The past couple of weeks have been hard for me. Rather, I've made them hard for myself. There seem to be good reasons to be in a funk -- Gary is still away, working, six days a week; the economic crisis has so many implications and we appear powerless to do much about it; my local unschooling group isn't seeing as many families at outings as have joined us online; a home across the street was robbed yesterday, sometime around 8 or 9 am, no less! Plenty of 'reasons' to be worried and stressed, leaving me feeling very out of sorts.
What to do about it? Well, I know I can choose to be happy even when not everything is as I'd like things to be. I've done it before. I can fake it til I feel it, which sometimes works. I can choose to look at my life, to smile at my children, to enjoy the sunshine and blue sky, I can think of Gary even when he's not home and know that I am loved.
Along the way I stumble across reasons to be happy and grateful for all I have -- even when it's not exactly the way I'd like it.
We live in a house that meets our needs for comfort and safety, even with an increase in the mortgage and too many legos on the floor.
Our children are happy, healthy and full of energy. They laugh at the most silly and simple things. Our house is filled with more joy and laughter than my own childhood had.
I have wonderful, amazing friends who really understand me -- and they still like me!
So why is it such a challenge for me to really embrace joy and happiness? To sit with it and feel truly happy and at peace for more than a few minutes? I'm doing my best to get to those answers, walking through the unhappy moments. After all, I don't have to be happy each moment to have a joyful life. I want to be happy overall, tho.
I got a bit closer today, as I woke thinking about how to be happier today, how to reach the end of my day feeling like it was well-spent -- no, even better, that it was well-enjoyed, that I really did spend my day grateful for and celebrating the good I have.
What came to me is that, while I can choose to be happy with less than I had plans for, less than I ideally want, somewhere inside myself, I struggle with feeling like I want it known -- on record, as it were -- that while I made the best of it, this wasn't my plan. I feel like I need people to know I wanted more.
Is that really what I want tho -- to be acknowledged as some tragic soul who wanted more but was denied it? Who figured out a way to make the best of it and sometimes to be grateful and express joy, despite life not being what I planned? What does that do for me, really?
Let's see...
it might relieve me of responsibility for making my own joy, claiming my own happiness,
it might just garner some sympathy from others, more likely, tho it will only garner pity and resentment from folks who say 'why is she so bitter?' (shades of my mother, definitely)
it certainly distracts me from embracing each moment as it comes into my life, from truly being happy right now,
most unforgivable of all, in my book (and this is my book, yes?), it lets 'them' win... let's who win? lack, frustration, disappointment, all those who've said 'you'll see -- life's not always what you want it to be'
Yes, not letting them win may seem like a poor motivation, but it's been a guiding force for me. Sometimes it's good force. It reinforces my determination to keep walking when I could just sit down and give up. Other times, it's not really helpful because it can become a rallying cry for a battle, when I'd be better off just walking away and letting go. Who cares if it looks like 'they' won? When I find my joy then I'm the one who wins the day.
Still, tho, why this frustration with choosing to be happy with less than ideal conditions? I'm beginning to see it's really about fear and distrust. Fear that if I smile and find a way to be happy with now (while still holding hope for more of what I want at some time) others will stop trying; will think I'm happy enough so there's no point in helping me have more. Distrust that the universe really has any good to offer me. Doubt that I have any right to expect as much good as I want. A little anger that others appear to have all they want -- at least they have things that I'd like to have -- while what I want feels like such a struggle. And a measure of petulance that it's not supposed to be this hard.
And, really, is 'my plan' better than what I do have right now?
I have a wonderful husband who loves me, friends who understand me, beautiful healthy kids who love me (I am still daily awed by how much my kids love me. I don't know why it still surprises me after 23 yrs, but it does. Who ever knew I'd be so valued?) We live in a house that meets our needs, in a city we all consider absolutely home, with wonderful fall weather all around me.
Really, how could I choose not to be happy? And that's my epiphany - every time I deny myself the right to be happy and joyous right here, right now, I'm actively choosing NOT to be happy.
So, in this moment, to quote a friend I love, whose path is recently much more rock-strewn than my own ~~ "I want to be happy. So I am."
Then today this quotation showed up in my email box, and it was such a good reminder for me:
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about." ~Charles Kingsley
But even more, I can choose to be enthusiastic about even the most ordinary things.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
On gunplay
Another collection of my thoughts that has appeared elsewhere online, imported here.
My Mom was one who never allowed my brother to play with guns—toy or real. We lived in the country until he was 10, and every other boy he knew had a pellet gun. By high school, my brother's life dream was to be a Marine Recon Ranger (he ultimately got 4-F'd) and he could field-strip and reassemble a M-I in under a minute. As an adult, he keeps a gun in the house and shoots at a target range, but has never shot anyone.
My Mom was one who never allowed my brother to play with guns—toy or real. We lived in the country until he was 10, and every other boy he knew had a pellet gun. By high school, my brother's life dream was to be a Marine Recon Ranger (he ultimately got 4-F'd) and he could field-strip and reassemble a M-I in under a minute. As an adult, he keeps a gun in the house and shoots at a target range, but has never shot anyone.
