Monthly Archives: September 2023

“S” is for Surrender

When we last left our Abecedarium (well, after a brief detour to praise Lisa Scottoline), I was reflecting on Reflection—which is big for me this time of year.  As we wound that essay down, I teased that I would write this time on Surrender as I work to learn how to let go and accept what I cannot control.  That is a profound topic during these Days of Awe (the 10 days on the Jewish calendar that begin with Rosh Hashanah and end with Yom Kippur).  It is a time of deep reflection, evaluation, and commitment to personal growth and Gd’s commandments.  As I noodled on surrender these past couple of weeks, the universe has brought me several examples to share and learn from.

I began my thinking with observing when I find it easy to surrender.  There are not many examples; however, one my regular readers are already aware of is spin class.  I have been a lifelong exerciser (at varying levels of intensity and commitment) in good part because of my ability to surrender during a workout.  I will admit that approximately 10 out of 10 times, I don’t want to go to the Y.  Even if I’m looking forward to a workout, when I am in my jammies sipping a cup of coffee and reading my daily comics, the thought of working up the energy to sweat (or even just to stretch) is a monstrous barrier.  But I go through the process of brushing my teeth, putting on workout clothes and driving to the Y knowing that I can just surrender to the instructor.

I learned several years ago that I need an instructor or trainer to get my best workouts.  It is amazing what I will do in the gym when someone else tells me to do it (versus what I can motivate myself to do).  I think it’s because it feels good to just surrender the responsibility to someone else.  I can shut down my frontal lobe and go.  Nowhere is that more evident than in spin class, as I detailed in my essay on Flow.  At the end of those classes, I am physically drained yet mentally energized.  In that instance, surrender is easy because I have trust in the instructor, and I do know that if I really, really need to pull back that I can.  That trust and knowledge of an “out” allows me to relax and give my all.  If only surrendering in other parts of my life was as easy.

Last time, I introduced surrender in the context of learning to not force control in every aspect of my life.  Much of that need to control, I know, comes from fear of being blindsided by an action of another or confronted with something I didn’t know I didn’t know.  I feel compelled to make sure those situations never happen or, if they do, work to right that wrong.  But no matter how much I want to control those situations, sometimes I just can’t and I have to surrender to it.  I have to let it go.  Lordy, that’s hard!  And one of those situations popped up this past week.

I was scrolling through Facebook and came across a Friend Recommendation for someone that I had already been Facebook friends with for years.  This is not a close friend, but someone I worked with at Air Products for years and years and someone I considered more than just a colleague.  She is someone I admire and whose respect I was eager to earn and retain.  I checked my friend list and, sure enough, she wasn’t on it.  Then I noticed I lost a subscriber to the blog.  Were the two related?  When did she unfriend me?  Why?  Was it something I wrote in a blog post or posted on Facebook?  I try not to be controversial, but I am pretty honest and know that people won’t agree with everything I write.  But her?  I thought we were of like minds.  (I don’t know if she is the subscriber I lost because they’ve “updated” the website managing tools in such a way that I can’t figure out how to see my complete subscriber list.)  I stewed over this for days.  OK, I’m still stewing over this.  “What did I do?!” I keep asking myself.  I have toyed with sending her a message, asking if I wrote something to offend her.  I mean, maybe it was a mistake!  Maybe she accidentally unfriended me and the subscriber loss was a coincidence in timing.  Maybe I accidentally unfriended her?  that is when I took a long, slow, deep breath and said, “Let it go, Sherri.”  This is not someone I am close enough with that further steps to find resolution are critical in the grand scheme of things.  I must surrender to the situation.  I can’t control it.  I have to let it go.  But, dammit, it’s hard.

Finally, one more “surrender” challenge popped up yesterday and this is a hard one.  It is also not resolved yet.  We came back from the shore yesterday to take our Maine Coon mix, Beau, to his annual vet appointment.  We’d been concerned about some labored breathing and his attempts at what seemed like trying to get a hairball up to no avail.  The vet took an Xray to find his lungs and chest cavity filled with fluid.  He’s not even six years old!  Is he in heart failure this young?!  They tried to remove some of the fluid but he was too distressed so we took him to an emergency vet.  We knew he’d need to stay at least overnight, so we left him there and came home.  I don’t know how parents of sick children are able to put one foot in front of another, much less breathe.  Kissing him goodbye last night, knowing there was a chance he wouldn’t even make it through the aspiration, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  I’m crying as I type these words, even.  I keep thinking that Gd takes the holiest and best of us during the Hebrew months of Elul and Tishrei, which we are in now.  Beau is the sweetest cat I’ve ever had.  I can’t lose him this soon!  But I must surrender.  Surrender to the skill of the vets.  And surrender to Gd’s will.  He made it through the aspiration.  They removed 200 ml of fluid—almost a cup.  He’ll see the cardiologist today.  We can only take it one step at a time.  We don’t even know how he’s doing this morning, yet, since we can’t call until 9:00 and I’m writing early. 

