee, and that’s just nasty, so I can freak out that my glass is full of pee, or I can use it to felt wool, and soften my skin. No, seriously, pee is awesome for those things.

And that’s the trick. How do I find the awesome reason in the situation? Is there a potent life lesson to be had? Is there practice on a topic like patience, or transformation that I could use some help with? Is there another use for what’s going on that will provide me with felted slippers and fantastically soft skin?

If I think it’s awful or I think it’s great, I’m right.

How have I changed from letting the emo zombies run my life to taking responsibility for my own darn self?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 08282013