When oldest son was young, I 'allowed' gunplay. He had nerf guns, noisy machine guns, a paintball gun at 15, and spent two years of high school in ROTC. He, too, announced his desire to become a Marine. At 16, he quit all that, and explained that while he still enjoys target practice with real guns, he doesn't believe he could ever kill another human being.
Both my son and brother are decent human beings, with no violent tendencies. My son does seem a gentler soul than my brother—or maybe just less battered by life, so less angry.
I believe kids are smarter than many adults give them credit for. I know mine are. As unschoolers, we know our kids are bright enough to figure out there's a difference between real violence and game playing. I'd bet that as free children living more autonomous lives, they understand that you don't have to have a gun to be violent towards someone else. That violence isn't about guns (they're just tools, after all)—violence is about power and control over other people. My instincts tell me that people who have been controlled, limited or denied by other (more powerful) people are more likely to be violent than those who have been respected and supported in pursuit of their own lives.
from a recent discussion on divorce
I posted a reply over at RU sharing some of my thoughts on divorce and its effects on kids.
After a bit of clean up and some cutting, here's what I have to say:
I used to disagree with the idea that divorce should be avoided whenever possible. I felt then that if one person in the couple was deeply unhappy and wanted out, their right to happiness might mean divorce was the right, or maybe least-bad, answer. I grew up in a home with two parents who should have never married. It wasn't entirely hellish, but close enough that I used to wish my parents would divorce. They finally did when I was 18, just after I left home, and it was beyond hellish for my younger brother and sister who wanted nothing more than to survive long enough to leave home (as I had).
I was divorced once, tho I'm married now. I left an abusive marriage when I saw my then-husband hit our infant son. I used to argue that there were good reasons for divorce aside from abuse. I could even say that kids can turn out okay in divorces -- my oldest son Will and many other kids have turned out okay. But now that I look at Will -- he's 23, and I remarried when he was 10 -- I see the damage a divorce did. Even a good, necessary divorce. The man he is today is in many ways defined by the years he spent as the child of a single mom. His perspective on the world is shaped by that. And he didn't grow up with parents fighting over him (we had only one contact with my ex after we left) or grandparents criticizing Mom.
In recent years I've watched three marriages end to divorce, in unschooling families, and heard news of at least one other, just in my own city which has changed my perspective somewhat. I've also factored in the damage I see in my younger siblings, and the long-term effects on Will, and now, absent abuse (adult or child), I would encourage everyone else to stay married and find a way to work it out. Not to stay and suffer, but to really commit to re-making their marriage into something that protects and blesses their entire family.
This isn't a Christian perspective. Neither is it a non-feminist opinion. I consider it a more pragmatic one. Even in a 'good' divorce, kids have to leave their childhood home on a rotating basis, negotiate new household expectations, spend holidays with only one parent, meet new partners.
In the past few years, I've really come to appreciate the example my in-laws give us, and Gary as a child, about what really is involved in a good marriage. They weren't as good at putting it into words as I might have liked, the but the way they live their marriage is a wonderful example. I can see where I missed huge and very essential lessons in marriage as a result of the fact that neither of my parents were willing to do what it takes to make marriage work.
I hope we can be an equally good example for our kids when they choose partners and get married.
After a bit of clean up and some cutting, here's what I have to say:
I used to disagree with the idea that divorce should be avoided whenever possible. I felt then that if one person in the couple was deeply unhappy and wanted out, their right to happiness might mean divorce was the right, or maybe least-bad, answer. I grew up in a home with two parents who should have never married. It wasn't entirely hellish, but close enough that I used to wish my parents would divorce. They finally did when I was 18, just after I left home, and it was beyond hellish for my younger brother and sister who wanted nothing more than to survive long enough to leave home (as I had).
I was divorced once, tho I'm married now. I left an abusive marriage when I saw my then-husband hit our infant son. I used to argue that there were good reasons for divorce aside from abuse. I could even say that kids can turn out okay in divorces -- my oldest son Will and many other kids have turned out okay. But now that I look at Will -- he's 23, and I remarried when he was 10 -- I see the damage a divorce did. Even a good, necessary divorce. The man he is today is in many ways defined by the years he spent as the child of a single mom. His perspective on the world is shaped by that. And he didn't grow up with parents fighting over him (we had only one contact with my ex after we left) or grandparents criticizing Mom.
In recent years I've watched three marriages end to divorce, in unschooling families, and heard news of at least one other, just in my own city which has changed my perspective somewhat. I've also factored in the damage I see in my younger siblings, and the long-term effects on Will, and now, absent abuse (adult or child), I would encourage everyone else to stay married and find a way to work it out. Not to stay and suffer, but to really commit to re-making their marriage into something that protects and blesses their entire family.
This isn't a Christian perspective. Neither is it a non-feminist opinion. I consider it a more pragmatic one. Even in a 'good' divorce, kids have to leave their childhood home on a rotating basis, negotiate new household expectations, spend holidays with only one parent, meet new partners.
In the past few years, I've really come to appreciate the example my in-laws give us, and Gary as a child, about what really is involved in a good marriage. They weren't as good at putting it into words as I might have liked, the but the way they live their marriage is a wonderful example. I can see where I missed huge and very essential lessons in marriage as a result of the fact that neither of my parents were willing to do what it takes to make marriage work.
I hope we can be an equally good example for our kids when they choose partners and get married.
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