I know I can’t control this.  In some ways, it’s easier to surrender when it is so clear things are out of your control.  I write to distract myself.  I take deep breaths.  I remind myself that these techniques are important for all of those little things, too.  Slow, deep breaths.  Focus on controlling yourself and your own reactions.  Take action when you can.  In the meantime, surrender.

(Postscript:  As I make my final edits before posting this essay, Beau is back home with us.  We don’t have the answers yet as to why he built up so much fluid.  The cardiologist doesn’t believe his heart disease is advanced enough to have caused it.  He clearly is more comfortable, acting very normal, very snuggly, and Bridget has finally stopped hissing at him.  We go back to talk with a surgeon and get him a CT scan on Wednesday.  We are trying hard to not option sort until we know more.  Meanwhile, I don’t miss a chance to love on him every time I can.)

“S” is for Scottoline (A Bonus Essay)

My loyal readers (both of you) are probably surprised to find this essay in your Inbox.  “Why, you JUST published your Deep Thoughts essay on Reflection this past Sunday,” you must be thinking.  “And you teased us that the ‘S’ essay would be on Surrender.  Plus, you are too lazy to write another essay in less than two weeks!”  You are right on multiple counts.  Yes, I indicated at the end of the Reflection essay that, as we work our way through our year-long Abecedarium, the next essay would be on Surrender.  And it will be.  In a little over a week.  If I can figure out how to write about it.  Because, yes, I generally AM too lazy to write more often than biweekly.  Consider yourself lucky!  Or not.

I write today motivated by Trish’s birthday.  Birthdays took on a whole new meaning when I met Trish.  I learned quickly that Trish is an outstanding gift giver.  Sometimes it’s because I turn to her and say, “I want THIS for my birthday!”  But more often, it’s because she is very observant and caring and notices things that would make excellent gifts for me.  Those first couple of years, I was stunned at her gifts.  How did she know?  I asked her for her secret.  “Just pay attention,” she said.  Luckily for me, my birthday is nine days before hers, so I get a little over a week to try and make up the gap between what I got for her and what I SHOULD have gotten for her.

Over time, she shared her superpower with me and I began, in my own way, to pay attention.  You see, those “wow” gifts don’t need to cost a lot.  They just need to mean something.  In fact, one of my all-time favorite gifts is a coffee mug.  What makes this mug so special, besides the person who gave it to me, is that it wears my mantra, the quote from Brené Brown that I often use in these essays—I’m here to GET it right, not BE right.  It is the only mug I use for my morning coffee.  (Trish didn’t give it to me, but knows how much I love it and she loves the giver as much as I do.)

There is a story behind one of the gifts I gave her this year that makes a great example.  And there’s another lesson in there, as well.  To introduce the gift, I have to make sure everyone knows a couple of (non-sensitive) things about Trish.  She is an avid reader, particularly of the crime/thriller/murder genre.  This is why I sleep with one eye open.  As such, she is a fan of Lisa Scottoline.  Additionally, Lisa wrote a weekly humorous column that ran in the Philly paper for years (and that now runs on her website) called Chick Wit that Trish absolutely adores.  I went onto Lisa’s website (I’ve decided we are on first name basis, now) to see if I could buy an autographed headshot or a personally inscribed book.  Not finding a way to purchase exactly what I wanted, I sent a generally inquiry to the “Write to Lisa” email listed.

Expecting to maybe hear back from a publicist in a few weeks, I was knocked over when only an hour or two later I received an email reply from Lisa herself!  Holy cow!  I just got an email from a world famous, best-selling author!  You have to try to imagine what someone who has always enjoyed writing (and painfully pens a biweekly blog that maybe a hundred or so people read) felt receiving that outreach.  That became MY birthday present!  Anyway, Lisa was super sweet in her reply and after a couple of back and forths we had a plan.  I would buy the book of my choice and she would send me a birthday card written to Trish for me to include with the book.  Lisa sent the card out THAT day.  I could barely contain myself!  How I kept this a secret for a couple of months is beyond me.

