Will Marriage Save You From Insecurity?

Just yesterday I was listening to a man who has been a high school teacher for over 20 years.  He says that he now assigns 20% less homework than he did 20 years ago, not because students are less intelligent, but because they are more occupied than ever with finding a suitable boy or girlfriend.

What is it about the drive to be partnered?  I think it is more than sexual gratification.  It seems to be a drive for completeness.  To say to someone, “you complete me” sounds quite romantic and innocent but that belief is rooted in trouble.    I once thought pre-arranged marriages were horrific.  Ugh.  I want to choose my partner, not have dear ole Dad do it!  So you can imagine my shock and dismay when I realized that, even though this entity named Jeannine chose my former spouse, it was not a clear-headed conscious choice.  The choice was driven by  the holes in my soul.  I needed completing alright, but it wasn’t the kind of completing that anyone could do for me.  I needed some insights and definite behavior changes to complete my personal growth journey to authenticity.  My soul (apparently) decided that clashing against, and maneuvering around, my former spouse was  a quick and efficient way of getting me there.  After taking the circuitous route of 30 years of marriage, kids, grandkids, several dogs, fish, rabbits, birds, a lizard and many tears later, I have indeed arrived at a functional state of authenticity.  I am whole enough to complete my evolutionary journey.

Marriage created a mostly safe container within which to evolve, change, grow.  It was certainly safer than being on the street, or partnering with anyone who happened to glance my way…. a direction I could easily have headed…. due to…. well, yes…. those dang holes in my soul again.

A friend sent me a link to an interesting article this morning that started this whole conversation in my head.  It’s titled, “Is Marriage a Remedy for Insecurity?“  An excerpt is below.  Read the rest and tell me what you think…

“We feel the need to make the other commit so we can control them, so we can be sure they will stay by our side and make us feel safe. Often, it is a need to receive the public approval associated with marriage, or to fulfill a childhood fairy-tale fantasy that we have had pushed down our throats. But I don’t wish to make it all appear so bleak. In a marriage between two people who love each other unconditionally, there is no need to tie the other person down or try to control them in any way; unconditional love gives the other the freedom of expression that we all wish for — the freedom to be ourselves.”

 

 

Leadership Styles

I was recently involved in a discussion that asked, “What makes a leader?”  I answered with my simple reply:  a leader is someone who looks behind him/her and sees people following.  Easy.  If no one is following you you’re not a leader.

A better question perhaps is, “What makes a good leader?”  Hmmm.  Good as in the size of the crowd that follows? Good as in the weirdness of the things the crowd will do at the prompting of the leader?  Good as in the impact on the followers?  There are plenty of mass leaders who lead their followers right off a cliff, or into a compound, or sexual bondage.  So then that begs the question, “What makes an ethical leader?”

But by far the best question when considering leadership is, “What makes a leader effective?”  I believe it is awareness.   A conscious leader is aware that he has followers and that he has a definite impact on them. She knows that people are watching, learning, imitating, duplicating, and promoting.  An unconscious leader is aware of none of those things.  The unconscious leader is like a bull in a China shop.

There is a responsibility that comes with being a leader.  Even if he has not chosen it, or she refuses to accept it, she is a leader nonetheless.  If s/he is one, s/he might as well learn to do it well.  Leadership comes in all shapes, sizes and formats.  Leadership principles can be found everywhere.  I recently attended the Genghis Kahn exhibit at the Denver Museum of Science and History.   That man was a leader.  I also recall seeing books on the leadership strategies of Attila the Hun, and leadership principles of Jesus Christ.  Most recently I saw a TED video clip that referenced the leadership styles of orchestra conductors.  I was aware of conductor’s physical expressions:  the waving of arms and tossing of hair and pointing to different sections.  But did not know that facial expressions, body language, and energy essence are utilized just as deliberately.  Utterly fascinating.

Check it out – Lead Like the Great Conductors.

Wowsers.  No sooner did  publish this post than someone sent me this very cool link of leadership definitions:

Craft in America

I miss being involved in the world of creation.  I’ve tried my hand at pen and ink drawing,  pastels, making dried flower arrangements, photography.  I lived in the mountains in harmony with the land, hauling water, chopping wood, harvesting herbs.  When a day’s work was done simple instruments came off the wall or out of a closet and brought to life with clapping, dancing and singing.

I just watched the PBS show on Craft in America.  It brought me back to simpler days, fulfilling days.  There is such a need for art in our culture.  Not just for art’s sake – but for  mastery, apprenticeship, diligence, learning something from the inside out, doing something solely for the passion of it and not monetary gain, for having an art or skill worth passing on to future generations so it is not lost.   Most of us are out of touch with our roots, with the things that bring life and light to our souls.  There were once so many avenues for the passions of young people.  We were once a nation of dreamers.  Isn’t that what America once was?  “If you can dream it, you can conceive it.”  America was supposed to be the land where, with diligent work, those dreams could come true.  I think that the principles for creating art are the very same principles required to build dreams – perhaps because so much of art happens at the dreaming level.  How compelling it could be to youth to invite them into those dreams and instill a hope that they, too, could one day create something useful and self-supporting for themselves.

One artist said, “Making things by hand is central to being human.”   Could it be that making things by hand is also central to making us human?

The War is Over

I wasn’t mad.  I was sad.  I wasn’t betrayed.  It was a conscious choice.  I wasn’t so ‘done’ or hateful that I threw away everything he’d ever given me.  Instead I tearfully boxed them up and put them away.  It was my idea, and it was his idea.  Neither of us liked it but we didn’t know what to do about it.  We’d bumped up against something in our relationship that neither of us could get past.  “I want…”  “Well I want…”.  Opposing wants.  He wanted more time together.  I wanted less.  He wanted togetherness.  I wanted freedom.  Our relationship was nearly perfect otherwise.  One catch.  The unsolvable catch.  We had no choice but to say goodbye.   To wave tearfully.  “I wish we could figure it out.”  There was no middle ground on this one.  No matter what we tried he didn’t have as much togetherness as he wanted, and I didn’t have as much freedom as I needed.  After losing myself in a 30+ year marriage and dedication to a family of 6 I wasn’t about to lose myself again.  I was, and was determined to remain, a separate entity…. I would not lose myself again…. not even for love.

Six months later life happened to bring us together on a project.  He’d changed.  I noticed.  Tears will do that.  The neediness was gone.  Where did it go?  Swallowed up by more resourceful ways of being???  It was very endearing.   After some deliberations we realized that it was never our love for each other that was in question.  After some cautious and calculated testing we decided to try it again.   Whatever internals shifts that happened inside him allowed him to be less demanding.  These were true character changes deep inside, not muscling through by controlled thinking.  He’d simply become happy to be by himself.  I found that I didn’t need to run, to desperately seek freedom, when he was less demanding.  I could gratefully move towards him instead.  The war was over.

The pictures and cards and notes came out of the box and back onto the shelf.  They’ve been added to over time… notes of love, yearning and tenderness, but this time not from a place of neediness (“I want”), but from a place of giving (“I love”).  Love is daily at my door.  It is not barging in.  It is not making demands.  I open the door wide to let it in…. or sometimes not if the mood isn’t right.  It’s all good.  It’s real. It’s life.  And more importantly, on the rare occasion that I choose not to open the door, he realizes it isn’t about him.  And that protects his heart.  I believe that he too, would say that our love is richer and more satisfying than it has ever been now that it is both offered and received freely.  No demands.  Just a gift to be enjoyed.  And we do.

The Starving Artist

I’m sitting in a burned out forest, the now famous Hayman fire in Colorado, surrounded by tall flowering grasses waving in the breeze, and the reds, blues, pinks and brilliant yellows of the sea of wildflowers that are reclaiming the land.

Ahhhhh.  My starving artist is fed for the moment.  Not the outward “can’t sell my art” starving artist.  This is my inner artist that craves new, exciting, and different.  If I spend too much time in the mundane, routine, sameness of daily life, my inner artist gets annoyed and begins to play an obnoxious beat on the bars of its cage demanding food – food in the forms of light and color and words and the unique aspects of life.

There comes a point when it just can’t tolerate the familiarity of the day-to-day any longer.  The same road to the store.  The same road to the job.  The same road to a friend’s house.  My car can practically drive there by itself.  Some times (my artist and) I just don’t want to know what’s around the bend.  I want to drive, slowly if possible, and be surprised at every turn.  “What’s next?”

I was delighted this morning to come around a turn on some back road somewhere north of Deckers, to see a herd of buffalo grazing, their coats glowing, backlit by the early morning sun; little ones suckling.  (Well little for a buffalo.)  The big boys were chewing the grass, watching. I just stood in their presence for a while taking it all in.  A teenager came to visit but got skittish when I stepped one step too many.

I didn’t intend to come to this burned area.  I just turned this way and that way according to what delighted me in the moment (Choosing Anew, a Path with a Heart, which is my theme for 2009) and here I am.  Sitting amongst wildflowers, bees and hummingbirds below twisted knotted trees.  Both death and life are very present here.