The card arrived a few days later.  I was hoping to intercept it and squirrel it away, but I came home from running an errand and found Trish had beat me to the mailbox.  It was the only piece of mail for me and there it sat, all by itself on the kitchen table, all but yelling, “EXPLAIN ME!”  Lisa had wisely addressed the card to me and not put on a return address.  Looking like a thief, I grabbed the envelope and hid it away.  I thought I had dodged a bullet, until we were reading side by side later that night.  Then this exchanged happened:

Trish:  What was that letter you got today?

Me (a terrible liar):  Just junk mail.

Trish (knowing I’m a terrible liar):  But the address was handwritten.

Me (panicking):  It was an offer from some store.

(Brief silence.)

Me, again:  OK, fine, it’s part of a birthday present for you.  But don’t ask me anything else about it because I’m really excited and I’ll give it to you now.

Trish (knowing I WILL give it to her now because I’m like a little kid when I get excited):  OK.

That was late July.  I wrapped the book right away with the envelope in it and put it with all the other gifts I wrapped right away to avoid giving her.  Over the next two months, it took almost everything I have inside to NOT break down and give her the gift.  And then today finally arrived.

We sat down for her to unwrap her pile.  I waited for her to reach for “it”.  I tried to contain my anxiety.  As she started to unwrap the gift, I grabbed my phone and said, “I want to video you opening this one.”  She gave me a sideways look.  She could tell it was a book.  How exciting could a book be?  I’ll tell you how exciting a book can be!  Just watch the video.  We haven’t been able to stop talking about it since (hence my need to sit down and write this essay).  Yes, Trish complimented me on my thoughtfulness, but we talked mostly about how cool it was that Lisa took the time to, first, engage with me, and then to write and send the card.  I know it wasn’t a ton of effort (compared to writing dozens of books!) but it’s not about the effort.  It’s about the impact of thoughtful actions.

Trish and I have often talked about this:  the importance of doing little things that may have an outsized impact, whether you realize it or not.  And most of the time, you don’t.  That’s why she catches the eye of everyone she sees at the Y, smiles, and says “Hi.”  It’s why I’ll compliment a perfect stranger on her shoes or his eyes.  It’s why she’ll use the server’s first name.  It’s why I’ll grab someone’s empty shopping cart and take it back.  Little, personal actions matter.  I wrote in the last essay about the importance of seeing the humanity in everyone around us.  This is part of that.

Think about little things that others, even strangers, have done that made a big difference in your day or even your life.  Then pay it forward.  Look for the opportunity do little nice things for others.  Oh, and go buy a book written by Lisa Scottoline.  In fact, buy all of them.  Multiple copies.  Give them to people you love.  I have it on first hand information that she’s a pretty cool person.

“R” is for Reflection

The Fall, or more specifically September, is a big time of Reflection for me.  Lots of endings and beginnings.  First, it’s the change of seasons.  The change from summer to fall will always make me think of the start of a new school year; the ending of one phase and the entrance into another.  My birthday falls in early September, which quite literally means the end of one age and the beginning of another.  The Jewish High Holidays are in the fall, beginning with the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and ending ten days later with the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).  Traditionally, this is a serious time of introspection for Jews—a look back over the past year and a commitment to change in the coming year.  It is also the time of year that I lost my maternal grandmother (the only grandparent I really knew) and my father.  So, yes, this is a time of Deep Reflection for me.

What kind of Deep Thoughts?  Poor Trish has to suffer through me going deep on anything and everything.  The first draft of this essay was a total mess.  I was all over the place.  Every movie or TV show I watch, every newsletter, even when I am at the Y—everything makes me pensive.  One might say I think too much.  One would probably be right.  I like to think it’s really about my powers of observation in overdrive.  The reality is that I can’t turn my brain off.  So, my way of dealing with the issue this year is to get it all out in an essay!  Buckle up.