My mind is free to wander where it will without parameters, and in that creativity is born.  The starving artist is fed for the moment.

The Arc of a Day

I love mornings.  It’s a time when I get the world to myself.  No traffic.  No lines.  No businesses open for that matter.  I can drive as slow as I want, or even on the wrong side of the road if I want.  The homeless are just waking, shaking off the chill of the night, greeting each other groggily.  Other inquisitive thinkers, those the world would call oddballs, like me,  are also about.  A few hours later the athletes and dog walkers begin to appear – the runners, joggers, bikers, heading out in the cool of the morning.  Mid-day brings the onslaught of everyone else.  It’s some kind of culmination point.  Those who work late are up.  Those who rise early are up.  The read the paper and drink coffee people are out.  The market place is in full buzz.

I’m in Manitou Springs writing next to a creek that has a playground.  The ladies with white tennies and pink sweaters.  The men with dress shoes and argyle socks pulled over the calf.  Cameras flashing.  Today I had a special treat.  I had the usual quietness in the low-angled golden sun of morning.  A cup of tea, wandering, looking at rocks.  (Found some purple ones in a layer of volcanic ash.)  Then the park filled with tourists and their kids.  But that wasn’t the treat.  The sky filled with thick gray rain-laden clouds and dumped buckets of rain on all of us.  The people scattered like ants.  Bumper to bumper cars crammed with people made there way… to probably a hotel room somewhere.

The treat was that  the rains have passed; the sun is out and the quietness has returned.  I have my morning again, for the second time today,  right smack in the middle of the day.  A few kids, a few pets, a few oddballs have returned.  The creek is louder because of the rain.  The cedar chips in the playground are more aromatic.  The picnic table I’m at is quite a lot cleaner after I wiped off the rain.  I’ve been given the gift of two mornings today.  Hooray for mornings.

Beginnings

I’ve always been intrigued with beginnings – that is roots.  Where does it start?  ‘It’ meaning a behavior, a word, a saying, a myth.  Community history is of particular interest.  The roots, be it religious based, gold digger based, or the long, hard hours of an agricultural community seem to carry through to its modern day practices no matter how long ago the city was formed.

I’ve been involved in the Rebuilding divorce recovery program for quite some time now.  I was privileged to train with Nina Hart-Fisher, the founder’s widow.  And even closer to “roots” I recently had the privilege of spending an afternoon with Bruce Fisher’s oldest son, Todd, who in the program’s beginnings helped his father compile the stats or the divorce adjustment scale and also volunteered a number of times in the live classes.

I was enthralled as I listened to some of the life events happening for Bruce Fisher as he was writing the various chapters of the Rebuilding After Your Relationship Ends, book that we use as the text in the live seminar.

Even more interesting are the varied experiences that made up the man, Bruce Fisher, throughout his life.  Starting out as a poor (if looked at in strictly financial terms) farmer, to a communications specialist in the Marines, to a probation office and educator, to singing in a barber shop quartet and pitching in the minor leagues.

All of those interests just underline the fact that divorce is common to men and woman of all walks of life.  No one is exempt to its far reaching effects. Bruce Fisher was also married 3 times.  Perhaps to develop the program that still exists in the world and impacts lives every day, his life had to encompass all these things he experienced. It likely wouldn’t be the program that it is today without them.

The man died 11 years ago, yet his legacy lives on.  Nearly every day I talk to someone who has been impacted by his work.  Granted I live close to the root.  Rebuilding started in Boulder.  Although Todd no longer lives in the Boulder area he also often talks to folks who tell him that his father’s work changed their life.

What a great legacy to live.

When the Right Thing Goes Wrong

This is amazing.  How could this happen?  The other day I ran into a little old lady with my bike.  The whole thing was slower than slow motion right before my eyes.  As she tottered along in front of me on the sidewalk I was prepared to go around her, far off the sidewalk and onto the grass.  The further off the sidewalk I rode, the further off the sidewalk she walked… until she walked right smack in front of me.  I ran right into her and knocked her down.

The thing that struck  was how two people could try so hard to do the right thing, for each other and also for ourselves, and bungle it up so bad.  We were both really trying to do right by each other, to make way, to provide space for the other, to tread carefully.   And we just crashed.  What a cartoon moment.   Falling over on her back was a bit of a fabricated and dramatic response, but it did serve to emphasize the cartoonishness of the moment.