One thing I keep noodling on is how we tend to dehumanize people we don’t directly know.  (What?  Yeah, this is why you should pity Trish!)  Trish took me to see Oppenheimer for my birthday.  Interesting birthday present, I know, but what made it a present is that I REALLY wanted to see the movie and Trish REALLY did not.  Plus, I wanted popcorn.  Anyway, I’ve been somewhat obsessed with the US decision to drop the bomb since I went through the Peace Museum in Hiroshima.  I’m not going to debate whether we should or should not have used the bomb.  There is no clear answer.  What I can say is that all the Japanese who were killed (tens of thousands instantly; tens of thousands more to radiation-induced illnesses) were for the most part just regular people going about their lives.  They had the same hopes and dreams and fears as we do.  Humans are humans are humans.  It would do us well to remember that when we take sides on political issues or really any issue.  People are complicated and have contradictory traits AND I am convinced that 99.9% of people are generally good humans trying to get through their day.  The truly evil ones are few and far between.  Focus on the humanity, first.

Another thing I’ve been noodling on is the importance of critical thinking skills.  (Seriously, this is what Trish has to put up with this time of year.)  I hear it that parents are concerned about what their kids are taught in school.  They absolutely should know, be involved, have a say.  AND they should insist that the most important thing their kids are taught are critical thinking skills.  Then, as they grow, they can take in new information and know how to evolve their thinking.  I was taught the concept of Manifest Destiny as a grade schooler—that it was Gd’s will that European settlers inhabit the US from sea to shining sea and that any native Americans that stood in the way were savages that deserved to be killed or subdued.  It did not ruin me as a child to learn this; however, as an adult I have taken in new information and evolved my thinking.  I was also taught that an atom can be pictured as raisin pudding (the raisins being electrons and the pudding being the nucleus).  That was fine in 5th grade.  By the time I learned Quantum Mechanics, I no longer pictured an atom that way.  Maybe it’s because I’m Jewish, but I question EVERYTHING.  Sometimes, my opinions are reinforced; sometimes they are changed.  But I am always questioning and evaluating.

Looking inward, a lot of what I have been noodling on lately surrounds my control issues.  I’ve referred to, and joked about, my extreme need to control everything in my life.  What I’ve been digging into is the “why?”  I will allow that part of it is my personality and I know I’m not alone in this characteristic.  I would say most people I know have control issues to some degree.  While Trish may chide me for being too much of a backseat driver (even when I’m sitting in the front seat), she has been known to make more than the occasional suggestion—and use her imaginary brake pedal—when I am driving.  I’ve become much more aware, lately, of people working to control the environment around them, ranging from “suggestions” to their partner or friends, to avoidance of situations when they can’t ensure it is to their liking.  Admittedly, that makes me feel a bit better.  It’s not just me.

Then again, “me” is all I can control so the focus has to be there.  I’ve described in previous essays times when I have been blindsided by people’s behaviors toward me or when I “didn’t know what I didn’t know”.  Those situations have caused long term pain, so part of my control issues surround pain avoidance.  This fear dovetails with my desire to be liked and/or admired and the extreme accommodations I have often made to help ensure that.  News alert:  it doesn’t work.  I have finally come to accept that I need to just be my authentic self and people will choose to like (or not like) me.  That doesn’t mean I am resistant to feedback.  I am continuing to grow and evolve, so I need to hear what others think.  What it does mean is that I sort that feedback through the filter of who I know myself to be.  It does not mean that I will try to change myself (or pretend to do so) to make others happy. 

As obvious as all of that sounds, getting there has been a long journey and it has meant accepting that some people are no longer a big part of my life.  I still struggle mightily with that.  Letting go is not my strong suit.  Allowing that I may never get closure or be able to state my truth is a bitter pill to swallow.  I am working to learn from past mistakes and do better going forward even if the chance to right previous wrongs never presents itself.  That, my friends, is super hard for me.  Learn.  Grow.  Accept.  Repeat.

As we move into this season, I keep asking myself the Big Questions:  How have I comported myself over this past year?  How am I looking to evolve?  As we have discussed, being authentic and vulnerable are two of the most difficult behaviors any of us can embody.  It can leave you open to hurt but it also opens you up to the most profound joy.  My control issues express themselves in a myriad of ways and my challenge is to confront the discomfort and disarm it.  I am beginning to believe this is the challenge of my remaining life!  There is a lot of meditation and self-talk going on these days and I know that 61 years of reinforced behavior will not change overnight.  I am committed to it, though.  I can’t control everything around me.  I don’t NEED to control everything around me.  I need to learn how to Surrender.