No wonder there are so many relationship crashes out there in the real world.   Even when the people in them are doing their very best to keep things on track they can misread each other and end up hurting one another.  Boom, just like that.  Crash.  It just confirms my belief that the very best plan of action for approaching life is to be fluid and flexible and get really good at rolling with the punches…. or the bike that runs into you….

Letting Things Go Their Own Way

I take a break from my work to read Byron Katie’s book “A Thousand Names for Joy” while I eat my lunch.  As I finish the third chapter for the day ‘True Mastery can be gained by letting things go their own way’ I notice that I’ve reached behind me as I read.  I’m gently stroking a leaf on a plant that is touching my shoulder as if it were the paper thin hand of a frail old woman.  Tears come to my eyes.  I flash on my German-speaking great grandmother who once cared for this ancient plant.  Is that the cause of the tears?  A connection with a woman who is in my blood but whom I have never met, through this 100+ year old Christmas Cactus?  Or do the tears appear because I find myself lovingly stroking this creature without having had a conscious thought to do so?  Or is it that I am able to find such genuine pleasure in this simple act?

There it sits  in all its aged wisdom, almost 4 feet wide and 2 feet tall – and that’s just what it’s grown since I almost killed it out of neglect in the 1980’s before I came to my senses.  It’s been in our family for generations.  I’d love to hear the stories it heard while taking up two seats at the kitchen table due to its large size.  Story has it that Great Grandmum came from Germany a crippled 13-year old as a stowaway on a boat – the only part of the story I know.   Does that have anything at all to do with why I reached so unconsciously behind me to say hello?  I have no idea.

One Life at a Time

“No man is a failure who has friends,”  says Clarence in the closing lines of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’.   Like George Bailey in the movie, I’ve been in pursuit of a dream of my own for over ten years now.  The journey has taken me to depths I never thought I would travel, to lands totally unfamiliar to me.  Requiring me to climb ‘mountains’ that years before I would never have believed myself capable.  The pursuit of a dream is a powerful motivator. There comes a time when there’s no turning back.  When remaining face to face with the rock means life and attempting to navigate the path back to the ground is certain death.

Sometimes that dream gets hijacked.  The path takes unanticipated twists and turns.  I intend to go one direction in hard pursuit of my dream only to find out Life has other ideas.  Ok.  Plan B.  Where will this new path take me?  Doesn’t look quite like what I thought it would but since this path is before me, and the other seems lost for the time being, I will follow it.   The compass in my head tells me I’m going the wrong way but the ‘right way’ has disappeared, at least for a time.

Part of my dream is delivering a service to a segment of the population who can benefit by it, and the tricky part is, that I also dream of being financially supported for doing so – much like any artist.  I deliver the service regularly.  I love it.  I’m good at it.  It’s very fulfilling.  It makes a huge difference to those who are impacted by it, which is ultimately the greatest payoff.   But since I don’t get paid enough to make a living at it I must seek other employ for the sake of the dollar.  I suppose this is part of the plan… the hijacked path… but mostly it seems that the pursuit of the dollar hijacks my energy from making the difference I desire to make. I’ve often wondered what the world would be like if we humans could be supported by living out our dream, talents and gifts, rather than be motivated by the elusive dollar.   I imagine our whole infrastructure would be different, filled with all kinds of artsy stuff and music and color and glorious buildings, and movies and theatre that edified rather than appealed to the lowest appreciations of mankind.

The world rewards by dollars.  Since I’m not creating (enough of) those I must not be a success – or so my mind makes up.    George Bailey had an inherent dream, a dream he was born with, a dream of travel and seeing the world and far away places, of building things, and freedom and independence and making a literal concrete difference.  He was a visionary and did his best, his entire life, to act on his vision.  Life handed him something else.  His dream apparently hijacked.  I relate.  Instead of living  his life as he envisioned it, he became a champion for common man and woman.    The servant’s heart was in him or he wouldn’t have been able to pull it off.    And just when he was at the end of his rope he was given the gift of living out in 3-D  the impact he had on his world — a review of the difference he had made – one life at a time.

Tonight I am questioning the wisdom of being motivated by dollars rather than healing a planet.  Are these not the two polarities in the movie?   Mr. Potter vs. George Bailey.   I accept my life as it is, while still being aware of my dream on another path winding through different woods out there somewhere.  Perhaps the two paths will intersect  sometime, and then I will know what the apparent hijacking is all about.  And maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t matter if it ever does.   It really is a wonderful life just as it is….. to live it, and give it, and touch it…. one life at a time.